Sale contracts constitute about 40% of the circa 500 legal texts found during the excavations at the Syrian city of Emar and in its surroundings. They are written in two different scribal styles, following two widely differing formularies called Syrian and Syro-Hittite.
The book provides an exhaustive analysis of these documents, discussing in detail all the elements of both formularies and the legal meaning thereof, as well as tracing their origin. The last chapter provides an attempt to collect the data on real estate ownership found in the Emar texts. All legal institutions are presented against a broader, comparative background, with an extensive use of scholarly literature. One of the most important conclusions concerns the existence in Emar of two parallel sets of legal rules concerning sale, used probably by different groups of the population. (Text in French)