Sources on the hittite laws

The legal Hittite documents all belong to official chancery as it is widely known. So far, no evidence of private Hittite documents (clay tablets) has been found. Compared to what we have in the Mesopotamian and Syrian cultures, we cannot say which jargon was deployed by common people. Such a lack of evidence hinders an overall picture of the legal Hittite lexicon since the Hittite laws and other records of official acts (trials, edicts, and others) formed part of official archives, temples, or royal palaces. These records were composed by officials, priests, and even members of the royal household, which means that experienced scribes wrote down such documents. It is generally believed that legal records of common people were inscribed on waxed wooden tablets, but due to their extremely fragile medium, no evidence has been found so far. But, it is also possible to put forward another hypothesis grounded on some observations. If Hittite subjects did not write legal documents to record their juridical acts and obligations, that is, when they bought slaves, houses, or when they lent money, silver, and cereals, or when they got married or divorced but did not write down anything, they might have done such acts by simply saying a few special words (Lat. certa verba) in the presence of witnesses, just like common people in ancient Rome.