If a Lion Eats Him...

Abstract

This article, starting from the analysis of the expression “if a lion kills/eats him” (i.e., a slave received on pledge), which appears in a limited number of surety contracts in the archive of the famous Balaĝunamḫe of Larsa (1829–1792 BC), gives a brief overview of the threat that lions posed not only to livestock but also to human beings in second-millennium Mesopotamia. Letters and administrative documents inform us of attacks on animals and, more rarely, even people. By contrast, collections of laws and legal principles seem to deal exclusively with problems arising from lions attacking domestic animals, without any mention of attacks on humans. In the light of this brief investigation, the author concludes that the expression “if a lion kills/eats him” must be considered a unicum, since it is not found in any other real-life or school contract. She assumes that the scribe decided to add this formula to the liability clause of Balaĝunamḫe’s surety contracts in order to cover as many scenarios as possible, including the chance of being eaten by a lion, clearly representing an event of force majeure.