Footnote 3 – The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?

In the early second millennium B.C. in the Mari texts, we can actually follow the course of negotiations between two kings (for example, of Babylon and Eshnunna). The negotiations, tablets Nos. 372 and 469, are published by D. Charpin in Archives Royales de Mari, XXVI/2 (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988), pp. 144, 179–182, 393–395. When two kings wished to make a treaty, one would send the other a “draft document,” a so-called “little tablet” in their terminology. The recipient would then decide what modifications were desired, and send back his counter-proposals in another draft-document or “little tablet.” Once both parties agreed on final terms, full oaths were sworn, and copies of the final, definitive text, the so-called “large tablet,” were exchanged.