Biblical Correspondences with Nuzi Akkadian

Some thirty-five years have elapsed since the late Dr. Edward Chiera began the excavations at Yorghan Tepe in Iraq,1 excavations which have produced a wealth of information concerning Hurrian social, economic and legal customs as they existed in the little town of Nuzi2 in the heart of the Mittanian Empire during the middle of the second millenium B.C.E. And, as Dr. Chiera began almost immediately to publish texts of various types from among the thousands of clay tablets there retrieved,3 it soon became evident that, frpm among the different aspects of culture reflected in these documents, there were frequent and provocative elements similar to elements in Hebrew culture, especially of the patriarchal period.