"Nuzi was a Hurrian administrative center not far from the Hurrian capital at Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The Hurrians are equivalent to the Horites in the Old Testament, also called Hivites and Jebusites. Excavations were carried out at Nuzi by American teams from 1925 to 1933. The major find was more than 5,000 family and administrative archives spanning six generations, ca. 1450-1350 BC. They deal with the social, economic, religious and legal
institutions of the Hurrians.
The tablets tell of practices similar to those in Genesis ...Some Nuzi tablets, called “tablets of sistership" --agreements in which a man adopted a woman as a sister.
In the society of the Hurrians, a wife enjoyed both greater protection and a superior position when she also had the legal status of a sister. In such a case, two separate documents were drawn up, one for marriage and the other for sistership.
This may explain why both Abraham and Isaac said their wives were their sisters. It is possible that they had previously adopted them to give them higher status, in accordance with the custom of the day."
GreatDiscoveries
And the men of the place asked him of his wife;
and he said, She is my sister:
for he feared to say, She is my wife;
lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah;
because she was fair to look upon.
Genesis 26:7
The tablets tell of practices similar to those in Genesis ...Some Nuzi tablets, called “tablets of sistership" --agreements in which a man adopted a woman as a sister.
In the society of the Hurrians, a wife enjoyed both greater protection and a superior position when she also had the legal status of a sister. In such a case, two separate documents were drawn up, one for marriage and the other for sistership.
This may explain why both Abraham and Isaac said their wives were their sisters. It is possible that they had previously adopted them to give them higher status, in accordance with the custom of the day."
GreatDiscoveries
And the men of the place asked him of his wife;
and he said, She is my sister:
for he feared to say, She is my wife;
lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah;
because she was fair to look upon.
Genesis 26:7