DEJONG ELIS OB Economic Text and Letters.pdf

8/18/2019 DEJONG ELIS OB Economic Text and Letters.pdf

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/dejong-elis-ob-economic-text-and-letterspdf 1/28

Old Babylonian Economic Texts and Letters from Tell Harmal

Maria de J. Ellis

Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 24, No. 3. (1972), pp. 43-69.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0256%281972%2924%3A3%3C43%3AOBETAL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

Journal of Cuneiform Studies is currently published by The American Schools of Oriental Research.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/asor.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.orgSat Dec 1 08:30:29 2007


http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html

http://www.jstor.org/journals/asor.html

http://www.jstor.org/journals/asor.html

http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html




O L D B A B YL O N IA N E C ON O RI IC T E X T S A N D L E T T E R S F R O M T E L L H A R N A L

~ I A R I A

J.

ELLIS

E

Yale University

I n vzemorium A. G'oetze

~h~ excavations at ~ ~ 1 1 conducted ill~~~~l

the la te 194 0~s y the

G ~ yielded ~

ma ny tab lets dating to th e Old Babylonian period

before and during the time of Hammurapi. 111-

cludcd amon g these tex ts were several da te l ists;

a geographical list,3 and

texts,' as

as

the famo us copies of the L~~~ of

Egn unn a, wh ich LVere published by A. Goetze.5

T he g rea t bu lk of th e tex ts, holvever, LVere arcllival

in nature, including economic texts, contracts,

and a qua ntit y of letters. Fifty of these letters

LVerc

publislled by ~~~ t~~ in

sumer

4,6 but

a

considerable number remain unpublished. xone

of the economic te xt s fro m th e offjcial excavatiorls

have so far beerl published, but transliteratiorls

and translations of ~~~~~l texts lThich mere ac-

quired

from

dealers i l l the 19201~

rid

3 0 1 ~ n d

are

in the ya le ~ ~ b

collection

l

mcrc prcserited by

S.

Simmons in JC S 12 and 14;7

copies of th ese t ab le ts mill appe ar in a volum e of

Early Old Babylonian texts to be published by

th e l'ale Bab ylon ian Collection.

Goetze made preliminary tran sliterati ons of al-

most a thou sand of th e economic texts and letters

from Tel l Harmal ; in 1967 he turned seventy-

four of these texts over to me for publication. I

copied them during a stay in Baghdad in 1967-

1 . For preliminary publications of t he excavations,

see Sumer 4 137-39, as well as the pamphlet of the I>i -

rectorate-General of Antiquities ent itl ed: Tell Harmal

1959).

2 .

Teha Baqir, Sumer

5 34-85 136-43.

3 . Cf Selim J . Levy, Sumer 3 50-83.

4 . Cf. e.g. Taha Baqir, Sumer 6 39-54; 130-48; 7 28-45;

-4.

C;oet,ze, Sumer

7 126-55; W .

von Soden, Sumer

8 49-56;

F:.

LI. Bruins, Sumer

9 241-59.

5 . See the definitive publication in AASOK 31 and the

recen t comnierlts by B. Landsberger, Symbolae David 2

65-105. Cf. a review of t he latt er, with further comments

by

J . J .

Finkelstein in JAOS

90 245ff.

The text has re-

cently been trea ted by R Yaron, The ws of EBnunna.

l i .

Sumer 14 3-78 = pp. 1-76 in the separate reprint),

plus pls.

1-24.

The article includes a di_scussion

o f

the

administrative organization of ancient Sadupp um, pp.

3-9.

7 . See JCS 13 71-93; 105-119; 14 23-32; 49 -55.

6K8 T he tex ts include twelve letters (nos. 63-

74 ); h e remainder are economic texts. These fall

into five main categories: 1) those dealing with

~ ~ ~ ~

:ibJu ('-lo

)

(2) those accounting f or carts

( G IS .~ I A R .G ~ nos. 13-20); (3) l ists of.DA;

harvesters (GUR US SE.GU R~,,.KU~; os. 21-36);

U lists of lvorkers (G UR US : nos. 37-56); an d

(5) me mo rand a listing disbu rsem ents(? ) of beer

P C ~

PN (nos. 57-61).1° Te xt s

11

and 12 deal

~ f' it h iPku, a ty pe of bread, lvhilf' no. 62 records

the division

of inheritance.

The present article is intended merely to make

the texts public, and to that end corlsists only of

this introduction, a catalogue of the texts ex-

c e r~ t e d rom the Iracl Aluscum General Register,

and the autograph copies of the texts. Th e d('ci-

sion for this fo rm of p ublic ation is based

11

several

reasons. Some of the texts should be treatcd

extensively, while others require little or nothing

~ ~ i ~ ~

8 . am indeb ted to officials of the Ilirectora te- ;ell -

era1 of Antiqu ities of I raq and of th e Iraq Museum ,

especially to Sayyid Fuad Safar, Dr. Faraj Basmachi,

and Dr. Fauzi Keschid, for permission to copy and pub-

lish these tablets, and for their kindness and help d11r1ng

my visit to Iraq t o work on the texts .

9 . These texts are an important addition t o the corpus

of at test ations for the term iibiu. As such they, w ~ t h

some further as yet unpublished material from Tell

Harma l, are tr eated extensively in my stu dy of LIesopo

tamian agricultural revenues to be published as a vol-

ume in the series Studi a Pohl)

10. No 59 was assigned to me under the impressio~~

that it also deals with

pat

PN.

I rather tend to douht

this, on several grounds. First , the

pat

texts deal ex-

clusively with beer; no 59 is a lis t of grain

Secol~dly,

the texts are cast in the form amount beer

pa t

PN date; if more than one person is listed, t he notlce

1s repeated zn toto with the exception of the d ay 111 the

date. No. 59 is a list of several persons, with a sub-tota l

The signs must probably be tak en as par t of the first

personal name listed, although at th e moment I cannot

suggest what i t may have been.

11. These texts were originally assigned to me under

the impression that Bibiu was also mentioned in them.

but s tud y of the text s has shown th at they ar e concerned

with ii-zp-ku rather than with Bi-ib-izr. For Bipku and

a similar confusion of it and BibBu see e.g . ARhI

9

234;

-4RMT 11 266, 277, 280, 281, 283, 286-91.



in th e w ay of editio n; among these are the lists of

harv esters an d workers. An extended discussion

here would therefore be very uneven in balance.

I t would also not allow the material to be used

to the best effect, since the texts, especially the

lists an d letters, are best studied in the context of

the cntire archive from Harmal. I have now

begun such a stu dy, using A . Goetze s preliminary

transliterations as well as some others, which I

made in

1967,

of texts not seen by Goetze.I2

The texts published here will bc discussed with

the rest of the archive.

Catalogue and extract from the Iraq Museum

General Register

Text Seal no. 13 Ibl number Findspot

to

IM register

Room 134, Level I1

Room 134, Level I1

Room 134, Level I1

Room 134, Level I1

Room 129, Level I1

Room 134, Level I1

Room 134, Level I1

Room 133, Level 11

Room 143, Level I1

Room 143, Level I1

Room 134, Level I1

Room 134, Level I1

Room 133, Level TI

Room 133, Level I1

Room 136, Level I1

Room 136, Level I1

Room 133, Level IT

Room 133, Level TI

Room 136, Level TI

Court 110, Level I1

Room 5, Level I1

Room 5, Level I1

Room 5, Level I1

Room 5, Level I1

Room 133, Level TI

12. Among the inscriptional material found during

the excavations at Tell Harmal were also

a

group of

brick-bullae, which I transliterated but did not copy in

1967. These tex ts are_ of some interes t for th e economic

situa tion of ancient Saduppum and its surroundings.

lLoom 109, Level I1

I'loom 136, Level I1

Iloom 109, Level

I

Iloom 109, Level I1

Room 136, Level I 1

Room 136, Level I1

Room 101, Level I1

Room 136, Level I1

lloom 133, Level I1

lloonl 109, Level I1

ILoom 136, Level I1

Surf ace

Itoom 133, Level I1

Room 133, Level I1

lloom 133, Level I1

lloonl 109, Level I 1

Square 5K Level I1

Room 109, Level TI

Room 133, Level I1

Iloom 82, Level I1

Room 133, Level I1

Room 133, Level I1

lloom 133, Level I1

Iloom 109, Level 11

I<oom 101, Level IT

Hoom 133, Level I1

Room 101, Level 11

ltoom 134, Level 11

Iloom 118, Level I1

Room 133, Level I1

I'loom 136, Level I1

Room 143, Level I1

Room 143, Level TI

Room 109, Level

T

Room 133, Level IT

Hoom 134, Level IT

ltoom 133, Level IT

Room 5, Level T

Room 155, Level l I

lPoom 191, Level TI

lioom 11, Level IT

Room 100, Square 10,

Level TI

68 Room 11, Level I1


70 Room 211, Level TI

71 Room 197, Level TI

72 14, case

Room 133, Level I1

73 Room 11, Level 11


13. There are illegible seal tr aces on text s 11, 13, 16,

and 60.





Re .

o



bue w

g

I

JL @pyp -%~Wq 8RH4+

J3 4

C



Obu



9LLIS

OLD

BABYLONI~~N

COXOMIC

EXTS XD LETTERSFROM TELLHARMAL

Obu

bo

R

ep 9



Ob .

i +



o

leu.

uu e

wnsat cd rcs

s h o









Rev





Ob .









6

LLIS OLDBABTLONIAUCONOMICEXTS

ND

LETTERS

ROM

TELLHAR~IAL











Coo

PI

RL .







Documents

DEJONG ELIS OB Economic Text and Letters.pdf