HAMMU-RABI IN THE MARI LETTERS / חמורבי בתעודות מארי

The present article focuses on the personality of Hammu-rabi as revealed in letters sent by residents of Mari, who had visited Hammu-rabi's palace to their king Zimri-Lim (1774/1775-1760/1761 B.C). This article will not focus on Hammu-rabi's historical, political or military activities, but on his personality. The discussion is divided into three major themes: 1. The ceremony welcoming the reinforcement from Mari and the delegation from Mari to the palace. 2. The relationship of Hammu-rabi with his ministers and the delegation from Mari. 3. The personality of Hammu-rabi. The Mari letters disclose a very human side of Hammu-rabi. He appears as a man who does not conceal his feelings. When pleased he shows his happiness, and when angry he can shout so much that he bursts into tears. The present article attempts to reveal some of the personal side of one of the greatest rulers of ancient Babylon. MARI AND THE BIBLE Very few written documents from the biblical period have been found in Eretz Israel. As a result we must rely mainly on external documents from the greater ancient Near East to learn about ways of life in biblical times. Documents from the archive of the city of Mari constitute one of the most important sources of our knowledge. In some fields of biblical reaearch, knowledge of the material from Mari is a fundamental requirement. For example, no scholar today can study such biblical institutions as prophecy, treaty-making or the organization of tribal units without utilizing the information found in the documents from Mari. Such utilization, however, must be by way of analogy. We cannot over-emphasize that there is no historical, social or cultural connection, direct or indirect, between the Mari documents and the Bible. By the time that the first semi-nomadic Hebrew tribes began to settle in Canaan the world of Mari had long been forgotten. No remnant of Mari found its way to Israel and the Bible. When we compare a biblical theme with its counterpart in Mari, we must examine each with its own research tools, just as we do with regard to other archaeological finds and their possible biblical counterparts. The primary tool of biblical research is the philological-historical criticism founded by de Wette and Wellhausen. Philological-historical criticism enables us to reconstruct the history of composition of a given text, its uniformity or the lack thereof, and the dates of its different components in the event that the text is not a unity. Research