Ur III administrative texts

The Neo-Sumerian (Ur III) period is known for having produced tens of
thousands of tablets though, paradoxically, much of the history and culture of this period remains in the dark. One of these areas is the history and organization of the Ur III military. This dissertation is an investigation of selected issues and the terminology related to the military history of this period. It attempts to rectify the absence of monographic studies on this topic and to clarify problematic issues that recur in the secondary literature.  Chapter one introduces the historical background of the Ur III period, focusing on the available sources and their associated biases. Chapter two establishes the framework for a military history of this period by utilizing year-names and textual references to plunder, and teases out some of the problems involved in using this data. This chapter utilizes the vast administrative corpus to build portraits of the enemy toponyms mentioned in year-names and attempts to determine their organizational structure and political relationship to the kingdom of Ur. Chapter three discusses the primary terms for soldiers (eren2, aga3-us2, gar3-du) and the garrison system that was established in the periphery. It demonstrated that the taxes on garrison settlements (gun2 ma-da) exhibited an array of formats and utilized a multiplicity of terms; this aids our understanding of the political statuses of a number of foreign toponyms. Chapter four investigates the context of the messenger text genre and some of the military terminology found within. This resulted in the discovery that different provinces and their messenger text corpora dealt with different regions of the periphery. Additionally, it was discovered that foreign groups from the periphery traveled in greater numbers and with greater frequency than previously assumed. Lastly, selected military terms were investigated and some previous assumptions regarding their meaning were challenged.  This dissertation increases and redefines our knowledge of the military and political contexts of the Third Dynasty of Ur and provides a beginning point for further research into this area.

Abstract：According to the texts, we believe that Abi-simti, a queen of Ur III Dynasty during Kings Amar-Sin and Šu-Sin period was not the wife of Amar-Sin, but the mother of Kings Amar-Sin and Šu-Sin. Amar-Sin was the throne name of Ur-Sin, the crown prince of Šulgi, and Abi-simti is identified with Šulgi-simti, the famous wife and Queen of Šulgi. From the reign of Amar-Sin, Šulgi-simti was renamed by Amar-Sin, his son, as Abi-simti. She was the dowager queen during the Amar-Sin and Šu-Sin period. Abi-simti, dowager queen, i.e. Queen Šulgi-simti, received gifts from high officials or envoys and took part in the religious activities.

This article examines 15 cuneiform tablets from the late 3rd millennium BC from southern Mesopotamia. As administrative tools of the Ur III state bureaucracy, the texts are primarily concerned with the administrative and economic affairs of the central authority, but they also offer important information on the individuals living in the Ur III state and their different roles within the state's bureaucratic structures.

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The damgar accounts of the Third Dynasty of Ur have been the subject of much debate, resulting in very different reconstructions of social and economic realities. One important aspect of these discussions involves the basic meaning of native terminology with such divergence of opinion that it is even debated whether these accounts show that the merchants, also translated trade-agents, typically operated with a deficit or a surplus. In this article, I edit one such account dealing with Pada, among the best-known merchants from the period, together with the rest of the cuneiform collection housed at the University of Mississippi Museum.

This short paper is a prosopographical study of one of the judges in Ur III Girsu, Lu-Ningirsu, the son of Lu-Baba, aiming to add as many details about his activity as possible on the basis of seal impressions and documents unearthed in Girsu.
The evidence discussed here indicates that Lu-Ningirsu was not only a judge but also an official of high status in the Lagaš province. Moreover, it is probable that his function as judge was precisely the result of his high status.

[The present article presents the publications of a small private collection of cuneiform text in Barcelona.] The Campalans collection of cuneiform text is a small group of eight texts purchased during last years in the antiquity market in Barcelona by Jordi Campalans. All these texts are administrative in nature (one tablet from the Uruk III period; one tablet from ED IIIb period; three tablets dating to the Ur III period and one tablet dating on the OB period) except for school exercise from the Uruk III period and a brick inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II. 1 Text 1. Measurements: 104×67×18. Provenance: unknown. Period: Uruk III. Unsealed. This text has already been published by Monaco 2016 nr. 197 (see also CDLI P464273). The text is an account of barley and emmer to be purchased (ŠAM 2). According to the description given by Monaco (2016: 197) the lower part of the tablet belongs to a different tablet, but examination of the tablet shows clearly that the tablet is almost complete and that all fragments belong to the same tablet (see photo). Monaco will publish a new edition of the text with some improvements and corrections. Text 2. Measurements: 49×26×10. Provenance: unknown. Period: Uruk III. Unsealed. This small tablet is a school exercise related to the texts published in CUSAS 21 156-304 (Monaco 2014: 133-158). Monaco published the texts according the complexity of their content; our text is similar to CUSAS 21 250 to 283. In all these texts the sign N 1 is followed by three (or four) signs on the obverse of the tablet, while the reverse remains uninscribed. A peculiar characteristic of our text is that the dividing line is vertical instead of being horizontal as in all the other texts of this kind (except for CUSAS 1, 8, see Monaco 2007: 45; Monaco 2014: 6). 1. The abbreviations are as in the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (http://cdli.ox.ac.uk /wiki/abbreviations_for_ assyriology). I would like to express my gratitude to Jordi Campalans for his assistance in studying these texts and to Wilfred Watson who was kind enough to correct the English. Any faults and errors are my own responsibility.

This volume contains a complete edition of sixteen Neo-Sumerian
barley allotment rolls from the Umma region, twelve of which are
currently kept in the Iraq National Museum, while the other four
tablets remain in private hands. The work includes a study of the
lists of workers and the different professions and occupations of
the personnel, and establishes the possible context of the tablets.
An analysis of the rich onomastic material recorded in the texts
is also provided, as well as a prosopographical evaluation of each
individual.

eds.) with the collaboration of Stefania Ermidoro and Erica Scarpa: Libiamo ne' lieti calici Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Lucio Milano on the Occasion of his 65 th Birthday by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends Alter Orient und Altes Testament Band 436 © 2016 Ugarit-Verlag-Buch-und Medienhandel Münster w w w . u g a r i t -v e r l a g . d e A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . N o p a r t o f t h i s p u b l i c a t i o n m a y b e r e p r o d u c e d , stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o -c o p y i n g , r e c o r d i n g , o r o t h e r w i s e , w i t h o u t t h e p r i o r p e r m i s s i o n o f t h e p u b l i s h e r . P r i n t e d i n G e r m a n y I S B N 9 7 8 -3 -8 6 8 3 5 -197-2

Abstract: The following paper is concerned with fourteen Ur III texts. Among them, there are two tablets (nos 2-3) and a bulla (no. 4) from the Ex Collection of Ladislas Mandel kept in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal while eleven cuneiform tablets (nos 1 and 5-14) are in the Département des Monnaies, médailles et antiques. The two collections belong to the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

In this paper, we will discuss the concept an-ki, “universe”, from the analysis of a diverse corpus of Mesopotamian texts (lexical, administrative, literary, omens, and kudurrus), with the aim of understanding how the tripartition of the cosmos in heaven, earth, and netherworld (or cosmographic perception of the universe) and, likewise, each of the mentioned planes would have been associated with a particular site destined for a group of divinities. In particular, we are interested in interpreting how from the third and until the first millennium BCE, the aforementioned textual sources would have been used together with a series of social practices and, in addition, they were linked to a belief system (myths), enabling the generation of a type of materiality of which participated the tablets as supports, the (written) messages that they contained, and the specialists (scribes / diviners) who elaborated and decoded them.

The nine Ur III tablets presented in this article are part of the Av private collection in Jerusalem. 1 The first batch of texts from this collection was published by the author. 2 I would like to thank the owner for his continuing support of my work. The texts below are in chronological order.

The six Neo-Sumerian cuneiform tablets published here are housed in the collection of the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts. They were brought to the Boston Public Library in 1928 when Edgar J. Banks had transcribed them in a letter (April 14). https://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlb/2021/cdlb2021_001.html

Wu Yuhong published an article on the animals issued to the é -uz-ga institution and its two cooks and two articles on the Calendar starting from the Month of Akiti in Puzriš-Dagan in 1996, 2000 and 2002 From 2006, more and more Puzriš-Dagan texts has been available to us through BDTNS and CDLI on the web, this situation urged us to revise and make a complete archives of the four pairs of the cooks (muhaldim) working in the é -uz-ga dining hall, who succeeded each other for 26 year from Šulgi 43 to Ibbi-Sin 2.

The present article offers a compilation of inscribed clay tablets from various auctions and collections. It continues the first part, which contains material from the Third Millennium B.C. up to the beginning of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The aim of this collection is, to make the artefacts available for scholars and for research.

Several years ago, I published a group of texts belonging to a larger series that recorded labor assignments for teams of workers from the city of Girsu (Allred 2008). At the time of publication, one of those texts, Fs Sigrist 16, no. 4, was available to me in transliteration only. This transliteration was highly problematic, however, as it featured a number of mistakes including both internal computational errors, as well as inconsistencies in relation to the other texts belonging to the series.

discussed the problem of the two calendars used in É-Puzriš-Dagan (Drehem) during Šulgi 44-48', but in that time I did not know how and why the normal Mašda calendar or the beginning of a year changed during Šulgi 44-48. In that article I used Šulgi 44-48 i-xii for the Mašda (=iti-maš-dà-gu7) calendar years and months, which began from month (iti) of maš-dà-gu7 (i) and ended at the month of iti-še-kin-kud (xii). Meanwhile, Šulgi 44'-48' i'-xii' were used for the dating of the Akiti calendar years and their months. An Akiti year ran from iti-á-ki-ti (i'=vi) to iti-ezem-Ninazu (xii'=iv) and six months later than its corresponding Mašda year. In this article, I will continue to use this way to distinguish the two different calendar systems during Šulgi 44-48'. The month order of the Mašda year or calendar (Šulgi ?-44 and from Amar-Sin so on) is i . The month orders of the Akiti year or calendar used by the Drehem officials is i'-vii' = iti-á-ki-ti -iti-še-kin-kud and viii'-xii' = iti-maš-dà-gu7 --iti-ezem-d Nin-a-zu. Strictly, the two calendars are the same one since the month names are the same, but the beginning of one was from Spring season while that of another was from Autumn, so I prefer to use Mašda/Akiti years to Mašda/Akiti calendar. For the beginning of a year was possibly from Spring in Nippur and Mari, but from Autumn in Sippar and Assyria (the eponym year) during the Old Babylonian period, see my A Political History of Eshnunna, Mari and Assyria (1994), 3.6.

CABRERA PERTUSATTI, Rodrigo (2016): “Reconstruyendo ‘espacios materiales’ a partir de tablillas cuneiformes. La frecuencia terminológica del vocablo ki-maḫ (tumba) en textos administrativos de Ur III”. En: Actas del XIX Congreso Nacional de Arqueología Argentina, 8-12 de agosto de 2016 (Serie Monográfica y Didáctica Vol. 54). San Miguel de Tucumán: FCN e IML, UNT, pp. 3103-3106. ISSN 0327-5868.

All discussions, both those we had envisioned and those that actually took place, were only possible because of the acceptance of our workshop for the 61 st Rencontre in Bern (and Geneva). We'd like to thank the organizers for accepting our proposal and for providing both the space and place for our meeting and our lively exchange of ideas. Our special thanks go to Sabine Ecklin, who was open to our scheduling needs and provided us with any help needed. Our warm thanks also go to Mirko Novák and Susanne Rutishauser, who made us feel very welcome at their conference venue in Bern.

"With the new CDLI photo of YOS 15 168 it was possible to add valuable details to the previously published seal legend. After analysing and comparing the text and the seal inscription there is
a high chance that the owner of the seal, Tūram-Dagan is identical with the important official of the Puzriš-Dagan administration. If we accept his reconstructed šu’i title a new stage can be added to his career."

Mining 15,000 cuneiform inscribed clay documents, albeit with about 10 lines of text each, this article discusses elements appearing on these tablets beyond text which accentuated in a visual way the structure of the documents and usually aided or, in some instances, obscured their reading and subsequent interpretation. These paratextual markers and graphic devices are left-edge inscriptions, rulings, blank spaces, and sealings that added information not available from the text alone.

Rodrigo CABRERA (2019): “¿Puede una tablilla de arcilla hablar? Arqueología de la escritura para la reconstrucción de los paisajes funerarios en Mesopotamia durante la Tercera Dinastía de Ur”. En: Rodrigo CABRERA & Leila SALEM (Comps.): “Cap. 21: Agencia y Materialidad de los Paisajes funerarios en la Antigüedad”. Libro de Resúmenes del XX Congreso Nacional de Arqueología Argentina. Córdoba: FFyH, UNC / IDACOR, CONICET, pp. 969-972. ISBN 978-950-33-1538-5.