Conferences and Workshops by Andrew Pottorf
The workshop addresses the social groups in the ancient Near East that were not slaves but whose ... more The workshop addresses the social groups in the ancient Near East that were not slaves but whose freedom was strongly restricted by law, economic conditions, patronage, religious institutions and other factors. Contributions highlight the differences between these groups from citizens with full rights, on the one hand, and from slaves, on the other. Why, how and on whom were they strongly dependent? Finally, the papers find out if there were ways out of these dependent statuses.
When? Monday, 17 July 2023, 14:30-18:00
Where? Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, Room Lipsius 003
Speakers:
14:30 Vitali Bartash (Bonn), Humans as donations to temples in Sumer
15:00 Cornelia Wunsch (Dresden), The hoax of semi-freedom
15:30 Andrew Pottorf (Harvard), The lives and work of the serflike UN-IL2 in the Ur III period
16:30 Annunziata Rositani (Messina), Inequality in the bīt asīrī (“the house of war prisoners”)
17:00 Nicholas Reid (Orlando), Prisoners as in-betweeners of society (Middle Babylonian period)
17:30 Jules Jallet-Martini (Paris), Freeborn vs freed heirs in some Old Babylonian texts
Contact: [email protected]
Articles by Andrew Pottorf
Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin (CDLB), 2024
This article features the Groton School cuneiform-text collection, including a discussion on its ... more This article features the Groton School cuneiform-text collection, including a discussion on its provenance as well as photographs, transliterations, translations, notes, and commentaries on the three texts in the collection. Two of the texts are from the Ur III period (ca. 2110-2003 B.C.E.), whereas one is from the Late Babylonian period (ca. 5th century B.C.E. through 1st century C.E.). The Ur III texts are an expense report from Puzriš-Dagān and a sealed receipt from an unknown provenience. Their commentaries focus on key terminology such as the term šu-gid 2 in the former and the phrase apin-la 2-ta ba-a in the latter. The Late Babylonian text is a loan document from Sippar concerning silver for a house sale. It is utilized for a detailed reconstruction of the provenance of the Maštuk archive, first postulated by Caroline Waerzeggers (2002). The commentaries for all three texts also highlight prosopographical observations, especially for the Late Babylonian text.
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 12, 2025
This article reexamines the origins and social status of the muškēnū ( maš.gag.en , etc., “those ... more This article reexamines the origins and social status of the muškēnū ( maš.gag.en , etc., “those who prostrate themselves”) in ancient Mesopotamia. Previously thought of as commoners, analysis of third-millennium sources reveals them to be settled outsiders, distinct from citizens of the communities they inhabited. This precarious position necessitated protection from rulers or other powerful figures. Evidence suggests the Semitic Middle Euphrates-Tigris region as the homeland of this phenomenon. Early Dynastic data (ca. 2600–2300 BC) portray the muškēnū as low-status outsiders by placing them in the context of male regular and house-born slaves, menial workers, robbers/seminomads, and female sex workers. Akkadian conquerors brought the phenomenon to Sumer during the twenty-third century BC. The muškēnū lived in imperial centers and traveled between Sumerian cities. The data on the muškēnū become more common during the Ur III period (2110–2003 BC). They lived primarily in royal settlements and on the kingdom’s periphery, suggesting a deliberate policy to establish a loyal social base, and they were “people” rather than “natives” of these towns. Male muškēnū were typically conscripted full time in low-income occupations involved in animal husbandry and cultivation, and they seldom held administrative positions. Male citizens, on the other hand, enjoyed a better economic position with part-time work and additional income opportunities. Few muškēnū women (feminine forms of the term are not attested) might have been forced into penal labor like some citizen women. Sex work was another profession for some muškēnū women, also mirroring the situation for some citizen women. During the Old Babylonian period (2002–1595 BC), muškēnum remained a term for a group of state-protected free individuals distinct from regular citizens of southern Babylonia. What was new is that Babylonian states used this category as a blueprint to conceptualize the entire free population as royal/state subjects, a concept originally alien in the south.
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Conferences and Workshops by Andrew Pottorf
When? Monday, 17 July 2023, 14:30-18:00
Where? Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, Room Lipsius 003
Speakers:
14:30 Vitali Bartash (Bonn), Humans as donations to temples in Sumer
15:00 Cornelia Wunsch (Dresden), The hoax of semi-freedom
15:30 Andrew Pottorf (Harvard), The lives and work of the serflike UN-IL2 in the Ur III period
16:30 Annunziata Rositani (Messina), Inequality in the bīt asīrī (“the house of war prisoners”)
17:00 Nicholas Reid (Orlando), Prisoners as in-betweeners of society (Middle Babylonian period)
17:30 Jules Jallet-Martini (Paris), Freeborn vs freed heirs in some Old Babylonian texts
Contact: [email protected]
Articles by Andrew Pottorf
When? Monday, 17 July 2023, 14:30-18:00
Where? Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, Room Lipsius 003
Speakers:
14:30 Vitali Bartash (Bonn), Humans as donations to temples in Sumer
15:00 Cornelia Wunsch (Dresden), The hoax of semi-freedom
15:30 Andrew Pottorf (Harvard), The lives and work of the serflike UN-IL2 in the Ur III period
16:30 Annunziata Rositani (Messina), Inequality in the bīt asīrī (“the house of war prisoners”)
17:00 Nicholas Reid (Orlando), Prisoners as in-betweeners of society (Middle Babylonian period)
17:30 Jules Jallet-Martini (Paris), Freeborn vs freed heirs in some Old Babylonian texts
Contact: [email protected]