Alterity as a Legal Bridge The Example of the City of Emar (Syria, 14th-13th Centuries BC)

In the Ancient Near East, foreigners did not carry their civic membership and personal guarantees outside their city, which made them more vulnerable. Merchants, particularly exposed to these disadvantages because of their activities, resorted to various remedies to protect both their person and their goods. Along with immunities granted by international treaties or direct negotiations with local rulers, a kind of "daw of nations" developed in some commercial towns of Syria in the middle of the second millennium BC, especially at Emar (Syria). The numerous deeds unearthed on this site depict an open society where locals and foreigners lived side by side under different rules. Legal discrimination appears as a means of acknowledging alterity without belittlement, of making separate communities coexist without organizing the domination of one over the other.