Sex Scandal Rocks Government
How Do You Spell "Monica" in Cuneiform?

The head of government is charged with an illicit sexual relationship while
in office.  In a deposition, he vehemently denies the charge. "Emphatically
no," he testifies. "I did not sleep with her."  His agents are called in to
testify.  The case has dragged on almost interminably.  The hearings have
been endless. The
matter is of great public concern and interest. 

Sound like Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton? Of course you're
wrong.  It's the case of Nuzi vs. Kushshiharbe.  And it all happened in
about 1400 B.C.  We know about it from cuneiform records unearthed at
Yorghan Tepe, ancient Nuzi, in northeastern Iraq.  

The young lady's name is not Monica, but Humerelli.  And Kushshiharbe, the
mayor of Nuzi, has allegedly been guilty of immoral behavior with Humerelli
not only once, but twice.  Worse still, Kushshiharbe used government agents
to bring him to the trysting place.  One of the agents so testified. 

Kushshiharbe was accused of, and tried for, a number of other crimes as
well, including misappropriating crown property, diverting tax collections
to his own use and accepting bribes. 

Alas, the tablet containing the verdict has not yet been found, so we know
no more about the eventual outcome of the Kushshiharbe-Humerelli case than
we do about the Clinton-Lewinsky case.

What we do know comes from 14 tablets unearthed in 1927 and 1928 by Edward
Chiera on behalf of the Harvard Semitic Museum (where the tablets are now
on view) and the Fogg Art Museum.  The tablets are written in Akkadian, the
lingua franca of the time. Nuzi was then a part of the kingdom of Mittani.*

* This story is based largely on the report in the Annual of the American
Schools of Oriental Research 16 (1936).


From the Biblical Archaeology Review,  September/October 1998 issue
http://www.bib-arch.org/strata989.html#ssrg