Property and Society. There is no native Mesopotamian term for the concept of property. In the written documentation, fields, orchards, animals, houses, furniture, and slaves are identified by terms such as the "field of Gimillu, the divination priest," or the "ox of Enlil-bani, the metalsmith." No written treatise on the concept of property— whether private, communal, or state—has ever been discovered, and given the Mesopotamian disinclination to commit abstractions to writing, none is likely to be found. The majority of legal documents from Mesopotamia, however, are overwhelmingly concerned with the proper disposition of what modern people would call property, and thousands of written cuneiform tablets refer to customs— some of which may well predate the invention of writing and written texts—for ensuring legal, unchallengeable, and fair treatment of individuals with property claims. Concern...