Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Marten Stol and Sven P. Vleeming -- Preface / M. Stol and S. P. Vleeming -- Legal aspects of Care of the Elderly in the Ancient Near East: Introduction / Raymond Westbrook -- Care of the Elderly in Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium B.C. / Claus Wilcke -- Care of the Elderly in Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian Period / Marten Stol -- Old Assyrian and Ancient Anatolian Evidence for the Care of the Elderly / Klaas R. Veenhof -- Care of the Elderly: the Neo-Babylonian Period / G. Van Driel -- Legal Aspects of Care of the Elderly in Egypt to the End of the New Kingdom / Andrea McDowell -- Die Sorge für die Älteren nach den Papyri / Hans-Albert Rupprecht -- Legal aspects of Care of the Elderly in the Ancient Near East: Conclusion / Raymond Westbrook -- Bibliography / Marten Stol and Sven P. Vleeming -- Indices / Marten Stol and Sven P. Vleeming.

Material support in old age : how did the various cultures of the Ancient Near East counter this problem? Surprisingly, this problem has hardly been discussed before and consequently this volume is the first work to concentrate on this important social topic. A group of scholars convened to study the strategies used when there was no son at hand to 'honour father and mother'. Lawbooks remain silent, but a wealth of information can be retrieved from legal texts otherwise not easily accessible to outsiders. In a testament, for example, the testator can assure his maintenance; in other cases a dowry or other gift may take care of a surviving widow. A 'son' could be installed by adopting a wealthy adult person, or a slave be set free under the condition of serving the manumitter until his death. Unmarried women appointted 'daughters' for the same purpose. The role of the 'public sector' (in this case the temple or the palace) in taking care of the destitute elderly remains a matter of debate, also in this book. All regions with rich source materials are covered: Egypt, ancient Sumer, the Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian periods in the history of Mesopotamia, the Old Assyrian colonies in Anatolia, Emar. The introduction and the conclusion are by Raymond Westbrook.

English and German

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