scandals and corruption: The Middle East with mutilation In year 17 of the reign of Ramses III a gang was being shortchanged by a greedy official who used undersized measures to distribute rations and then presumably kept the difference for himself The matter was brought to the attention of Akh-pet, another scribe of the vizier, who checked the grain measure and found that it held 38 hin instead of the standard 40 (ca one-half bushel) Thus the workmen had been receiving percent less than their due The famous Tomb Robbery Papyri also describe the looting of graves and temples during the reigns of Ramses IX and XI, sometimes with the complicity of officials who took bribes to keep silent and release those who were under arrest Another mid-Twentieth Dynasty (1196–1070 b.c.e.) papyrus records charges of large-scale embezzlement and misconduct against personnel of the temple of Khnum at Elephantine, including an unnamed priest Another papyrus describes the crimes of a certain Djehutihotep, the chief guard of the Karnak temple Since this was arguably the most sacred public place in Egypt, his crimes provide evidence of the extent of negligence and corruption at the highest levels of the Theban administration In the prayers of ordinary Egyptians, preserved in letters and documents from the village housing the workers at Deir el-Medina, there are pleas to the gods for justice after all other doors were closed to them, pleas to hear their petitions, and pleas to ease their suffering from the rapidly increasing corruption in their society In one prayer, Amun is “the vizier of the poor; he does not accept bribes from the guilty, he does not speak to the one who witnesses, he does not look to (favor) the one who makes promises.” In another source, a lady invokes Amun to protect her from gossip and rumors Although these documents portray the dark side of ancient Egyptian society, there were nonetheless ordinary good people who attempted to bring up their offspring with ethics and good principles THE MIDDLE EAST BY HEATHER D BAKER In Mesopotamia political power was concentrated in the hands of the ruler The surviving sources for the exercise of royal power therefore have to be treated with caution because they almost always originate with the king and his court; independent testimony is rare indeed The written documentation available about political scandal at the highest level tends to concern episodes when the transition from one ruler to the next was contested or when a king saw fit to condemn the actions of his predecessor or both In such cases as these the king whose account survives may have been motivated by a desire to enhance his own reputation at the expense of a previous ruler by seeking to question the legitimacy of his reign or his actions while in office The circumstances surrounding the death of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704–681 b.c.e.) reflect one such instance of a troubled succession from one ruler to the next Many de- 911 tails of what happened are still unclear, because the cuneiform sources are fragmentary and difficult to interpret Still, it is clear that there was a plot to murder Sennacherib, who had taken the unusual step of naming his younger son, Esarhaddon, as his successor Esarhaddon’s case may well have been promoted by his mother, Naqia, a powerful woman well versed in palace intrigue Following the death of his father, while Esarhaddon was in hiding for safety, his older brothers fought among themselves for the throne, but on his return Esarhaddon defeated them in battle He took the throne and ruled for 11 years (680–669 b.c.e.) Another political scandal, of a rather curious nature, involves the Babylonian king Nabonidus (r 556–539 b.c.e.), who left his country to live in apparently self-imposed exile in Taymā’ (in Saudi Arabia) for 10 years Although he went to Arabia in the role of military conqueror, this does not explain why he remained there for so many years, leaving his son Belshazzar to rule in Babylonia in his stead A conventional view holds that the Babylonian priesthood opposed his unorthodox religious beliefs, especially his attempts to promote the moon god Sin at the expense of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, Marduk Nabonidus’s own inscriptions hint at such a background to these events His successor, Cyrus the Great, the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, certainly portrayed Nabonidus as an oppressive ruler who did not worship Marduk Cyrus claimed to have been chosen by Marduk and to have restored Babylonian religious life to the peaceful state it had enjoyed before Nabonidus disrupted it A more informal insight into the affairs of state can be found in the correspondence kept in the royal archives Of course, it has to be borne in mind that letters written to the king were intended to promote the cause of the sender by casting him in a favorable light, sometimes at the expense of his rivals Sometimes the letters contain reports of alleged injustice; one scholar, for instance, writes to the king complaining that a local governor had taken away a field of his It seems to be expected that the king will intervene personally in cases such as this where officials abused their power The sources for information about economic scandal and corruption are of a rather different nature Some of the Laws of Hammurabi are concerned with the misappropriation of property, both private and institutional, and with fraud They include, for example, the case of a (female) innkeeper who gives out short measures of beer They also set out regulations governing the conduct of trading ventures so as to protect the merchants from fraud The great palace and temple institutions of the ancient Near East were extremely bureaucratic, and much effort was expended on controlling and recording the movement of goods between different establishments and their responsible officials Precious items could be stored in sealed containers or rooms Sealing was the ancient equivalent of a locking mechanism The official in charge would impress his seal upon a lump of clay applied to the door bolt When the room needed to be opened, the sealing would be broken