Tehip-tilla

Tehip-tilla was a wealthy landowner and palace official at the court of Nuzi. He had gained his wealth through trade and commerce and through a productive two-field system of agriculture in which each field was cultivated only once in two years.

He left an extensive archive recoding his business transactions. He used his money to acquire large areas of land in and around Nuzi. At that time, individual private ownership of land did not exist in the region, or was restricted, and instead families jointly owned land. To circumvent these restrictions, Tehip-tilla had himself adopted by various members of the community. He gave his new parents a gift, which in effect was the sale price, in return for the usufruct of the fields. Tehip-tilla was adopted some 200 times and acquired access to the farm income of a large domain. Most of them were in debt to him, and by adopting him they signed their fields over to him, and paid off their debts and kept working on land as tenant farmers. Thus Tehip-tilla gained access to both land and labor without interference by the local governmental authorities.