912 scandals and corruption: Asia and the Pacific one; it contains many documents recording cases brought before the temple authorities Most involve relatively minor episodes of theft and embezzlement There was one particularly persistent offender, a man named Gimillu His career is documented over a period of around 20 years; at first he was in charge of the livestock owed to the temple, and later he was responsible for the income from the temple’s agricultural land Gimillu misappropriated temple property on a large scale; even after being convicted and fined heavily and then trying to abscond, he continued to work for the temple in a responsible position There does seem to have been a high degree of tolerance toward convicted thieves and fraudsters From the private sphere in the Neo-Babylonian Period (625–539 b.c.e.) there is a court record concerning attempted extortion by a man who tried to pass off a forged cuneiform tablet When challenged by the intended victim, he snatched the clay tablet from his victim’s hands and tried to destroy it by chewing it Other records reveal that even though he was found guilty, the villain continued to conduct business The scribe who wrote the fake tablet was also liable to be punished when caught ASIA AND THE PACIFIC BY Stone panel from the palace of Sennacherib, Nineveh, northern Iraq, Neo-Assyrian, about 700–695 b.c.e.; this panel shows soldiers of the royal guard; the king’s death was thought to have been the result of a plot within the palace to murder him (© The Trustees of the British Museum) in front of witnesses In this way it would be immediately clear if someone had gained unauthorized access Livestock could be branded in such a way that marked them as temple property, and even the temple dependents who formed part of its workforce could be marked to make it difficult for them to escape Thus the institutional administration contained inbuilt deterrents against fraud and theft, but they could not be entirely eliminated Normally it is difficult to extract information on these subjects from the cuneiform tablets that made up the institutional archives To shed light on them, documents that tell a story rather than simply recording the transfer of commodities are needed In records of accounts there are many cases where the figures not add up, but it is impossible to prove that these represent a deliberate attempt to defraud rather than simply errors on the part of the scribe Suitable sources include records of lawsuits and letters containing anecdotal evidence of corruption Fortunately, some of the surviving archives contain material of this kind The Eanna temple archive from Neo-Babylonian Uruk is KIRK H BEETZ Although Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.) believed that China had an ancient past that featured good and just governments, it seems that no ancient Chinese government at any time was free of corruption Written records for the Shang (1500–1045 b.c.e.) and early Zhou (1045–256 b.c.e.) dynasties are scant, but those that exist suggest that corruption among military leaders and government officials was constant throughout the history of ancient China One corrupt practice involved the trading of women by powerful men During the Six Dynasties (220–589 c.e.) women were used as bribes, and if the bribes persuaded generals to switch sides during a war, the fates of millions of people changed based on a man’s lust for women Many military leaders were not susceptible to being bribed with women but could be bribed with gifts of horses or money Thus, the corruption of some Chinese leaders reduced women to the level of horses, and for the sake of their bribes they betrayed their province or country, their lord or king, and broke their oaths of loyalty Sometimes tens of thousands of people died when the man who was supposed to protect them changed sides for a bribe and killed them Many historians consider the era of Confucius to have been notably corrupt Most of the people of China were peasants who were forced to work every day in their fields From the Zhou Dynasty through the end of the ancient era kings occasionally tried to redistribute land to peasants, but members of the nobility would confiscate land or loan peasants money at interest rates that were impossible to repay They would then take the peasants’ lands and force the former owners to work the lands for the profit of the nobles, making the peasants slaves in all but name