In Mesopotamia, the terms kittum and mîšarum were two complementary ways of noting "justice". The first word, kittum, derives from the root KûN, meaning "to be stable": this is justice as the guarantor of order, for example, that which obliges the debtor to repay his creditor. The second term, mîšarum, derives from the root YŠR, meaning "to go straight": this is the justice that rectifies unbearable situations, preventing the rich from crushing the poor and leading kings to forgive the weakest the arrears of their taxes and debts. In 17th-century Babylonia, justice was experienced in two different ways.
First, there was what might be called ordinary justice, corresponding to the notion of kittum, responsible for settling disputes that might arise in everyday life. The course of trials can be studied thanks to the procedural documents that have come down to us, but also thanks to correspondence. These documents show that written and testimonial evidence, far from being in opposition, were seen as complementary: when the written word developed, the Mesopotamians personified tablets by likening them to witnesses, considering them to have a mouth, since it was possible to listen to them. If the written word played an increasingly important role in the administration of evidence during the Paleo-Babylonian period, this was above all the result of a phenomenon of accumulationdue to the passage of time: family archives were increasingly well-stocked. When both written and testimonial evidence were lacking, the procedure of the evidentiary oath was used: several examples have been examined.
