Amnon Altman

The ''Historical Prologue'', an important, integral part of subordination treaties of the Ancient Near East in the 2nd millennium B.C.E., has been known until now mainly from Hittite treaties. Its function in these treaties was to display the justification for the political subordination of the subjugated country, thus depriving the subordinate party of any opening to repudiate the treaty on the pretext that the subjugation was illegal. As such, this section constitutes a very rich source for the concepts and rules of inter-state law of the Ancient Near East, although, unfortunately, it has not yet been exploited due to a misinterpretation of its role. This research presents a new approach to these prologues, and a detailed legal and historical discussion of their wording, in order to gain better insight into the legal conceptions and rules that underlie them. From the series ''Bar-Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture''.