Old Akkadian Sale and Loan Documents

Various (Sargonic-period private parties and witnesses) · c. 2334-2154 BC (the Sargonic period) · Girsu (Iraq) · law

Thousands of private contracts recording field sales, silver loans, and slave purchases, each closed with a witness list rather than a royal seal, argue that everyday property law in the Akkadian empire ran on local, customary practice rather than codified statute; no Akkadian-period king left a comparable law code, and Mesopotamia's earliest surviving one, Ur-Namma's, would not appear until decades after Akkad's own empire had already collapsed.