BCE), all of these are written in Akkadian. The collections share numerous similar laws, but none is a mere copy or updating of an earlier collection, nor even an updating of earlier language; instead, each one must in some way have responded to the situation in which it was compiled. Legal traditions similar to those of Mesopotamia are known from other ancient Near Eastern contexts apart from the Bible. The Hittites collected laws as early as the Old Kingdom period (17th and 16th centuries), and