Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies: Workshop Organized at the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Paris 2019 (Dubsar, 21) 3963271566, 9783963271564

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dubsar 21 Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies

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Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies Workshop Organized at the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Paris 2019 Edited by Armando Bramanti, Nicholas L. Kraus and Palmiro Notizia

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Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies Workshop Organized at the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Paris 2019

Edited by Armando Bramanti, Nicholas L. Kraus and Palmiro Notizia

dubsar Altorientalistische Publikationen Publications on the Ancient Near East Band 21 Herausgegeben von Kristin Kleber und Kai A. Metzler

Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies Workshop Organized at the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Paris 2019

Edited by Armando Bramanti, Nicholas L. Kraus and Palmiro Notizia

Zaphon Münster 2021

Cover illustration: copy of CUSAS 33, 236 (A. Bramanti).

Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies. Workshop Organized at the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Paris 2019 Edited by Armando Bramanti, Nicholas L. Kraus and Palmiro Notizia dubsar 21

© 2021 Zaphon, Enkingweg 36, Münster (www.zaphon.de) All rights reserved. Printed in Germany. Printed on acid-free paper.

ISBN 978-3-96327-156-4 (Buch) ISBN 978-3-96327-157-1 (E-Book) ISSN 2627-7174

Table of Contents Preface ............................................................................................................... vii Program of the Workshop ....................................................................................ix Armando Bramanti – Nicholas L. Kraus – Palmiro Notizia Early Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium CE: The Last Two Decades of Research (2000–2020) ................................................ 1 Kathryn Kelley More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” ........................................................................................................ 9 Xianhua Wang How Many Priest-Kings in Town? A Glance at the Political Structure of the City of Uruk at the Dawn of Civilization .................................. 45 Giacomo Benati – Camille Lecompte The Scale and Extent of Political Institutions in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia: The Case of Archaic Ur ...................................... 61 Nadezda Rudik Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr: Die frühdynastischen Beschwörungen aus CUSAS 32....................................... 99 Alfonso Archi Ebla(itologists) and Sumer(ologists): Reasons for a Dialogue ......................... 159 Marco Bonechi – Ryan Winters Ebla through Huwawa’s Gaze: Inner and Outer Perspectives on Early Syria, between Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia ........................... 171 Nicholas L. Kraus An Addition to the Early Dynastic Lexical Tradition: Early Dynastic Personal Names A (Word List Z)............................................. 191

Table of Contents

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Armando Bramanti The Making of a Sign List: Toward a Paleography of Early Dynastic Umma ....................................................................................... 203 J. Nicholas Postgate More Points of Grammar in Gudea: Resuscitating the Dynamic Mode ........... 211 Indexes Texts ............................................................................................................ 247 Divine names ............................................................................................... 250 Personal names ............................................................................................ 251 Geographical names .................................................................................... 252 Sumerian words ........................................................................................... 253 Semitic words .............................................................................................. 255

Preface The papers collected in this volume originate from the workshop “Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies” held in Paris on July 9th, 2019 at the occasion of the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. The present volume brings together ten articles concerned with diverse aspects of the Early Mesopotamian documentation – i.e. texts dating to the Archaic, Early Dynastic (I–II, IIIa, IIIb), Sargonic, and Gutian periods, and extending geographically to include Ebla and its royal archives. Eleven papers were presented during the workshop. Even though not all of them appear in this volume, we would like to thank all the fourteen speakers who presented their research, as well as the members of the audience for their contributions to the discussion during the workshop. Bibliographical abbreviations used in this volume follow those used by the Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie, which can be found on the webpage of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften at https:// rla.badw.de/reallexikon/abkuerzungslisten.html. We are grateful to the organizing committee of the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale for their hard work, kind support and hospitality in accommodating our workshop within the conference. We also express our gratitude to Kristin Kleber and Kai Metzler for their assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. In Madrid, Berlin, and Bologna January 1st, 2021 Armando Bramanti Nicholas Kraus Palmiro Notizia

Pictured from left to right: Marco Bonechi, Emily Zeran, Massimo Maiocchi, Ryan Winters, Armando Bramanti, Palmiro Notizia, Nicholas Kraus, Ekaterina Markina, Nadezda Rudik, Camille Lecompte. Not pictured: Alfonso Archi, Giacomo Benati, Kathryn Kelley, J. Nicholas Postgate, Xianhua Wang.

Program of the Workshop Tuesday 9th July, 2019 Chair: M. Maiocchi 9:00–9:30

P. Notizia, A. Bramanti, and N. Kraus Introduction to the Workshop

9:30–10:00

A. Archi “Ebla(itologists) and Sumer(ologists): The Need for a Dialogue”

10:00–10:30

M. Bonechi and R. Winters “Ebla through Huwawa’s Gaze: Inner and Outer Perspectives on Early Syria, between Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia”

Break Chair: A. Bramanti 11:00–11:30

X. Wang “How many Priest-Kings in Town? A Review of Studies of the City of Uruk at the Dawn of Civilization” (Read by A. Bramanti)

11:30–12:00

C. Lecompte and G. Benati “The Agricultural Lands of the Nana Temple at Ur: Some Insight into the Scale of Political Economies during the ED I-II”

12:00–12:30

E. Markina “The Sargonic Royal Family: The Case of Śar-a-dìGU-BI-śi-in”

12:30–13:00

M. Maiocchi “Approaching Lagash II Archives: Texts, History, Methodology”

Lunch Break Chair: P. Notizia 14:00–14:30

K. Kelley “All the Women and All the Men: A Previously Unidentified Fragment of Archaic Word List C”

14:30–15:00

N. Kraus “The Lexical List Word List Z”

15:00–15:30

A. Bramanti and E. Zeran “Two New Early Dynastic Sign Lists: Progress and Problems”

x

15:30–16:00

Program of the Workshop

N. Rudik “Kriechende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr: die frühdynastischen Beschwörungen aus CUSAS 32”

Break Chair: N. Kraus 16:30–17:00

N. Postgate “Gudea’s Dynamic Diction: Fresh Thoughts on Sumerian Verbal Prefixes”

Early Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium CE: The Last Two Decades of Research (2000–2020) Armando Bramanti (CCHS – CSIC, Madrid) Nicholas L. Kraus (Freie Universität Berlin) Palmiro Notizia (Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna)

The aim of this brief article is to provide some quantitative data on newly published written sources kept in major museums and private collections, as well as to offer an overview of the current state of research on the history and culture of third millennium Mesopotamia before the rise of the Ur III dynasty. Early Mesopotamia has recently attracted the attention of Assyriologists thanks to the enormous amount of new epigraphic material – mostly clay tablets – which appeared in the last decades. As a result of the sudden publication of thousands of texts, the Archaic, Early Dynastic, Sargonic, and post-Sargonic periods have assumed new relevance in the general landscape of research on third millennium Mesopotamia, which was until recently dominated by the NeoSumerian studies. With the exception of a few hundred Ur III tablets, the publication of the third millennium cuneiform documents in the Rosen Collection at Cornell University and the Schøyen Collection (Spikkestad, Norway) is now fully completed. In less than ten years, between 2007 and 2016, almost 2,800 cuneiform tablets belonging to the Rosen Collection and dating from the Archaic to the Sargonic period have been published in ten different volumes of the CUSAS series. 1 Likewise, Early Mesopotamian administrative and legal documents, royal and votive inscriptions, lexical texts, and incantations from the Schøyen Collection, totaling nearly 550 objects, were all published between 2010 and 2017.2 In addition to these two major collections, since 2006, when the two Banca d’Italia volumes appeared, approximately 5,000 new pre-Ur III cuneiform documents from major museums and private collections have been made

1

CUSAS 1 (2007); 13 (2009); 11 (2010); 14 (2011); 19 (2012); 23 (2013); 21 (2014); 20 (2015); 27 (2015); 33 (2016). 2 CUSAS 12 (2010); 17 (2012); 32 (2016); 35 (2017).

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Armando Bramanti – Nicholas L. Kraus – Palmiro Notizia

available to the scientific community.3 This figure does not include dozens of published and unpublished texts scattered among many small and anonymous private collections all over the world, and countless cuneiform tablets confiscated in Iraq in recent years, whose photographs are often generously shared with Western colleagues by Iraqi scholars. Just as an example, the edition of a Sargonic tablet seized by Iraqi authorities and now housed in the Iraq Museum recently appeared on the Journal of Cuneiform Studies (Alkhafaji 2019). This is a unique mu-iti account, originating in the Umma region, which also bears a year formula. More specifically, the year name commemorates the establishment of Dur-Maništusu. This tablet is the first known text securely dated to the reign of Maništusu and is therefore extremely important for historical and paleographical reasons. Other examples are provided by recently published groups of Early Dynastic and Sargonic texts in the collections of the Iraq Museum (e.g. Alkhafaji / Marchesi 2020, Fahad / Abbas 2020, and Almamori / Notizia 2021). Furthermore, several looted tablets currently kept in the Iraq Museum and the Sulaimaniah Museum have been edited by young Iraqi students in PhD dissertations, MA theses, and research papers. Digital versions of these essays are easily accessible online on academia.edu and in the Iraqi Academic Scientific Journals repository (https://www.iasj.net), where all the newly founded journals published by the Iraqi universities are available. Regrettably, the overwhelming majority of these objects come from illicit excavations and are thus devoid of any archaeological and archival context. Nobody should ignore the unprecedented extent of destruction caused to numerous archaeological sites of southern Mesopotamia by the activity of looters during the last twenty years – and especially in the mid-1990s – and every Assyriologist is well aware of the controversy over the publication of epigraphic material from the antiquities market. On the bright side, due to the partial political stability enjoyed by the southern provinces in recent years, new archaeological excavations and surveys have been conducted in Iraq, especially in the Umma region, during which third millennium cuneiform documents have been found. Some of these new administrative sources recovered during an Iraqi-Slovak joint expedition at Tell

3

To the previous CUSAS volumes, also add Banca d’Italia 1–2 (2006); Nisaba 25 (British Museum, 2013); SCTRAH (Real Academia de la Historia, 2014); CUSAS 26 (public and private collections, 2014); WVDOG 143 (Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin / Istanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri, 2015); TIM AkkS 1 (Iraq Museum, 2015); CUSAS 31 (private collection, 2016); STTI 2 (Istanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri, 2018); Nisaba 31/1 (Oriental Institute of Chicago, 2019); Foster 2020 (Yale Babylonian Collection); Maiocchi / Visicato 2020 (public and private collections).

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Jokha were recently presented at the Université de Genève.4 As a result of the publication of new epigraphic material, Adab and Umma are now, after Ĝirsu-Lagaš, the two best documented regions of southern Babylonia before the Third Dynasty of Ur. Other sites of origin of small groups of newly published cuneiform texts include Fara, Isin, Umm el-Hafriyat, and Ur. The number of Early Dynastic and Sargonic documents from the Umma region has grown exponentially in a few years, from about 700 in 2006 to nearly 1,800 texts. The same is true for the corpus of Early Dynastic and Sargonic tablets from Adab which has almost tripled in number. 5 According to M. Molina’s (2019, 151) calculations, the Sargonic texts from Adab constitute 25% of all the Old Akkadian tablets today at our disposal. The availability of an enormous amount of new textual evidence, most of which can be now conveniently browsed online on the CDLI searchable database, calls for a fresh re-examination of these corpora to achieve a better understanding of the cultural, political, and socio-economic history of Early Mesopotamia. In addition, up-to-date sign lists and syllabaries for the Early Dynastic and Sargonic periods are still lacking. Since palaeography – in conjunction with prosopographical analysis – has proved to be key for the attribution of unprovenanced tablets to known archives and dossiers, the development of these basic research tools cannot be further delayed. Shifting the attention to northern Mesopotamia and Syria, one would notice that only few cuneiform tablets, all retrieved during controlled excavations, have been published in the last twenty years.6 These documents were found at the sites of Mari (Horioka 2009; Cavigneaux 2014; Colonna D’Istria 2014), Tell Beydar (Milano 2014), Tell Brak (Eidem et al. 2001), Tell Leilan (Milano 2007), and Tell Mozan (Maiocchi 2011). As for the Ebla royal archives, between 2008 and 2019, several monographs of the ARET and ARES series which include several previously unpublished administrative and lexical documents, and a useful bibliographical survey of the archaeological and textual evidence (Scarpa 2017), have appeared. 7 One international workshop on the Lexicon and Grammar of the Ebla Texts has been held at the Friedrich-Schiller-

4

Les fouilles à Tell Jokha (Umma) – Découvertes archéologiques et philologiques, July 6th 2019, with the participation of N. Al-Mutawalli, K. S. Ismael, W. Sallaberger, D. Hulinek, C. Mittermayer, M. Molina, and A. Bramanti. 5 For some figures about the Adab and Umma Early Dynastic and Sargonic corpora, see Bramanti 2019, 3 with fns. 4 and 5. 6 For an overview of the scant epigraphic material from the Middle Euphrates and Tigridian regions see Marchesi 2015 and Maiocchi 2019. 7 ARES 4 (2008); ARET 15/1 (2008); ARET 16 (2010); ARET 15/2 (2013); ARET 20 (2018); ARET 19 (2019).

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Armando Bramanti – Nicholas L. Kraus – Palmiro Notizia

Universität Jena in 2019,8 and, to the best of our knowledge, at least four PhD dissertations on Ebla have been defended in the last few years.9 Furthermore, since 2010, the digital edition of a large number of Eblaite texts is freely accessible on the online database of the Ebla Digital Archives project (http:// ebda.cnr.it), which also provides corrections and numerous collations. Looking back at central and southern Mesopotamia, alongside the new cuneiform sources now available, a number of new studies have appeared in recent years which have expanded our understanding of particular topics and consolidated evidence and historical discussions. For example, the third ARCANE volume History & Philology (Sallaberger / Schrakamp 2015) collected and summarized historical and chronological data for the third millennium and reviewed decades of interpretative research, with contributions from numerous scholars in the field. Further notable works have included: a lifetime of research on the Sargonic period (Foster 2016); detailed analyses of the corpus of Early Dynastic, Sargonic, and post-Sargonic texts from Ĝirsu (e.g. Prentice 2010, Lehman 2016, Balke 2017, and Schrakamp 2017); investigations of economic, social, and cultural aspects of the third millennium (e.g. Rey 2016, Bartash 2019, Kraus 2020, Krebernik / Lisman 2020); and a volume celebrating two renowned scholars who have dedicated their careers to research on the history, culture, and languages of Early Mesopotamia (Arkhipov / Kogan / Kaslova 2020). With so many new texts now available, the future looks bright for the early periods of Mesopotamian history; numerous less-known projects and initiatives are currently underway, several PhD dissertations were completed and their results are soon to be published, and a whole new generation of Assyriologists is specializing in the study of pre-Ur III Mesopotamia. With new cuneiform sources and a renewed interest in these early periods, we look forward to the next twenty years of research in Early Mesopotamian studies and a better understanding of these important phases of the history of the Ancient Near East.

References Alkhafaji, N., A Double Date Formula of the Old Akkadian King Manishtusu, in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 71 (2019) 3–9. Alkhafaji, N. / Marchesi, G., Naram-Sin’s War against Armanum and Ebla in a Newly-Discovered Inscription from Tulul al-Baqarat, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 79 (2020) 1–20.

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Lexicon and Grammar of the Ebla Texts: An International Workshop, March 12th–13th 2019, with the participation of L. Milano, J. Pasquali, I. Schrakamp, M.V. Tonietti, R. Winters, M. Krebernik, A. Archi, M.G. Biga, M. Bonechi, A. Catagnoti, M. Maiocchi. 9 Karbotly 2017; Winters 2018; Cianfanelli 2019; Scarpa 2020.

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Almamori, H.O. / Notizia, P., The City-State of Umma in the Pre-Sargonic Period. New Tablets from the Iraq Museum, in: Akkadica 142 (2021) 1–30. Arkhipov, I. / Kogan, L. / Koslova, A. (eds.), The Third Millennium: Studies in Early Mesopotamia and Syria in Honor of Walter Sommerfeld and Manfred Krebernik (Cuneiform Monographs 50), Leiden / Boston 2020. Balke, Th.E., Das altsumerische Onomastikon. Namengebung und Prosopografie nach den Quellen aus Lagas (dubsar 1), Münster 2017. Bartash, V., Establishing Value. Weight Measures in Early Mesopotamia (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 23), Boston / Berlin 2019. Bramanti, A., Some Thoughts on Chronological and Geographical Liminality in Early Mesopotamian Paleography: The Case of Umma and Adab, in: Devecchi, E. / Mynářová, J. / Müller, G. (eds.), Current Research in Cuneiform Palaeography 2. Proceedings of the Workshop organised at the 64th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Innsbruck 2018, Gladbeck 2019, 1–12. Cavigneaux, A., Nouveaux textes de Mari Ville II (campagnes 1998 à 2007), in: Butterlain, P. et al. (eds.), Mari, ni Est, ni Ouest (Syria supplément 2), Syria: revue d’art oriental et d’archéologie 91/2 (2014) 291–340. Cianfanelli, E., L’amministrazione del regno di Ebla: funzionari e sottoposti, PhD Dissertation, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence 2019. Colonna d’Istria, L. / Criaud, H., Résultats archéologiques et nouvelles données épigraphiques : Le chantier Palais Sud 2 (2006–2008), in: Butterlain, P. et al. (eds.), Mari, ni Est, ni Ouest (Syria supplément 2), Syria: revue d’art oriental et d’archéologie 91/2 (2014) 355–406. Eidem, J. / Finkel, I. / Bonechi, M., The Third-millennium Inscriptions, in: Oates, D. et al. (eds.), Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 2: Nagar in the Third Millennium BC, Cambridge / London 2001, 99–120. Fahad, S.S. / Abbas, R.A., Cuneiform Tablets from Shmet from the Excavation Season of 2001, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 110 (2020) 1–13. Foster, B.R., The Age of Agade. Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia, London / New York 2016. — Sargonic and Pre-Sargonic Cuneiform Texts in the Yale Babylonian Collection, Atlanta, GA 2020. Horioka, H., Additional Early Dynastic Tablets Possibly from Mari, in: Orient 44 (2009) 121–150. Karbotly, A., Relazioni della città di Ebla con regni vicini e con altre città siriane nel XXIV sec. a.C., PhD Dissertation, Sapienza – Università di Roma, Rome 2017. Kraus, N., Scribal Education in the Sargonic Period (Harvard Semitic Studies 67), Leiden 2020.

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Krebernik, M. / Lisman, J.J.W., The Sumerian Zame Hymns from Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ: With an Appendix on th Early Dynastic Colophons (dubsar 12), Münster 2020. Lehmann, U., dŠára-ì-sa6 und Ur-ba-gára: Untersuchungen zu den Verwaltungstexten der neusumerischen Lagaš II-Periode aus Ĝirsu (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 430), Münster 2016. Maiocchi, M., A Hurrian Administrative Tablet from Third Millennium Urkesh, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 101 (2011) 191–203. — History and Philology, in: Rova, E. (ed.), Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean. Tigridian Region (Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean 5), Turnhout 2019, 355–371. Maiocchi, M. / Visicato, G., Administration at Girsu in Gudea’s Time (Antichistica 27, Studi Orientali 10), Venice 2020. Marchesi, G., History and Philology, in: Finkbeiner, U. et a. (eds.), Middle Euphrates (Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean 4), Turnhout 2015, 423–429. Milano, L., The Akkadian Occupation in the Northwest Area of the Tell Leilan Acropolis, in: Kaskal 4 (2007) 53–64. — The Earliest Epigraphical Documents and other Texts from Tell Beydar (Excavation Season 2004–2009), in: Milano, L. / Lebeau, M. (eds.), Tell Beydar. Environmental and Technical Studies. Volume II (Subartu 33), Turnhout 2014, 151–214. Molina, M., The Palace of Adab During the Sargonic Period, in: Wicke, D. (ed.), Der Palast im antiken und islamischen Orient. 9. Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, 30. März bis 1. April 2016, Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden 2019, 427–475. Prentice, R., The Exchange of Goods and Services in Pre-Sargonic Lagash (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 368), Münster 2010. Rey, S., For the Gods of Girsu. City-State Formation in Ancient Sumer, Oxford 2016. Sallaberger, W. / Schrakamp, I. (eds.), Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean. History & Philology (ARCANE 3), Turnhout 2015. Scarpa, E., The City of Ebla. A Complete Bibliography of Its Archaeological and Textual Remains (Antichistica 12, Studi Orientali 5), Venice 2017. — Social History through Textual Patterns. Study on the Social Organization at Ebla during the Age of the Royal Archives, PhD Dissertation, Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice 2020. Schrakamp, I., Das Bewässerungssystem des präsargonischen Staates von Lagaš (ca. 2475–2310 v. Chr.). Untersuchungen zu den technischen, administrati-

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ven, sozioökonomischen und rechtlichen Aspekten eines der ältesten regionalen Irrigationssysteme Südmesopotamiens anhand keilschriftlicher Quellen, Habilitationsschrift, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2017. Winters, R.D., Negotiating Exchange: Ebla and the International System of the Early Bronze Age, PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 2019. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/41121311 (accessed in September 2020)

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” Kathryn Kelley (University of Toronto)

Introduction1 A unique lexical composition originating in the Uruk III period (ca. 3200–3000 BC) and alternately known as “Tribute” (Green / Nissen 1987 and hereafter), “AD-GI4” (Westenholz 1998 and Civil 2013), and “Word List C” (Pettinato 1981 and Veldhuis 2006) has received intermittent attention due to some unusual and difficult-to-interpret features. These features include the use of irregular numerical notations, repetition of a 27-line section, progressions of entries with less-than-apparent semantic content or graphical links, and opaque explanatory additions appearing in later third or early second millennium recensions. While this has led some to explore a possible association between text content and literary narrative,2 N. Veldhuis (2006 and 2014) has emphasised a relationship between the text and the administrative corpus, suggesting its primary significance is as “an exercise in elementary administrative skills” (2006, 195). This study introduces a newly identified Uruk III period fragment of Tribute from Uruk, which fills in a gap of two lines in the proto-cuneiform composite. The fragment offers the opportunity to re-focus discussion of the text on the 1

I would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Robert Englund, whose comments improved this work, and whose tireless decades of scholarship have been fundamental to the disciplines of proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite studies. Proto-cuneiform sign names in this study follow Green / Nissen 1987 as modern convention. ZATU numbers (= Green / Nissen 1987) are used to clarify when a sign’s associated value is in question. Archaic Tribute line numbers refer to the composite text in Englund / Nissen 1993, 112–120 and later period Tribute line numbers are according to Civil 2013. 2 Englund / Nissen 1993 and elaborated by Englund 1998. The text later received the attention of M. Civil in 2013. Even that study, full of rich insights, presented only a very tentative plot for what Civil suggested, with all due caution, may have been an early attempt to record a literary narrative similar to genres known from Early Dynastic and following Sumer.

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Kathryn Kelley

interpretive possibilities inherent in the proto-cuneiform composition and contemporary administrative corpus themselves, which have until now been sidelined in preference for focus on the lines as they appear in later manuscripts (see especially Civil 2013). It is argued here that while Archaic Tribute presents an exploratory use of script in the Uruk III period and therefore presents a unique challenge of interpretation, the basic difficulties associated with the composition reflect wider knowledge gaps in our understanding of protocuneiform administrative practice, as well as shifts (of mostly unexplored magnitude) in orthographic tradition that occurred between the Late Uruk and Early Dynastic periods. Confident interpretations of the two lines preserved on this fragment remain out of reach. However, some differences between protocuneiform and later manuscripts are further outlined, and observations on the administrative context of the final third of the text are offered in the hope that they may eventually bring us closer to understanding the cultural knowledge underlying Archaic Tribute.

Overview of Archaic Tribute Tribute is one of the best attested proto-cuneiform lexical compositions. Its canonical version consisted of 94 lines, typically arranged in 6 or 7 columns, sometimes spilling over onto the reverse of a tablet.3 Some manuscripts preserve colophon inscriptions – for the proto-cuneiform witnesses, these appear on the reverse of the tablet and include what may be a numerical notation in the range of 70 units counted in the sexagesimal system.4 Post-proto-cuneiform manuscripts are known from Fara, Abu Ṣalabiḫ, Ebla, and Nippur, along with texts of unknown origin. A complete list is provided by Civil (2013, 52–53),5 to which should also be added Wagensonner 2019 (P450153) given AD-GI4 / Tribute manuscript siglum X9. 3

Suggested by the witness W 21208,1 with ca. 13 lines per column; for an Early Dynastic comparison, see manuscript A3. 4 Unfortunately, all numerical summaries are partially broken, with the possible exception of W 21208,1 / P000517, preserving 1N34 1N14 (equivalent to 70 N1, with N1 in this system representing a single discrete object). Numerical summaries of lexical texts might relate to the number of entries copied, but some inconsistencies in counts indicate that this feature requires further attention. The Archaic Tribute composite contains 94 entries, and it is not easy to see how a count of 70 could refer to any distinct section of the composition. 5 CDLI numbers are added to Civil’s sigla here for convenience: Fara (F1=P010581, F2=P010583); Abu Ṣalabiḫ (A1=P010388, A2=P010394, A3=P010006, A4=P010331); Ebla (E=P241483); Nippur (N1=P453274, N2=P228051 [bottom half Ni 1597 available in line drawing Civil 2013, fig. 5]); Unknown origin: (X1=P251639, X2=P252192, X3=P222197, X4=P355744, X5=P252314, X6=P388293, X7=no CDLI entry / no published photograph, X8=P272619).

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 11

The content of the text can be broadly divided into thirds. The opening of the text includes two lines that may be considered a “text header”, before a 27-line section of consumable goods that is repeated, altogether making up the first two thirds of the text. Following this, the final third of the text appears to shift in theme, introducing plants and other difficult to understand designations and including some repetitive patterns discussed below. The final eleven or twelve lines of Tribute represent the opening lines of the lexical list known as Plant.6 The structure of Plant is primarily known from later manuscripts, although it is also attested in a handful of fragmentary proto-cuneiform tablets (score in Englund / Nissen 1993, 120).7 Early Dynastic and later Plant is itself a manuscript with unusual features, in which complex glosses describing aspects of the plants appear (Veldhuis 2014, 98–102). It is interesting that this clearly experimental example of the lexical genre8 was linked from proto-cuneiform onwards with Tribute. The unusual features of Tribute have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere (Civil 2013, 13–68 with previous literature), and only a few comments will be made here. One of the most distinguishing features of the composition is its inclusion of numerical notations of differing values in the first two thirds of the text. In the final third of the text, only the standard 1N1 is used. Unlike the other dozen lexical lists in proto-cuneiform, Tribute does not use sign shape as a significant organizing principle,9 and while thematic sections can be observed, the reasons for the progression of lines in the third part of the text in particular have been difficult to explain.

The new fragment of Archaic Tribute and its interpretive implications The fragment published as “Heidelberg 9” in ATU 7 (= Englund / Nissen 2001, 29), was excavated at Uruk between the years 1953 and 1968. It was published along with 590 other texts and fragments housed in the German Archaeological 6

Manuscripts of Plant preserving the overlapping lines with Tribute are listed in Civil (2013, 53) and manuscript sigla are retained here: a=P010649, c=P010086, e=P453272. 7 Uruk III text W 20266,44 / P000290 may either present an independent excerpt of the beginning of Plant, or if indeed belonging to the end of a whole or excerpted manuscript of Tribute (Englund / Nissen 1993), it uniquely continues to entries of Plant beyond SAR ZATU 506, the later traditional ending line of Tribute. 8 Gabriel (2020) has recently discussed the proto-cuneiform lexical tradition more widely as a “frontier” of the writing system, and raises questions regarding strategies employed by scribes to expand the uses of the script. 9 For a study of graphemic organizing strategies of proto-cuneiform lexical texts, see Wagensonner 2010 and 2012, who also points to limited examples in Archaic Tribute showing graphical patterns (2010, 299).

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Institute at the University of Heidelberg, most of which, unlike this fragment, retained their Warka excavation numbers. The fragment presents two lines of proto-cuneiform that differ from later Tribute manuscripts by only one sign. Upon publication, the text was described as an unidentified lexical composition, but was compared to an Abu Ṣalabiḫ manuscript (OIP 99, 459 / Civil’s AD-GI4 manuscript A1) of Tribute (Englund / Nissen 2001, 29). Despite the brevity of the passage, the case shape and content make it highly likely that this is a fragment of Archaic Tribute, or perhaps the corresponding section in an archaic version of Plant.

Figure 1. Uruk III fragment ATU 7, Heidelberg 9 / P000709. This and all proto-cuneiform text art below courtesy of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI).

Heidelberg 9 reads: 1′ 1N1 SAL SAL 2′ 1N1 URa URa

In later Tribute and Plant manuscripts, the line with SAL is represented in the following ways: F1 1N1 SAL F2 1N1 SAL

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 13 A1 ˹SAL˺ […] A3 SAL X1 1N1 SAL X2 1N1 SAL N2 SAL LA X410 SAL+ME TUR3 X6 ˹SAL LA?˺

The corresponding lines in Early Dynastic Plant are: a c e

˹1N1˺ SAL […] SAL+AŠ SAL11

Figure 2. New composite text of Archaic Tribute (adapted from Englund / Nissen 1993, 26 fig. 9) with organizational structure presented.

The first line of Heidelberg 9 therefore differs from all later manuscripts in doubling the sign SAL. All manuscripts retain UR UR. The addition of these two lines to the archaic versions of Tribute give occasion to re-assess the 10

Cf. Civil’s 2013 score with SAL:LA here. Reading following Krispijn 2012: this text, now in a private collection, is only available in hand-copy. 11 Possible erasure of LA before SAL? See photo Civil 2013, 66 fig. 3.

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thematic content of the final – and arguably most poorly understood – section of the composition. This is especially important in light of Civil’s interpretation that these lines refer to “the female workers (and) all the workmen”, which supports his hypothesis that the final third of the text is a literary narrative (or perhaps “series of vignettes”) relating to agricultural field work (Civil 2013, 21– 22). Civil’s interpretation of SAL SAL and UR UR is not impossible; however, it is shown below that in the proto-cuneiform context, such an interpretation is less likely than a number of other possibilities.

Archaic Tribute in relation to the proto-cuneiform administrative evidence While Archaic Tribute must indeed have served a function in scribal training (Veldhuis 2006), the closeness of the text’s contents to administrative practice has not been closely investigated. We might begin to asses to what extent Tribute can be understood as “a quick reference guide concentrating on frequently used elements of the system” (Veldhuis 2006, 193–194) by comparing sign use in Tribute and the known administrative documents.12 A few comments are offered here. Sign use can be examined separately in two main sections following the text header (lines 1–2): 1) the first two thirds of the text, consisting of the repeated list of consumables (lines 3–30 / 31–58; and 2) the final third of the text (lines 59–94). In the list of consumables, 38 unique signs are used, and the few signs which are repeated only occur in the constituent parts of compound signs, such as LAGAB (lines 3–5) and MUŠEN (lines 6 and 26).13 The near absence of sign repetition within the list highlights how this section of Tribute contrasts with lexical texts such as the Lu2 List as well as with the final third of Tribute, which includes a number of repeated signs. Following line 30, the repetition of the entire passage itself may be a didactic technique. However, this is not the only possible interpretation of a feature so unique to proto-cuneiform: one may speculate whether the lengthy, linear organization of goods in Tribute – at odds with the tabular layout of administrative texts (especially the more complex ones) – could have been understood by scribes in a similar vein to the visual message of the Uruk Vase, depicting processions of cultic offerings in a manner

12

Sign frequencies in this study follow Kelley / Born 2021 with data available at https://zenodo.org/record/3858117 and a manipulatable online interface at https:// mrlogarithm.github.io/pe-pc-datasets-interface/pc.html. These sign statistics, drawn from the corpus as available on CDLI (accessed in June 2019) supersede those presented in Englund 1998, 70–71. 13 Also noting the general shape common to U8, UTUA, and UD5 in reference to sheep (lines 22–24).

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that could suggest an eternally recurring ritual.14 Another similarity between Tribute and the Uruk Vase is that in each, the presentation of repetition involved individuals associated with a vessel in the shape of the sign GAR. In Archaic Tribute this appears in a prominent location, as the final sign in the repeated sequence. See Civil 2013, 34–35 for discussion of lines 31–59 in Tribute as representing a Late Uruk cultic official. In the first two thirds of the text, entries do not thoroughly cover any section of animal husbandry, but skip across different animal groups, among other things. Some of the signs are commonly used in administrative material, although only around a quarter of signs in this section are among the top 50 most common proto-cuneiform signs, and a number are especially rare.15 The apparent dissimilarity between this part of Tribute and the known administrative documentation increases when considering compound signs (including ABRIG of the introduction, GAZI, MUNU3, and HALUB of lines 2–5) that are unattested in proto-cuneiform outside of the lexical tradition. In addition, sign combinations within cases are either rarely or never found in the administrative corpus,16 such as Tribute lines 11–39: GAb AMAR, which is administratively unattested in proto-cuneiform. Since that particular sign combination gives the impression of being a realistic administrative term, as it aligns with a much later third millennium writing amar-ga for suckling calves (Stol 1993–1997, 191), the example may serve as a reminder that the partiality of the surviving protocuneiform administrative material constrains the conclusions that can be drawn from studying sign use. Interestingly, although the final third of Tribute has been more difficult to interpret, the signs in that section are moderately more commonly attested in the existing administrative corpus than are signs in the first two thirds of Tribute. In addition, signs in neighbouring cases in the final third of Tribute also occur together significantly more frequently in administrative tablets than do signs in neighbouring cases in the first two thirds of Tribute (Kelley / Born 2021). Indeed, Uruk III texts MSVO 1, 44 (P005111) and MSVO 4, 65 (P005467)

14

Bahrani (2001, 134–139) discusses the way repetition appears in the Uruk Vase and suggests that “such repetition and doubling has the effect of infinite circular movement”. 15 PEŠ2 is administratively unattested; KAD4 is found only twice, UZ five times, BALA nine, and KAL thirteen. 16 Kelley / Born 2021 show that around half of the sign combinations in Tribute are administratively unattested in proto-cuneiform. Following the multi-sign header entries which have no exact parallels in administrative cases, only two sign combinations drawn from the first section of Tribute are identified in any administrative text (AN GIR2 is found in two texts and A MUŠEN in six); while seventeen sign combinations from the final part have at least one administrative parallel, although most remain rare or at most moderately well attested in comparison to a list of known proto-cuneiform sign combinations.

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discussed below appear to highlight the relevance of the final third of Tribute to certain administrative genres. A cursory examination of sign use suggests the possibility that the novelties of Archaic Tribute as a whole are best explained as an exploratory use of the cuneiform writing system to represent (or perhaps to construct) cultural knowledge, with a secondary purpose relating to a scribe’s technical training in relation to contemporary administrative practice. At present, it remains difficult to understand the rationale that linked the first two sections of Tribute with the last section. The first sections appear to mix rare and common consumables and do not group items in ways especially similar either to common lexical tactics (such as by graphical similarity) or to known administrative practice; while the final section is a more typically lexical-like list of marsh plants and field and crop designations which includes items that are also more commonly found together in administrative accounts.

Standardization and variation in Archaic Tribute The Early Dynastic versions of Tribute varied to a minor extent from the protocuneiform text. More complex explanatory elements were primarily added in the later third / early second millennium manuscripts. At the same time, protocuneiform orthographies re-emerge in places in the latest manuscripts, indicating the existence of now-lost third millennium intermediaries. Variation among proto-cuneiform manuscripts themselves is also noteworthy in relation to the history of the text’s transmission. An example of differing Archaic Tribute manuscripts appears in lines 28–31 (repeated in lines 55–58), the conclusion of the list of consumables and the location of some much-discussed Old Babylonian additional lines (see below). Minor change in both sign use and line ordering are visible in the few surviving proto-cuneiform sources for these lines (figure 3). 1. Alternation of UB ŠA3a1 and URI ŠA3a1. Manuscript W 20266,117 clearly preserves UB ŠA3a1, whereas W 15895,i has instead URI ŠA3a1. UB and URI are not graphically similar, but may share phonetic similarity, if as Civil suggests (2013, 54–57), UB had an early reading of /war/. The Early Dynastic and following manuscripts prefer ŠA3 URI (adding IŠ) over the other Archaic Tribute witnesses with ŠA3 UB. 2. Alternation of entry order: UB/URI ŠA3a1 final versus GAR final. For the proto-cuneiform manuscripts, GAR more commonly ends each lengthy repeated sequence of consumables, but one variant in line ordering is attested (W 20266,117), in which GAR appears before UB ŠA3. Early Dynastic and later manuscripts almost without exception follow this more rarely attested protocuneiform ordering, placing GAR in the entry before URI ŠA3 (to which is also

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 17

added the sign IŠ). Manuscript X9 may combine the two entries: ˹URI˺:GAR: IŠ!(KISAL) (Wagensonner 2019). This variation in proto-cuneiform line ordering may affect our interpretation of one of the later third millennium additional lines, which appears immediately following URI:IŠ.17 The later line, attested in variants (ŠA2:NAM:GU2:BI:ŠUM2; see score in Civil 2013, 34), has been understood in different ways: Englund (1998, 99) took the phrase to relate to “giving as tribute” (ša3 nam-gun2 sum); Veldhuis (2014, 80) as “plotting its oppression” (admitting he was unable to offer an explanation for this phrase in the context of a list of consumables);18 and Civil (2013, 36) as either a legalistic expression regarding inheritance related to Sargonic nam-gu2 … ak, a phrase involving a hypothetical compound verb gu2 … šum2 (“to pay attention”), or similarly to Englund, with gu2 as the direct object of the verb in “to deliver a load”.19 There is no space here to reconsider these options,20 but the Archaic Tribute manuscripts produce the following additional observations: 1. If ŠA3 of the proto-cuneiform manuscripts already stood as an extreme abbreviation for one of the phrases presented above, in Archaic Tribute this phrase did not typically appear precisely at the end of the long list of consumables, but was followed by an entry with the sign GAR (perhaps, for example, describing the agent responsible for the aforementioned transfer of goods). However, later scribes (and at least one during the Uruk III period) decided that GAR should instead come before the ŠA3 entry or phrase. 2. It seems quite likely, however, that UB/URI ŠA3 of the Uruk manuscripts, and perhaps URI IŠ:ŠA3 of Early Dynastic manuscripts did not originally mask one of the longer phrases discussed above but was re-interpreted, with the element ŠA3 splitting off in the process to become part of a new phrase. The agreement already in the Early Dynastic versions that GAR should precede the entry with ŠA3 could suggest that ŠA3 had by then already begun to be 17

A second, and possibly related, well-discussed later additional line appears in the final third of the text, inserted after what is in Archaic Tribute line 71 (Civil’s later score line 76). In Old Babylonian, the line appears as ša3 gu2-bi nam-gi4, “the heart returns to its bank” with clear literary parallels (Englund 1998, 99). This line is not discussed here, except to say that its location in Tribute splits a coherent section of marsh plants from an expanded repetition of those plants along with other items (see figure 4). Both of these lines should probably be understood in connection with the elaborate glosses observed in 3rd millennium manuscripts of Plant mentioned above. 18 Read by Veldhuis as šag4 nam-gu2-bi sig10. 19 Both of Civil’s latter interpretations arise from the arrangement of signs into a phrase ša3 gu2-bi nam-šum2. 20 See the extended discussion in Civil (2013, 34–36 and 54–57), whose arguments rely on Early Dynastic and following traditions. Civil seems unaware of the evidence for proto-cuneiform manuscript variation presented above when he implies that URI is an Early Dynastic replacement for UB (comments on Civil 2013, 35–36, and 54).

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interpreted as part of a significant, list-concluding phrase. The element ŠA3 in UB ŠA3 / ŠA3 URI in proto-cuneiform, as well as its precise relevance to the possible interpretations presented above remains unexplained (Civil 2013, 36). 3. Finally, since the aim of this article is to explore the interpretive clues within the proto-cuneiform manuscripts themselves, one should note a feature that is more apparent in the proto-cuneiform manuscripts than in later ones: that is, the possible phonetic similarities in the simple sequence (/nar/, /war/-ŠA3, /ĝar/) of Archaic Tribute lines 56–58. No other section of Archaic Tribute has so far been suggested to follow phonetic patterns of organization, although such patterns are known from later lexical texts and occasionally have been (tentatively) identified for proto-cuneiform lexical compositions (e.g. Wagensonner 2010, § 3).

Figure 3. Proto-cuneiform tablets preserving Archaic Tribute lines 28–31 and 56–58.

The final third of the text Following the completion of the repeated list of what are predominantly animals and animal products, the final section of the text consists of 34 entries, many of which contain sign combinations that have been difficult or impossible to interpret. Up to twelve entries appear in essentially the same manner in later manuscripts, while the remainder are subject to sign replacements and/or additions and occasionally the removal of whole lines. The overall impression of this section in proto-cuneiform is that it presents varieties of reeds and other marsh, estuary, or riparian flora along with objects and/or structures associated with these plants. The overlap between this section and administrative sign use, as well as the popularity of Archaic Tribute, suggests that the harvesting and processing of reeds and similar plants was significant to Late Uruk period

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cultures and to proto-cuneiform scribes.21 GI (a depiction of a reed frond) is one of the ten most common proto-cuneiform signs, although it is only attested a little over half as often as ŠE (“barley”, or generally “grain”), the second-most commonly used sign. However, raw frequency statistics can only be used with caution to make suggestions about the relative importance of certain topics in proto-cuneiform administration, since it is clear that some signs are used in multiple ways, just as in later cuneiform. GI and its reduplicated form GI+GI have sometimes been interpreted as proto-cuneiform administrative functions built upon a rebus that exploits the homophony of Sumerian /gi/ “reed” with /gi/ (later normally wr. GI4) “return”, although Englund (1998, 77) expressed doubt over this. GI and BA do parallel each other and may in some instances represent administrative functions, while GI may in other uses refer to reeds (phragmites australis and arundo donax of the family Poaceae) and some similar plants (of the families Typhaceae “cattails”, Cyperaceae “sedges”, and Juncaceae “rushes”).22 The sign SAL is another such example: although one of the top ten most frequent proto-cuneiform signs, this fact cannot be used to directly corroborate the extent of female labor in proto-cuneiform administration (pace Asher-Greve 2008, 121 and Algaze 2013, 81) as will be discussed below. Following the section on reeds and related items, the later traditional beginning of Plant is presented in Tribute lines 83–94. This appears to be a discrete section of the overall composition of Tribute, relating to field agriculture and beginning with the sign combinations EN GAN2 AD and KIa SAG (lines 83–84) – perhaps, though not certainly, reflecting deliberate parallel with the composition’s header line 1: U4 KIa SAG ADa. The composite (including only a few notable variants) for lines 59–94 is:23 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 21

1N45 KIa 1N45 KIa KIa 1N1 KIŠIKa U2a/b 1N1 ŠENNURa 1N1 GIŠ 1N1 GI 1N1 GI ZIa 1N1 GI+GI ŠE3 1N1 ZATU718 E2a PIRIGb1 (one manuscript): APINa E2b PIRIGb1 1N1 ENa ŠE3 1N1 ENa ŠE3 ZIa 1N1 SAL IŠb 1N1 GAR SAG ˹UB˺ LAGABb+LAGABb

On the importance of such resources to early Southern Mesopotamian civilization, see discussion in Pournelle / Algaze 2014. 22 See Cammarosano 2014, 67–69 with previous literature. 23 Following Englund / Nissen 1993 with minor modifications.

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72 1N1 GI AL 73 1N1 A 74 1N1 ˹GIŠ˺ SARa A (one manuscript): […] HI SAR 75 1N1 GIŠ 76 1N1 BIR3c APINa 77 1N1 GI 78 1N1 TAR ZATU751a 79 1N1 GI ZIa 80 1N1 DI ZATU751a 81 1N1 GI+˹GI˺? [ŠE3] 82 1N1 SAL NEa Beginning of “Plant” 83 ENa GAN2 ADa 84 KIa SAG 85 AN KIa24 86 ˹SUMb˺ 87 […] 88 SAL SAL 89 URa URa 90 ŠE3 […] 91 BAD SUG 92 BA KIa 93 SARa ZATU506 94 NAGARa ZATU506

The sign KIa in lines 59 and 60 may refer in some way to land along with area measures (1 N45 = ŠAR2, estimated by Nissen / Englund / Damerow 1993, 57 as ca. 936 acres). In line 61 proto-cuneiform KIŠIKa U2a/b refers to a thorny bush (Akk. ašāgu),25 and in line 62 ŠENNURa, a fruit-bearing tree. The text then lists what may all be reed and marsh plant categories in lines 63–66 in a pattern which is taken up again in 75–82 (figure 4) with additional lines in between. The pattern in lines 77–82 might include a plant category followed by an object associated with/made from it – some of the latter which appear to be cords or similar plant fiber products. In later manuscripts, several of the lines corresponding to the so-called objects (e.g. paralleling Archaic Tribute lines 76,

24

Manuscript W 20572,1 (the only fragment extant for line 85) is read here AN KIa, as later manuscripts, rather than Englund / Nissen’s (1993) AN DI, since three horizontal strokes can be seen inside the diamond-shaped sign (compare DI in archaic LU2, e.g. W 20266, 18 / P000264). 25 A rationale for the inclusion of this plant along with the following section may be found in an observation by Heimpel (2009, 298): “the cutting of shok [ašāgu] is often recorded in connection with field work in Umma texts, usually in connection with hoeing, occasionally with harvesting reeds”.

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78 etc.) repeat the initial plant designation in the following line, perhaps for clarification. However, it is not clear whether a sequence of distinguishable plant species is presented in 63–66. The first item, GIŠ (normally “lumber” or “tree”) may in this context correspond to the later writing giš gi, “reed thicket, canebrake”,26 although later manuscripts retain the writing GIŠ alone for this line. The sign combinations in Archaic Tribute lines 65–66 clearly refer to marsh plants but their precise meaning is difficult to determine. Civil (2013, 41) understood GI ZIa27 and GI ZIa ŠE3 as types of rushes (Juncaceae) or sedges (Cyperaceae), taking GI+ZIa in both combinations as an early writing for ZI+ZI(KWU127) since later Tribute manuscripts have ZI+ZI.LAGAB and ZI+ZI.EŠ2 and similar for these lines. Species identification of proto-cuneiform GI ZIa and GI ZIa ŠE3 (if such is more or less intended by the terms) is not made clear by these later Tribute entries.28 GI ZI may relate to the type of plant loaned into Old Babylonian Akkadian as kīsu (CAD K, s.v. kīsu C). At Ur III Garšana and elsewhere, gi zi may indicate “fresh reeds” where it may have been used as fodder (Heimpel 2009, 302).29 gi-zi-eš-ta is a type of primitive, campfire-made bread referenced in the literary text Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave attested from the early 2nd millennium BC.30 In addition to serving as fuel for cooking, several marsh plants including cattails (Typhaceae) and reeds (Phragmites) contain parts that are edible to humans in a number of forms, including as porridge and as additions to flour (Ochsenschlager 1992), as well as providing an important source of animal fodder. A sweet modern Iraqi dish known as khirret is made from the pollen of Typha, and according to Nasrallah (2019, 201) “to the marsh 26

Akkadian apu (CAD A2, 199). apu is distinguished from ṣuṣû (ṣiṣû) and appāru, the latter paralleled by Sumerian sug and ambar (both written LAGAB×A) for “marsh, reed thicket”. 27 Proto-cuneiform ZATU617 or ZIa is understood by Green / Nissen (1987, 311) as “GI+GAR3, GI+U2, or GI.gunu”. Civil (2013, 41) notes that occasionally later cuneiform ZI+ZI also drops one of the sets of additional lines modifying GI, so that the combination appears as GI+ZI. 28 In third millennium documents, ZI.ZI.ŠE3, ZI.ZI.A, and ZI.ZI.LAGAB may all refer to different rushes or other similar plants (Molina / Such-Gutiérrez 2004, 14). 29 See text no. 232 contrasting ˹gi˺ and gi-zi. 30 “Not knowing how to bake bread or a cake, not knowing an oven, with just seven coals he baked gi-zi-eš-ta dough. While the bread (ninda) was baking by itself, he pulled up ‘šul-hi’ reeds (gi) of the mountains, roots and all, and stripped their branches. He packed up all the cakes as a day’s ration. Not knowing how to bake bread or a cake, not knowing an oven, with just seven coals he had baked gi-izi-eš-ta dough” (transl. ETCSL http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1821.htm; accessed in April 2020). The alternate spelling with izi may here be related to the coal-firing described in the passage (and see below / Heimpel 2009, 210–211 gi izi “fire reed”).

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people, the plant is a God-sent [sic].The rhizomes are a source of nutritious starch, the bases of the leaves are eaten raw or cooked, the young flower spikes are cut off and eaten, and in mid-summer the yellow pollen is collected and made into khirret”. The Old Babylonian thematic word list Ura 2 (lines 1–201, MSL 7, 7–20) lists over 200 terms related to reeds (GI), including a few items that may be related to designations in the final section of Archaic Tribute (gi zi, gi NE, gisal-la, gi dur). Ethnographic work in 20th century southern Iraq highlights the uses and terminology relating to reeds and other plants among the Marsh Arabs (Salim 1962). Reeds (phragmites australis / arundo donax) are important for making mats and other objects, animal fodder, construction including buildings and fences, and shoring up areas against encroaching waters. Terminology for reeds and other marsh plants themselves may reflect stage of growth (Salim 1962, 104) or – often relatedly – the use of the plants, just as much as knowledge of biological differentiation. For example, Ochsenschlager’s modern ethnographic work led him to observe: “Although every modern villager knows the botanical difference between them, he or she will refer to young reeds, rushes, and sedges as grass when collecting fodder, or middle-sized reeds and large sedges as rushes when collecting material for waterproofing certain architectural features” (Ochsenschlager 2002, 162). In between the repetitive pattern, lines 67–72 present sign combinations that are difficult to interpret. The possibility that ZATU718 E2a PIRIGb1 of Archaic Tribute 67 refers to a structure associated with marsh plant fibers or products may be supported by a passage in an Ebla Bilingual (MEE 4, no. 24 rev. vii 2–7 = Pettinato 1982, 53) which presents unclear terms that resemble the sequence in lines 65–67 of Archaic Tribute, along with Eblaite equivalents: e₂-ZI:ZI.A mi-ša-tum e₂-ZI.ZI še₃-na-tum31 e₂-PIRIG ḫa-ba-lu

31

Hajouz 2013, 707 (no. 911) comments that he leaves še₃/ši3-na-tum without a suggested Eblaite translation due to the uncertain meaning of the corresponding Sumerian entry.

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Figure 4. Thematic repetition in Archaic Tribute involving reed thicket(?), reed, and perhaps similar unidentified sedges, rushes, or grasses and associated products.

Archaic Tribute lines 71–72 present examples in which the later Tribute manuscripts might be misleading. Only one text (W 20572,1) preserves these lines, and the transcription of line 71 is unfortunately not certain, but it is clear that the text exhibits drastic changes in later manuscripts here. Contrary to Civil 2013, later manuscript line 74 and/or 75 AL:TAR / AL.TAR.EŠ2 (and variants) are not missing in Archaic Tribute, but rather correspond to Archaic Tribute line 72, GI AL.32 The proto-cuneiform entry suggests a different interpretation than the later texts, although it is possible that GI AL in proto-cuneiform is related to later AL.TAR – a term for general construction work that sometimes included work with reeds (Heimpel 2009, 231–235) – or perhaps ˹gi˺ al-kud-da, “cut reeds” (Old Babylonian Ura 2, e.g. CUSAS 12, 3.2.1 / P250736 obv. iv 27). Alternatively, a rare (lexical only) term gial (= Akkadian kadāru) for reed “fencing” is attested in the much later composition ana ittišu (Ai IV i 29 = MSL 1, 53) in the opening section including terms related to field leases and garden tenancies. Or, following other known uses of AL/MAH2 in proto-cuneiform, the 32

Contrary to Englund / Nissen’s 1993 score, there is no broken area in line 72 (sole manuscript W 20572,1 / P000474); the reading GI AL seems certain.

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combination GI AL could be taken as “mature reeds” (noting the importance of stages in growth to the harvesting and use of reeds cited above) – though admittedly this modifier is only known so far in proto-cuneiform in relation to mature animals and possibly workers. However, the proto-cuneiform administrative evidence offers one parallel: GI AL appears in a text fragment from Uruk as a product counted in the derived capacity system ŠEʺ, recorded in a case neighbouring a product designated NESAG2a […] “offering”(?). A survey of proto-cuneiform administrative texts confirms that the relatively infrequent sign ZATU751 consistently appears with other signs probably designating ropes. That observation, in combination with a comparison of protocuneiform and later Tribute manuscripts makes it clear that ZATU751 should be understood as the graphical forerunner to DUR (LAK545), which (with few exceptions) replaces ZATU751 in later Tribute. For example, Archaic Tribute line 78, TARa ZATU751 becomes GI:DUR:TAR (manuscript X1) and similar variations. Consequently, most forms of ZATU186 (Green / Nissen 1987, 195 “DUR?”) may not be DUR after all. Notably, manuscript X2, which is shown elsewhere to correspond more closely to Archaic Tribute, replaces DI : ZATU751a in line 80 not with a combination involving DUR like the majority of manuscripts, but with DUR2(ZATU127), a graphically unrelated sign that does not appear in the known Archaic Tribute manuscripts. This perhaps recalls a lost Tribute tradition or reflects knowledge of early administrative practice, since ZATU751 has a close association with the sign DUR2 in proto-cuneiform administrative texts: for example, the signs appear together in W 20274, 33 / P003531 and W 20274, 22 / P003520. Is DUR2 in combination with ZATU751 in the proto-cuneiform administrative material a phonetic indicator for Sumerian /dur/, “binding” (or Semitic ṭurru, “rope”)? DUR2 also appears in proto-cuneiform administrative cases in combination with SAL notably frequently (at least eight times). The wholesale replacement of Archaic Tribute entry 82 (SAL NEa) in all later manuscripts with variations of the combination ZI+ZI:EŠ2:DUR (Civil score line 85) suggests that the entry was interpreted as a kind of rope. SAL and NEa are known in relation to reeds or similar plants in several (perhaps interrelated) ways in later cuneiform administration. At Ur III Garšana GI SAL referred to a commonly used building material, “reed layers in brickwork” (Heimpel 2009, 258–266), lent into Akkadian as gisallu. In that same corpus, gi izi(NE), understood by Heimpel as “fire reeds” were used to make both gisallu and a related construction material called di’’um (Heimpel 2009, 302). Later at Uruk some thirty tablets from the palace archives dated to the time of Samsuiluna and Rim-Anum (Sanati-Müller 1996) attest to a “bureau of reeds” (Seri 2013, 203) tracking deliveries of reeds for gisal-la, “baskets”(?)33 and giizi-la2,

33

Sanati-Müller tentatively relates this product to GI.GUR.SAL.LA, “baskets”.

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 25

“torches”, among other things. Interpretation of SAL in Archaic Tribute line 82 as a basket made from some variety of gi-like plant may be supported by the later manuscript inclusion of ZI+ZI:EŠ2/ŠE3 in the entry, since a common third millennium Sumerian offering-basket, particularly used for fish deliveries, was written sa.ZI+ZI.ŠE3 (also sa.ZI+ZI.A) (Englund 1990, 154).34 The disappearance of SAL in later manuscripts of line 82 adds to the impression of a schism in orthographic tradition surrounding some uses of that sign in the early third millennium. The meaning of SAL IŠb in line 70 remains obscure – it is replaced with DAM URU×IŠ in most later manuscripts, which is similarly difficult to interpret and does not readily indicate that later scribes understood the line in the same way as proto-cuneiform scribes. It is, however, notable that SAL in proto-cuneiform was used for women of different statuses (both low and high), including various administrators/personnel, so that replacement with DAM in later Tribute seems plausible. Uses of IŠ/SAHAR (ZATU270) in proto-cuneiform sometimes appear to be part of officials’ titles (including line 45 composite LU2 List, P464118).

The final lines of Archaic Tribute as the beginning of Plant Archaic Tribute line 83, EN GAN2 ADa, marks the beginning of the conventional Plant composition of later Early Dynastic tradition, and judging by a few extant proto-cuneiform tablets, perhaps also an independent Archaic Plant.35 From this entry onwards the lines present special problems of interpretation. The section seems to have moved away from the marsh plants and the products of their fibers as an organizing theme, and may instead record a mix of field or landscape designations and categories of crops. The neighbouring entries 84–85 SAG KIa and AN KIa are difficult. In protocuneiform administrative texts, KI and AN are relatively commonly paired in entries. We might expect field designations of some kind here, and a Neo34

Another parallel between SAL and NE – though less likely relevant to Tribute line 82 – must be mentioned here: Powell (1984, 62) noted the lexical association between a crop designation še SAL (dillatum, see below) and še NE (zahx) = lu’āštu, the latter of which he interprets as category of minor crops perhaps “named after some peculiarity of their awns or husks”. Mixed SAL and NEa is therefore a possible interpretation of Tribute line 82 (see especially Uruk III administrative text MSVO 4, 65 obv. ii 1 / P005467), although less expected within the reed and rope section of the composition, unless Powell’s “minor crops” can be understood as the edible parts of reeds or rushes instead of emmers or other wheats. 35 W 20363 / P000439, bottom left corner of a tablet begins with line 10 of Plant and includes 7 entries, which leaves about the right space on the broken top left for the first nine lines, following the typical ca. 17-entry per column lexical tablet format as reconstructable through witnesses of Tribute.

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Babylonian text (BM 72143, MSL 11, 171–172) in fact puts SAG.KI (Akkadian pūtu) as a field side in direct relationship with EN×GAN2-tenû (compare especially the late Tribute manuscript X7 line 87), although the manuscript is admittedly late for drawing confident comparison. Nonetheless, it is noted that pūtu is specified in CAD (P, 549 s.v. pūtu 3a 2ʹ) as appearing “in MB kudurrus, Emar, NB: passim, always wr. SAG.KI and determined by AN.TA or KI.TA and cardinal directions”, providing further possible link to sign use within the end of Archaic Tribute and the early lines of the Plant list. The later independent composition Plant (lines 1–10) begins by repeating with minor variation the final lines of Tribute (corresponding to Archaic Tribute 83–93/94). Plant then continues on to list terms for divisions of the day (lines 11–20 [Englund 1988, 164–168]) and unclear terms probably related to agriculture, along with South and North winds (lines 21–27). Though fragmentary in the proto-cuneiform version, in Early Dynastic witnesses lines 28–32 present atypical literary terms for the points of the compass as descriptions of lions, PIRIG (Veldhuis 2014, 91–92) that resurface again only in a few much later lexical texts.36

Archaic Tribute and later manuscripts: merging or dropping lines Lines 91–94 require a re-alignment of Uruk and later sources to those presented in the score of Civil 2013. The clearest Uruk III source for these lines (W 20266,44 / P000290) is a non-standard tablet in that it includes at least part of Tribute, but also continues beyond line 94 (= Plant 10) which marks the end of Tribute in other witnesses; rather, this source continues through line 27 of Plant with the break probably originally containing around a dozen more lines. The correspondence between Archaic Tribute and later manuscripts seems to be as follows: Tribute 91 W 20266,44 BAD LAGAB×A W 20266,45 […] ˹LAGAB×A˺ = Civil later sources 95a37 F1 BAD:GA2×A F2 [BAD]:GA2×A A1 [BAD]:˹LAGAB×A˺ A3 BAD:˹LAGAB×A˺ X1 BAD:GA2×A X2 BAD!:GA2×A! 36

Tribute 92 W 20266,44 BA KIa W 20266,45 BA ˹KIa˺ = Civil later sources 95b — (omitted) F1 — F2 A1 — — A3 — X1 X2 —

Veldhuis identified these as compass points through comparing passages in the later second and first millennium series Erimhuš and Malku=šarru, and comments that, given the apparent terminological connection with the obscure passage in Early Dynastic Plant, the scribes of those series must have had knowledge of some now lost traditions. 37 Designations a and b for Civil line 95 are added in this study.

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 27 N1 N2 X4 X6 A C E

— (omitted) — — — BAD LAGAB×A ˹BAD˺ LAGAB×A BAD LAGAB×A

N1 N2 X4 X6 A C E

GIŠ […] BA:[KU?][x-ki?] ˹GIŠ˺? BA:KU!38 BA […] — — —

Transliterations here primarily follow conventions set in Civil 2013. LAGAB and GA2 are both simple rectangular frame signs, so this entry remained essentially unaltered throughout all manuscripts that included this line. LAGAB×A = Sumerian sug or ambar (“marsh, reed thicket”). The use of BAD here may be explained by spellings of Akkadian agammu, “marsh” ( “a-ga-am A×BAD = a-gam(var. -ga-am)-mu” Old Babylonian sign list Ea I 11 / MSL 14, 176 [CAD A1, 142]) – or, more specifically, “a large, marshy, and permanent or semi-permanent lake used as a reservoir to dispose of flood waters” (Civil 1994, 130), for example mentioned in conjunction with adjacent agricultural land in a text from Susa (MDP 23, 170 no. 9). No later Tribute manuscript retains both Tribute 91 and 92, although their appearance next to each other in Archaic Tribute is assured in two Uruk III manuscripts. While Archaic Tribute 91 corresponds in most later manuscripts to 95a with essentially the same entry (BAD + a rectangular frame signs embedded with A), Archaic Tribute line 92 (BA KIa) is omitted in most later sources, excepting where we may be able to identify its influence in variant lines in manuscripts N2, X4, and X6.39 These are late manuscripts and none preserves a clear BA KI, although all sources are damaged. Instead, two appear to either replace KI – or reinterpret Tribute 91 LAGAB×A with KU. It seems clear that these manuscripts retained some influence from Tribute 92 in their inclusion of BA, and they might have mixed elements deriving from both Archaic Tribute 91 and 92. Englund (1998, 77) noted the apparent use of BA to designate certain plots of land in proto-cuneiform administrative documents, although the significance of BA is not understood. BA KIa of Archaic Tribute 92 may be a land or environment designation that is distinguishable from LAGAB×A “marsh”.

38

Reading based on Geller’s hand-copy as presented in Krispijn 2012. Krispijn reads BA:BA:ŠE3 and Civil (2013) BA:KU!. 39 Pace Civil (2013, 15) who presents BA:KU as an Old Babylonian “logogram replacement” for Early Dynastic BAD:LAGAB×A presumably on graphic or phonetic similarity between KU (=suh5?) and LAGAB×A (but with no reference there to protocuneiform line 92 BA KIa as the origin of the element BA). Proto-cuneiform line 91 BAD:LAGAB×A (= BAD.SUG) is missing in Civil’s score on page 48.

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Figure 5. Uruk III tablets attesting the final lines of Archaic Tribute. Left to right: W 20266,45 / P000291; W 20266,46 / P000292; W 20266,44 / P000290.

As with the lines just discussed, the final two lines of Archaic Tribute (94–95) were not retained as consecutive entries in later manuscripts.40 Almost all witnesses preferred SARa LAK175 (Civil line 96) corresponding to Tribute 93, dropping Tribute 94 (NAGARa ZATU506) entirely. On the other hand, X4, X6, and possibly e, preferred LAK175 SILA3. The replacement logic leading to the writing SILA3 is uncertain, but perhaps represents a development from the GAR or NAGARb of Archaic Tribute line 94; manuscript N2 with LAK175 SILA3? SAR uniquely blends Archaic Tribute 93 and 94 into one entry. The proto-cuneiform sign ZATU50641 is a graphical forerunner to LAK175, the latter of which is possibly to be read hirinx and understood as a plant designation for either a local weed or imported aromatic (Civil 2013, 58–59). The significance of the appearance of SAR LAK175 (rev. i 2) and BAD SUG (rev. i 6)42 as two of six listed designations of fields in the early third millennium stone document known as the Figure aux Plumes (Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991, 66–67) is intriguing but remains unclear.43 Another of those field designations (rev. i 4) may be read SUHUR44 A, yet another field designation (along with BAD SUG), that could indicate areas associated with water. In any case, the vocabulary overlap between this final section of Tribute and the Early Dynastic land transfer document support the argument that Tribute at this point is concerned with types of land.

40

Another type of early variation in the concluding lines of Tribute comes from the end of Early Dynastic Fara source F2, which included three further non-standard lines, only one of which can be read in part: SANGA? HU […]. 41 Green / Nissen (1987, 281) attributes the value ŠAGAN to ZATU506 and list several forms of it as graphical forerunners to LAK175, 407, and 458. This is opposed by Steinkeller (1995, 708–709) who restricts the relationship to LAK175. 42 Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting (1991, 67) reads BE.SUG. 43 The authors refer to the Ebla manuscript of Tribute in their notes on these lines of the text. For recent publication of this text, see Lecompte 2020. 44 ZATU491 = LAK227.

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 29

SAL (SAL) in proto-cuneiform In reference to later Tribute line 92 (Archaic Tribute 88), Civil (2013, 49 fn. 92) suggested that “the most likely meaning of SAL here is amtu”, citing a lexical text from Ebla with SAL = ʾa3-ma-tum (VE 1160 Pettinato 1982, 324 and Krebernik 1983, 41). Civil’s interpretation follows the spirit of the secondary literature regarding proto-cuneiform SAL (since Vaiman 1989 and Englund 2009) which emphasizes uses of that sign as a near semantic equivalent to later geme2, although he departs from the majority of literature by suggesting a Semitic language context for this entry (his discussion rarely comments specifically on the proto-cuneiform manuscript, and interpretations are presumed to apply to witnesses of all periods). The reading is possible but arguably unlikely based upon consideration of the uses of SAL in protocuneiform and contextual clues in Tribute itself. ZATU443 (hereafter SAL) is associated with SAL, MI2, and MUNUS by Green / Nissen 1987. It is extremely common, in fact, the fifth most commonly used proto-cuneiform sign. The sign’s frequency differs between the protocuneiform corpora. In the Uruk corpus SAL appears in just under 5% of texts, in the Jemdet Nasr texts 11%, and in tablets of unknown provenience 20% of texts.45 The sign clearly depicts a human vulva, and therefore lexical values such as munus have been suggested in proto-cuneiform contexts, though without any manner of proof; it has also been shown to be used with a similar meaning to later geme2 (Vaiman 1989). It is possible (but also remains unproven) that the sign was used already in proto-cuneiform for the adjective “fine” as in later Sumerian /sal/, whence the conventional sign name. A survey of the proto-cuneiform corpus shows that the extremely productive sign SAL is certainly used with meanings other than “female servant”, including as an indicator for female personnel of various social positions, female animals (sheep, goats, cattle, and donkeys)46 but also appearing in many cases where its use to indicate “female” is not clear. Among the unclear uses are a possible textile product or female weaver designation (AŠ BAR SAL),47 a variety of apparent product designations, geographic designations, and possible personal names, administrative titles, and institutional titles that generally do not produce ready Sumerian equivalents. SAL appears as a category parallel to PAPa, AN, and ENa (all as modifiers of the sign UR3, “roof”?) in the proto-cuneiform lexical Vocabulary (e.g. W 14337,a+ / P000025). Strikingly, the proto-Elamite

45

Data drawn from the CDLI, accessed in May 2020 and sign frequencies as cited in Kelley / Born 2021. 46 The sign is also found in combination with signs for birds, fish, and lioness (examples of the latter may be part of an institutional or geographic name). 47 Discussed in Kelley 2018, 302–304.

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graphical equivalents of PAPa (Proto-Elamite sign M3b),48 SAL (M72), and AN (M46) appear in the same order in a proto-Elamite text from Susa (MDP 17, 112 / P008310), raising the possibility that these sets of signs function as parallel categories in the two writing systems. A comparison with the proto-Elamite corpus, consisting of approximately 1,600 texts, also reveals an interesting contrast with the sign profile of M72, which is SAL’s proto-Elamite graphical and partial semantic parallel. The protoElamite sign is 24th most common, demonstrably less common than SAL is in proto-cuneiform.49 It is used in less than 3% of proto-Elamite texts, and its strict positioning as the final sign (or frequently the only sign) in an entry in all but a single text50 suggests that, unlike the apparent situation in proto-cuneiform, the sign was not given a broad array of ideographic or phonetic values. The contexts in which M72 appear also seem to preclude its use in complex individuals’ titles, which contrasts with proto-cuneiform SAL’s clear use in a wide variety of cultic, administrative, and institutional designations. It may be noteworthy that M72 appears to have been used less flexibly in proto-Elamite, given that the writing system was a technological dead-end, unlike proto-cuneiform which developed into later cuneiform, in part thanks to its ability to expand its communicative potential through complex associations resulting in multiple values for a given sign. However, M72 is not necessarily representative of proto-Elamite sign flexibility as a whole, which is a topic requiring further investigation. M72 is among a small set of signs that were common to both proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite, and may possibly be understood as a “loan” from early proto-cuneiform, presumably relating to a specific administrative context relevant to both early scribal communities. Once established in protoElamite, M72 remained restricted to that limited administrative context, and one may speculate that since the proto-Elamite writing system tended not to depict human body parts (Dahl 2016), the scribes may have chosen not to exploit the shape of the sign to expand its uses through ideographic associations. A reduplicated form SAL SAL appears in a handful of Uruk III administrative texts and fragments (two from Uruk and the remainder unprovenanced), from which little can be gleaned. It is possible that SAL SAL could be a personal name attached to a female worker in the Umma area, if the current hypothesis for understanding case and subcase use in CUSAS 31, 27 is correct: two “ŠA3 SAL” (female infants?) are understood to be further described by their personal names in subcases (see Englund 2009), SAL SAL in one case 48

Proto-Elamite sign numbers follow the working signlist of Dahl available at http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/proto-elamite (accessed in April 2020). 49 All sign frequencies after Kelley / Born 2021 and other statistics are calculated based upon the CDLI database of Proto-Elamite texts (accessed in May 2020). 50 The exception is from Tepe Yahya (TY 11 Damerow / Englund 1989 / P009535) and may represent a regional variation of the tradition known at Susa.

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 31

and TUR3 NUNUZ in the other. Reduplications of SAL in third and early second millennium Sumerian texts are more than likely not directly relevant to interpreting Archaic Tribute, given the evidence that grammatical forms are not presented in proto-cuneiform texts in similar ways as later cuneiform.51 Many proto-cuneiform texts contain too little information to offer certain interpretation of the use of SAL, although drawing on corpus-wide study of sign use may lead to more confident translations. An example of this is an Uruk fragment (W 21335 / P004373) which preserves only a summary line recording 8N1 SAL GUMb. Following later Sumerian use (gum / naga4, “to crush”, “mortar” – noting the proto-cuneiform sign probably depicts a mortar and pestle) we may interpret this either as a count of female grain grinders or products associated with their work;52 products made from a crushed crop SAL; or products of finely (SAL) crushed crops! A solution can only come from greater understanding of administrative practice across the corpus.

URa (URa) in proto-cuneiform Proto-cuneiform UR (ZATU586; LAK664) is a moderately uncommon sign (ranked 141st in frequency), found in around thirty texts from Uruk, six from Jemdet Nasr, two from Tell Uqair, and around twenty of unknown provenience. The sign is understood as a dog’s head, which accounts for the later reading ur (Sumerian for “dog”). However, due to our current state of knowledge of protocuneiform, it has not been shown that any uses of the sign in proto-cuneiform are in fact records of either dogs or words (such as proper nouns) that include a syllable /ur/. The most likely association between URa URa in Archaic Tribute 89 and later orthographies is in the Early Dynastic Plant line 120, ur-ursar, although translation of this item is difficult. Early Dynastic Sign List A (e.g. SF 7 / P010573) includes UR UR in five consecutive entries, perhaps, as noted by Civil (2013, 49) suggesting a plurality of meanings. Other signs repeated multiple times in this list include ZI+ZI+A, LAGAB×A, and SAG.KI, all of which appear in the final section of Tribute. Nonetheless, UR is difficult to 51

A few examples of later reduplicated SAL are as follows: A Song of Inana and Dumuzi mentions SAR? sag9-ga dilib3-e sal-sal-[gu10] as a description for a category of plants “with a head of fine hairs” (Composite translation ETCSL Dumuzi-Inana W line 35) – sal-sal representing the Sumerian adjective “fine”. At Ebla, ninda-sal-sal “finely milled bread”(?) is known in a few lexical and administrative (e.g. P240694) texts. SAL.SAL is also known lexically as a fish and a bird designation, including the entry […]mušen = raqraq-qu = la-qa-la-qa, “stork” in Neo-Assyrian Murgud from Nineveh (MSL 8/2, 172; CT 14, pl. 6, K 4318 / P365318). 52 The notation 8N1 precludes the possibility that this count occurs in the capacity measure system, in which N1 is replaced with N14 at 6 N1.

Kathryn Kelley

32

positively identify as a term in relation to either wetland resources or field crops in archaic or third millennium cuneiform administration. Bilingual presentations of UR UR in much later lexical texts include its use for a crop-devouring insect or pest (e.g. Middle Assyrian Ea VII [VAT 9541 obv. ii 10ʹ] ur-ur / ākilu, ur-ruur [UR&UR],53 and Neo-Assyrian omen text CT 20, pl. 33 K 2263 etc. rev. 89 a-ki-lu še-am KU2(GU7) [CAD A1, 266–267]). A reduplicated form UR UR, sometimes read ur-teš2, is attested as a personal name from Early Dynastic administrative texts (Pomponio 1987, 266–268 / Balke 2017, 450), to which a possible comparison can be made with URa URa appearing in a Schøyen Collection Uruk III text (MS 2863/18 / P006184); it appears as a subcase that may be the name of one of seven “3-year-olds” (U4 3N57 TUR)54 and it is the only instance of this personal name in the known proto-cuneiform corpus. A reduplicated URa does not appear anywhere else in the corpus, and single uses of URa are difficult to interpret. A typically laconic Uruk text W 6426,a / P000768 illustrates this: URa with an unclear modification (gunû?) appears alone in the colophon of a short account of items in the sexagesimal system, here including 1N48 1N34 3N14 (= “690”) NUNUZa2 and 5N34 (= “300”) GAR3 (baked goods?). URa may function in the colophon as an abbreviated personal or official designation of an individual associated with the account, or it may qualify the account in some other way. Archaic Pig List (W 12139 / P000014) may offer a clue to URa as an archaic plant designation: the category URa ŠUBUR appears in a progression that suggests the animals are being distinguished there by type of feed or habitat/ manner of feeding, including “reed”, “field”, and “barley”: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

53

Obv. iii 1N1 GI ŠUBUR 1N1 URa ŠUBUR 1N1 ŠA3a1 ŠUBUR 1N1 GAN2 ŠUBUR 1N1 ˹ŠEa˺ ŠUBUR 1N1 GURUŠDA ŠUBUR 1N1 A ŠUBUR

reed + pig dog(?) + pig (designation of a young pig)55 field + pig barley/grain + pig livestock fattener + pig water + pig

See comments in Veldhuis 2014, 327. Since Englund 2009 interpreted as “3-year-olds”, contrasted with one and two year olds, and AL (= MAH2, “mature ones”?). 55 Dahl 2006, 34 and Bartash 2015, 133. Bartash’s suggestion that ŠA3 TUR represents a group of mixed babies and children is difficult to maintain given proto-cuneiform examples recording a single ŠA3 TUR, such as in W 23999,1 / P004735. See Kelley 2018, 365–372 for ŠA3 in age group designations within proto-cuneiform. 54

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 33

While less fitting in the immediate context of the passage, we cannot dismiss the possibility that URa ŠUBUR is a reference to pig-hunting dogs, such as illustrated in the seal impression on MSVO 3, 82 / P005393.

Interpreting SAL SAL and URa URa Civil’s suggestion that SAL and URa represent parallel categories of female and male workers is not confirmable from the known proto-cuneiform administrative record, in which the frequent pairing of SAL as a presumed female worker is instead with KURa or GURUŠ rather than UR.56 Neither is there evidence for later direct cuneiform paralleling of the signs SAL and UR with these meanings. However, there are a handful of instances in proto-cuneiform in which SAL and UR appear together in a case or in neighbouring cases or contexts which remain to be interpreted. In Uruk III text W 23973,01 (P004684) the entry NUNa PAPa SAL URa presents such a case, in a context that suggests it may be an official’s title. The account type to which the fragment belongs is not clear, although the reverse preserves the sign GAa (a depiction of a dairy vessel) as part of a colophon. Reduplication in proto-cuneiform requires further systematic study, and for the moment the reduplications SAL SAL and URa URa in Tribute cannot be securely interpreted in relation to lexicon, grammar, or administrative process. One may note the cluster of “reduplicated” forms in this section of Tribute: SUM(ŠEtenû+ŠEtenû), SAL SAL, URa URa, and possibly ŠEa+˹ŠEa˺. Elsewhere in Tribute reduplication occurs with line 60 (1N45 KIa KIa)57 and 71 (1N1 GAR SAG ˹UB˺? LAGAB LAGAB), as well as the complex reed designations in lines 66, 79, and 81. Both the immediate and wider contexts of the entries SAL.SAL and URa.URa in Tribute lead one to expect the designation of some category of plant:

56

Englund 2009 and Kelley 2018, 255–320 with catalogue of personnel designated by the sign SAL (263–271). 57 Several (but not all) later manuscripts remove the doubling of KI and reduplicate the numerical sign instead.

34 Archaic Tribute 86 SUMb […]

Kathryn Kelley Interpretation

Later Manuscripts

A collective designation of edible bulbs58

A general designation of edible bulbs? Or “mixed grain”? Variant writings include ŠE+ŠE:A59

87 […]

88 SAL.SAL 89 URa.URa 90 ˹ŠEa˺ […]60

A collective designation of minor cereal crops A designation of crops? A collective designation of cereal crops including barley

A designation of early harvest crops (flax or grain) ZA GIN3 AŠ/A = šeza-gin3 duru5 / Akkadian abaḫšinnu ? SAL / SAL.LA ? UR UR “Mixed barley/grain” ŠE+ŠE.HI.A, / ŠE.HI.A / U2.A.HI and similar

The sign SUMb in line 86 is partially broken but the reading appears certain. Interestingly, this line is one of a minority that underwent total replacement already in the Early Dynastic manuscripts, supplanted (unless following lost proto-cuneiform manuscripts) by variant entries including ŠE.61 The sign SUM reappears further in Plant over a dozen times in different combinations. While the line immediately preceding SAL SAL in Archaic Tribute (line 87) remains unattested, later manuscripts consistently include ZA GIN3 DURU5 for which we should probably understand šeza-gin3 duru5 (Akkadian abaḫšinnu [Ura 24, 153–154; MSL 11, 83]) – which Powell (1984, 64) interprets in a general sense as “green grain … grain harvested at an early stage (for roasting, soups, and the like)” and Civil as “a late stage in the growth of barley” (Civil 2013, 49 and previous literature). Thavapalan (2019, 355–363) discusses na4ZA.GIN3.DURU5 as a mainly second and first millennium term for “a light blue/turquoise vitreous material that was produced by coloring frit with an oxide of copper” (comparable to the famous Egyptian Blue), suggesting that the term was associated with the crop designation through color parallel – a reference to the blueish-green appearance of flax fields in springtime.62 Akkadian abaḫšinnu is 58

See the numerous entries including SUM in Early Dynastic Plant, especially lines 71– 76 and 101–108. 59 See Civil (2013, 48), post-proto-cuneiform Tribute Line 90 score. 60 ŠEa+ŠEa of Englund / Nissen (1993, 118) is not visible on the only extant manuscript W 20266,44 / P000290. 61 See comments in Green / Nissen (1987, 279) supporting identification of this form as SUM. 62 Considering the appearance in Tribute manuscripts of SAL / SAL.LA after za-gin3 duru5, Lafont (2008, 7) raised the possibility that SAL.LA in Tribute refers to a stone, as in MSL 10, 69 line 16 na4SAL-la = abnu mul-ta-as-[ḫi-ip-tu2] which appears shortly

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 35

described as a category of crop specifically contrasting with GIŠ.SAR.HI.A, “garden crop?” in a personal letter from Mari (ARM 1, 112 obv. 5 and 10). The latter designation can also be compared to Archaic Tribute 74: GIŠ.SARa.A and variant […] HI ˹SARc˺. An attractive option is therefore associating Archaic Tribute SAL SAL (and later Tribute’s SAL?) with the poorly attested third millennium crop designation še SAL, Akkadian dillatum (Diri 5, 209 / MSL 15, 174–175 še ša2-al ŠE.SAL = di-il-la-tum) understood by Powell (1984, 60–61) as “a collective designation for minor cereal crops including the emmers but excluding ‘wheat’ (GIG)”. Powell identifies a single administrative text in which še SAL is used (Powell 1978, no. 25 / P298618), dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period and deriving from the Umma region. To this can be added CUSAS 33, 146 / P325099 also from the Umma region and dated similarly. Powell 1978, no. 25 (comments Powell 1984, 60–61) is a record of named areas of cultivated land and the cereals grown in them. še SAL appears to be cultivated alongside še SAR in some of these areas of field, while in others it is še SAR alone, ziz2 (“wheat”), or še SAR and GIG – all minor cereal crops or terms for stages of crop growth. The other text mentioning še SAL is CUSAS 33, 146, which records fields belonging to six different individuals, areas ranging from 5 ½ to 1 iku per individual. One of these groups of fields is associated with the “great storehouse” (ganun-mah) of an išib (purification) priest of Inana. The text includes the designation id2, specifying that the fields were located along the riverbank (Notizia / Visicato 2016, 132). The rarity of the category of crop še SAL in administrative texts and its failure to appear in the lexical Ura may indicate that it was an early orthography that was falling out of use already during the third millennium (Powell 1984, 61), a hypothesis which would seem to support an early origin. The relationship between še SAL and another minor third millennium crop šegu2-nida(NUNUZ)63 – generally taken to refer to pulses because of the element gu2 – remains unclear (Powell 1984, 61). If SAL was indeed a kind of collective designation for certain crops already half a millennium before in the Uruk III texts, this may offer a way to explain before line 21 na4za-gi-in-du-ru-u = NA4 [mu-ṣu SAL] (literally, “female + discharge stone” see Johnson 2015, 36). 63 gu2 ni-daNUNUZ = Akkadian raq-tum or sal-tum / šal-tum (Ura 24, 130; MSL 11, 81) / and CAD S, 106 saltu A “qualifying grain”. A similar Akkadian word, (CAD S, 106 saltu B) can refer to “cut” as in “cut-up reeds”. The signs SAL and NUNUZ also share some association within Sumerian, since emesal for “woman” is nunus (written nu-nus); a similar association may extend as far as proto-cuneiform, if Lecompte’s identification of U4 SAL ZI (CUSAS 1, 98 / P325232) as the priestess designation known in Early Dynastic texts as, e.g. nunuzx(SAL)-zi Utu (SF 57 obv. i 4) / engar nu-nuznunuzx-zi Utu (SF 57 obv. vi 18) is correct (Lecompte 2016, 34–35).

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the reduplication SAL SAL as a method for indicating something like “various, collected” in Archaic Tribute, since it also appears alongside reduplicated forms in the neighbouring lines, SUMb (= ŠEtenû+ŠEtenû), “bulbs?” and UR UR another crop designation(?), and in association with ŠEa [HI A], “mixed grains” (noting several later manuscripts have forms including ŠEa+ŠEa in that line). Furthermore, an identification of SAL as a category or designation of plant might go some way towards explaining the extreme productivity of this sign in proto-cuneiform. In support of this is also the observation that a number of proto-cuneiform administrative texts that use the sign SAL in uncertain contexts include capacity measures in the derived capacity measure system Šʺ which is understood to indicate measures of emmer or a similar minor cereal crop apart from barley (Nissen / Englund / Damerow 1993, 29). Two examples are presented in figure 6. There may also be a single explicit reference to še SAL in an unprovenanced Uruk III text CUSAS 31, 109 / P387742 (obv. i 3: ŠEa SAL 1N57 ABa), noting also the text colophon describing the products counted in relation to the possible administrative function Ea – and separated from this, GI GAN2 ŠEa (only speculatively, “brought up / grain of the ‘GI’-fields”?). Uruk III text MSVO 1, 44 from Jemdet Nasr is an account of barley and emmer distributions (Englund / Grégoire 1991, 20) that shares a number of overlaps in vocabulary with Archaic Tribute. Sign commonalities include its use of SAL ZATU751a (obv. ii 3) and an entry with one of the rare reduplications of SAL (obv. i 6: SAL SAL PAPa). However, it is MSVO 4, 65 that may provide strong supporting evidence for the use of SAL as a consumable plant designation. The account uses SAL in four different combinations, two of which are again notable for overlaps with Tribute content: obv. i 3: SAL ZATU751b BUa (cf. Archaic Tribute lines 78–82 and their replacements with rope terms in later manuscripts) and obv. ii 2: NEa SAL (compare Archaic Tribute line 82). This account has been understood to record emmer distributions in the derived capacity system for “named individuals (primarily female slaves designated SAL)” (Englund 1996, 27). Another plausible interpretation is that the measures of some crop or crops, of varying designations, are recorded and then totalled together in the summary. Unified totals involving different products are known elsewhere in proto-cuneiform and later corpora, and in fact we find a close parallel to the combined category of emmer designations še NE.GI.BAR, “wheats?” of Early Dynastic Girsu, attested in “white/bright” (UD / babbar) and “dark” (GI6 / giggi) varieties that can be subsumed in totals together (Powell 1984, 63).

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 37

Figure 6. MSVO 1, 44 / P005111 (left) and MSVO 4, 65 / P005467 (right).

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Compare this to the following designations in MSVO 4, 65: Column ii 1 NEa SAL 2 UD HAL SAL 3 GI6 SAL

A strong case thus emerges for understanding SAL as a crop designation in some way paralleling later še NE.GI.BAR. Another text may hold especially important clues to some meanings of SAL and URa in connection with each other: CUSAS 31, 89 / P006366 uses both SAL SAL (obv. i 8) and SAL URa (obv. iii 1) among a variety of poorly understood designations including SAL GAN2 and ŠA SAL ZATU751c. The text presents a summary designation of UR5 […] and a capacity measure in the same derived system Šʺ as the texts above. SAL SAL and SAL URa are counted with 1N1 as are most entries in the first column, whereas SAL GAN2 and ŠA SAL ZATU751c are among the entries counted with 2N39a 1N24 (= 15 N30a). These standard ratios are normally seen as evidence of worker rationing texts (see Dahl / Hawkins / Kelley 2018, 19–21 with previous literature) but the vocabulary may suggest otherwise here. It is difficult to understand why later Tribute manuscripts would choose to omit the reduplication of SAL in the line paralleling Archaic Tribute 88, particularly while retaining UR UR (itself almost certainly an obscure reference) consistently in the following line. It may be noteworthy that there are observable changes to all entries involving SAL from Archaic Tribute in later manuscripts and that this may attest to a particular shift in uses of this sign after the early third millennium. In a few late Tribute manuscripts which otherwise appear to retain greater similarities to the proto-cuneiform witnesses, the line appears as SAL.LA. While this could hypothetically be a survival of an unattested third millennium abbreviated writing for dillatum,64 more likely it suggests that these late third millennium manuscripts may have understood the line to refer to the reed product GI.(GUR).SAL.LA mentioned above, although in Archaic Tribute this meaning does not seem probable in context. Finally, Tribute manuscript X4 uniquely reads SAL+ME(?) TUR3; Old Babylonian TUR3×SAL = ŠILAM (cf. Mittermayer 2006, 21), so that the line appears to be reference to a cow.

64

See Abu Ṣalabiḫ Plant manuscript OIP 99, no. 24 / P010086 with SAL AŠ in the line corresponding to Archaic Tribute SAL SAL and ŠEa SAL 1N57 ABa in administrative text CUSAS 31, 109 / P387742 – could AŠ and/or 1N57 stand for /dil/ as a phonetic indicator for dillatum in these examples?

More Than a Woman? On Proto-cuneiform SAL and the Archaic “Tribute List” 39

Conclusions Proto-cuneiform studies has moved beyond the expectation that sign functions can with any consistency be understood through pictography in a straightforward manner, and little success can even be claimed thus far for identifiable Sumerian-Sumerian homophones or rebus as a major mechanism for expanding sign use in Uruk IV–III texts. It has yet to be rigorously explored how closely the proto-cuneiform corpus conforms to the dominant orthographic traditions of the later third millennium. While we are extremely fortunate to have the lexical tradition to anchor our understanding of proto-cuneiform studies to later scribal traditions, our ability to apply sign names to proto-cuneiform texts has not produced an especially coherent (and rarely “translatable”) archaic corpus of administrative material – this even though attempted translations have tried to accommodate for a possibly verb-less and morpheme-light recording system. Similarly, our understanding of Archaic Tribute – an experimental and highly-valued cultural composition, whatever we may decide its “genre” to be – may be both aided and obfuscated by analysis focusing on later scribal interpretation of the text, and by its presentation in transliteration with sign names applied from later traditions. It is clear that the repertoire of proto-cuneiform sign forms was largely standardised across Late Uruk sites themselves, yet our difficulty in reading proper names (Englund 2009, §2.5) or other multi-sign cases that reflect Sumerian vocabulary suggests that the standard orthographic rules and sign functions in Uruk III texts may differ significantly from those established during the Early Dynastic periods. It is already known that the development of a relatively standard orthography across sites in the early third millennium was not entirely uncontested, as evidenced by the development of UD.GAL.NUN, even if that was a secondary and deliberate alternation from a dominant orthography (Krecher 1992). SAL appears in three different lines in the final section of Archaic Tribute, and its meaning in each of these is uncertain. All of the lines using SAL underwent changes (sign additions, subtractions, or replacements) in later Tribute manuscripts, indicating that traditions surrounding the use of SAL – especially in the context of plants and agricultural management – had changed. In reviewing the proto-cuneiform administrative corpus, the use of SAL for a crop designation in some circumstances seems likely, as does the interpretation of SAL SAL similarly in Archaic Tribute line 88.

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References Algaze, G., The End of Prehistory and the Uruk Period, in: Crawford, H. (ed.), The Sumerian World, London 2013, 68–94. Asher-Greve, J., Images of Men, Gender Regimes, and Social Stratification in the Late Uruk Period, in: Bolger, D. (ed.), Gender Through Time in the Ancient Near East (Gender and Archaeology 17), Lanham, MD 2008, 119– 171. Bahrani, Z., Women of Babylon. Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia, London 2001. Balke, T.E., Das altsumerische Onomastikon Namengebung und Prosopografie nach den Quellen aus Lagas (dubsar 1), Münster 2017. Bartash, V., Children in Institutional Households of Late Uruk Period Mesopotamia, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 105 (2015) 131–138. Cammarosano, M. The Cuneiform Stylus, in: Mesopotamia 49 (2014) 53–90. Civil, M., The Farmer’s Instructions. A Sumerian Agricultural Manual (Aula Orientalis Supplementa 5), Barcelona 1994. — Remarks on AD-GI4 (A.K.A “Archaic Word List C” or “Tribute”), in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 65 (2013) 13–68. Dahl, J.L., Early Swine Herding, in: Lion, B. / Michel, C. (eds.), De la domestication au tabou. Le cas des suidés dans le Proche-Orient ancien (Travaux de la Maison René-Ginouvès 1), Paris 2006, 31–38. — The Production and Storage of Food in Early Iran, in: Origini 37 (2016) 45– 50. Dahl, J.L. / Hawkins, L.F. / Kelley, K., Proto-Elamite Worker Categories, in: Garcia-Ventura, A. (ed.), What’s in a Name? Terminology and Job Categories in the Ancient Near East (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 440), Münster 2018, 15–44. Damerow, P. / Englund, R.K., The Proto-Elamite Texts from Tepe Yahya (The American School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin 39), Cambridge, MA 1989. Englund, R.K., Administrative Timekeeping in Ancient Mesopotamia, in: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 31 (1988) 121– 185. — Organisation und Verwaltung der Ur III-Fischerei (Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient, Band 10), Berlin 1990. — Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Diverse Collections (Materialien zu den frühen Schriftzeugnissen des Vorderen Orients 4), Berlin 1996. — Texts from the Late Uruk Period, in: Attinger, P. / Wäfler, M. (eds.), Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/1), Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen 1998, 15–217. — The Smell of the Cage, in: Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2009:4 (2009).

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Englund, R.K. / Grégoire, J.-P., The Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Jemdet Nasr (Materialien zu den frühen Schriftzeugnissen des Vorderen Orients 1), Berlin 1991. Englund, R.K. / Nissen, H.J., Die lexikalischen Listen der archaischen Texte aus Uruk (Archaische Texte aus Uruk 3), Berlin 1993. — Archaische Verwaltungstexte aus Uruk: Die Heidelberger Sammlung (Archaische Texte aus Uruk 7) Berlin 2001. Gabriel, G.I. Die archaischen Listen aus Uruk und die proto-keilschriftliche frontier. Überlegungen zu Funktion und Genese des ältesten lexikalischen Corpus, in: Journal of Near Eastern History 7/1 (2020), 1–24. Gelb, I.J. / Steinkeller, P. / Whiting, R.M., Earliest Land Tenure Systems in the Near East: Ancient Kudurrus (Oriental Institute Publications 104), Chicago, IL 1991. Green, M.W. / Nissen, H.J., Zeichenliste der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk (Archaische Texte aus Uruk 2), Berlin 1987. Hajouz, M. Der Wortschatz der Ebla-Texte. Morphologische und lexikalische Analyse, PhD Dissertation, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena 2013. Heimpel, W., Workers and Construction Work at Garšana (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 5), Bethesda, MD 2009. Johnson, J.C. (ed.), In the Wake of the Compendia. Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia (Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures 3), Berlin 2015. Kelley, K., Gender, Age, and Labour Organization in the Earliest Texts from Mesopotamia and Iran (c. 3300–2900 BC), PhD Dissertation, Oxford University, Oxford 2018. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:afa3362e-118243aa-a2b9-d675bd8c585a (accessed in June 2020) Kelley, K. / Born, L., A Quantitative Analysis of Proto-cuneiform Sign Use in Archaic Tribute, in: Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin 2021:6 (2021) Krebernik, M., Zu Syllabar und Orthographie der Lexikalischen Texte aus Ebla. Teil 2 (Glossar), in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 73 (1983) 1–47. Krecher, J., UD.GAL.NUN versus ‘Normal’ Sumerian: Two Literatures or One?, in: Fronzaroli, P. (ed.), Literature and Literary Language at Ebla (Quaderni di Semitistica 18), Florence 1992, 285–303. Krispijn, T.J.H., An Old-Babylonian Version of the Tribute List, in: Boiy, T. et al. (eds.), The Ancient Near East, A Life! Festschrift Karel Van Lerberghe (Orientalia Lovanniensia Analecta 220), Leuven 2012, 297–304. Lafont, B., Le prisme cunéiforme conserve au Musée Nationale de Beyrouth, in: Bulletin d’archéologie et d’architecture libanaises 12 (2008) 161–188. Lecompte, C., Representation of Women in Mesopotamian Lexical Lists, in: Lion, B. / Michel, C. (eds.), The Role of Women in Work and Society in the

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Ancient Near East (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 13), Boston, MA 2016, 29–56. — A propos de deux monuments figurés du début du 3e millénaire : observations sur la Figure aux Plumes et la Prisoner Plaque, in: Arkhipov, I. / Kogan, L. / Koslova, N. (eds.), The Third Millennium. Studies in Early Mesopotamia and Syria in Honor of Walter Sommerfeld and Manfred Krebernik (Cuneiform Monographs 50), Leiden 2020, 418–446. Mittermayer, C., Altbabyloniszhe Zeichenliste der sumerisch-literarischen Texte (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Sonderband), Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen 2006. Molina, M. / Such-Gutiérrez, M., On Terms for Cutting Plants and Noses in Ancient Sumer, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 63 (2004) 1–16. Nasrallah, N., Delights from the Garden of Eden. A Cookbook and History of the Iraqi Cuisine (Abridged 2nd Edition), Sheffield, UK 2019. Nissen, H.J. / Englund, R.K. / Damerow, P., Archaic Bookkeeping. Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East, Chicago, IL 1993. Notizia, P. / Visicato, G., Early Dynastic and Early Sargonic Administrative Texts Mainly from the Umma Region in the Cornell University Cuneiform Collections (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 33), Bethesda, MD 2016. Ochsenschlager, E.L., Ethnographic Evidence for Wood, Boats, Bitumen and Reeds in Southern Iraq, in: Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 6 (1992) 47– 55. — Seeing the Past in the Present: Twenty-Five Years of Ethnoarchaeology at alHiba, in: Ehrenberg, E. (ed.), Leaving No Stones Unturned. Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen, Winona Lake, IN 2002, 155–168. Pettinato, G., Testi lessicali monolingui della Biblioteca L. 2769 (Materiali epigrafici di Ebla 3), Naples 1981. — Testi Lessicali Bilingui della Biblioteca L. 2769 (Materiali epigrafici di Ebla 4), Naples 1982. Pomponio, F., La prosopografia dei testi presargonici di Fara (Studi Semitici Nuova Serie 3), Rome 1987. Pournelle, J. / Algaze, G., Travels in Edin: Deltaic Resilience and Early Urbanism in Greater Mesopotamia, in: McMahon, A. / Crawford, H. (eds.), Preludes to Urbanism The Late Chalcolithic of Mesopotamia, Cambridge, UK 2014, 7–34. Powell, M.A., Texts from the Time of Lugalzagesi. Problems and Perspectives in Their Interpretation, in: Hebrew Union College Annual 49 (1978) 1–58. — Sumerian Cereal Crops, in: Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 1 (1984) 48– 68.

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Salim, S.M., Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta, London 1962. Sanati-Müller, S., Texte Aus dem Sîn-Kāšid-Palast, in: Baghdader Mitteilungen 27 (1996) 365–399. Seri, A., The House of Prisoners. Slavery and State in Uruk during the Revolt against Samsu-iluna (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 2), Berlin 2013. Steinkeller, P., review of: Green / Nissen 1987, in: Bibliotheca Orientalis 52 (1995) 690–713. Stol, M., Milch(produkte). A. In Mesopotamien, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 8 (1993–1997) 189–201. Thavapalan, S., The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 104), Leiden 2019. Vaiman, A.A., Die Bezeichnung von Sklaven und Sklavinnen in der protosumerischen Schrift, in: Baghdader Mitteilungen 20 (1989) 121–133. Veldhuis, N., How Did They Learn Cuneiform? Tribute/Word List C as an Elementary Exercise, in: Abusch, T. et al. (eds.), Approaches to Sumerian Literature Studies in Honour of Stip (H. L. J. Vanstiphout) (Cuneiform Monographs 35), Leiden 2006, 181–200. — History of the Cuneiform Lexical Tradition (Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record 6), Münster 2014. Wagensonner, K., Early Lexical Lists Revisited. Structures and Classification as a Mnemonic Device, in: Kogan, L. et al. (eds.), Language in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 53e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Babel und Bibel 4/1), Winona Lake, IN 2010, 285–310. — Early Lexical Lists and Their Impact on Economic Records: An Attempt of Correlation between Two Seemingly Different Kings of Data-Sets, in: Wilhelm, G. (ed.), Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Würzburg 20–25 July 2008, Winona Lake, IN 2012, 805– 817. — A New Source of “Word List C”, in: Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 2019/44 (2019) 75–76. Westenholz, J.G., Thoughts on Esoteric Knowledge and Secret Lore, in: Prosecký, J. (ed.), Intellectual Life in the Ancient Near East. Papers presented at the 43rd Rencontre Assyriologique International Prague, July 1– 5, 1996, Prague 1998, 451–462.

How Many Priest-Kings in Town? A Glance at the Political Structure of the City of Uruk at the Dawn of Civilization Xianhua Wang (Shanghai International Studies University)

In this essay I will try to come to terms with the political structure of Uruk at the dawn of civilization through a new take on the concept of the Priest-King of Uruk according to the most recent sources on the topic, with particular regard to P. Steinkeller’s literature.1 According to the categories of source materials, I have loosely divided the presentation into three sections: art-historical, philological, and archaeological. The fact that archaic texts are still poorly understood may explain why studies on the Priest-King mostly refer to art historical sources. There is some danger inherent in this approach, as will become clear later. By comparison, attempts that rely heavily on philological material have made significant progresses in recent years regarding the Priest-King, most noticeably on the interpretation of critical terms such as EN and NAMEŠDA (Steinkeller 2017; Lecompte 2018).

An art-historical composite? It is commonly assumed that the Priest-King finds its most dramatic representation on the Uruk Vase (figure 1) (Van de Mieroop 20072, 27). To the upper left of the reconstructed scene on the Uruk Vase, the man in the net kilt is usually assumed as the archetypical Priest-King, who was in turn identified with the human figure with a “brimmed cap” found in other forms of iconography, on cylinder seals, on varied types of reliefs, and a few cases in round sculpture.2

1

Edzard 1965, 74 and Van de Mieroop 20072, 27. I would like to express my sincerest thanks here to P. Steinkeller for reading an early draft of this essay, offering most insightful comments, and especially for everything since 2014. The same gratitude goes to my decades-long teacher W. Horowitz of the Hebrew University, who also read the draft. I bear full responsibility for any mistakes or inaccuracies. 2 Schmandt-Besserat 1993 and Braun-Holzinger 2007, 7–24 collected the relevant sources. See also Marchesi / Marchetti 2011, 186–196 and, more recently, Steinkeller 2017, 82– 104 with previous literature.

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Based on these varied sources Schmandt-Besserat summarized that this figure may have served as warrior, justice enforcer, hunter or master of animals, herder, priest, wealth collector for the temple, and consort of Inana, all under her umbrella title “Images of Enship” (1993, 214–217). D. Hansen keenly noticed that, in lieu of the Priest-King of Uruk “only the ruler’s role as consummate builder and architect, an important aspect of royal service noted first in the art of the Early Dynastic period, seems to be missing from the visual evidence of the Uruk and Jamdat Nasr periods, although this may be due to the vagaries of excavation” (Hansen 2003, 22).

Figure 1. The Uruk Vase. After Lindemeyer / Martin 1993, pl. 25 fig. l.

In a recent study devoted to the Priest-King, a term Steinkeller maintains to describe the ruler of Uruk, he focused only on the ritual aspect, which seems to him the defining aspect of the problem. In dealing with art-historical materials, Steinkeller is convinced that the scene on the top register of the Uruk Vase found its abbreviated versions on cylinder seals that “obviously constituted a treasured heirloom” that was excavated as part of a deposit in the latest phase of level III of

How Many Priest-Kings in Town?

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the Eanna precinct.3 In this view, both the scenes on the top register of the Uruk Vase and those on cylinder seals depict the delivery of food offerings to Inana by the Priest-King. In his words: “this relationship was reciprocal, with the Priest-King feeding Inana on behalf of the community he ruled over, and with Inana providing the Uruk community with agricultural abundance and protection in return, and making the Priest-King her chosen representative” (Steinkeller 2017, 85). In the same essay devoted to the Priest-King of Uruk, Steinkeller challenged two specific proposals concerning the iconographic interpretation of the Uruk Vase: the first suggests that the Priest-King figure may not be human but divine (Marchesi / Marchetti 2011, 195), and the second, that the female counterpart of the Priest-King on the Uruk Vase and the seals could actually be a mortal or “an elite woman linked to Inana” (Suter 2014, 550–555). Steinkeller discarded the suggestion that the male protagonist on the Uruk Vase could be a divine figure though he mentions that “there is a possibility that the Priest-King of Late Uruk times may have enjoyed a semi-divine status, being a Dumuzi-like figure of sorts, in which he differed quite significantly from the later ensiks, his linear successors” (Steinkeller 2017, 91). In another article published later, he gave some more weight for “the assumption that there indeed existed a nexus of some kind between the Priest-King and Dumuzi” (Steinkeller 2019b, 666). In the case of Suter’s proposal Steinkeller disagreed by pointing out that statues of Inana are actually mentioned in Uruk III sources and that “no priestesses of Inana of any importance are attested in later times.” 4 The Dumuzi-like albeit human figure was the goddess Inana’s chief ritual official in Uruk III times, and simultaneously the care-taker of Inana’s herds. This person was responsible for cereal production and animal husbandry, in the latter capacity Uruk’s chief shepherd (Steinkeller 2017, 89–90). I follow Steinkeller in not discussing the problem of sacred marriage often involved in the context of the Priest-King. Even if some sacred marriage was practiced by the ruler of early Uruk, methodologically the often ill-defined concept of sacred marriage does not have immediate bearing on the nature of kingship.5 Remaining with art-historical materials, it may be pointed out here that however convincingly Steinkeller argued in favor of the ideological or pragmatic 3

Steinkeller 2017, 88 and 236–237, figs. 11–15, with reference to Marchesi / Marchetti 2011, 190. 4 See Steinkeller 2017, 82–104 for a through critique of Suter 2014, especially 91–94 on TAK4.ALAM in Uruk III texts. In my view Suter’s suggestion that the woman could be a ruler’s wife, live or dead, not any priestess, should not be completely ruled out. 5 McCaffrey 2013 (with literature), however, is an otherwise illuminating recapitulation of the topic.

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ritual aspect of the ruler of Uruk at that time, to which the same figure’s role in cereal production, care-taking of Inana’s herds, and shepherding for Uruk may be related, the other categories of the traditional iconography of the Priest-King, those of the warrior-hunter, were not dealt with.6 For a thorough treatment of the topic, however, these latter scenes cannot simply be left aside unless the Priest-King is effectively only understood as a priest or the purpose is limited in delineating the ritual aspect of his role. The king, as long as he is named as such, by default maintains justice and defends the community. The problem is how a Priest-King could be differently perceived than a real king when in iconographic terms the protagonist of these images of the warrior or hunter are not easily disentangled from the priestly ones in the Late Uruk iconographic corpus. In Schmandt-Besserat’s description, at least two of the scenes on cylinder seals have to be understood as the Priest-King serving as a warrior, and in some cases as a hunter, as on the Lion Hunt Stele and the Gebel el Arak ivory knife handle (figure 2).7

Figure 2. The Lion Hunt Stele. After Strommenger 1962, fig. 18.

6

Steinkeller 2017, 83 mentions the Priest-King as warrior and hunter but does not engage with such iconography. 7 Schmandt-Besserat 1993, 204, 212, 214 figs. 3, 10, 13.

How Many Priest-Kings in Town?

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It is also undeniable that the scenes she interpreted as images of justice maintainers involve weaponry (figure 3a–b).8

Figure 3a–b. The Priest-King as enforcer of justice. After Lenzen 1950, 9 figs. 4–5.

The recent publication by A. McMahon of the early sealings from Tell Brak poses a further challenge to the traditional understanding of the Priest-King because of the early dating of the sealings to ca. 3,800 BC (figure 4). Considering the long distance both geographically and temporally between her findings and the Uruk exemplars, the image of the protagonist on McMahon’s sealings may simply be explained as one of the hunter without involving anything to do with the Priest-King at all. The fact that the iconography of the hunter, however, remained an integrated element of the iconography of the Priest-King of Uruk in art, suggests a possible connection. McMahon is therefore justified in calling the protagonist of her findings another “priest-king” (McMahon 2009, 121).

8

Schmandt-Besserat 1993, 215 fig. 14. Here are Lenzen 1950, 9 figs. 4–5.

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Figure 4. Lion spearing sealing from Tell Brak. After McMahon 2009, 117, fig. 1.

The critical question is apparently whether the art-historical Priest-King was only an iconographic composite, namely, how all the “Images of Enship” represented the same person as attested on the Uruk Vase, and what kind of definable role is actually meant by that image. Given the fact that the man in the net kilt is broadly accepted as the Priest-King in art-history, this question relates to the true function of this human figure. Taking into consideration the warrior-hunter images as well, the striking fact is that, except for those specific elements identifiable in the ritual scenes, many of the collected seals have scenes that do not exactly match those on the Uruk Vase. If the Priest-King is thus named because of the ritual aspect of his relationship between him and Inana, it remains to be explained that the reconstructed scene on the Uruk Vase is not easily reconciled with the warrior-hunter scenes, especially when taking into consideration the early sealings from Tell Brak which tend to associate the Priest-King with the warrior-hunter image. One has to decide whether to give up identifying iconographic figures by characteristic headset or dresses such as the “brimmed cap” or the net kilt or simply stop including all the iconographical materials into one interpretative scheme.

EN as title of the Priest-King To the right of the top register of the Uruk Vase and behind the standing goddess, or elite woman whoever she was, one finds a pair of large emblems which, according to Steinkeller, are emblems of Inana and graphs of her name, the MUŠ₃ sign.9 Farther behind these elements, is a large stepped altar supported by a pair of rams, on top of which stand two long-haired attendants, one of whom holds with both hands an object whose shape is identical to the archaic sign EN. As of 9

Steinkeller 2017, 84 with reference to Steinkeller 1998.

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the nature of this object, Steinkeller believes it is some kind of a ceremonial vessel which symbolized the office of the en in Inana’s cult, namely the Priest-King.10 In his phrasing: “it is clear that the presentation of the EN object to the Priest-King by Inana and her attendant and the presentation of food offerings to the goddess by the Priest-King and his naked attendant are symmetrical, reflecting a relationship of reciprocity: by bestowing foodstuffs on Inana, the King-Priest is rewarded with the EN object” (Steinkeller 2017, 85). Steinkeller quoted texts from the archaic corpus to illustrate the attestations of the en of Uruk, the en of NI.RU, and the en of Urumx([ME.]HA.UR+RAD), which suggest to him that “during the Uruk III period, en served as a generic designation of the city-state ruler throughout Babylonia”.11 The sign EN in the archaic corpus often appears in colophons, he pointed out, and the title is attested as recipient of volumes of barley and other commodities, as possessor of sheep and donkeys, and in connection with ritual observances (Steinkeller 2017, 94–96). Steinkeller presented the text MSVO 4, 73 as a listing of the en’s cooks, “plausibly” his subordinates:12 i

1

1 muhaldim en

one cook (for) the en,

2

1 muhaldim eš₃

one cook (for) the shrine,

3

1 ŠUM.X.DI

(and) one (cook for) ŠUM.X.DI

4

DA

(were) assigned (to work);

ii

1

gal-muhaldim en

(these are) chief cooks of the en;

iii

1

3 gal-muhaldim en DA

three chief cooks of the en were assigned (to work).

In further support of en as the generic designation of the rulers of city states in the Uruk III period, Steinkeller offered an argument against the theory that NAMEŠDA, the first entry of the Lu A list, was the title of the ruler of Uruk in archaic times, originally suggested by Lambert (1981, 94–97). The entry now usually rendered NAMEŠDA is written ŠITA+GIŠ+NAM2. In his original study, Lambert read it as nam2 giššita, “lord of the mace”, arguing from the observation that in the Early Dynastic III UD.GAL.NUN orthography nam2 stands for nam=bēlum (1981, 94). With a re-examination of the relevant evidence as well as

10

Steinkeller 2017, 85 and 236, fig. 10. Steinkeller 2017, 94–95 with references. For en of Uruk, quoted texts are CUSAS 1, 20; MSVO 3, 21; CUSAS 31, 185; for en of NI.RU are MSVO 1, 159 and 235; for en of Urumx are MSVO 4, 1–4, 10, 22, 24–26, 28, 34–35. 12 Steinkeller 2017, 95. Interpretation is Steinkeller’s, cf. Englund / Matthews 1996. 11

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Lambert’s argumentation, Steinkeller concluded that, nam₂-šita₂ “is a collective designation of high cultic functionaries within a temple household”.13 More recently regarding NAMEŠDA, a conclusion compatible with Steinkeller’s has been independently reached by Lecompte’s study on the Archaic Lu A list based on comprehensive use of the archaic administrative texts (2018, 85–98). In Lecompte’s phrasing, “it can be inferred that the individuals bearing this title [NAMEŠDA] and encountered in the texts studied here were not in all likelihood rulers but merely administrators of different ranks” (2018, 97–98). Though one may still wonder why NAMEŠDA is the first entry of the list Archaic Lu A what that reflects about the nature of NAMEŠDA, the studies by Steinkeller and Lecompte together seem to effectively leave en as the best probable candidate for the title of the ruler for Uruk, or as Steinkeller puts it, the generic title of rulers of city states in archaic Babylonia. One additional problem may need to be mentioned here, that EN was literally the most frequent sign in the archaic corpus as pointed out by R.K. Englund, though these statistics are based on the archaic texts then available (see Englund 1998, 70). It seems difficult at first sight to imagine that the title of the Priest-King in Uruk or even generally of the rulers of city states in archaic times could appear in the contemporary textual corpus in such a high frequency, as it goes against common sense that the ruler would have been so frequently mentioned in administrative texts. For the time being, nevertheless, it seems en as the generic title of the city ruler in Uruk III Babylonia is the best available theory. Of course, the identification of en as the archaic title is only one part of Steinkeller’s interpretation of the development of the title of the ruler in early Babylonia. However if the sign EN originally reads /urun/, 14 as Steinkeller convincingly explained, the title en for the early rulers in Babylonia goes back far in time, at least into the Late Uruk period. In his theory, the title en was used for Babylonian rulers in Early Dynastic period, altogether five centuries long, and was borrowed by various neighbors, while en only retained its former ritual functions at the city of Uruk. 15 I propose instead that the ritual functions associated with the en in archaic Uruk were perhaps a secondary development, rather than the primary characteristic of the title. This hypothesis derives from the interpretation of the cult of former rulers and priestly officials from Ebla, Lagaš, Umma, as well as Ur, to which Steinkeller also referred (2017, 30–32). In his study, for instance, Steinkeller considered that in Lagaš the cult of former rulers “likely reflects the tradition that the archaic rulers of Sumer, to whom the ensiks of Lagash undoubtedly traced their real or imagined descent, had borne the title of en” (1999, 110–111). The dates of the attestations in the 13

Steinkeller 2017, 96–100 and 2019a, 136. The origin of the UD.GAL.NUN orthography is a particularly complicated question to be introduced in this context. Cf. Civil 2013. 14 For the reading of EN as urun or uru16, see Civil 1989, 55. 15 Steinkeller 2017, 100–103, with reference to Steinkeller 1999.

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Lagašite sources seemed to support this postulation, namely the Lagašite cult of former rulers was from the ancient past when en was both a ritual functionary and the ruler, just like the Priest-King reconstructed for the archaic period. However, the fact that the cult of former rulers was attested also in Ebla, as well as at Umma and Ur in later times, may suggest that it was probably a common practice across the region and from much earlier traditions than that of Uruk III. The ancestors, in these places, were collectively revered in cult, presumably after death, but they were not necessarily ritual functionaries when alive. A closer examination of the available textual sources, furthermore, reveals that the only solid evidence for a living ruler with the title en of Uruk dates to the Early Dynastic III period with Lugal-kigine-dudu.16 Such a long gap in time is certainly significant. It is more likely that the title en changed at Uruk, as in the case of Lugal-kigine-dudu. In this alternative scenario, the pervasive attestation of the sign EN in the Late Uruk corpus also makes better sense since by then the sign EN, with its root going back into prehistory, now multiplied its use in the graphic system, adding a new layer to the more archaic system. It also follows from here that the Priest-King’s link to Dumuzi was likely some re-interpretation based on this new concept of rulership that developed in Uruk, rather than Dumuzi as one of the historical figures who started the tradition. 17 The protective role of Dumuzi as the archetypical shepherd must have a much earlier origin. Although it is impossible to know if Dumuzi as the husband of Inana was an equally ancient tradition, the different aspects of Dumuzi should not be considered unified from the beginning. Wiggermann quoted Moortgat who stated that the identity of the Priest-King as the en for the archaic ruler of Uruk “does not exclude the possibility of an iconographic overlap with Dumuzi, the god that he embodied as husband of Inanna.” 18 Insofar as the Late Uruk period is concerned, it is likely that a Dumuzi-like figure was meant as the prototypical Priest-King, but this does not render the Dumuzi as such historically real. Dumuzi was too ancient to have created the en tradition, but rather it was the Urukeans who did this and re-formed the association with Dumuzi early on.

16

RIME 1.14.14. The three archaic tablet collected for the en of Uruk during the Uruk III period (Steinkeller 2017, 94), CUSAS 1, 20; MSVO 3, 21; and CUSAS 31, 185, are not securely to be interpreted as referring to the ruler of Uruk. CUSAS 1, 20 is not quoted by Lecompte 2018 but a NAMEŠDA NAGAR (obv. i 2) and an EN NAMEŠDA (obv. iii 1) are attested in the same text as EN UNUG (obv. ii 1). See Monaco 2007, 57–58. 17 Cf. Steinkeller 2019b, 662–666 on the Walters Plaque. 18 Wiggermann 2010, 328, referring to Moortgat 1949.

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How many Priest-Kings in town? In discussions of the divinity or humanity of the protagonist in iconographic evidence especially from the Uruk Vase, Marchetti suggested that the imagery of the Priest-King is limited only to the Uruk III period and disappeared subsequently, based on his observation that he saw the protagonist on the Figure aux plumes as a deity, probably Ningirsu.19 Steinkeller discarded the possibility that the protagonist on the Uruk Vase may be a deity by referring to the warrior-hunter depictions of the Priest-King.20 In our understanding, although the Priest-King iconography disappeared after the Uruk III period and whether the protagonist thus identified on the Priest-King scenes was a living human king or already a divine figure like Dumuzi, the interpretation of en as the generic title of early rulers remains probable. The problems with Steinkeller’s interpretation drive the question to its core, namely the political structure of Uruk in Late Uruk times. Art-historical materials, fascinating as they are, are often open to different interpretations, but rarely have much to say about the banal details of how the city of Uruk was governed at that time. Philological studies have now pinpointed a possible title of the ruler of Uruk, but unfortunately also have little to offer in this regard. As the subtitle of this section asks, I started all my musings on the ruler of Uruk with quite a simple question: how many Priest-Kings in town? What matters for governing a city is not which iconographic tradition the city followed or with which title the ruler was addressed, but how the ruler became a ruler and what authority they held on which matters. In sum, whether Uruk was ruled by a monarchic dynasty or a republican oligarchy is a much more important question than the title or the image of the ruler presented to the public. A look at the current world would make it perfectly clear that the iconographies or titles of a ruler are often misleading when comes to the governance of a community. In daily language, if we can put it as such, the main difference between the two systems, the monarchic and the republican, is perhaps only how many rulers could live at the same time. In a monarchic system, rulership is inherited by kin, usually after the former ruler’s death; in a republican system, the ruler can step down allowing another to take his place and does not need to serve as ruler for life. In the latter case, therefore, the usual consequence is that the former ruler and the current one will overlap in their life spans. In the case of archaic Uruk, however, it is not possible for the moment to describe in detail the politics of the city, and indeed very few attempts were made 19

Marchesi / Marchetti 2011, 187. Note Krebernik 2019 re-reads the Blau Monuments and takes the dominant male figure depicted on the reliefs as one involved in ritual perhaps sanctioning the transaction between the stone-cutters. Cf. Schmandt-Besserat 1993, 204 fig. 4 and Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991, nos. 10–11. 20 Steinkeller 2017, 90 with fn. 248.

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to address the political structure of Uruk in any detailed way. We need to follow a different line of thinking for the governance of Uruk if only to put things together. First, insisting that the iconography of the Priest-King reflects the reality of Uruk in ways beyond purely ideological representations, one may go back to the scene on the Uruk Vase, for which R.M. Czichon’s reconstruction is actually more persuasive at least in technical terms (2006, 185 fig. 2) (figure 5). What is depicted on the top register of the Uruk Vase points to the economic sphere rather than the religious or cultic, since the protagonist is specifically donating textiles, or at least not strictly food offerings as Steinkeller described (2017, 84–85).

Figure 5. Reconstruction of the Uruk Vase. After Czichon 2006, 185 fig. 2.

Textiles can of course also be taken as donations or offerings, but more characteristically belong to the economic sphere. As the qualification already speaks out, the important nuance is that substantial donations of textiles are not affordable by poor people. This minor difference in reconstruction, therefore, can further problematize the relation between the Priest-King and Inana, as the man in the net kilt is likely to be quite a rich man, as seen from what he was donating. There is iconographic evidence to suggest that offerings to Inana were at least varied in kinds and often not explainable as symmetrical with what Inana had to offer in the sense of strictly feeding back. In this more economic understanding then, the en of Inana would be an honorary reward for the materially qualifying candidates, rather than simply an ideological representation of enship. In the above discussions of the debate over the divinity versus humanity of the iconography of the Priest-King, a third category of the visual evidence remains yet to the explained, namely that of the scenes of en as enforcer of justice (figure 3a–b). Given how little is known of the Uruk period and if the scenes have been correctly interpreted as maintaining justice, these scenes reflect the en as a civil administrator, rather than as a leader conducting wars against invaders. If, as Steinkeller has suggested, the warrior-hunter scenes actually show the prowess of

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the real ruler, it can be posited that military leaders would also have had the same chance to be introduced to Inana and take on the title of EN. The important difference is that, in this more nuanced understanding, the priestly, the economic, and the military heroes do not have to be the same individuals. It happens that the Uruk Vase depicts a candidate from the economic sphere, but this is perhaps by chance since the less affluent war heroes or priestly officials simply could not afford such luxuries to be displayed in the Eanna temple. The scene on the Uruk Vase may be a representation, but there is no reason to consider it an archetype. However speculative, this is how I find the concept of an aristocratic oligarchy more likely for the political structure of Uruk in the 4th millennium, with the title en in close association with Eanna where candidates are given authority by Inana, possibly through the granting of the en object, but only for a limited period of time. The system may be peculiar to the city of Uruk as no evidence yet to prove other cities had the same political structure. Interestingly, as scholars wasted so much ink in reconstructing the image of the protagonist on the Uruk Vase, the broken piece with which we can identify the real image of the en seems forever lost. This often neglected fact is highly significant, in my perception, as the most plausible explanation is that some kind of vandalism took place, which is often seen in later periods when the eyes or the face of the enemy ruler were defaced. This further suggests that the protagonist on the Uruk Vase would not be primarily priestly. In which political context would the image of a harmless priest have to be vandalized? Be that as it may, it is finally time to look at the architectural remains of Uruk from Late Uruk times, the only material remains one may hope to integrate into a description of the political structure of the city. In her discussion of the palaces and temples in the Sumerian world, M. Heinz noticed that the so-called Square Building was built and demolished when there was a break in the sequence of Eanna during phase IVb, a time when our Priest-King emerged on the historical scene (2013, 183).21 Heinz interprets the coincidence in terms of political history: “Towards the end of the Uruk IV, the development of a newly established secular power represented the ‘omnipresent’ male protagonist, needed a symbol which it was impossible to overlook. The Square building, according to this idea, was this sign – the locus of a new function and seat of a new functional elite” (Heinz 2013, 183). After the demolishing of the Square Building, Heinz suggests that Eanna re-established the original situation as an exclusively religious space, an interpretation somehow reminiscent of the primitive democracy thesis.22

21 22

See Sürenhagen 1999, tables 3–4. See Jacobsen 1943 and a related suggestion in Johnson 2015.

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The fact that the Uruk Vase was discovered in the Eanna, however, speaks against such a correlation between the differences in architectural features of the Square Building and Eanna. Though the Uruk Vase fits into her scenario in which the Eanna re-established itself exclusively as a cultic space, the fact that the overall spatial design of Eanna potentially allowed for the accumulation of large groups of people inside the temenos, implies that the large complex was meant to gather the public, rather than keep them out. Instead of speculating over the dating and function of the wall of Eanna, the art-historical, philological, and architectural evidence seems to suggest that it was exactly the Priest-King, Heinz’s “omnipresent” male protagonist, who frequented the temple in periods subsequent to the Square Building. That being said, it is impossible to say if the re-establishment of the Eanna simply meant a thorough transformation of the space by a new type of ruler.23

References Braun-Holzinger, E.A., Das Herrscherbild in Mesopotamien und Elam (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 342), Münster 2007. Civil, M., The Statue of Šulgi-ki-ur5-sag9-kalam-ma. Part One: The Inscription, in: Behrens, H. / Loding, D.M. / Roth, M.T. (eds.), DUMU-É-DUB-BA-A. Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg (Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Found 11), Philadelphia, PA 1989, 49–64. — Remarks on AD-GI4 (a.k.a. “Archaic Word List C” or “Tribute”), in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 65 (2013) 13–67. Czichon, R.M., Neue Überlegungen zur Bedeutung und Entstehung der frühdynastischen Beterstatuetten, in: Altorientalische Forschungen 33 (2006) 179–188. Edzard, D.O., Die frühdynastische Zeit, in: Cassin, E. / Bottéro, J. / Vercoutter, J. (eds.), Die Altorientalischen Reiche. Vol. I: Vom Paläolithikum bis zur Mitte des 2. Jahrtausends (Fischer Weltgeschichte 2), Frankfurt 1965, 57–90. Englund, R.K., Texts from the Late Uruk Period, in: Attinger, P. / Wäfler, M. (eds.), Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/1), Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen 1998, 15–217. Englund, R.K. / R. Matthews, The Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Diverse Collections (Materialien zu den frühen Schriftzeugnissen des Vorderen Orients 4), Berlin 1996. Gelb, I.J. / Steinkeller, P. / Whiting, R.M., Earliest Land Tenure Systems in the Near East: Ancient Kudurrus (Oriental Institute Publications 104), Chicago, IL 1991.

23

See the criticisms to Scott 2017 by Richardson 2018 and Miller 2019.

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Hansen, D.P., Art of the Early City-States, in: Aruz, J. / Wallenfels, R. (eds.), Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New York, NY / New Haven, CT / London 2003, 21–37. Heinz, M., Public Buildings, Palaces and Temples, in: Crawford, H. (ed.), The Sumerian World, London 2013, 179–200. Jacobsen, T., Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 2 (1943) 159–172. Johnson, J.C., Late Uruk Bicameral Orthographies and Their Early Dynastic Rezeptionsgeschichte, in: Dittmann, R. / Selz, G.J. (eds.), It’s a Long Way to a Historiography of the Early Dynastic Period(s) (Altertumskunde des Vorderen Orients 15), Münster 2015, 169–210. Krebernik, M., Towards the Deciphering of the “Blau Monuments”: Some New Readings and Perspectives, in: Renn, J. / Schemmel, M. (eds.), Culture and Cognition: Essays in Honor of Peter Damerow (Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge Proceedings 11), Berlin 2019, 35–55. Lambert, W.G., Studies in UD.GAL.NUN, in: Oriens Antiquus 20 (1981) 81–97, 305. Lecompte, C., The Archaic Lists of Professions and Their Relevance for the Late Uruk Period: Observations on Some Officials in Their Administrative Context, in: Garcia-Ventura, A. (ed.), What’s in a Name? Terminology Related to the Work Force and Job Categories in the Ancient Near East (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 440), Münster 2018, 81–131. Lenzen, H.J., Die Tempel der Schicht Archaish IV in Uruk, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 49 (1950) 1–20. Lindemeyer, E. / Martin, L., Uruk Kleinefunde III: Kleinfunde im Vorderasiatischen Museum zu Berlin: Steingefässe und Asphalt, Farbreste, Fritte, Glas, Holz, Knochen/Elfenbein, Muschel/Perlmutt/Schnecke (Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka, Endberichte 9), Mainz 1993. Marchesi, G. / Marchetti, N., Royal Statuary of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia (Mesopotamian Civilizations 14), Winona Lake, IN 2011. McCaffrey, K., The Sumerian Sacred Marriage: Texts and Images, in: Crawford, H., The Sumerian World, London 2013, 227–245. McMahon, A., The Lion, the King and the Cage: Late Chalcolithic Iconography and Ideology in Northern Mesopotamia, in: Iraq 71 (2009), 115–124. Miller, N.F., Paradise Lost, in: The Journal of Peasant Studies 46 (2019) 872– 877. Monaco, S.F., The Cornell University Archaic Tablets (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 1), Bethesda, MD 2007. Moortgat, A., Tammuz: Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube in der altorientalischen Bildkunst, Berlin 1949.

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Richardson, S., Review of James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 77 (2018) 307–311. Schmandt-Besserat, D., Images of Enship, in: Frangipane, M. et al. (eds.), Between the Rivers and Over the Mountains: Archaeologica anatolica et mesopotamica Alba Palmieri dedicata, Roma 1993, 201–219. Scott, J.C., Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven, CT 2017. Steinkeller, P., Inanna’s Archaic Symbol, in: Braun, J. et al. (eds.), Written on Clay and Stone: Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Krystyna Szarzynska on the Occasion of her 80th Birthday, Warsaw 1998, 87–100. — On Rulers, Priests and Sacred Marriage: Tracing the Evolution of Early Sumerian Kingship, in: Watanabe, K. (ed.), Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East: Papers of the Second Colloquium on the Ancient Near East “The City and its Life” held at the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan (Mitaka, Tokyo) March 22–24, 1996, Heidelberg 1999, 103–137. — History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia: Three Essays (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 15), Berlin 2017. — Babylonian Priesthood during the Third Millennium BCE: Between Sacred and Profane, in: Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 19 (2019a) 112– 151. — More on Dumuzi and the “Brimmed Cap” of the Priest-King of Late Uruk Times, in: Pieńkowska, A. / Szeląg, D. / Zych, I. (eds.), Stories Told around the Fountain: Papers Offered to Piotr Bieliński on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, Warsaw 2019b, 657–670. Strommenger, E., Fünf Jahrtausende Mesopotamien. Die Kunst von den Anfängen um 5000 v.Chr. bis zu Alexander dem Großen, Munich 1962. Suter, C.E., Human, Divine or Both? The Uruk Vase and the Problem of Ambiguity in Early Mesopotamian Visual Arts, in: Brown, B.A. / Feldman, M.H. (eds.), Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, Berlin 2014, 545–568. Sürenhagen, D., Untersuchungen zur relativen Chronologie Babyloniens und angrenzender Gebiete von der ausgehenden Ubaidzeit bis zum Beginn der frühdynastisch II-Zeit (Heidelberger Studien zum alten Orient 8), Heidelberg 1999. Van de Mieroop, M., A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 BC (Blackwell History of the Ancient World), Oxford 20072. Wiggermann, F.A.M., The Image of Dumuzi: A Diachronic Analysis, in: Stackert, J. / Nevling Porter, B. / Wright, D.P. (eds.), Gazing on the Deep: Ancient Near Eastern and other Studies in Honor of Tzvi Abusch, Bethesda, MD 2010, 327– 350.

The Scale and Extent of Political Institutions in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia: The Case of Archaic Ur Giacomo Benati (University of Bologna) Camille Lecompte (CNRS – Nanterre)

Abstract In this paper we investigate the scale and extent of the political institutions of Ur during the beginning of the Early Dynastic period (28th century BC), a historical juncture that saw the rise of city-states in southern Mesopotamia. We provide a fresh analysis of a group of administrative texts related to field management, originating from the temple household of Nanna, in order to identify patterns of institutional land use, the organizational hierarchy of institutional farming, and the resources at the disposal of the temple. We also combine archaeological, textual and survey data to estimate demographics and agricultural production in the agrarian state of Ur. We provide proof that temple households in the early 3rd millennium BC controlled land estates that could virtually sustain entire urban sites and exploited them through increasingly complex arrangements with the farming sector.

1 Introduction1 The management of the agrarian sector controlled by the political institutions in early 3rd millennium Ur, during the ED I period (approximately during the 28th century, see Lecompte / Benati 2017, table 2), has been investigated by several scholars, either by relying on the written evidence or by combining it with archaeological settlement patterns and environmental conditions in the region of Ur (Benati 2015, §§ 6.3.3 and 6.3.4; Burrows 1935, 12–13; Charvát 2016, 224– 273; Pettinato 1999, 100–106; Steinkeller 1988, 19–23; Wright 1969 and 1981). 1

C. Lecompte wrote §§ 3, 4, 5.2, and the Appendixes; G. Benati wrote §§ 2 and 5.1; §§ 1 and 6 were written together. We thank Emmert Clevenstine for having corrected our English, the editors of this volume for useful comments that helped us strengthen the article, and R. Rattenborg for discussing with us relevant methodological aspects of the approach employed in this work.

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The management of the agricultural estate of the temple household of Nanna in Ur is well documented by approximately 80 tablets and fragments which form the only institutional archive dating from the inception of the Early Dynastic period so far retrieved in Mesopotamia.2 These tablets, combined with survey and archaeological data, offer reliable evidence to estimate the resources controlled by such head institutions in the city. In order to better interpret the scope of the economy of this political institution, new studies have been undertaken by the present writers on the land texts from Ur, offering a comprehensive edition of the documents as well as an evaluation of the land areas managed by the temple administration and a detailed index of the individuals connected to it. In this paper, which aims at giving an overview of the mechanisms of land management and of the agricultural texts, including the results of former studies, particular attention is given to the mechanics of land allocation, to labor organization and to the quantitative dimension of institutional farming. Taken together, these aspects can provide insights into the developing fiscal systems of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia.

2 State capacity at the dawn of the Bronze Age: H. Wright’s model of agricultural political economy According to the analysis carried out by H. Wright (1969, 27–28), Ur at the beginning of the 3rd millennium was a town of ca. 21 ha populated by ca. 4,000 people. The institutional sector was formed by at least one large temple household, the temple of Nanna, headed by saĝĝa-officials, and by a palatiallike sector headed by an ensi-official (cf. Benati 2015, § 4.4.5; Sallaberger 2010; Visicato 2000, 18 fn. 17). These political institutions performed functions that largely correspond to those traditionally attributed to the state, i.e. organizing agricultural activities, levying taxes, providing public goods, etc. In the surroundings of Ur were located two small towns – Tell al-Sakheri, and Sakheri Sughir – and some small agricultural villages (Wright 1969, 117; Benati / Leoni / Mantellini 2016; Hammer 2019). The total rural population is estimated to have been around 6,000 individuals (Wright 1969, 27). The center of Ur had at working distance ca. 9,000 ha of arable land, watered by a branch of the Euphrates river and by a network of small channels bringing water to the fields (Wright 1969, 34 fig. 4; Hammer 2019, 196 fig. 19). By analyzing the cuneiform records stemming from the administration of the temple of Nanna, Wright (1969, 27) concluded that the temple household was formed by a class of 2

It has been formerly demonstrated that the agricultural domain mentioned in the ED I texts from Ur belonged to the temple household of the god Nanna, see Burrows 1935, 13; Charvát 1979, 17; Steinkeller 1988, 23; Benati / Lecompte 2016a, 21; see also Sallaberger 2010, for a different interpretation.

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titled officials, controlling large land-holdings and agricultural outputs, cooperating with a class of small farmers cultivating the land in return for a share of the harvest and drafting power (see also Steinkeller 1988, 21 and in general Steinkeller 2019). He estimated that ca. 800 people out of 6,000 could have been farmers attached to the institution, while the total of rural workers settled in the Ur enclave could be estimated at around 2,500 individuals (Wright 1969, 121). Land controlled by the institutions is divided according to its use in the texts and allotted to high officials and institutional personnel in return for service and maybe rents, in line with the well-known šuku-system (Wright 1969, 119–120; Pettinato 1999; Benati 2015, § 4.4.8; Cripps 2007, 19). Šuku-lands were sub-allocated and farmed by sharecroppers. Sharecroppers were organized according to the plow-team model – they were farmers provided with oxen, seed and fodder by the institution in exchange for a share of the produce. In this paper, we present a new assessment of the texts dealing with land management with the aim of further elaborating on Wright’s framework as to the agricultural decision-making in land allocation employed by the temple of Nanna. We also present an estimation of the scale and extent of the cereal economy of the Ur enclave and temple household of Nanna, in order to better frame the capacity of the institutional economies of the time (cf. Rattenborg 2016). In the next sections, we review the institutional management of arable land at Ur (§ 3) and the land management structure of the temple household of Nanna (§ 4), in light of a fresh analysis of the Archaic Texts relating to land use. Furthermore, we provide a first assessment of demographics and population resources for the Ur enclave (§ 5), based on survey data. Finally, we provide a general assessment of the relevance of Ur ED I evidence for understanding the crucial political and economic changes occurring at the onset of the Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia (§ 6).

3 The land management texts 3.1 The Ur land texts and their classification The agricultural texts represent one of the main bodies of the archaic texts from Ur, approximately 20% of the whole corpus (with probably 75–80 tablets). 3 Interestingly, the majority of the land texts originate from a primary archaeological context, called the “Ancient Room”, which was an office

3

Compare with Visicato 2000, 15, with a total of 23%, but this was prior the publication of the remaining tablets and fragments from Ur in Lecompte 2013 and in Benati / Lecompte 2016b, 8–10.

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pertaining to the Nanna temple (Benati / Lecompte 2016a), while the rest was mostly uncovered in trash layers in Pit X (Lecompte / Benati 2017, 6–8).4

Figure 1. Settlements, waterways and possible extension of arable land in the Ur region at the beginning of the Early Dynastic period according to survey data (based on Wright 1969, 34 fig. 4).

As to their content and layout, land texts can be divided among following categories: 1. Most of the agricultural documents are field allotments; these record plots of land in diverse areas with the name of their recipients, which were probably assigned as šuku (see § 4.1), “subsistence land” or, if this type of management is confirmed, rented to the personnel of the Nanna temple. They include tablets of large format with separate columns, considered by Visicato (2000, 15 fn. 6) as possible Sammeltafeln, such as, UET 2, 168, which is presented below (Appendix 1). UET 2, 87, in contrast to those texts, is a large tablet giving a long list of recipients, but is devoid of any clear separation marks or lines, being therefore a document written for one occasion and not a summary of distinct procedures. There are also smaller documents, some of them referring only to a few recipients, such as ATFU 58. Note also that UET 2, 82 looks like a small docket referring to only three large areas allocated to different individuals. 2. A few tablets are similar to small dockets. They consist of a landrecording procedure for an important area of land. Examples include: UET 2, 102 (see Table 1 below), 122, 147bis. 4

The relevant texts are UET 2, 351, 356–371.

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3. Another type of text, identified by Friberg (1997–1998), consists of two or three area-and-seed texts (UET 2, 20, 167, to which he adds UET 2, 201; see also Steinkeller 1988, 20), which give the seed rate used for fields. 4. At least two texts are mixed accounts: UET 2, 127 displays unusual information by associating amounts of uruda (copper) and animals with one land surface; and UET 2, 371, records a troop of individuals keše2-ra connected with fields’ areas. UET 2, 102 obv. 1.

2(burʾu) 2(bur3) 4(iku) aša5 uru4(APIN) ša3 BU.MA “144 ha, within BU.MA, APIN land”

Table 1. Example of a short land document with an important agricultural area: UET 2, 102.

3.2 Observations on the terminology Burrows (1935, 12–13) drew specific attention to several administrative terms in use in the ED I texts from Ur which are ambiguous and cannot be fully understood. In the present paper, most of these expressions will be analyzed in order to exemplify the issues raised by the aforementioned documentation, but a more in-depth discussion is still a desideratum. 1. šu-tab and nu-šu seem to represent opposite categories. While šu-tab occurs in several tablets (UET 2, 98, 104, 168, 226, maybe 254 and 362), nu-šu is only attested in UET 2, 226. That document is important because it might show that both terms refer to a step in the land attribution. Šu-tab is in general associated with personal names, except in UET 2, 98, while nu-šu immediately follows the surface of the plot without any holder and is only once followed by the term ḪI-ra (which eludes our understanding as well). Therefore, the former (šu-tab) may indicate a piece of land assigned or attributed to someone, while the latter (nu-šu) may designate a piece of land which remains without any individual to take care of it. The clause nu-šu, set apart from the rest of the first column of the reverse, might have been used to remind the scribes and administrators of the presence of unattributed plots, or to state that the individuals listed on that column received plots that were formerly unattributed. Alternatively, those terms may instead be understood as referring to an agricultural technique or to an interest or a levy (of unclear nature). This is nevertheless highly hypothetical since it has been assumed elsewhere else that nu-šu referred to a personal name (Lecompte 2016, 139). Interestingly, šu-tab occurs also in a few Abu Ṣalabiḫ texts, which may represent a relic of the ED I uses, although this term is seemingly unknown in the Fara documents (Krebernik / Postgate 2009, 13, with bibliographical references, see Table 3). Therein, šu-tab, which follows regularly še+gan2 and is in some instances

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associated with munus (assigned to women?),5 refers, as is the case in ED I Ur, to a type of šuku-land. The šu-tab plots are rather large areas, from 2 eše3 at the lowest to several bur3, with an average area of approximately 2–3 bur3.6 The šutab-plots are mentioned with land recipients or, in some instances, with a geographical name, such as Lal3-la-adki.7 This term can also be compared with TAB-BA in the ED IIIb texts from Ĝirsu and Umma (cf. Bauer 1972, 110–111; Maekawa 1977, 23; Powell 1978, 19). 2. UET 2, 98 rev. ii 3: ˹4(iku)˺ ziz2 šu ĝal2, maybe “4 iku (of land) (with) available emmer” (see Burrows 1935, 7). 3. ki aša5-ga (?) / aša5 KI GA. There seem to be two variants, either aša5 KI GA or merely KI GA. Both terms are designations of fields which occur together with personal names. As a field category, it is written in some instances on the first line of the tablet, referring therefore to the status of all the plots concerned. — UET 2, 140 rev i 1: 2(eše3) aša5 KI GA Ur-dNin-DUN4 — UET 2, 206 obv. i 1: 2(bur3) 2(eše3) aša5 GA KI Me-saĝ-an-AK — UET 2, 208 obv. i 1: […] ˹2(bur3)?˺ aša5 GA KI ˹šu? x8˺ — UET 2, 211 obv. i 1: aša5 ˹GA KI˺ — UET 2, 358 rev. ii 1: 2(eše3) GA KI […] — UET 2, 366 obv. ii 4: 1(bur3) Zur-zur GA KI It might be read ki -ga or ki gagana2, although its meaning in this context is not clear and indications of grammatical elements are rare in archaic Ur. According to UET 2, 206, plots of this type can be located within the (district of) BU.MA. It seems to occur in connection with plots belonging to the šuku category. Tentatively, it could refer to a stage in cultivation of land, for instance to a cultivated area of a plot recently measured (or the opposite, to a fallow plot),9 rather than to an institutional condition. It may be similar with GAN2 ki, occurring in the En-ḫeĝal tablet.10

5

This association occurs in: IAS 511, 529, 552, maybe 553 and 554, see Krebernik / Postgate 2009, 20. Since both terms are also features on their own of several plots of land, they might indeed be understood as two distinct categories which can nevertheless be associated (see Krebernik / Postgate 2009, 6 and 12–13 for an interpretation as a land assigned to women). 6 For instance, large tracts of lands are represented by IAS 528 obv. iii 2: 6(bur3) [še]+˹gan2˺ šu-tab. Smaller fields are to be found in IAS 511 obv. vii 3: 2(eše3) še+gan2 šu-tab. 7 IAS 511 (= OIP 99), obv. vi 2. 8 Maybe TAB? 9 The ED IIIb texts from Ĝirsu refer for instance to the terms aša5 ki-duru5 and aša5 kiĝal2, cf. LaPlaca / Powell 1990, 76–77. 10 Obv. ii 5. See Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991, 71; Wilcke 1996, 30: “KI-Feld”. See also Powell 1978, 19 on its rare occurrences in ED IIIb Umma.

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4. aša5 PEŠ/ḪA du3 and AL. These terms may be references to cultures and to seeds, but their meaning eludes us. — ATFU 63 rev.: 2N34 3N14 5N1 aša5 apin-du3 šušx: “155, plowing (?), the šuš-herdsman”, which might refer to draft animals (?) or to seeds. — UET 2, 167 obv. 3: 3N14 du3 PEŠ (maybe seeds or objects are meant, see Friberg 1997–1998, 51). — UET 2, 196 C, rev. i 1: aša5 ˹AL˺ […] (fragment). — UET 2, 201, rev. 1: 2(burʾu) 4(bur3) 2(eše3) aša5 al du3 ḪA: “159.84 ha of field, plowed (?), hoe (?) ḪA”; tablet dealing with seeds (Friberg 1997–1998, 52). — UET 2, 177. rev. ii 2: du3 PEŠ (quantity of seeds; Friberg 1997–1998, 52). 5. Land-recording terms. Apart from gid2-a (also interpreted as a-gid2), 11 note also the reference to aša5 bar. However, due to the large area in UET 2, 163 rev. i 8: 1(burʾu) 1(eše3) aša5 bar, it is unlikely that it refers here to the marginal and irregular surface implied during the procedure of land measurement. 6. Fields with geographical designations. Most of the fields for which a geographical clue is given are located within a possible district, ša3 BU.MA. Note also the possible topographical indication: aša5 E DUR2 (eg2 dur2, compare with the Ĝirsu terminology, cf. Maeda 1984, 41).

4 The institutional structure of early Ur and the management of agrarian resources by the temple of Nanna 4.1 A Three-tiered organization? Since the seminal works by Burrows (1935, 12–13), Wright (1969, 99–104), Steinkeller (1988), and Pettinato (1999, 100–106), it is acknowledged that the management of fields in archaic Ur follows more or less the well-known patterns from the ED IIIb period. For instance, in Ĝirsu during the ED IIIb period, institutional land was divided into three main categories: (1) fields that were directly supervised by the central administration notably called “lord domain”, niĝ2-en-na; (2) fields which were allotted on conditions of services to be performed (Sumerian šuku, literally meaning “subsistence field”); and (3) fields which were leased out (Sumerian apin-la2). Similarly, according to the Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr period records, fields might have been divided between different legal categories, such as GAN2 en (lord’s field), subsistence fields, or fields connected to the sign MAŠ, a male kid (notably in documents from unknown provenance), which might represent the payment of a rent.12 The 11

Cf. Lecompte 2016, 138 with bibliography. Steinkeller 1988, 13–14; Pettinato 1999, 106; Englund 1998, 208–213; Cripps 2007, 111. For the existence of a payment in goats (maš) in connection to fields, see the 12

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evidence of this terminology from the ED IIIa period seems more limited, since the texts from Fara and Abu Ṣalabiḫ document mostly the use of šuku and maybe APIN. In archaic Ur, the following categories are distinguished as management types: 1. aša5 en “lord’s field”, which is interpreted as land directly supervised by the central institution. According to Burrows, this term occurs in four tablets (UET 2, 147b, 160, 184, and 227) and may be inferred in three further documents (UET 2, 143, 362, 365). 13 Relying on UET 2, 160, in which individuals are attributed plots of land within the “new field of the lord” (?), Steinkeller (1988, 21) assumes that the recipients of plots of land called aša5 en are high-ranking administrators who managed almost independent administrative units. A closer look at these documents shows that aša5 en does not follow a fixed pattern:14 — UET 2, 147b, a fragment of an originally small tablet: ˹aša5˺ en is the only field preserved and is included within the “domain of Nanna”, aša5 Nannax(ŠEŠ.NA), which has an area of 2 šar2 9 bur3 and 3 iku, that is 837 hectares, or 2 burʾu 9 bur3 and 3 iku, 189 hectares, which seems more likely.15 — UET 2, 160 refers more precisely to the “new lord’s field” or to an area “within the new fields of the lord’s domain”: aša5ša3 en gibil / ša3 aša5 en gibil. It is subdivided into four large tracts of land: Lu2-ĝeštin:16 8 bur3 = 51.64 ha E2-igi+bur (SAR?): 8 bur3 3 iku = 52.92 ha Mes-pa3-da: 8 bur3 = 51.64 ha Ša3-si: 6 bur3 2 eše3 = 43.2 ha — UET 2, 184 records 10 plots of land, the areas of which range from 3 bur3 (19.44 ha) to 1 eše3 (2.16 ha) either assigned to individuals (E2-igi+bur, probably the same as in the former tablet and [Lu2?]-ĝeštin) or designated as aša5 bar, “outer land”; aša5 en is displayed as a clause set apart from the rest of the columns on the obverse, while the reverse seems to summarize the fields as observations in Monaco 2007, 269. The tablets from the Schøyen collection seem to reinforce the association between goats and areas as being the payment of a rent rather than a sale. On MAŠ in the ED IIIb texts related to land renting, see Steinkeller 1981, 131–139. 13 The latter is uncertain and the identification of the sign EN should be collated. 14 Maybe also in UET 2, 113 D ii 3: gu2-an-še3 7(bur3) 2(eše3) ˹EN?˺ [aša5]. 15 Former calculation according to Friberg 1997–1998, 51: while the author identifies the numerals as being equal to 29 bur3, he seems nevertheless to have recognized the two first ones as 2 šar2 (“D”) and not as burʾu (Dd). The photograph provided by CDLI shows 2 burʾu rather than 2 šar2. 16 Considered to be a personal name in Abu Ṣalabiḫ by Krebernik / Postgate 2009, 17. However, note that the same term is considered in the texts from Ebla to be a profession related to wine, which does not seem likely in ED I Ur.

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APIN, either uru4, apin, or engar (see below, § 4.1, 3), therefore perhaps mixing two institutional categories. — UET 2, 227 is a fragment referring to three plots of land, with an area of at least 3 bur3 (19.44 ha), associated to a personal name, KA-iš and to the “domain of Nanna”; aša5 en is their common designation. — UET 2, 143 records 19 plots of land, the areas of which range from 2 bur3 (12.96 ha) to 1 eše3 (2.16 ha); only one of them, assigned to Amar-e2 baḫar2? RU (or Amar-E2.EDIN RU),17 of 2 bur3 (12.96 ha) seems to belong to the category of the aša5 en. — UET 2, 362 and 365 are too fragmentary to offer any relevant evidence, but the latter seems to refer to a large field of 5 šar2 / 5 burʾu 9 bur3 1 eše3 2 ½ iku, that is 2005.38 or 385.38 ha. Steinkeller’s line of reasoning (see above) is not fully supported by UET 2, 184 in which two tenants, occurring also in UET 2, 160, receive an average size of plots, 12.96 and 19.44 ha, not the large domains mentioned in the former document. Rather one can infer from a comparison with the Ĝirsu texts that those large tracts of land referred to in UET 2, 160 are areas on which works, like harvest, plowing or sowing, are planned. Also, one notices that fields devoid of any administrative designation as to their status can have a considerable area, such as in UET 2, in which a kindagal-official receives 259.4 ha. The qualification aša5 Nannax co-occurs with aša5 en in two instances: first in UET 2, 147B, aša5 en seems to be logically included within aša5 Nannax, then the relation is the opposite according to UET 2, 227, as already noticed by Pettinato (1999, 106). The term aša5 Nannax is mentioned in further documents listed by Burrows (1935, 13), one dealing with cereals (UET 2, 73), another being UET 2, 127 (see below for its interpretation), while it may also be found in connection with šuku plots, in UET 2, 164 and 358. 2. aša5 šuku is held to be a subsistence or sustenance field, which is granted in exchange for a service. The term occurs in connection to fields in four documents: — UET 2, 163 records several plots of land assigned to individuals or categorized as aša5 bar; their area ranges from 1 eše3 (2.16 ha) to 8 bur3 (51.84 ha) or 1 burʾu 3 bur3 (84.24 ha), but the total as well as a sub-total on the obverse refer to larger areas. Aša5 šuku […] is written as a subscript in the first line of the obverse, probably as an institutional designation for all the fields. The total, gu2-an-še3, may be read as 2 šar2 7 bur3 (822.96 ha) or 2 burʾu 7 bur3 (174.96 ha). The latter seems less likely since only four of the fields would represent half or more of the total area. Šuku may also be repeated on the obverse but associated with other signs.18 17

Compare with BAḪAR2.E2, maybe as a spelling of the divinity dNun-ur4-ra, cf. Marchesi / Marchetti 2011, 167. 18 Obv. ii 1: 1(eše3) šuku NIĜ2 KALAM ASAL.RU.

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— UET 2, 164 is a fragment referring to seven plots of land ranging from 5 bur3 1 eše3 (34.56 ha) to 1 eše3 (2.16 ha); only the first plot of the obverse is labeled as šuku zi-ga, probably “šuku land taken out”. The plots seem to be labeled as belonging to aša5 Nannax. — UET 2, 368, see below (§ 4.4), is a fragment referring to šuku keše2-ra gibil. — UET 2, 365, refers to a large field within the locality BU.MA, with an area of 5 šar2 / 5 burʾu 9 bur3 1 eše3 2 ½ iku, that is 2,005.38 or 385.38 ha. Furthermore, the tablets referring to plots of land assigned to individuals without any institutional category are probably to be understood as šuku-fields, as suggested here, although this cannot be proven in each case. Prosopographical connections between UET 2, 163 (with aša5 šuku as a subscript) and other texts seem to reinforce this idea, since the individuals assigned a plot in the same document occur elsewhere (Table 2 below). Although different individuals can have the same name, it is assumed that Bilx-igi+bur, a name which is rare in archaic Ur, in UET 2, 163 (where fields are described as šuku) and in UET 2, 181 (no clause indicating the status of the fields) is the same person since the land plots have an identical area. It can be suggested that the tablets dealing with land allocation and devoid of any clause related to their institutional status (such as those listed on Table 2) refer in general to fields belonging to the šuku category. 3. APIN occurs several times in connection with fields, and rarely in the expression aša5 APIN. It has been debated whether or not it has to be equated with the later apin-la2, “leased out”. According to Steinkeller (1988, 23), it may be read as uru4, “to cultivate” or engar, the latter being unlikely in some tablets (Burrows 1935, 35; Pettinato 1999, 106; Cripps 2007, 111 fn. 17). Since APIN refers often to the profession engar, especially when following a personal name, only the occurrences connected with aša5/GAN2 and set apart as subscript or clauses are considered here: — UET 2, 102: docket of type 2 (see § 3.1), “144 ha, within BU.MA, APIN land”. — UET 2, 104: several plots (12 preserved) assigned to individuals, some of them being engar (obv. i 2 an individual seems to be merely designated as engar); the sign APIN occurs also as a clause set apart on the obverse (obv. i 5, ii 3, and iii 4), but its value is uncertain. It may refer to the category of land rather than to the profession engar. — UET 2, 127, see the discussion below (§ 4.1, 3). — UET 2, 161, individual plots of land, APIN is written in the first line, unfortunately badly damaged, reading ˹APIN šum2-šum2˺. — UET 2, 184, see above (§ 4.1, 1); combination of aša5 en and APIN, the former on the obverse, the latter on the reverse and seemingly being the category of all the fields.

The Scale and Extent of Political Institutions in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia Recipients of land Ama-en2-si

UET 2, 163 1 eše3 3 iku

Bilx(NE.PAP.UET 2Sign 377)-igi+bur Lu-lu

1 eše3 3 iku

Mes-an Zur-zur

1 bur3 1 eše3 3 iku

2 bur3 4 iku 2 bur3 2 eše3 3 iku

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Other land documents UET 2, 87: 2 eše3 3 iku UET 2, 109: engar UET 2, 181: 1 eše3 3 iku UET 2, 164 (šuku zi-ga): 1 bur3 1 eše3 UET 2, 171a: 1 eše3 UET 2, 181 with GUR?-dNiraḫ: + 1 eše3? UET 2, 226: occurs four times (+1 bur3 – 1 eše3 – 1 eše3 – 2 bur3 1 eše3) UET 2, 371 (nu-banda3): connected to keše2ra UET 2, 140: mes-an-ne2! engar Passim, smaller areas (UET 2, 27 – UET 2, 108 –UET 2, 128 – UET 2, 202 – UET 2, 366 – UET 2, 367

Table 2. Individuals to which šuku fields are assigned in UET 2, 163.

The evidence regarding the meaning of APIN is therefore ambiguous. UET 2, 184 might show, as already pointed out by Steinkeller (1988), that the categories APIN and en are not separated and that the former does not refer to a rent. It may nevertheless be that these fields’ status changed since, as evidenced in ED IIIb Ĝirsu, plots belonging to the aša5 en could be transferred to the apin-la2 category. 19 By comparison, only one of the Fara land texts, in which the category apin-la2 does not occur, refers to the term aša5 uru4 “ploughed field”. Pomponio (in Pomponio / Visicato 1994, 221–222) considers this to be an abbreviation for anše uru4-du3, “the asses have carried out the ploughing”, and perhaps should be understood as absin3-du3 or apin-du3 (cf. VWDOG 143, 13). In Abu Ṣalabiḫ, the sign APIN is mostly encountered in šuku engar (“prebend of farmers”).20 This evidence from the Fara period (see Table 3) seems to reinforce the interpretation offered by Steinkeller that APIN should be read uru4. A critical document for the understanding of APIN is UET 2, 127, which has been the subject of much debate.21 The tablet consists of two parts: first, several 19

See for instance HSS 3, 40 (edition: Selz 1989, 205–206), obv. iii 18–20–iv 1, 1 ½ iku of rented land (apin-la2) are said to have been “given out of the lord’s demesne”, niĝ2-enna-ta ba-a-am6, see also VS 14, 72 rev. ii 4. 20 Krebernik / Postgate 2009, 10. 21 Burrows 1935, 13; Wright 1969, 109–111; Steinkeller 1988, 23; and recently Bartash 2019, 40–42. Note that the item dug-uruda occurs in the lexical list Archaic ḪAR-ra A, no. 128 (see Civil 2008, 84), in which it probably relates to a pot, despite the author’s opposite opinion. On the other hand, uruda NI, measured in ma-na in obv. i 4, recalls either the vessel, lid2, well-known in the archaic and 3rd millennium texts or, should it be a mistake for gag as suggested by Bartash, the term gugaguruda, also written guuruda

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individuals are associated with amounts of copper measured in mina, a copper object dug-uruda, a copper object (?) NI measured in mina, and animals (oxen and once donkeys or horses). The last column of the reverse contains an area as a total, referred to as APIN, as well as amounts of copper objects dug-uruda, and oxen (without any personal name associated). A clause set apart indicates that this is connected with the domain of Nanna (aša5 Nannax). While Wright (1969, 109–111) had considered this text as a payment of the rent of fields, Steinkeller (1988, 27) challenged this interpretation, and suggested that the oxen and amounts of copper represented an allocation of draught animals and implements for agricultural tools. Bartash (2019, 40–42), emphasizing the uncertainties of its administrative context, thought that the items of copper and animals “may have been payments to the temple for the use of the fields”. Yet some problems arise from the tablet: — The copper object dug, notwithstanding Bartash’s dissent, is probably a pot, scarcely attested but at least occurring in a lexical list from the 3rd millennium (see fn. 22 in the present article); Wright (1969, 109) suggested that its weight, which is unknown, should be equal to 3.5 minas. — obv. i 4 refers to 60 minas of uruda NI, which seems to be otherwise unknown (Bartash 2019, 41 compared it with KAK uruda, “copper nails”). — Due to the lack of established equivalency between livestock and copper, it is hard to estimate the value of such animals; Wright (1969, 109) suggested equating the value of 1 ox with 5 minas of copper (compare with the price known in Ur III texts at a rate of 1 ox for 8.5 to 10.5 giĝ4 of sliver, cf. Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991, 278). — A comparison of the document with later sale contracts from the Fara period is necessarily tentative; while land, according to the Fara documents, is sold for 2 or 3 copper minas per iku (and approximately between 5 and 15 copper minas by adding the “additional payment”, niĝ2-diri, and the “gift”, niĝ2ba, cf. Andersson 2014, 3–4), the price of the field in UET 2, 127, with an area of 304 iku, should it be sold at the same rate, would be 608 or 912 minas (but 1,540 to 4,620 with the additional payment). — The total of the items preserved on the obverse and the first column of the reverse of of UET 2, 127, is as follows: probably more than 83 minas of copper; 60 minas of uruda NI; 23 copper pots (dug-uruda); 1 horse/donkey (anše DUN.GI); 9 oxen. The last column on the reverse of the tablet, which does not seem to be the final total, refers to 5 oxen and 17 copper pots (dug-uruda).

occurring in the aforementioned lexical list, no. 153, see Civil 2008, 36 and 88. The name in obv. ii 4 surely contains the sign GAN to be read ḫe2 (with ḪI as a phonetic indication) whose value is discussed in Lecompte 2013, 139, and can be understood either as aya2-ḫe2 for aya2-ḫe2-AK, cf. with PNs 111 and 624 in UET 2, or as ḫe2-a.

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Compared with the sale contracts of Fara, all those items, supposedly exchanged for the use of land, may be equal to the “main price” of the Fara contracts.22 — This total could also be compared with the rent of the fields expressed in the later ED IIIb texts from Ĝirsu, when the rent could be given as a sum of silver, an amount of barley and an amount of goats (Steinkeller 1981,129–141), or from the Ur III period (cf. Maekawa 1977, 22–23): the rent seems to have been respectively 1/6 giĝ4 of silver and 5/6 gur saĝ-ĝal2 in barley per iku (Maekawa 1977, 23) and 10 giĝ4 of silver per bur3 (as said above, the area of UET 2, 127 is 304 iku, approximately 16.89 bur3). Although it does not seem straightforward to convert a sum of silver from the end of the 3rd millennium to a sum of copper from the beginning of the 3rd millennium, the items paid by the individuals in UET 2, 127 might be superior to the expected price of the rent of the field.23 22 Bartash 2019, 42, finds nevertheless the amounts in UET 2, 127, “comparable” to those “in the Šuruppak legal texts”. A calculation, based upon a rate of: 2/3 giĝ4 of silver = 1 ma-na of copper; 1 ox = 10.5 giĝ4 of silver = 15.75 ma-na of copper; 1 anše dun-gi = 11 giĝ4 of silver = 16.5 ma-na of copper; 1 dug-uruda = 7.5 giĝ4 of silver = 11.25 ma-na of copper (following the rate of 1 container uri for 10 giĝ4 of silver and of axes for 5 giĝ4 of silver, cf. Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991, 290), gives the following amount of copper (without the puzzling term uruda NI): 83 minas of copper (uruda ma-na) + 220.5 minas for the oxen + 16.5 minas of copper for the donkey/horse + 450 minas of copper for the containers dug-uruda = 770 minas of copper. To this can be added 60 minas of uruda NI, the rate of which is unknown. Be that as it may, if 1 mina of uruda NI is equal to 2 minas of regular copper, the price of the field would therefore be in the average range of the Fara documents (890). This does, nevertheless, not take into account the additional payment, which could be represented by the amounts of copper containers (dug) and oxen on the last column of the reverse, devoid of any personal name (if the document was a sale contract). The total amount of copper items and animals is therefore similar to the main price of the Fara fields but still much inferior to their total price. Such calculations are of course tentative and cannot take into account the variations of prices during the third millennium. 23 By comparison, Englund 2012, 444 and Powell 1990, 83–84 refer to the following equivalency between copper and silver during the Ur III period: 1 shekel of silver = 1 ½ mina of copper; according to Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991, 289, 1 mina of copper has a price of 2/3 shekels of silver in the Sargonic Lambert Tablet, but this rate would result in a high amount of copper but probably still inferior to the total mount of copper items and animals: the Ur III rate of rent could imply that in UET 2, 127, 168.9 shekels of silver are expected, which, converted according to the Lambert Tablet, gives 253.35 minas of copper; if the rate of the ED IIIb Ĝirsu texts is applied (1/6 giĝ4 of silver and 5/6 gur saĝ-ĝal2 per iku, which sould mean 1 giĝ4 of silver per iku), the expected rent is 462 minas of copper. The amount of copper items and animals in this tablet is therefore superior to the expected rent of fields. Although the calculation is tentative, this situation could also be explained by the variation of prices or a higher rate of rent during the ED I–II period.

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Despite the uncertainty of any interpretation, the tablet UET 2, 127, might be one of the rare pieces of evidence of a rental system of fields (the plots belonging to the Nanna temple) or maybe more probably of a field’s purchase (the plots being purchased or sold by the Nanna temple),24 which can be linked to other documents and data.25 ED I–II Fara

-- / (aša5) APIN --

(aša5) APIN

aša5 šuku

aša5 en

šuku

--

šu-tab nu-šu --

Abu Ṣalabiḫ

--

aša5 uru4 = uru4-du3? --

šuku (and šuku engar) aša5 šuku

--

šu-tab

ED IIIb Ĝirsu

aša5 apin-la2

--

aša5 niĝ2-enna

--

Table 3. Comparison of the terminology related to fields during the Early Dynastic period.

Compared to the ancient kudurrus and the sale contracts from the Fara period, UET 2, 127 does, however, not seem to follow any well-known pattern and does not display a structure which could be related with a sale (compare with Wilcke 20072, 80, 63–64 for the Ušumgal Stele and ELTS 13, a document dating maybe to the ED I–II period and referring to oxen) – the mention of aša5 Nannax is more reminiscent of management documents and there is no explicit term for the sale. The sale could therefore be of another nature than those known so far.26 The reading of APIN is also uncertain, but might be uru4 rather than a term similar to the later apin-la2. Interestingly, one rare occurrence of both signs APIN and LA2 might be found in the slightly later monument called Figure aux Plumes, where the interpretation of these two signs is also puzzling.27 24

The interpretation offered by Steinkeller 1988, 23, according to which the oxen and metal objects are draught animals and agricultural implements, is less convincing since it does not explain the presence of minas of copper. Since several individuals are associated with amounts of copper or livestock, they might be either the sellers (similarly to Pre-Sargonic contracts featuring one buyer and several sellers) or the buyers (the land being sold by the Nanna temple). 25 As said above, UET 2, 168 also refers to a copper object but its role eludes us; see also UET 2, 140, rev. i, which, according to the traces preserved, also contains references to the sign uruda. 26 Compare with IAS 508 obv. i 1ʹ and rev. iii 1, which seems to refer to the sale of šuku plots. Tentatively, the items of copper and the animals could also correspond to the dusu tax which was paid in lieu of the performance of the corvée-obligation, for which see Steinkeller 1993, 143, Cripps 2007, 37–46 and Bramanti 2020. 27 It is also worth noticing that the sign APIN occurs in four ancient kudurrus, although its meaning is not clear (ELTS 2, obv. i 2; ELTS 6 obv. ii 2; CUSAS 17, 103 obv. ii 5 and rev. v 2), as well as in a kudurru dating probably from the ED I–II period (CUSAS 17, 104 viiiʹ 5ʹ).

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4.2 Professions mentioned as recipients of land Although the šuku- and APIN-plots are generally attributed to individuals mentioned only by name, professions are also referred to in the documents, but less often. We provide a list of these professions below. 1. Priests: — pa4-šeš, a plot of 6.48 ha; — išib-AN, a plot of 6.48 ha.28 2. Craftsmen and low-level officials: — An anonymous simug, “smith”: a plot of 4.32 ha (UET 2, 98 rev. ii 2); Ušum-gal, another simug: a plot of 8.64 ha (UET 2, 358 obv. i 3′). — Lu-lu, a nagar, “carpenter”: a plot of 10.6 ha (UET 2, 366 obv. ii 3). — dilmun, probably a profession connected with silver: a plot superior to 0.72 ha (UET 2, 79 obv. 2).29 — A nimgir-gal aša5 (?) occurs twice in UET 2, 226 (rev. i 7′ and rev. iii 9), once with a plot whose area is not preserved, then with a plot of maybe 4.77 ha.30 3. Higher-rank officials: — kindagal, which is here not a chief barber: 259.2 ha (UET 2, 82 obv. 1). — A kiĝgal, traditionally interpreted as “head of the assembly” but more probably a leader of a gang or a military official, in UET 2, 108 (cf. Marchesi / Marchetti 2011, 103 fn. 53 and Benati / Lecompte 2016a, 21–22). — A land-recorder saĝ-sug5 may occur in UET 2, 168 (see Appendix 1), although Burrows’ drawing shows for that line ˹lu2 du5˺. In the latter two cases, professional titles are referred to as the responsible for fields or several plots of lands. 4.3 The role of the engar farmers As said above (§ 4.1, 3), in many instances, the sign APIN refers to the farmers, engar, who had a preeminent role and are mentioned in the following contexts (see also Wright 1969, 103, 107, 109, 111, 115; Steinkeller 1988, 21, 23): — the engar farmers occur occasionally as recipients of land: UET 2, 104 rev. i 1: 1(bur3) Ama-e2-si engar (6.48 ha); rev. i 4: 4(iku) Amae2!-si engar (1.44 ha);

28

Respectively in: UET 2, 27 rev. ii 9′ (probably to be understood together with the rest of the inscription, SAL.ḪU AN.U4); UET 2, 81 obv. ii 2. 29 This term, in consideration of the designation DILMUN ZAGa in the Archaic Lu2 list, entry 85, is less likely to be a personal name. 30 In the latter, the last numeral is either ¼ or ½ (less probably) of an iku (cf. Burrows 1935, pl. 37 C [Numerals III. Land Measure]).

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UET 2, 226 rev. i 8: 1(bur3) […] Munus-ad2-gal engar (6.48 ha), who may be identical with Munus-ad2-gal, but without a professional title in the same tablet rev. iii 10 and is assigned an area of 1 bur3 2 eše3 (10.8 ha); rev. iii 1: 2(eše3) Amar-u4-sakar (4.32 ha); UET 2, 356 obv. ii 1: 1(burʾu) Šul-šul engar (64.8 ha); UET 2, 359 obv. ii 1′: ˹1(bur3)˺ Ib-mud (6.48 ha). — in most of the documents related to the engar farmers (called also by their personal names), those are mentioned in lines devoid of numerals and following some plots of lands, the cultivation of which they probably managed or controlled: UET 2, 104 rev. ii 1: Ama-e2-si engar (the same individual receives a plot of 1 bur3, see above), linked with 11 or 12 plots of land; UET 2, 108 obv. iii 5: Pa-bilx-ga engar (at least 15 fields under the supervision of a kiĝgal a-ša3aša5); UET 2, 109 obv. iv 6: Ama-enx(ŠU2)-e2-si engar, 22 plots being preserved; UET 2, 135bis i 4: Ama-[IGI?]+BUR-sa6-si (fragment); UET 2, 140 rev. i 2: Mes-an-ne2! engar (5 plots preserved); UET 2, 168 obv. i 5′: Šul-IG engar; obv. ii 5′: Dumu-ša3-˹dar?˺ engar; obv. ii 9′: Ur-dLamma engar (see Appendix 1); UET 2, 356 obv. i 6: AK-lu; obv. ii 5′: A-˹KA?˺-ra, both are responsible for fields of large area, the former being linked with two or four fields, two of them having areas of 45.36 ha and 62.64 ha, the latter with three fields, the largest reaching 103.68 ha. In UET 2, 108 and 168, each engar is, alongside the ensix(PA.SI) of BU.MA in the latter document, responsible for some plots of land, while the official in charge of the whole procedure is respectively a kiĝgal a-ša3aša5 and maybe a saĝdu5. This probably shows that the engar was responsible either for the cultivation of the relevant fields or for collecting any tax, rent, or part of the production. In UET 2, 104, Ama-e2-si is responsible for maybe 11 or 12 plots, some of them being labeled APIN, which is not associated with a personal name and may not have to be considered as engar but rather as uru4, “cultivated” or apin-(la2), “on rent”. In comparison with these data, later ED IIIb texts from Ĝirsu show that the role of engar during the ED IIIb period was partly similar: — They can be recipients of šuku- and apin-la2-plots of land.31

31

The engar farmers receiving plots of land are well documented, see for instance Nik 1, 44 (edition: Selz 1989, 212–213) obv. iv 9–10, in which Ur-dam the engar is assigned a (šuku ki-duru5) plot of 1 bur3 (6.48 ha); DP 582 obv. ii 8–iii 1–2, in which Ur-du6 is assigned a šuku plot of 1 bur3 (again 6.48 ha). See also VS 25, 79, in which several engar are linked to plots of niĝ2-en-na condition, probably in connection to some agricultural work to perform.

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— Some of them are apparently responsible for the management of fields and their cultivation, especially in a group of texts featuring the expression engar-be2, “their farmer (responsible for those fields)”.32 — Ur-dam, according to documents RTC 75 and VS 14, 170, which feature the same expression engar-be2, seems also to be linked to collecting the payment of the rent, including the dusu/dubsig(IL2)-tax or corvée (Wilcke 20072, 34; Steinkeller 1981, 130–137). — The engar could also take other responsibilities, like managing quantities of cereals,33 digging irrigation canals;34 note also a group of (anonymous) engar ki-gub in the ration lists (Selz 1998, 56; Prentice 2010, 70).35 In the documents from Fara, Pomponio (in Pomponio / Visicato 1994, 222) also observed that some individuals bearing the title engar were responsible for the barley used for sowing. The administrative tablets from Abu Ṣalabiḫ are consistent with this picture, since the engar farmers regularly receive šuku land and are also responsible for other individuals’ plots: according to Krebernik / Postgate (2009, 6), the engar-officials were “like farm managers” who could have people under their control. The engar-farmers are therefore an important administrative level in the management of the domain of the god Nanna in Ur: not only did they receive, like other types of personnel of this temple, plots of land, but they probably were in charge of coordinating the cultivation of plots assigned to other individuals and of collecting taxes or some type of levy. By comparison with the texts from Ĝirsu, one could also infer that UET 2, 104, which refers to several plots labeled as APIN and put under the supervision of Ama-e2-si, an engar, was a record of rented fields (see also § 4.1, 3). 4.4 On keše2-ra and the role of the army The term keše2-ra applies to fields in several tablets dealing with fields’ allotment (Wright 1969, 115; Steinkeller 1988, 22): 32

Nik 1, 32 rev. iii 12 (edition: Selz 1989, 192–195); cf. Bauer 1972, 112. Texts featuring this term are notably RTC 75; VS 14, 170; Nik 1, 32; DP 585, 586, 587, 589, 592, 591 (in chronological order). Not only are rented fields (apin-la2) or fields bound to a levy (su3-la) concerned, but also sustenance land. 33 See Nik 1, 39 (edition: Selz 1989, 205–206), an accounting document on crops and on the distribution of cereals, two engar, Puzur4-Mama and Gala-tur, being recipients of cereals. 34 For instance, Ur-dam, the same farmer as the one responsible for land on rent in VS 14, 170 and RTC 75, is assigned a length of 100 nindan (600 meters) of canal to dig in VS 25, 77. See also VS 25, 7, in which are listed furrows of different plants, one of šum2 sikil (onion) belonging to the farmer Lugal-pa-e3. 35 For instance, in HSS 3, 6 (edition: Selz 1993, 77–93) obv. vi 10. See also Prentice 2010, 191, for their implication in the maš-da-ri-a.

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1. šuku keše2-ra gibil (UET 2, 368 obv. i 2′), where it follows the mention of the field aša5 e2-tur; 2. keše2-ra AK: — UET 2, 135bis obv. i 3′, in which it seems to indicate the category of a land tract of at least 2 bur3 (12.96 ha) probably linked with a name, Ama[IGI?]+BUR-sa6-si, a farmer; — UET 2, 357 obv. ii 7′, in which it refers to a field of at least 3 bur3 (= 19.44 ha) without any individual associated; 3. UET 2, 371 (see Appendix 2) is a key text for this term, mainly recording gangs of men under the supervision of overseers (ugula), who are in turn below the nu-banda3-officials; some parts of the tablet deal also with fields and agricultural areas. Keše2-ra occurs therein three times, twice as a designation of the troops, notably in the term uĝ3 keše2-ra, once probably for the fields. Steinkeller (1988, 22) hypothesized that keše2-ra (read sir3-ra) referred to plots assigned to soldiers (uĝ3 keše2-ra). It could therefore be compared with the later term zu2(KA) keše2 = Akkadian kiṣru, for levying troops as well as for workmen performing a task (Lafont 2009, 5–6; Schrakamp 2010: 62, 65, 84, 132; note surx(ERIN2) zu2 keše2-ra2, “die dienstverpflichteten Truppen”). 36 In view of the later ED IIIb documentation, for instance from Ĝirsu, it can also be speculated that the uĝ3 keše2-ra were workers performing assigned tasks (such as hypothesized by Wright 1969, 115) and liable for military service.37 They might have received their share of land after having performed a duty similar to the later ilkum.

5 Quantitative aspects: a first assessment 5.1 Population ecology and resource exploitation in early 3rd millennium Ur enclave For the purpose of this paper we focused on calculating demographics, consumption requirements and agricultural catchments for the Ur enclave and the institutional capacity for the Nanna temple using survey data provided by Wright (1969, 1981; see also Hammer 2019, 197–202 table 1). According to Wright’s dataset, the aggregate settled area of Ur enclave amounted to ca 36.7 36

Note that later texts from the ED IIIb period from Umma and Ĝirsu, also attest the expression aša5 keše2-(ra2), see respectively CUSAS 33, 154 (Umma), 180, and 184 and DP 578 rev. ii 4 (Ĝirsu). 37 See notably the recent studies of Schrakamp (2014) on the categories RU-lugal and aga3-us2, notably Schrakamp 2014, 723–724: “Als Gegenleistung für ihr hohes Einkommen und ihren hohen Status leistete sie, in Gruppen unter Aufsehern organisiert, Wehrdienst und bildete den Kern des lagašitischen Heeres. Zugleich trug sie die Hauptlast der öffentlichen Arbeiten”.

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ha, which includes the city of Ur itself, the two towns of Sakheri Khabir (site no. 30) and Sakheri Sughir (site no. 47), and some hamlets ranging between 0.4 and 1.5 ha. In total these sites suggest a settled population of ca 5,400 people, if we consider an average of 150 people per hectare as a reasonable, although conservative, estimate (Barjamovic 2014, 61).38 Site

Site no. (Wright 1981) 10

Settlement (ha)

Population (150p/ha)

21

3,150

T. Sakheri

30

8

1,200

Sakheri Sughir

47

2.7

405

Hamlets

8, 82, 142

5

750

36.7

5,505

Ur

Totals Site Ur

Cons_L (grain kg/y) 557,550

Cons_M (grain kg/y) 781,200

Cons_H (grain kg/y) 1,061,550

T. Sakheri

207,600

297,600

404,400

Sakheri Sughir

70,065

100,440

136,485

Hamlets

129,750

186,000

252,750

Totals

964,965

1,365.240

1,855,185

Site

Catch_L (ha)

Catch_M (ha)

Catch_H (ha)

Catch_0,9ha/p/y

Ur

1,714

2,402

3,266

2,835

T. Sakheri

638

814

1244

1,080

Sakheri Sughir

214

308

418

364

Hamlets

398

572

776

675

Totals

2,964

4,096

5,704

4,954

Table 4. Demographic and resource estimates for the Ur enclave during the ED I period (survey data from Wright 1969, 1981). Catchment scenarios (L = Low, M = Medium, H = High) are given considering biennial fallow practices.39 38

See Colantoni 2015 and Stone 2017 for fresh assessments of demographic estimates based on Mesopotamian urbanization remains. 39 The subsistence level (cons_L) is based on the average per capita consumption of cereals for developing countries estimated by FAO to be around 173 kg per year (http://www.fao.org/3/y4252e/y4252e04b.htm). Cons_M is based on the average of 248 kg per year calculated by Sallaberger and Pruß (2015, 113) from the Tell Beydar ration lists evidence (cf. also Ur / Wilkinson 2008, 313). Cons_H is set at 300 kg/person/year based on Rattenborg’s (2016, 51), estimates of Middle Bronze Age grain allotments for adult individuals, ranging between 300 and 375 kg per year, and Adams’s (1981, 86, 146) estimates based on the Ur III evidence (i.e. 300 kg/person/year).

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Then we estimated consumption requirements based on these demographic figures. Table 4 provides three scenarios: (1) a subsistence level (cons_L), calculated using Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data for developing countries, (2) a medium level based on Early Bronze Age evidence from institutional food allocation practices at Beydar (cons_M), and 3) a high level (cons_H) based on Ur III and Middle Bronze age food allotment practices (see fn. 39 for the sources). On the basis of these three consumption scenarios, we projected the total agricultural catchment area required to achieve each required cereal output – calculated by dividing the total output by the average yield for large estates given by Wright (1969, 104) as 650 kg of barley/ha – which was then doubled since it is well-known that biennial fallow was practiced during the 3rd millennium and therefore each year half of the arable land was left uncultivated (Widell 2013, 57, 63).

Figure 2. Barley consumption estimates for the Ur enclave based on survey data (see Table 4 and fn. 39 for specific information about consumption scenarios).

Furthermore, to add robustness to the analysis, we estimated the total catchment areas by considering that, to support one individual consuming on average 248 kg/year – and with the farming returns set at 559 kg of barley/ha for small estates (Wright 1969, 104) – an amount of 0.45 ha/person/year would have been required, which translates into 0.90 ha/person/year considering biennial fallow practices. Notably, this additional estimate attains figures which are somehow in between catch_M and catch_H scenarios, providing a more realistic optimum scenario. Thus, the Ur urban population of ca. 3,150 individuals would have consumed between 557,000 and 1,061,550 kg of grain per year – dependent on consumption levels (see figure 2) – resulting from the cultivation of between

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1,714 and 3,266 ha of arable land, with a possible optimum catchment between 2,800 (Catch_M) and 2,900 ha (i.e. Catch_0,9ha/p/y). Consequently, the total settled population of the Ur enclave would have required between 964,000 and 1,689,000 kg of grain/year to sustain itself, resulting from the eventual cultivation of between 2,964 and 5,704 ha of arable land, with a possible optimum between 4,000 (Catch_M) and 4,900 ha (i.e. Catch_0,9ha/p/y).

Figure 3. Agricultural catchment estimates based on survey data (see Table 4).

We calculate now the production potential of the Ur agricultural enclave, estimated to be around 9,000 ha by Wright (1969, 33).40 According to Wright (1969, 104), harvest yields can be reconstructed from Ur texts at around 650 kg/ha of barley for large estates – a yield in line with the Ur III period crop production levels (Widell 2013, 64; Maekawa 1974, 9, 26; Maekawa 1984, 84; Jacobsen 1982, appendix 17) – and 559 kg/ha for small estates (Wright 1969, 104). Therefore, the total projected production potential of the Ur enclave arable land would have been between 5,850,000 and 4,950,000 kg of barley/year, which, considering fallow, would result in a total of between 2,925,000 and 2,475,000 kg/year.

40

According to Wright (1969, 33) the Ur enclave is the agricultural productive area occupying the northern sector of the 1969 survey area. Wright fixed the southern and northern margins of the agricultural enclave respectively as the walking distance from the Ur and the upstream end of the Euphrates branch. The southern portion of the surveyed area was occupied by the Eridu region which, according to Wright, produced negligible evidence of ED I settlement, and farther south by the desert.

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Ur enclave (ha) Total 9,000 After fallow 4,500 Percentage of total output consumed by settlements (in aggregate)

Total output (650kg/ha) 5,850,000 2,925,000 C_L C_M C_H 32% 46% 63%

Total output (550kg/ha) 4,950,000 2,475,000 C_L C_M C_H 38% 55% 74%

Table 5. Total estimated production for the Ur enclave and relationships between consumption and production levels (see Table 4).

By comparing these figures to the total consumption requirements estimated before, reaching up to 1,690,000 kg/year, we can conclude that the Ur enclave population consumed up to 57–68% of the total agricultural production only if we consider the high consumption scenario, and therefore the enclave was above subsistence level during the early stages of the 3rd millennium (see Table 4). If we consider as mean value the medium consumption scenario (Cons_M), then we can conclude that the Ur settled enclave was consuming around half of the total potential production of the Ur agrarian enclave, leaving substantial margin for the growth of human communities, as attested by the growth experienced by the enclave during the late 3rd millennium (Wright 1981, 327–328; Hammer 2019). Turning to the production potential of the Nanna temple estate, a total figure of more than 1,165 ha is seemingly given by UET 2, 122. If we take this figure as a possible total amount of land controlled by the temple – but with the caveat that the real total could have been even larger – it means that at least 13% of the total arable land of the enclave was administered by the Nanna temple.

Total land controlled (ha) ±1,165 13% of total enclave arable land

Nanna temple household Production potential Workforce potential (650 kg/ha) 378,625 kg/y C_L C_M 13% of total enclave 2,188 1,526 production (after fallow) 66% of 46% of total total farmers farmers

C_H 1,260 34% of total farmers

Table 6. Institutional capacity regarding farming and workforce for the Nanna temple household (see Table 4 for the consumption scenarios).

Considering the average yield mentioned above for large estates, then the total production potential, after fallow, would have been around 378,000 kg/year. By taking into account the three scenarios for per capita consumption of cereals for institutional workers, the estate of the Nanna temple could have sustained between 2,188 and 1,260 individuals/year, which means, potentially, between 40 and 69% of the estimated urban Ur population and ca. 22–39% of the total Ur enclave settled population. If we take as reference the figures provided by

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Wright (1969, 121) as to the number of attached farmers (ca. 800) and the total of rural workers (ca. 2,500) settled in the Ur enclave, then the temple household of Nanna could – potentially – have been able to employ between 34 and 66% of them year-round. However, the temple used agricultural produce also for seed, fodder, and other purposes (cf. Wright 1969, 112–113), and therefore the precise amount allocated for paying wages was certainly a smaller fraction of the total, hard to calculate at present. This notwithstanding, we can positively reinforce the idea that the temple household of Nanna was, indeed, the main institution in the Ur enclave. Another strand of evidence important for assessing the extent of this early institutional economy is represented by a group of texts that record quantities of agricultural produce connected to chief administrators of the Ur enclave (Wright 1969, 113, table 3). Text

Official

Produce recorded (kg)

Projected land surface

Land surface after fallow

UET 2, 222

ensi of Ur

17.4 ha; 23 ha

40,4 ha

UET 2, 188

ensi of Dugin

11,340 kg barley 15,090 kg wheat +1,080 kg

No. of estimated wages (248– 300 kg/p/y) 88–106

+2.8–5 ha

+3–4

22–24 ha

27–33

UET 2, 162

ensi of BU.MA šid še (accounting?) or saĝĝa še?

+1.4 or 2.5 ha (?) 11–12 ha

24.8–36.4 ha

50–60

8,220 kg 7,950 kg barley, 7,035 kg wheat

6.3–8.5 ha; 6.1–9.7 ha

Table 7. Texts collated by C. Lecompte. The conversion from archaic units and kg is based on the assumption – in contrast to the figures provided by Wright (1969, 113, Table 3) based on the equivalency of the archaic Ur cereal quantity system with the ED IIIb gur at Ĝirsu (1 gur = 150 l) – that the archaic Ur counting system applied to cereal units is equivalent to the archaic Uruk system (see for instance Englund 1998, 119, 215).

Indeed, although Wright’s (1969, 113) figures had to be corrected, from these three texts we may conclude that high officials had at their disposal large quantities of cereals – either resulting from the collection of rents/taxes through the engar-farmers or as produce harvested from their estates – that they could then allocate for various purposes, e.g. paying wages to workers, providing seed and fodder, etc. If we consider these amounts of cereals as potential payments for wages, then we may estimate that the ensis of Dugin and BU.MA had at their disposal sums that could be employed to sustain small gangs of workers (ugularank gangs according to Wright 1969, 115) or perhaps their households, whereas

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the ensi of Ur, and possibly the saĝĝa of the Nanna temple, could sustain large households or mid-to-large groups of workers – not dissimilar from the numbers given by Wright (1969, 115) in regard to the workforces controlled by nubandalevel officials. These estimates, albeit hypothetical, allow us to conclude that, already in the early phases of the 3rd millennium, political institutions in southern Mesopotamia reached a considerable extension and capacity via concentration of landed assets, even in rather small urban sites.41 In particular, the offices of chief temple administrators and that of the ensi – a high political office apparently attested also in small towns – were directly in charge of managing revenues from farming through a multi-tiered organization structure that integrated the rural sector into the institutional machinery. We further elaborate on these mechanisms in the closing section. 5.2 Statistical and prosopographical perspectives Our current research, which is still a work-in-progress, focuses on two aspects, which we think may enhance our understanding of the archaic texts from Ur: 1. First, in order to estimate the scope of the resources of the Nanna temple as well as the subsistence land assigned to its personnel, we will convert all the plots and fields mentioned to modern area systems and provide statistics. For instance, we can observe the following facts: — the tablets of type 2 (see § 3) give a reliable idea of the range of possible sizes of the domain of Nanna (see § 5.1). — the average area of plots assigned to the personnel of Nanna varies at some extent according to the documents: in UET 2, 168 (see § 3), by only taking into account the plots and personal names preserved, we obtain an average area for 28 plots of 6.84 ha; we can observe that the same tablet refers in general to plots having an area of 1 bur3, 2 eše3 or 1 eše3 3 iku. 2. Another aspect of our research consists of studying the prosopography of the individuals, notably the recipients of land, which, as shown in § 4, proved its value by reinforcing the idea that most of the agricultural texts refer to šukuplots. A few individuals suffice to exemplify the approach to be developed in further studies: — Ama-iri-si: UET 2, 168 rev. i 3′: 3.24 ha (see Appendix 1) – UET 2, 108 (join with UET 2, 153?) obv. i 2′: 4.32 ha (?). This individual occurs mostly in the agricultural texts, in which they receive plots of similar size and can also be the same as an individual occurring in a sheep account (UET 2, 252).

41

According to the six-tier site hierarchy based on size proposed by Adams (1981, fig. 25) in ED I, Ur should be considered a four-tier urban site, where Tell al-Sakheri a fivetier one.

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— dInanna-AK: UET 2, 98 obv. ii 1: 9.72 ha – UET 2, 168 obv. iii 7: 9.72 ha and maybe rev. i 5: 8.64 ha (see Appendix 1). UET 2, 357 obv. ii 6: 19.44 ha – UET 2, 366 obv. ii 7: 16.2 ha – UET 2, 211 2: +4.32 ha. This individual receives rather large tracts of land and twice an identical one. It is nevertheless uncertain whether or not the same individual is referred to (UET 2, 98 and 168 positively do). He can also be connected to the same personal name occurring in cereal accounts, whereby he would be involved in the delivery or the expenses of cereals maybe produced from his own plots.42 Yet, two features of the archaic texts from Ur impede further prosopographical studies. Due to their poor state of preservation, significant pieces of information did not survive and we are left with many fragments containing very limited data. Furthermore, unlike the later Šuruppak, Ĝirsu, or Umma texts, the recipients of land are not arranged in a standardized way, which would help us when reconstructing the missing lines.

6 Conclusions The onset of the 3rd millennium in Mesopotamia witnessed the rise of secondary urbanism, and important changes at the political and social levels that are still being clarified (Benati 2015; Nissen 2015; Steinkeller 2018, 2019; Matthews / Richardson 2018). Although a redistributive institutional structure is already established by the Late Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia (Steinkeller 1988, 13–14; Englund 1998, 212–213), the “classic” institutional organization system, as we know it from the later Early Dynastic sources (Garfinkle 2013; Prentice 2010), begins to emerge in the post-Uruk phase. A key feature of this statebuilding process consisted of the rise of a judicial system for managing the main productive asset of the time, arable land (cf. North / Wallis / Weingast 2009). The creation of legal capacity started with the introduction, at the very end of the 4th millennium, of private legal documents (Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991; Renger 1995, 273–278; Wilcke 20072, 25–26) regulating property rights on land – which, by then, was already concentrated in the hands of elites, notably close to the temple (Renger 1995, 272–273) – and of land-for-tenure arrangements, the so-called šuku-system (Cripps 2007, 19–20; Englund 1998, 209–212). Through this system, political institutions secured manpower and agricultural returns – i.e. more fiscal capacity – by enfranchising a growing number of citizens that received usufruct over land in exchange for labor, taxes, and services. This is attested by the sheer size of the political economies of the institutions in Jemdet Nasr (Renger 1995, 273) and Ur (see above § 5.1) at the onset of the 3rd millennium. The second step was represented by the rise of 42

See for instance UET 2, 31 obv. i 2′; UET 2, 65 obv. i 8, in which he might be the responsible of barley delivery or distribution; see the references in Burrows 1935, 31.

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palatial organizations as second institutionalized decision-makers, alongside the temples, in the emerging Sumerian city-states (Steinkeller 2018, 2019; cf. Benati / Guerriero / Zaina 2019), and by the introduction of corvée arrangements and army conscription mechanisms (Steinkeller 2015, 9–14; Cripps 2007, 22–29; Schrakamp / Paoletti 2011, 161–162), which, as attested by this article, seem to be emerging already in archaic Ur (see above § 4.4). These political and legal innovations allowed institutions to successfully expand the ranks of citizens participating to institutional activities, which is also attested by the growing infrastructural power of early Mesopotamian states that during the second and third quarters of the 3rd millennium started to be able to raise conscripted armies and build expensive public buildings, such as fortifications (Richardson 2011, 18–20, 35–36; Rey 2016, 36, 39–40, fig. 1). As said above, Ur provides some of the best data to contextualize the early phases of these important processes. Due to the nature of the sources, we are in a better position to reconstruct the decision-making structure and economic organization of the temple sector since the palace and the early rulers, the ensis, are mentioned infrequently (Benati 2015, § 4.4.2). Indeed, the temple household of Nanna controlled a substantial amount of agricultural land, possibly as much as the catchment of small urban site such as Ur, and extracted revenues in part by cultivating the fields through sharecroppers and in part by allotting and renting fields to its personnel and to farmers. The land of the temple household of Nanna seems to have been organized as follows: — Land was used according to two or, less likely, three documented modes: (1) aša5 en, land supervised by the central institutions; (2) šuku-land as subsistence field allotted to workers and institutional personnel; (3) APIN-fields, maybe rented out to farmers and individuals, although the connection of this term with the later apin-la2 category of land is still hypothetical. — Institutional farming was managed according to a multi-layered hierarchy:43 (1) high-ranking individuals were in charge of large tracts of land, either as aša5 en or as a part of the domain to divide into allotments plots assigned to the personnel of the temple; (2) nubanda-rank officials probably supervised work units and/or field allotments assigned to those liable to service in the work units; those groups were subdivided in smaller units ranging from 21 to 43 men – according to UET 2, 371 – under the responsibility of the ugula. This organization is reminiscent of the role of the RU-lugal and aga3-us2 in ED 43

A preliminary survey carried out on a dozen of land management texts indicates four clusters for the average measures of field allotted by the temple of Nanna, with the majority clustering between 0.36 and 52.92 ha (1), then a cluster between 52 and 137 (2), 259 and 434 (3), and finally, a couple of texts that record surface between 1,165 and 1,211 ha (4). Further work is, however, required to check more carefully the three/fourlevel decision-making structure for farming hypothesized by Wright (1969, 115).

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IIIb Ĝirsu, who formed a high social level, receiving plots of land and being responsible of groups of men serving as soldiers or workers; (3) The engarfarmers, who are the most frequently mentioned officials within our texts, may have been responsible for the cultivation of the plots allocated and for the collection of fees, taxes on the production or for the payment of the rent of the APIN-fields, were it the case that they were similar to the later apin-la2 category. — Institutional farming was thus carried out through sharecropping and/or corvée arrangements. The engar-farmers played probably a salient role within this institutional structure, especially as regards the management of the resources and the agricultural production. The management of the institutional land was also based on considerable personnel, reaching up to 700 individuals according to Wright (1969, 115), who received allotments of arable land. Some of them were encumbered with a military service (keše2-ra), while others, as proven by the occurrence of a few craftsmen such as smiths and carpenters (see § 4.2), were probably integrated in a system of redistribution. Another important feature of the Ur texts is the information on the collection and management of agricultural revenues, chiefly grain, which can provide further insights into taxation mechanisms. The main officials in the Ur enclave, chief temple administrators and the ensis, are attested in connection to the handling of large quantities of grain that could be employed to sustain the institutional personnel. This is an important strand of evidence because the power to gather revenues is a core component of state capacity models developed by social scientists (Besley / Persson 2009; Mayshar et al. 2019; Winterhalder / Puleston 2018), but the origin of fiscal capacity in the ancient world is still an underdeveloped subject (Jursa / Moreno García 2015; Benati / Bonechi 2020; Bramanti 2020). Besides maintaining the institutional machinery, the revenues from farming were invested by the institutions in the provision of some public goods, such as the maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure (Benati 2015, § 6.3.1, fn. 29), the organization of religious festivals (Benati 2015, § 4.4.7) and seemingly a conscripted army (see § 4.4). The organization of cultic activities also featured a pan-Mesopotamian inter-city network of gift exchanges connected to specific rituals – the so-called “City Seals network” – of which Ur was a key node, further indicating the remarkable institutional capacity achieved by Ur early in the 3rd millennium (Benati 2015, § 6.6, fig. 6; Matthews / Richardson 2018). In conclusion, institutional capacity in early Ur was built by creating synergies between social classes through a common economic activity – irrigated farming – that allowed political institutions to exploit large tracts of agricultural land, extract substantial returns from them and redistribute the outputs via the provision of public goods. Cooperation between an elite managing institutional land and the farming sector was achieved by integrating farmers, craftsmen and people liable to a service into the institutional machinery via land-allocation practices that de facto secured access to land and

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benefits to state personnel within a redistributive system in exchange for labor and services and a share of public goods.44

Appendix 1. UET 2, 168: a text exemplifying institutional land allocation mechanisms 1. Edition of UET 2, 16845 obv. i 1′ 2′ 3′ 4′ 5′ 6′ 7′ 8′ 9′ obv. ii 1′ 2′ 3′ 4′ 5′ 6′ 7′ 8′ 9′ 10′ obv. iii 1′ 2′ 44

(Probably 5 or 6 lines missing) ˹1(bur3)˺ […] ˹x˺ 1(bur3) Ig-si4 1(bur3) AK 2(eše3) Igi+bur-ki Šul-IG engar ˹+2(bur3)˺ Amar-MUŠ3.KUR 1(bur3) Da-dar 1(bur3) Amar-e2-gibil 1(bur3) En-abzu-si (A few lines missing) […]-di4-la 2(eše3) UD.NI-umbinx?(UET 2-Sign 21-GADA)-na 1(eše3) gag-uruda 1(eše3) 3(iku) AŠ Dumu-ša3-˹dar?˺ engar 1(eše3) Aya2-šeš!(uri3) 1(bur3) 1(eše3) Ur-saĝ 1(bur3) AN-la-a Ur-dLamma engar 6(bur3) Bilx-lal3 (A few lines missing) […] ˹1(bur3)?˺ […] 2(eše3) ˹x46˺

Prentice (2010, 90–95), interprets the “ration” which the personnel of the Ba-U2 temple received as a type of wage for the performance of a work. It has to be noticed that several professional categories receiving a food allocation in the documentation from Ĝirsu were also recipient of šuku plots of land: for instance, the cook Ḫamati, who belongs to the category of the lu2 šuku dab5-ba in the “ration” lists (cf. Prentice 2010, 72 for the implication of the cooks), is also assigned plots of land of 4 iku in several tablets, notably HSS 3, 40, VS 25, 70, VS 25, 87, and HSS 3, 38. 45 Underlined: lines which do not seem to refer to a personal name but to a possible transaction. Bold: officials with a responsibility. 46 AL or NI.

The Scale and Extent of Political Institutions in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia

3′ 4′ 5′ 6′ 7′ 8′ 9′ 10′ 11′ 12′ 13′ obv. iv 1′ 2′ 3′ 4′ 5′ 6′ 7′ 8′ 9′ rev. i 1′ 2′ 3′ 4′ 5′ 6′ 7′ 8′ rev. ii 1 2 3 4

1(eše3) EREN2 2(eše3) Mes-utu 2(eše3) 4(iku) AN-ma-la 1(bur3) A-tu 1(bur3) 1(eše3) 3(iku) dInanna-AK 1(eše3) 3(iku) Šul 1(eše3) 3(iku) AK BU.MA 1(eše3) 3(iku) AN-za7 2(bur3) A-me-ki 2(eše3) 3(iku) Lu-ma 1(eše3) Na-˹ni˺ (Some lines missing) 2(bur3) […] 1(bur3) 1(eše3) ˹šu˺-[…] 1(eše3) 3(iku) TAR-[…] 1(bur3) ˹AŠ?˺ […] 1(eše3) 3(iku) Ur-ib ensix BU.MA 2(bur3) ˹Lugal˺-da 1(eše3) […] 1(eše3) […] (Some lines missing) 1(eše3) […] 2(eše3) ˹x˺-ad2-gal 1(eše3) 3(iku) Ama-iri-si 2(eše3) U4-sakar 1(bur3) 1(eše3) 3(iku) ˹d?˺[Inanna?]-AK 1(eše3) ˹x˺ […] BU-[MA x] ˹GAN2?˺ ˹saĝ?˺-dun3 […]-nu-gu2 šu-tab BU.MA ša3

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2. Area of the land allotments in UET 2, 168 Allotments Officials […]: 6.48 ha Igi-si4: 6.48 ha Šul-IG engar Ak: 6.48 ha Igi+bur-ki: 4.32 ha Amar-MUŠ3.KUR: +12.96 ha Da-dar: 6.48 ha Amar-e2-gibil: 6.48 ha En-abzu-si: 6.48 ha Dumu-ša3-˹dar?˺ engar […]-di4-la: […] Three plots do not refer to personal names: – UD.NI-umbinx?-na (a stone?): 4.32 ha – gag-uruda (a metal object): 2.16 ha – AŠ (dili?): 3.24 ha = in total: 9.72 ha Aya2-šeš: 2.16 ha Ur-saĝ: 8.64 ha Ur-dLamma engar AN-la-a: 6.48 ha Bilx-lal3: 38.88 ha […]: 6.48 ha [… NI/AL]: 4.32 ha EREN2 = a group of workers (?): 2.16 ha Mes-utu: 4.32 ha AN-ma-la: 5.76 ha a-tu (a priest?): 6.48 ha ensix BU.MA dInanna-AK: 9.72 ha Šul: 3.24 ha AK BU.MA: 3.24 ha AN-za7: 3.24 ha A(ya2?)-me-ki: 12.96 ha Lu-ma: 5.4 ha Na-ni: 2.16 ha […]:̣ 12.96 ha šu-[…]: 8.64 ha TAR(sila?)-[…]: 3.24 ha AŠ?: 6.48 ha Ur-ib: 3.24 ha Lugal-da: 12.96 ha […]: 2.16 ha […]: 2.16 ha […]: 2.16 ha BU-[MA x] / ˹GAN2?˺ x-ad2-gal: 4.32 ha Ama-iri-si: 3.24 ha U4-sakar: 4.32 ha ˹d?˺[Inanna?]-AK: 8.64 ha […]: 2.16 ha ˹saĝ?˺-du5 / […]-nu-gu2 / šu-tab / BU.MA ša3 “land-recorder (?) […], šu-tab-land, within BU.MA”

The Scale and Extent of Political Institutions in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia

Appendix 2. UET 2, 371: a key text for understanding institutional labor management 1. Edition of UET 2, 371 obv. i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 obv. ii 1′ 2′ 3′ 4′ 5′ 6′ 7′ rev. i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10a 10b 10c 10d 10e rev. ii 1 2

4(u) 3(aš) ˹keše2˺-[ra] Amar-ku3-ga [ugula] ˹4(u)˺ 3(aš) Me-˹ra˺ ugula […] 3(aš) ˹Ama?-ušum?˺-gal ugula […] Igi-˹gu4?˺ […] ˹Amar˺-[…] Amar-[u4]-sakar [nu-banda3] 2(u) 1(aš) ˹Amar-šul-ki ugula˺ 2(u) 1(aš) Gu4-tur ugula 2(u) 1(aš) AK ugula lu-lu nu-banda3 3(u) 2(aš) Ku-li ugula (Beginning of the column damaged) ˹2(u)˺ [ …] ˹2(u)˺ [ …] ˹3(u) MA?˺ [ugula] ˹3(u)˺ 2(aš) ˹x˺-si ugula […]-si nu-banda3 si:ga:˹nam?˺ 4(u) 8(aš) Mes-lu ugula gu2-an-še3 3(ĝeš2) 4(u) 6(aš) uĝ3 keše2-ra Amar-u4-sakar nu-banda3 1(ĝeš2) 3(aš) Lu-lu nu-banda3 1(ĝeš2) 4(aš) Ama-e2-du10 nu-banda3 1(ĝeš2) Lu2-za7-˹za7˺ […] dugin2 […] […] [… nam?]-si-ga […] 2(u) 4(aš) Ba-˹ra?˺ 1(bur3?) 2(eše3) ˹2(iku)?˺ […] 1(bur3?) 2(eše3) 3(iku) ˹lu2 x˺ 1(burʾu?) 1(bur3?) ˹2(iku?)˺ […] 1(burʾu?) 4(bur3?) […] 1(burʾu?) 3(bur3?) […] 4(burʾu) 4(bur3) ˹+1(iku)˺ keše2-˹ra˺ […] [gu2]-an-še3 […] ˹1(eše3)˺ […]

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2. Observations obv. ii 6′ and rev. i. 8: Burrows held those lines for a possible personal name, GA SI MUD. Its interpretation is thorny since the broken sign may also be NAM and its meaning seems to be that of a designation rather than a name. The interpretation of the numerals in rev. i 10c–e is not certain. They read as follows by using the conventions for the archaic texts: 10c 1N45 1N14 ˹2N1?˺ […] 10d 1N45 4N14 […] 10e 1N45 3N14 […] They could also refer to cereals, though this does not seem likely here. 3. Analysis Obverse (lines preserved) Number of men 43

ugula Amar-ku3-ga

43? 43? x x 21 21 21 32 32 Reverse 226

Me-ra-[x] Ama-ušumgal Igi-gu4? Amar-[…] Amar-sul-ki Gu4-tur AK Ku-li x

63 63 x

Lu-lu nu-banda3 Ama-e2-du10 nu-banda3 [PA?]-duginx(UET 2-Sign 303) ugula x x [nam?]-si-ga Ba-˹ra?˺

Number of men x +4 +24

Amar-u4-sakar nu-banda3

nu-banda3

Amar-u4-sakar

Lu-lu Ama-e2-du10 4 burʾu (?) 4 bur3 +1 iku = +285.48 ha gu2-an-še3: […] + 1(eše3)

nu-banda3

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Lafont, B., The Army of the Kings of Ur: The Textual Evidence, in: Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2009:5 (2009). LaPlaca, P.J. / Powell, M., The Agricultural Cycle and the Calendar at Presargonic Girsu, in: Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 5 (1990) 75–104. Lecompte, C., Archaic Texts and Fragments from Ur (Nisaba 25), Messina 2013. — Observations on Diplomatics, Tablet Layout and Cultural Evolution of the Early Third Millennium: The Archaic Texts From Ur, in: Balke, T. / Tsouparopoulou, C. (eds.), Materiality of Writing in Early Mesopotamia (Materiale Textkulturen 13), Berlin / Boston, MA 2016, 133–164. Lecompte, C. / Benati. G, Nonadministrative Documents from Archaic Ur and from Early Dynastic I–II Mesopotamia: A New Textual and Archaeological Analysis, in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 69 (2017) 3–31. Maeda, T., Work Concerning Irrigation Canals in Pre-Sargonic Lagash, in: Acta Sumerologica Japanica 6 (1984) 33–53. Maekawa, K., Agricultural Production in Ancient Sumer: Chiefly from Lagash Material, in: Zinbun 13 (1974) 1–60. — The Rent of the Tenant Field (gán-APIN.LAL) in Lagash, Zinbun 14 (1977) 1–54. — Cereal Cultivation in the Ur III Period, in: Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 1 (1984) 73–96. Marchesi, G. / Marchetti, N., Royal Statuary of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia (Mesopotamian Civilizations 14), Winona Lake, IN 2011. Matthews, R.J. / Richardson, A., Cultic Resilience and Inter-City Engagement at the Dawn of Urban History: Protohistoric Mesopotamia and the ‘City Seals’, 3200 – 2750 BC, in: World Archaeology 50 (2018) 723–747. Mayshar, J. et al., The Origin of the State: Land Productivity or Appropriability? (unpublished manuscript), 2019. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/omoav/mayshar_et_al_jpe_2n d_11_oct_2019.pdf (accessed in March 2020) Monaco, S.F., The Cornell University Archaic Tablets (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 1), Bethesda, MD 2007. Nissen, H.J., Die ältere frühdynastische Zeit als Forschungsproblem, in: Selz, G. J. / Dittmann, R. (eds.), It’s a Long Way to a Historiography of the Early Dynastic Period(s) (Altertumskunde des Vorderen Orients 15), Münster 2015, 1–32. North, D. / Wallis, J.J / Weingast, B., Violence and Social Orders. A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge, UK 2009. Pettinato, G., La proprietà fondiaria nella Mesopotamia del 3. millennio dal periodo di Gemdet Nasr alla 3a. dinastia di Ur, in: Klengel, H. / Renger, J.M. (eds.), Landwirtschaft im alten Orient. Ausgewälte Vorträge der XLI.

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Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Berlin, 4.–8.7.1994 (Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 18), Berlin 1999, 99–113. Pomponio, F. / Visicato, G., Early Dynastic Administrative Tablets of Šuruppak (Istituto Universitario di Napoli, Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici Series Maior 6), Naples 1994. Powell, M., Texts from the Time of Lugalzagesi. Problems and Perspectives in Their Interpretation, in: Hebrew Union College Annual 49 (1978) 1–58. — Identification and Interpretation of Long Term Price Fluctuations in Babylonia: More on the History of Money in Mesopotamia, in: Altorientalische Forschungen 17 (1990) 76–99. Prentice, R., The Exchange of Goods and Services in Pre-Sargonie Lagash (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 368), Münster 2010. Rattenborg, R., The Scale and Extent of Political Economies of the Middle Bronze Age Jazīrah and the Bilād al-Šām (c. 1800–1600 BCE), PhD Dissertation, University of Durham, Durham 2016. (http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11932/ accessed in March 2020) Renger, J.M., Institutional, Communal, and Individual Ownership or Possession of Arable Land in Ancient Mesopotamia from the End of the Fourth to the End of the First Millennium B.C., in: Chicago-Kent Law Review 71 (1995) 269–319. Richardson, S., Mesopotamia and the ‘New’ Military History, in: Brice, L.L. / Roberts, J.T. (eds.), Recent Directions in the Military History of the Ancient World (Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians 10), Claremont, CA 2011, 11–51. Rey, S., Mesopotamian Poliorcetics Before Assyria: Genesis of the Art of Fortification and Siege Warfare, in: Frederiksen, R. et al. (eds.), Focus on Fortification: New Research on Fortifications in the Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East. Papers of the Conference on the Research of Ancient Fortifications, Athens 6–9 December 2012 (Fokus Fortifikation Studies 2), Oxford 2016, 34–42. Sallaberger, W., The City and the Palace at Archaic Ur, in: Šašková, K. et al. (eds), Shepherds of the Black-headed People: The Royal Office Vis-à-vis Godhead in Ancient Mesopotamia, Pilsen 2010, 31–38. Sallaberger, W. / Pruß, A., Home and Work in Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia: ‘Ration Lists’ and ‘Private Houses’ at Tell Beydar/Nadaba, in: Steinkeller, P. / Hudson, M. (eds.), Labor in the Ancient World: A Colloquium Held at Hirschbach (Saxony), April 2005 (International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economies 5), Dresden 2015, 69–136. Schrakamp, I., Krieger und Waffen im frühen Mesopotamien. Organisation und Bewaffnung des Militärs in frühdynastischer und sargonischer Zeit, PhD Dissertation, Philipps Universität Marburg, Marburg 2010.

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— Krieger und Bauern. RU-lugal und aga3/aga-us2 im Militär des altsumerischen Lagaš, in: Neumann, H. et al. (eds), Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien. 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006 (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401), Münster 2014, 691–724. Schrakamp, I. / Paoletti, P., Steuer. A. Babylonien im 3. Jahrtausend, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 13 (2011) 161– 164. Selz, G., Altsumerische Verwaltungstexte aus Lagaš. Teil 1. Die altsumerischen Wirtschaftsurkunden der Eremitage zu Leningrad (Freiburger Altorientalische Studien 15/1), Stuttgart 1989. — Altsumerische Verwaltungstexte aus Lagaš. Teil 2. Altsumerische Wirtschaftsurkunden aus amerikanischen Sammlungen (Freiburger Altorientalische Studien 15/2), Stuttgart 1993. — Untersuchungen zur Götterwelt des altsumerischen Stadtstaates von Lagaš, Philadelphia, PA 1998. Steinkeller, P., The Renting of Fields in Early Mesopotamia and the Development of the Concept of “Interest” in Sumerian, in: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 24 (1981) 113–145. — Grundeigentum in Babylonien von Uruk IV zur früdynastischen Period II, in: Brentjes, B. (ed.), Das Grundeigentum in Mesopotamien (Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Sonderband), Berlin 1988, 11–27. — review of: Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts in Philadelphia. Part Two: The ‘Akkadian’ Texts, the Enlilemaba Texts, and the Onion Archive (The Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 3) by Åage Westenholz, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993) 141–145. — Introduction. Labor in the Early States: An Early Mesopotamian Perspective, in: Steinkeller, P. / Hudson, M. (eds.), Labor in the Ancient World (The International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economies 5), Dresden 2015, 1–35. — The Reluctant En of Inana – or the Persona of Gilgameš in the Perspective of Babylonian Political Philosophy, in: Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 5 (2018) 149–177. — Babylonian Priesthood during the Third Millennium BCE: Between Sacred and Profane, in: Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 19 (2019) 112– 151. Stone, E.C., How Many Sumerians per Hectare?, in: Heffron, Y. / Stone, A. / Worthington, M. (eds.), At the Dawn of History. Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of J.N. Postgate, Winona Lake, IN 2017, 567–582. Ur, J. / Wilkinson, T.J., Settlement and Economic Landscapes of Tell Beydar and its Hinterland, in: Lebeau, M. / Suleiman, A. (eds.), Beydar Studies I (Subartu 21), Turnhout 2008, 305–327.

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Visicato, G., The Power and the Writing: The Early Scribes of Mesopotamia, Bethesda, MD 2000. Widell, M., Sumerian Agriculture and Land Management, in: Crawford, H. (ed.), The Sumerian World, London 2013, 55–67. Wilcke, C. Neue Rechtsurkunden der Altsumerischen Zeit, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 86 (1996) 1–67. — Early Ancient Near Eastern Law. A History of its Beginnings. The Early Dynastic and Sargonic Periods, Winona Lake, IN 20072. Winterhalder, B. / Puleston, C.O., The Exchequer’s Guide to Population Ecology and Resource Exploitation in the Agrarian State, Cliodynamics 9 (2018) 40–83. Wright, H.T., The Administration of Rural Production in Ancient Mesopotamia (Anthropological Papers – University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology 38), Ann Arbor 1969. — Appendix: The Southern Margins of Sumer: Archaeological Survey of the Area of Eridu and Ur, in: Adams, R.McC., Heartland of Cities. Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates, Chicago / London 1981, 295–361.

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr: Die frühdynastischen Beschwörungen aus CUSAS 32 Nadezda Rudik (Leipzig) Meinen Eltern in der Zeit der Quarantäne

1 Einleitung Mit diesem Beitrag setze ich die Reihe von Artikeln fort, die den frühdynastischen Beschwörungstafeln aus der Schøyen-Sammlung gewidmet sind, die vom Professor Andrew George in CUSAS 32 publiziert wurden.1 Mit ihren 22 lesbaren Texten hat sich die Anzahl der bekannten Beschwörungen aus der frühdynastischen Periode IIIa fast verdoppelt. Hinzu kommt, dass die meisten dieser Texte keine Duplikate von bereits bekannten Texten sind. Vielmehr sind sie neu und enthalten neben schon bekannten Motiven und Formeln auch neue Motive, neue Formeln und neue Zeichenkombinationen. Sie erweitern somit wesentlich den Bestand der frühdynastischen Beschwörungen und unser Verständnis magisch-religiöser Vorstellungen in einer der frühesten schriftlichen Perioden. Mit 1

Für den ersten Artikel in dieser Reihe siehe Rudik 2020. Weitere Artikel sind in Vorbereitung. Der vorliegende Aufsatz stellt eine überarbeitete Fassung meines Vortrages dar, den ich auf der Rencontre in Paris im Rahmen des Workshops „Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies“ halten durfte. Für die Einladung, an diesem Workshop teilzunehmen, gilt mein herzlicher Dank den werten Kollegen A. Bramanti, N. Kraus und P. Notizia. Mein besonderer Dank gilt P. Attinger, A. George und M. Krebernik, die den ersten, damals noch viel kürzeren Entwurf dieses Aufsatzes gelesen und ihn durch ihre Kommentare, Kritik und Vorschläge wesentlich verbessert haben. Natürlich gehen alle verbliebenen Fehler und Irrtümer in diesem Artikel zu meinen Lasten. An dieser Stelle möchte ich mich auch bei M. and B. Schøyen für die Möglichkeit bedanken, in der Schøyen-Sammlung arbeiten und die Beschwörungstafeln kollationieren zu können. Überdies bin ich der ehemaligen Bibliothekarin der Schøyen-Sammlung E. Gano Sørenssen sowie den Kollegen A. George, K. Volk, J. Matuszak, L. Vacín und K. Wagensonner, die mich bei meiner Arbeit in der Sammlung immer mit Rat und Tat unterstützt haben, äußerst dankbar. Zu guter Letzt gebührt mein Dank meinem Mann und ägyptologischen Kollegen Marco Stockhusen für die geduldige Korrektur meines Beitrages. Neben den im RlA gebräuchlichen Abkürzungen wird hier FSB + Nr. verwendet, was für „Frühe Sumerische Beschwörung“ + Nummerierung der Texte in Rudik 2015 steht.

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Nadezda Rudik

dem folgenden Beitrag werden erste vorläufige Ergebnisse zu diesen Texten präsentiert. Der Artikel besteht aus vier Teilen. In der Einleitung (1) wird die allgemeine Charakteristik der frühdynastischen Tafeln aus der Schøyen-Sammlung und ihrer Texte vorgestellt. In Teil 2 werden die einzelnen Passagen aus dem Text CUSAS 32, 2 besprochen. Der Teil 3 ist den Texten aus CUSAS 32, 1 gewidmet: 1a (3.1) und 1d (3.2) werden ediert und ausführlich kommentiert. Im 4. Teil wird eine Beschwörung der Sammeltafel CUSAS 32, 3 besprochen. Der Aufsatz wird durch das Glossar, die Liste der im Artikel erwähnten Texte und Bibliographie abgerundet. Von den dreien ist die Tafel CUSAS 32, 22 die kleinste. Sie ist nur auf der Vorderseite in zwei Kolumnen beschrieben und enthält eine einzige Beschwörung gegen Schlangen, die mit einem Kolophon versehen ist. Im Weiteren werde ich sie als „Schlangentafel“ bezeichnen.3 Die Tafeln CUSAS 32, 14 und CUSAS 32, 35 sind Sammeltafeln. Die erste ist in einem sehr guten Zustand. Sie umfasst insgesamt neun Beschwörungen mit fünfeinhalb Texten auf der Vorderseite und dreieinhalb auf der Rückseite. Genauso wie die kleine Tafel gegen Schlangen besitzt auch CUSAS 32, 1 ein Kolophon. Da in den Texten dieser Tafel ungewöhnlich viele Göttergestalten auftreten, nenne ich sie „Göttertafel“. Von der massiven Tafel CUSAS 32, 2 ist nur ein zentrales Bruchstück erhalten geblieben. Sieben Kolumnen auf der Vorderseite sind einigermaßen gut lesbar und bergen nicht weniger als neun Texte in sich. Die Rückseite ist größtenteils mit einer festen Kruste überzogen. Deshalb lassen sich hier nur wenige der Fächer entschlüsseln. Diese Tafel hat von mir den Namen „Enlil-Tafel“ bekommen. Die genauere Erklärung erfolgt später. Als Nächstes möchte ich die Schøyen-Tafeln im Kontext der bereits bekannten frühdynastischen und in manchen Fällen späteren Beschwörungsliteratur (im Weiteren manchmal als „Vergleichstafeln/-texte“ bezeichnet) betrachten.6 Die Bewertung soll auf Grundlage folgender Kriterien vorgenommen werden: 1.1. Vorhandensein eines Kolophons; 1.2. Zielsetzung der Beschwörungen; 1.3. Auftreten von Gottheiten; 1.4. Motive; 1.5. Zeichenkombinationen.

2

CDLI: P253641. Für eine ausführliche Beschreibung aller drei Tafeln siehe schon George 2016, 25–28. 3 Ich habe allen Tafeln einen Namen gegeben, um sie nicht ständig nur mit ihren Inventarnummern angeben zu müssen. 4 CDLI: P253640. 5 CDLI: P253642. 6 Beispiele für umfassende Editionen von früheren Beschwörungen (bis in die altbabylonische Zeit) sind Krebernik 1984; van Dijk / Geller 2003; Rudik 2015; George 2016.

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr Beschwörungstafeln aus der Schøyen-Sammlung7

Vergleichstafeln: einige der längst bekannten FD IIIa Beschwörungstafeln

CUSAS 32, 2 = „Schlangentafel“ CUSAS 32, 1 = „Göttertafel“ CUSAS 32, 3 = „Enlil-Tafel“

VAT 12597 (P010644) VAT 12524 (P010631) VAT 12639 (P010610) VAT 12749 (P010639) VAT 12684 (P010665) IAS 549 (P010007) TSŠ 170 (P010769) IAS 319 (P010256) MRAH O.1920 (P272783) CUSAS 23, 199 (P325553)

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Tabelle Nr. 1. Schøyen-Tafeln im Kontext.

1.1 Vorhandensein eines Kolophons Wie ich schon erwähnt habe, besitzen zwei von drei frühdynastischen Beschwörungstafeln in der Schøyen-Sammlung die für lexikalische und literarische Texte der frühdynastischen Zeit typischen Kolophone, und zwar Listen mit Personennamen, wobei die meisten Einträge mit UMBISAĜ beginnen. Darauf hat schon A. George in CUSAS 32 hingewiesen.8 Ich halte es aber für angebracht, diese Tatsache nochmals zu unterstreichen. Früher wurden die frühdynastischen Beschwörungen als eine besondere Textgruppe betrachtet, die sich von den anderen literarischen Texten nicht zuletzt aufgrund der fehlenden Kolophone abhebt.9 Das Vorhandensein von Kolophonen bringt die Beschwörungen mit anderen lexikalischen und literarischen Texten dieser Zeit in Zusammenhang und dürfte ihren gemeinsamen Sitz im Leben reflektieren. Darüber hinaus treten in den Beschwörungen auf der „Göttertafel“ zwei Unterschriften auf, die auf die Zielsetzung der Texte hinweisen. Sie folgen beide Male der Standardschlussformel der frühdynastischen Beschwörungen KA+UD dNin-girimx „(das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim“. Einer von ihnen ist sogar mit dem Genitiv und der Kopula /am/ gebildet: KA+UD dNin-girimx(A.BU.ḪA.DU) KI ME TE MA kam4(LAK29) (Das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim. Sie (die Beschwörung) ist betreffs… (CUSAS 32, 1a ii 1–2)

7

Für eine Beschreibung und Edition der ausgewählten Texte siehe George 2016, 25–28. George 2016, 27–28. 9 Siehe z. B. Cunningham 1997, 5 und George 2016, 27. 8

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Nadezda Rudik KA+UD dnin-girimx(A.BU.ḪA.DU) ĝiri2 ĝiri2 (Das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim. (Betreffs) Skorpione. (CUSAS 32, 1 iii 6–7)

Das ist deshalb interessant, weil nach den bisher erfassten Daten die Unterschriften dieser Art (mit dem Genitiv und der Kopula) erstmals in den Beschwörungen aus Ur III vorkommen.10 In den frühdynastischen Beschwörungen aus Ebla gibt es zwar schon Unterschriften, sie sind aber anders gebildet und anscheinend unter dem Einfluss der semitischen Sprache entstanden.11 1.2 Zielsetzung der Beschwörungen Was die Zielsetzungen anbelangt, bieten die Beschwörungen aus der SchøyenSammlung keine Überraschungen. Sie sind typisch für diese Zeit. Schlangen, Skorpione, Dämonen und Krankheiten stehen nach wie vor im Fokus des Interesses. Ungewöhnlich scheint jedoch die relative thematische Homogenität der Schøyen-Texte, wie sie uns zumindest auf der gut lesbaren „Schlangen-“ und „Göttertafel“ begegnet. Wie aus der zweiten Tabelle ersichtlich ist, sind auf diesen Tafeln vier von zehn Beschwörungen sicherlich und eine höchstwahrscheinlich gegen Schlangen und Skorpione gerichtet. Zwei weitere Texte weisen eine bildliche Sprache auf, die sowohl auf stechende Kreaturen als auch auf Dämonen hinweisen könnte. Von den sieben Texten der „Enlil-Tafel“, die ich thematisch einordnen konnte, zielen fünf darauf ab, gefährliche Tiere zu bekämpfen. In den Vergleichstexten zeigt sich ein etwas anderes Bild: von den 28 mir bekannten Beschwörungen des Frühdynastikums IIIa haben mutmaßlich nur acht Texte mit stechenden und beißenden Tieren zu tun, wobei zwei von diesen Texten höchstwahrscheinlich gar nicht gegen einen Skorpion sind, sondern Ritualzwecken im Ritual der Heiligen Hochzeit dienen. Die meisten (nämlich 14 Texte) betreffen dagegen verschiedene Krankheiten bzw. die Geburt.

10

Rudik 2015, 44. Es handelt sich dabei um die Unterschriften mit lu2, wobei lu2 dem späteren akkadischen ša in Unterschriften zu akkadischen Beschwörungen entsprechen könnte (Krebernik 1996, 12). Siehe z. B. ša zu-qi2-qi2-pi2 TIM 9, 66, 35 (CDLI: P223459) „betreffs des Skorpions“; ša ša3 si-sa2 YOS 11, 21, 33 (CDLI: P305832) „betreffs der Behandlung des Inneren“. 11

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Beschwörungen aus der SchøyenSammlung

Vergleichstexte (FD IIIa)

CUSAS 32, 2 = „Schlangentafel“ 1. Schlangen

VAT 12597 (Fara) 1. = FSB 61A: Fruchtbarkeit (Skorpion, Heilige Hochzeit?) 2. = FSB 13A: Schlangen/Skorpione12 3. = FSB 66A: Schlangen/Skorpione 4. = FSB 15A: Krankheit 5. = FSB 14A: Krankheit 6. = FSB 57A: Geburt 7. = FSB 5: Krankheit 8. = FSB 22: Ohrenkrankheit 9. = FSB 23: Augenkrankheit

CUSAS 32, 1 = „Göttertafel“ 1a. Dämonen/Schlangen (?) 1b. Schlangen/Skorpione 1c. Dämonen igi-ḫulu, lu2-ḫulu, udug-ḫulu 1d. Skorpion (?) 1e. Skorpionen/Dämonen (?) 1f. Schlangen 1g. Krankheit 1h. Krankheit 1e. Skorpione CUSAS 32, 3 (12+) = „Enlil-Tafel“ Identifiziert: fünf gegen Schlangen/Skorpione zwei gegen Krankheiten

VAT 12524 (Fara) 1. = FSB 4: Krankheit 2. = FSB 60: Fruchtbarkeit (Viehzucht?) 3. = FSB 11: Schlangen/Skorpione (?)13 4. = FSB 62: Fruchtbarkeit (Skorpion, Heilige Hochzeit?) 5. = FSB 12: Schlangen/Skorpione14 6. = FSB 84: unklar 7. = FSB 79: Hausbau VAT 12639/VAT 12749 (Fara) 1. = FSB 71: Mundreinigung VAT 12684 (Fara) 1. = FSB 1: Lob an Tamariske IAS 549 (Tell Abu Ṣalabiḫ) 1. = FSB 8: Krankheit TSŠ 170 (Fara) 1. = FSB 13B: Krankheit 2. = FSB 66B: Schlangen/Skorpione

12

Dieser Text wird in Krebernik 1984, 14–18 als eine Beschwörung gegen Bann, in Rudik 2015, 144–146 als eine Beschwörung gegen Krankheit gedeutet. Siehe jetzt aber den Text CUSAS 32, 1b, der eine ausführlichere Version von FSB 13 darstellt und eindeutig gegen Schlangen gerichtet ist. 13 Diese Beschwörung wird in Rudik 2015, 140–141 als eine Beschwörung gegen Krankheit interpretiert. Sie muss aber wegen der Verbalform mu-GIR2.GIR2, die in CUSAS 32, 1 zweimal in Verbindung mit Schlangen bzw. Skorpionen vorkommt (CUSAS 32, 1b ii 6 und 1f vi 7), umgedeutet werden. 14 Der Text muss im Vergleich zu Rudik 2015, 142–143 genauso wie FSB 11 umgedeutet werden. Zu den Gründen siehe die vorherige Fußnote.

104 Beschwörungen aus der SchøyenSammlung

Nadezda Rudik Vergleichstexte (FD IIIa) 3. = FSB 15B: Krankheit 4. = FSB 57B: Geburt 5. = FSB 14B: Krankheit IAS 319 (Tell Abu Ṣalabiḫ) 1. = FSB 85: unklar MRAH O.1929 (unbekannt) 1. = FSB 16: Krankheit 2. = FSB 17: Krankheit CUSAS 23, 199 (unbekannt) 1. Krankheit

Tabelle Nr. 2. Zielsetzungen der Beschwörungen aus der Schøyen-Sammlung und der Vergleichstexte.

1.3 Auftreten von Gottheiten Bezüglich des Auftretens von Gottheiten lassen sich in den Schøyen-Tafeln ebenfalls einige Besonderheiten beobachten. In der „Schlangentafel“ wird keine Gottheit explizit erwähnt. Die „Göttertafel“ weist hingegen eine Göttersammlung auf, die fast größer ist als auf allen anderen Beschwörungstafeln des Frühdynastikums IIIa zusammen. Zehn Gottheiten, wobei einige auf dieser Tafel mehrmals erwähnt werden, regen sich über Geschehnisse auf, kommen zur Hilfe oder treten miteinander in Dialog. Im Vergleich dazu verfügen die an Göttergestalten reichsten Vergleichssammeltafeln VAT 12597 und MRAH O.1929 jeweils nur über sechs Gottheiten (siehe Tabelle Nr. 3). Die populärste Gottheit der Schøyen-Tafeln ist nach wie vor die Beschwörungsgöttin Ningirim, die acht Mal (davon nur vier Mal in der Schlussformel) in Erscheinung tritt. Die Göttin NE.DAG scheint dort aber keine so wichtige Rolle zu spielen. Während sie in den Vergleichstexten mehrmals auftaucht, kommt sie auf den Schøyen-Tafeln nur einmal vor (CUSAS 32, 1b ii 11), und dazu in einer Beschwörung, die offensichtlich eine Variante einer Beschwörung der Vergleichstexte (FSB 13) darstellt. Beschwörungen aus der SchøyenSammlung

Vergleichstexte (FD IIIa)

CUSAS 32, 2 = „Schlangentafel“ Keine

VAT 12597 (Fara) Ningirim: 6 (3 in der Schlussformel) NE.DAG: 3 Enlil: 4 (2 in einem Text)

CUSAS 32, 1 = „Göttertafel“

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr Beschwörungen aus der SchøyenSammlung

Vergleichstexte (FD IIIa)

Ningirim: 8 (4 in der Schlussformel) Enlil: 3 (2 in einem Text) Asar: 2 Nergal: 2 (in einem Text) Utu: 1 oder 2? Enki: 1 An: 1 NE.DAG: 1 Baḫar-Enunzaku: 1 Nin-e2-SUM (?): 1

Enki: 2 (in einem Text) Ninpiriĝ: 1 Ninmaš: 1

CUSAS 32, 3 (12+) = „Enlil-Tafel“ Enlil: 8+

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VAT 12524 (Fara) Ningirim: 3 Enlil: 1 NE.DAG: 1 VAT 12639/VAT 12749 (Fara) Ama-ušumgal: 1 VAT 12684 (Fara) Enlil: 1 Ninlil: 1 IAS 549 (Tell Abu Ṣalabiḫ) Ningirim: 1 TSŠ 170 (Fara) Ningirim: 1 NE.DAG: 2 Enlil: 2 (in einem Text) Ninmaš: 1 Šara: 1 IAS 319 (Tell Abu Ṣalabiḫ) Ningirim: 1 MRAH O.1929 (unbekannt) Ningirim: 2 Utu: 1 Nanna: 1 Enki: 1 Enlil: 1 IG.DU: 1

Tabelle Nr. 3. Gottheiten in den Beschwörungen aus der Schøyen-Sammlung und in den Vergleichstexten.

Die „Enlil-Tafel“ ist nicht minder ungewöhnlich, aber auf eine ganz andere Weise: die einzige Gottheit, die hier immer wieder auftaucht, ist Enlil (daher der Name „Enlil-Tafel“). Im lesbaren Teil der Tafel kommt er insgesamt acht Mal

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vor. Andere Gottheiten treten nicht auf, soweit man nach dem erhaltenen Rest der Tafel beurteilen kann. 1.4 / 1.5 Motive und Zeichenkombinationen Bei der Besprechung der Motive und Zeichen möchte ich mich auf die Texte und Textstellen konzentrieren, die in CUSAS 32 gar nicht oder nur ganz kurz angesprochen worden sind. Da der Stoff zu umfangreich ist, habe ich nur die interessantesten und mehr oder weniger verständlichen ausgewählt. Zuerst soll kurz auf die „Schlangentafel“ eingegangen werden, darauf folgt die kommentierte Edition zweier Texte der „Göttertafel“, um abschließend noch einen Blick auf eine Beschwörung der „Enlil-Tafel“ zu werfen.

2 „Schlangentafel“: CUSAS 32, 2 (MS 4549/2 = P253641) Im Rahmen meines Vortrages auf der Rencontre in Paris wurden an dieser Stelle ungewöhnliche Zeichenkombinationen und einzigartige Motive auf dieser Tafel mit ihrer Beschwörung gegen Schlangen erörtert. Seit der Publikation dieser Beschwörung in der Festschrift Sommerfeld/Krebernik,15 erübrigt sich dieser Schritt. Stattdessen werden hier einige Fehler korrigiert, die in dieser Edition aufgetreten sind, und ein paar zusätzliche Anmerkungen zur Paläographie der Tafel gemacht. Im Incantatio-Teil der Beschwörung, der die rituellen Praktiken beschreibt, die gegen eine Schlange angewendet werden mussten, kommt die folgende Zeile (ii 2) vor: eme-ba gu di4-di4 ma-si. Ich übersetzte sie als „sie (eine Gottheit) füllte ihre (= der Schlage) Zunge mit kleinen Schnürchen für mich“.16 Dabei habe ich zwei si verwechselt: si „füllen“, das mit Direktiv gebraucht wird, und si(g) „hineinstecken, eintiefen“, das in Verbindung mit Lokativ in Erscheinung tritt.17 Hier ist eindeutig si(g) anzusetzen. Die Übersetzung würde also nun so lauten: „sie (eine Gottheit) steckte kleine Schnürchen in ihre Zunge für mich hinein“. Das Motiv beschreibt wohl eine rituelle Praxis, die auf Schlangen angewendet wurde. Ein ähnlicher Ausdruck, allerdings mit dem Verb la2 anstatt von si(g), kommt oft in späteren Beschwörungen vor.18

15

Rudik 2020. Rudik 2020, 633. 17 Auf diesen Fehler hat mich freundlicherweise P. Attinger in seiner E-Mail vom 06.02.20 hingewiesen, wofür ich ihm von ganzem Herzen danken möchte. Zum Unterschied zwischen beiden Verben siehe z. B. Attinger 2008, 12 mit Anm. 2; Molina 2014, 193; Schrakamp 2015, 396. 18 Rudik 2020, 647–648. 16

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Ferner müssen wir uns der Zeile i 3: ka niĝar-bi sa2 du11-ga „das Maul ist ihre Cella; sie traf ein“ zuwenden.19 Für die Verbalform DI du11-ga habe ich in meinem Aufsatz zwei Verben in Betracht gezogen: sa2—du11 „eintreffen“ oder silim—du11 „begrüßen“, wobei ich die beiden in einer Fußnote aus mir selbst nicht mehr erklärlichen Gründen als Verben eingestuft habe, die erst seit der altbabylonischen Zeit in Erscheinung treten.20 Die beiden sind jedoch natürlich auch schon früher belegt: bekanntlich erscheint sa2—du11 spätestens seit FD IIIb in Königsinschriften im Kontext regelmäßiger Lieferungen.21 Noch früher ist das Verb sa2—du11 „erreichen, ankommen“ in literarischen Texten bezeugt, die in der UD.GAL.NUN-Orthographie verfasst sind.22 Die Verbalformen treten dort sowohl normalorthographisch als auch in der UD.GAL.NUN-Orthographie auf: sa2 nam2-du11;23 sa2 ḫe-˹mu(NUN)-du11(ŠID)˺;24 sa2(KAD4) ḫe-mu(NUN)˹na5-du11(ŠID)˺;25 sa2(KAD4) mu-du11.26 Hingewiesen sei auch auf den Ausdruck SA2.DU11.GA-ne in einer eblaitischen Beschwörung, den Krebernik (1984, 110) allerdings als ein Substantiv und nicht als eine Verbalform auffasst. Alle diese Belege untermauern meine These, dass die Zeichenkombination DI KA GA als sa2 du11-ga gelesen werden muss, aufs Beste. silim—du11 kommt ebenfalls wahrscheinlich schon in Ebla als silim—e vor.27 Zum Schluss möchte ich noch das Problem der Paläografie ansprechen und hoffe, damit auch die weitere Diskussion anzuregen. In meinem Beitrag28 habe ich einige Zeichen der „Schlangen-“ und „Göttertafel“ anhand der Kriterien betrachtet, die von Krebernik29 für Fara und Tell Abu Ṣalabiḫ formuliert wurden, ohne dabei aber irgendwelche Schlüsse ziehen zu können. A. Bramanti, der sich unter anderem auf die frühdynastische Paläographie von Umma und Adab spezialisiert hat, hat mich darauf hingewiesen, dass bei der „Schlangentafel“ die Umma-Paläographie vorliegen könnte.30 Besonders das Zeichen BI, aber auch

19

Rudik 2020, 631. Rudik 2020, 640 Anm. 27. Darauf hat mich wiederum P. Attinger in seiner E-Mail vom 06.02.20 aufmerksam gemacht. 21 Siehe z. B. RIME 1.9.4.12 iiʹ 2ʹ (En-anatum I, CDLI: P431109); RIME 1.9.5.23, 30 (En-metena, CDLI: P431140; P222530); Attinger 1993, 632 und 638. 22 Siehe Zand 2009, 78 mit Anm. 429. 23 CUT 9, 9A 08.03 (Zand 2009, 335; CDLI: P010488); CUT 22, 22A 02ʹ.04ʹ (Zand 2009, 432; CDLI: P010326); CUT 24, 24A 02ʹ.01ʹ–02ʹ (Zand 2009, 451; CDLI: P010920). 24 CUT 7, 7D 06.02ʹ (Zand 2009, 308; CDLI: P225986). 25 CUT 7, 7C 12.10ʹ (Zand 2009, 308; CDLI: P010109). 26 CUT 4, 4A 06.13 (Zand 2009, 218; CDLI: P010622). 27 Attinger 1993, 670 und 672. Zu den beiden Verben siehe auch Rubio 2006, 168. 28 Rudik 2020, 630–631 Anm. 3. 29 Krebernik 1998, 280. 30 Mündliche Mitteilung und E-Mail vom 02.02.20. 20

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das Zeichen MUŠ würden die für Umma typischen Züge aufweisen.31 Tatsächlich wird das Zeichen BI in i 2 und 3 der „Schlangentafel“ und auch in Rs. i 2, iv 9 und 10 der „Göttertafel“ mit einem zusätzlichen Keil oben genauso wie in Umma geschrieben. Durch die gleiche Schreibung zeichnet sich aber meiner Meinung nach, auch das Zeichen BI auf den Beschwörungstafeln aus Fara (SF 46 Vs. iv 1; SF 71 Vs. i 3)32 aus. Soweit ich sehen kann, ist das Zeichen MUŠ in Fara und auf der „Schlangen-“ und „Göttertafel“ ebenfalls in ähnlicher Weise geschrieben. Somit muss einstweilen die Frage nach der Herkunft der beiden Tafeln offenbleiben.

3 „Göttertafel“: CUSAS 32, 1 (MS 4549/1 = P253640) Wie schon gesagt, enthält die „Göttertafel“ insgesamt neun Beschwörungen: wohl vier gegen Schlangen bzw. Skorpione, zwei gegen Krankheiten, eine gegen Dämonen und zwei mit umstrittenen Funktionen. Dabei wird die Zielsetzung in drei Fällen im Text nicht ausdrücklich genannt. Man kann sie aber anhand des Fachvokabulars und durch den Vergleich mit späteren Beschwörungen mit relativer Sicherheit bestimmen. Bei der ersten Beschwörung der Tafel, für die anschließend eine Edition geboten wird (3.1), handelt es sich z. B. mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit um eine Beschwörung gegen Dämonen oder eventuell (aber weniger wahrscheinlich) gegen Schlangen. Die Ausdrücke in der vierten Beschwörung der Tafel, die nach der ersten besprochen wird (3.2), könnten dafür sprechen, dass dieser Text einem Skorpion gewidmet ist. 3.1 CUSAS 32, 1a (i 1–ii 2)33 i1

i2

31

Einleitungsformel LAK35834-nu-ru LAK358-nu-ru Expositio dumu ?35 ME TE MA

Zur Paläografie dieser Zeichen in Umma siehe Bramanti / Notizia 2016, 298 und Bramanti 2019, 8. 32 SF 46 = VAT 12524 = CDLI: P010631; SF 71 = VAT 12684 = CDLI: P010665. 33 Eine kurze Beschreibung des Textes findet sich in George 2016, 26. A. George nennt dort den Anfang (dumu ME.TE.MA) und den Kolophon; stellt fest, dass ME.TE.MA ein Schlüsselterminus des Textes ist, und erwähnt die Formel „bei … beschwören“, die in i 6–7 vorkommt. 34 Die Kopie in George 2016, Plate II zeigt nur das Zeichen AN. Laut meiner Kollation ist aber ein leicht abgeriebenes Zeichen ŠU2 vor dem Zeichen AN zu sehen. Das Zeichen ist also LAK358, wie auch sonst passim in der Einleitungsformel auf dieser Tafel. 35 Emendiert in Analogie zum Kolophon.

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr i3 i4 i5

i6 i7 i8 i9 i 10 i 11 i 12 i 13 i 14

ii 1

ii 2

36

109

Kinder (von?)…! dumu ki šuš2 Kinder, die Erde bedecken! u4 piriĝ su e-gu736 Als der Löwe (sein = des Patienten) Fleisch zerfleischte, lu2-ra ki-ba e-kux(DU) trat ich/er (ein Priester?/eine Gottheit?) dorthin zu (diesem) Menschen ein. Incantatio zi an Beim Leben des Himmels! zi den-lilx(E2)37 Beim Leben Enlils! KI ME TE MA (Du,)…! ki šuš2 (Du, der) die Erde bedeckt! ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2 (Du, der) auf der Erde herumwimmelt! lu2-ta en-na ba-ta-gi4-na Bis du dich vom Menschen (nicht) abwendest, an-na nu-bala wirst du den Himmel nicht überqueren. ˹niĝ2˺-ba den-lilx(E2) Enlil (wird) keine Ration šu-zu nu-ba-la238 dir (wörtlich: deiner Hand) zuteilen. Legitimationsformel KA+UD dNin-girimx(A.BU.ḪA.DU) (Das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim. Kolophon KI ME TE MA kam4(LAK29) Sie (die Beschwörung) ist betreffs…

Hier und in i 5 ist die Zeichenanordnung nicht eindeutig. Zur Lesung dieser Zeilen siehe auch den Kommentar unter 2.1. 37 Zu dieser Schreibung im 3. Jt. siehe Krebernik 1998, 284 und Wang 2011, 85–91, 227. 38 Es ist erwähnenswert, dass M. Krebernik noch ein weiteres Syntagma in dieser Zeile vermutet (E-Mail vom 12.05.20), das mit dem Zeichen la2 beginnt: la2 ist in der zweiten Reihe des Kastens geschrieben, danach folgt ein kleiner Bruch, an dessen Stelle weitere Zeichen stehen könnten. Ich kann diese Annahme momentan weder bestätigen noch widerlegen. Wenn la2 nicht zur Verbalform nu-ba-la2 gehören würde, hätten wir einen schönen Satz mit zwei im Einklang stehenden Elementen /ba/: niĝ2-ba nu-ba „er wird (dir) keine Ration zuteilen“. Der Sinn des Satzes würde sich dabei nicht ändern. Es muss aber angemerkt werden, dass momentan eine nicht weniger schöne Parallele zwischen den Verbalformen nu-bala (i 12) und nu-ba-la2 (i 14) existiert.

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3.1.1 Zum Inhalt39 Der Text besitzt einen guten Aufbau, der aus der Einleitungsformel, Expositio, Incantatio, einer Schlussformel in Form der Legitimationsformel und dem Kolophon besteht.40 In der Expositio wird die Ausgangssituation beschrieben. Zuerst wird kurz der Agent des Bösen eingeführt (i 2–3), der nicht lange zögert, um einen Menschen anzugreifen. Er labt sich gerade an seinem Fleisch (i 4), als sich die Kräfte des Guten ohne großen Pomp melden (i 5).41 Die Incantatio, der dramatische Handlungsteil, wird hier in Form der Beschwörungsformel „beim Leben beschwören“ und der Wunschformeln für die Beseitigung des Bösen realisiert.42 Dabei hebt sie sich von den anderen frühdynastischen Beschwörungen durch einen Ausdruck ab, der zwar gut in altbabylonischen Beschwörungen belegt ist, aber hier zum ersten Mal in einer frühdynastischen Beschwörung auftritt (siehe 2.4). Möglicherweise stellt die Incantatio die direkte Rede des Helden dar, der dem halbabgenagten Leidenden zur Hilfe kommt. Er beschwört das Böse (i 6–7) und droht ihm mit Konsequenzen (i 11– 14), falls es sich weigert, prompt zu verschwinden. 3.1.2 Zu den Protagonisten In diesem Text taucht kein Begriff auf, der den Hauptakteur der Beschwörung näher definieren würde. Das Thema des Textes ist aber ganz eindeutig. Die Protagonisten sind dumu (KI) ME TE MA, die den Boden bedecken, auf der Erde herumwimmeln und in Gestalt eines Löwen hinter Menschenfleisch her sind. Die Zeichenkombination (KI) ME TE MA kommt zweimal im Text selbst (davon einmal in Kombination mit dumu) und einmal in seinem Kolophon vor: dumu ? ME TE MA dumu ki šuš2 Kinder (von?)… ! Kinder, die die Erde bedecken! (i 2–3) KI ME TE MA ki šuš2 ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2

39

Es handelt sich um die Interpretation, die mir am sinnvollsten erscheint. Sie stellt trotzdem nur einen Versuch dar, wie es fast immer der Fall bei den frühesten Texten ist. 40 Zum Aufbau der früheren Beschwörungen siehe ausführlich Rudik 2015, 22–68 und Rudik 2018, 401. Zu den Schlussformeln siehe Rudik 2015, 29–43. 41 Für alternative Interpretationen siehe den Kommentar zur Zeile. 42 Zu den Wunschformeln für die Beseitigung des Bösen siehe Rudik 2015, 24–25.

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(Du,)… ! (Du, der) die Erde bedeckt! (Du, der) auf der Erde herumwimmelt! (i 8–10) KI ME TE MA kam4(LAK29) Sie (die Beschwörung) ist betreffs… (ii 2)

Als Nächstes wird der Versuch unternommen, die Schlüsselfigur des Textes, die sich hinter dem Spitznamen dumu (KI) ME TE MA verbirgt, näher zu bestimmen. In 1 (3.1.2.1.1–3.1.2.1.5) wird die Zeichenkombination (KI) ME TE MA behandelt; in 2 (3.1.2.2.1–3.1.2.2.5) wird CUSAS 32, 1a abschnittsweise mit FSB 2 und FSB 3 verglichen; in 3 (3.1.2.3.1–3.1.2.3.3) wird die bildliche Sprache besprochen und in 3.1.2.4 wird ein Fazit gezogen. 3.1.2.1 (KI) ME TE MA In der Zeichenkombination (KI) ME TE MA ist nur die Position von KI am Anfang der Abfolge sicher. Die Zeichen ME TE, jedes Mal eng zusammengeschrieben, stehen immer über MA. Wenn allerdings genug Platz vorhanden ist, steht MA immer zwischen KI und ME TE, aber etwas tiefer. In Frage kommen also in erster Linie zwei Lesefolgen: (KI) ME TE MA und (KI) MA ME TE. Die Zeichen ME TE könnten auch als ein Logogramm ME.TE mit unklarer Lesung oder als ME:TE verstanden werden. 3.1.2.1.1 (KI) ME TE MA in CUSAS 32, 1a und zwei Texten aus Ebla Eine ähnliche Zeichenkombination kommt in zwei anderen frühdynastischen Beschwörungen, FSB 2 und FSB 3, die aus Ebla stammen:43 CUSAS 32, 1a i2 ME TE MA KI MAME TE i8 KI MAME TE ii 2 FSB 2 i2

43

GI17 TI ME MA

Für FSB 2 siehe Krebernik 1984, 96–100 und Rudik 2015, 103–107; CDLI: P241072; für FSB 3 siehe Krebernik 1984, 102–104 und Rudik 2015, 108–110; CDLI: P241090; P241200. In diesem Aufsatz wird für beide Texte jedoch eine neue Interpretation geboten.

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112 iv 4

FSB 3A ii 4 FSB 3B iii 1

GI17 TI MA

NU GI17

KI!44 MA DA MI

Aus der Zeichenanordnung in FSB 2 iv 4 ergibt sich die Lesefolge GI17 TI MA mit ME/MI als einem nicht obligatorischen Element (Natürlich kann ME dort auch versehentlich ausgelassen worden sein). So stehen insgesamt also vier syllabische (?) Schreibungen zur Verfügung: ki-te-ma-me (CUSAS 32, 1a) gi17-ti-ma-me (FSB 2) ki-da-ma-mi (FSB 3B) gi17-ti-ma (FSB 2)

Hinzu kommt eine abgekürzte (?) Form nu-gi17 (FSB 3A). 3.1.2.1.2 KI/GI17 TE/TI MA als kitim „Totengeist“? Allen diesen syllabischen Schreibvarianten könnte das Wort kitim „Totengeist“ zugrunde liegen, wie schon Krebernik (1984, 98) für die Schreibung gi17-ti-ma vermutet hat. Der Eintrag GIDIM = nu-ga-ti-mu-um in der eblaitischen Zeichenliste (Ebla Sign List 97)45 könnte wahrscheinlich auch die abgekürzte Form nugi17 erklären. Dazu siehe auch nu-kitim in der frühdynastischen Liste Lu E 69 (MEE 3, 7 iv 6). Dann würde es sich bei ME in CUSAS 32, 1a und FSB 2 sowie MI in FSB 3 um abtrennbare Elemente handeln. An der Annahme, dass alle vier Schreibvarianten die gleiche syllabische Schreibung darstellen, stören jedoch zwei Dinge: Erstens sehe ich keine plausible Erklärung für das abtrennbare ME/MI; zweitens steht in CUSAS 32, 1a TE immer nach ME, wobei beide praktisch eine Ligatur bilden (ME+TE, siehe auch LAK751). Handelt es sich bei (KI) ME TE möglicherweise nicht um eine syllabische Schreibung (wie in den Texten aus Ebla), sondern um ein Logogramm? Schließlich zeigte man sich bei den Schreibungen von kitim in Beschwörungen krea-

44

Die Interpretation dieses bisher umstrittenen Zeichens (Krebernik 1984, 103: KI, DI oder ḪI) wäre somit durch die Textparallele gesichert. 45 CDLI: P218313 Rs. iv 21.

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tiv,46 siehe z. B. kitimx(UR2×GI.IDIM) in FSB 2947 oder gi-dim in ASJ 15, 7 No. 4 Vs. 6 und 8.48 3.1.2.1.3 (KI).ME+TE als Logogramm (KI).ME+TE-ma könnte ein Logogramm für kitim mit Genitiv darstellen. Es ergäbe sich dann der Ausdruck „Kind(er) von kitim“, der mit späterem lu2 kitimma „der Mensch des (Toten)geistes“ vergleichbar wäre.49 Das ME und MI in den Beschwörungen aus Ebla könnte man möglicherweise auch genitivisch erklären. Wie die Schreibvariante gi17-ti-ma (FSB 2 iv 4) demonstriert, könnte gi17-ti-ma bzw. ki-da-ma mit /ma/ am Ende eine Standardschreibung (zumindest in den Beschwörungen) für kitim sein, wobei -ti-ma für /tim/ verwendet wurde, wie es für Ebla typisch ist (Krebernik 1982, 225). Die Zeichenliste aus Ebla (siehe 3.1.2.1.2) bezeugt, dass das Wort kitim in Ebla mit der Mimation versehen werden konnte (nu-ga-ti-mu-um). Dann stünden möglicherweise gi17-ti-ma-me (FSB 2) und ki-da-ma-mi (FSB 3B) für den Genitiv /kitim-im/, wobei die Vokale in -me und -mi den Vokal von /KvK = mim/ angeben würden (wie in si-nu-me /šinnim/ Krebernik 1982, 225 und 1983, 10).50 In Analogie zu dumu KI.ME+TE-ma könnte man auch die abgekürzte Schreibung nu-gi17 (FSB 3A ii 4) genitivisch (mit nu als Regens) auffassen. Dann ergäben sich die folgenden Formen: Nominativ: gi17-ti-ma (FSB 2 iv 4) Genitiv mit Bezugswort: dumu KI.ME+TE-ma (CUSAS 32, 1a i 2) nu-gi17 (FSB 3A ii 4)

46 Für üblichere Schreibweise von kitim im 3. Jt. siehe Heimpel 2009, 138–139. Für orthographische Varianten siehe Lieberman 1977, 353. 47 CDLI: P273889; P273898; van Dijk / Geller 2003, 31–36; Rudik 2015, 204–212. Zur Lesung UR2×GI.IDIM gegen KUM×GI.IDIM (van Dijk / Geller 2003, 34) siehe Rudik 2015, 204 Anm. 359. 48 van Dijk / Geller 2003, 35; CDLI: P307728. 49 Siehe lu2 kitim-ma = ša ˹e-ṭe₄˺-mi (MSL 12, 168 A 356). Siehe auch MSL 12, 194 U (C4) i 3. 50 Siehe aber Krebernik 2018, 275: „Cv-Cv spellings for closed syllables are very consistent in using syllabograms with the same vowel. Exceptions are rare, and individual explanations have to be looked for“. -ma-me/mi in der Form gi17-ti/da-ma-me/mi weist freilich nicht die gleichen Vokale auf. Wie schon gesagt, kann man das aber damit erklären, dass gi17-ti/da-ma eine feste Zeichenfolge, eine Art Logogramm für kitim war, das auf Eblaitisch vielleicht als /kitimum/ gelesen wurde.

114

Nadezda Rudik freier Genitiv (?): KI.ME+TE-ma (CUSAS 32, 1a i 8) KI.ME+TE-ma (CUSAS 32, 1a ii 2) gi17-ti-ma-me (FSB 2 i 2) ki-da-ma-mi (FSB 3B iii 1)

Bei der Annahme, dass dumu KI.ME+TE-ma und nu-gi17 genitivisch in Analogie zu späterem lu2 kitim-ma gebildet sind, stößt man aber auf Probleme. Es ist nicht ganz klar, ob im 3. Jt. ein Ausdruck (lu2 kitim) oder eine genitivische Verbindung (lu2 kitim-ma) anzusetzen ist. Die Form nu-ga-ti-mu-um (Ebla Sign List 97) zeigt Nominativ und spricht somit für den Ausdruck lu2 kitim.51 Jedenfalls möchte ich mit Alster 1997, 393 und Steinert 2012, 299 lu2 kitim(-ma) als Bezeichnung für den verstorbenen Menschen („Mensch-Geist / Mensch des Geistes = Menschengeist (?)“)52 und dumu KI.ME+TE-ma somit als „Kindergeist“ (als Bezeichnung für ein verstorbenes Kind?) deuten. Der Ausdruck „Kindergeist“ wäre freilich einmalig und ungewöhnlich. In Analogie zu den Schreibungen UR2×GI.IDIM in FSB 29 und gi-dim in ASJ 15, 7 No. 4 Vs. 6 und 8 ließe sich das angenommene Logogramm KI.ME+TE in zwei Teile, KI und ME+TE, zerlegen. Rein spekulativ könnte man dabei für ME+TE die Lesung DIM bzw. IDIM (in Analogie zu UR2×GI.IDIM) ansetzen. Einige Indizien in den UD.GAL.NUN-Texten deuten darauf hin, dass ME.TE als Bezeichnung für einen Ort oder als ein Epitheton für Berge diente,53 für die eine Lesung idim „Quelle“ im Prinzip ansetzbar wäre.54

51

Siehe auch Steinert 2012, 309 Anm. 54. Für den Wechsel von kitim und lu2 kitim in späteren Texten, was ebenfalls für die Existenz des Ausdruckes lu2 kitim (neben dem in lexikalischen Texten vorkommenden lu2 kitim-ma) spricht, siehe die kurze Diskussion in Attinger 2019a, 113 Anm. 146 mit weiteren Literaturverweisen. Möglicherweise muss man zwischen einem lu2 kitim „Mensch-Geist“ und einem lu2 kitim-ma „Mensch des Totengeistes“ als eine Berufsbezeichnung unterscheiden (zum Beruf lu2 kitim-ma siehe z. B. Zgoll 2006, 406). 52 Ausführlich zu kitim als Bezeichnung für den verstorbenen Menschen sowie für Überlegungen zur Etymologie des Wortes siehe Steinert 2012, 300–315. 53 Für kur ME.TE siehe passim in Zand 2008. Für ME.TE als mögliche Bezeichnung eines Ortes siehe: d(UD)en(GAL)-ki NUN ME.TE-na / dim2 dim2 mu-LAGAB (CUT 3, 2.1, 6, Zand 2009, 188) „Enki hat an seinem ME.TE (?) …“; d(UD)en(GAL)-ki(UNU) ME.TE / maš2(LAK369) šu mu-gid2 (CUT 3, 3.1, 8, Zand 2009, 190) „Enki hat an ME.TE (?) ein Omen verlangt“. Ferner erscheint ME.TE in CUT 92A vi 2 (Zand 2009, 532) mit dem Epitheton sikil „rein“ in einer Reihe von verschiedenen Orten und stellt selbst höchstwahrscheinlich eine Ortsbezeichnung dar. Schließlich siehe ME.TE kur(UD)-kur(UD)-˹ta˺ / ˹ki-gal˺ nam2-˹ta˺-e3(LAGAB) (Var.: ME.TE kur-kur-ta ˹ki nam2-ta˺-e3(LAGAB) (CUT 7, 2.1, 81, Zand 2009, 301) „ME.TE ist den Bergen, der Unterwelt wahrhaftig rausgegangen (= Quelle ist entsprungen?)“. 54 Für kur idim als „Quellenberge“ und als Beiname für die Unterwelt siehe Horowitz 2011, 285; Katz 2003, 343; Geller / Vacín 2016, 218.

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Wenn bei dieser Spekulation (ME.TE = IDIM) zufällig ins Schwarze getroffen wurde, wäre es vielleicht auch möglich, einen Schritt weiterzugehen und das KI.IDIM unseres Textes nicht als ein Logogramm für kitim „Totengeist“, sondern als einen Beinamen der Unterwelt deuten. Schließlich steht ki-idim in der altbabylonischen lexikalischen Liste AOAT 25, 11–1255 in einer Reihe mit kimaḫ und ki-in-dar. dumu ki-idim-ma „Kinder der Unterwelt“ würde einen perfekten Sinn ergeben (im Unterschied zu den „Kinder des Totengeistes“). Bei dieser Annahme wäre man auch nicht mehr gezwungen, das Zeichen KI in i 2 in Analogie zu i 8 und ii 2 zu rekonstruieren: „Kinder der Quelle“ und „die Unterweltigen (= die der Unterwelt)“ wären dann einfach synonyme Ausdrücke. Dies ließe sich mit ein paar Stellen aus altbabylonischen Beschwörungen gegen böse Udug-Dämonen vergleichen: idim ˹abzu umun7˺-na-meš (UHF 402) „In der Quelle (von?) Abzu sind sie sieben“; du6 ku3 kur idim-ta ša3 i3-im-ta-e3 (UHF 769) (Komposittext) „aus der Mitte der reinen Kluft, der Quellenberge kamen sie raus“. Für nu-gi17 des eblaitischen Textes wäre es dann aber schwer, eine Erklärung zu finden. Die Gleichung ME.TE = IDIM bleibt jedenfalls vorerst höchst spekulativ und nicht mit Sicherheit beweisbar. 3.1.2.1.4 (KI) ME TE MA = ki-ME te-ma? Alternativ könnte man das (KI) ME TE MA unseres Textes als ki-ME te-ma deuten. Dabei würde ki die Erde bzw. die Unterwelt bezeichnen, die entweder mit einem Epitheton ME versehen ist oder mit ihm zusammen einen Begriff für „Erde“ bzw. „Unterwelt“ bildet. te-ma stünde syllabisch für dim2-ma „erschaffen“.56 Zum Vergleich kann die Zeile aus der altbabylonischen Beschwörung gegen Udug ḫulu herangezogen werden: a an-ne2 ri-a-meš dumu ki-in-du du2-da-meš Sie sind diejenige, die An gezeugt hat; sie sind Kinder, die die Erde geboren hat. (UHF 247, 367)

Siehe auch eine andere Beschwörung gegen Udug ḫulu: ki-a dim2-bi das Geschöpf der Erde / der Unterwelt. (UHF 378)

So könnte man die entsprechenden Zeilen auch in den eblaitischen Beschwörungen erklären. Die Schreibung gi17 ti-ma (FSB 2) würde sogar die Hypothese bestätigen, dass ME ein nicht obligatorisches Element des Ausdrucks ki-ME 55 56

IM 70209 Rs. iii 23; CDLI: P274929. Diese Idee verdanke ich M. Krebernik (E-Mail vom 11.05.20).

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war. Problematisch ist aber die Schreibung in FSB 3B. In Analogie zu ki-ME tema in CUSAS 32, 1a würde man die Zeichen dort als ki-MI da-ma analysieren wollen. Sowohl KI und MI als auch DA und MA sind aber schräg gegenüber voneinander geschrieben, was merkwürdig wäre. Dazu bliebe das nu-gi17 aus FSB 3A wiederum unverständlich. 3.1.2.1.5 ME.TE = me TAR? In einer Ur III-zeitlichen Beschwörung gegen Schlangen kommt die folgende Passage vor: muš-e kur muš-ta še26–(KA)57 nam-ge4 me TAR an-ki-ka me ka ba-ni-AK dumu me TAR an-ki umun7-a-ne-ne Die Schlange hat von den Schlangenbergen gebrüllt. Die Spitzzüngige (?) des Alls züngelte (?) (hin und her) mit der Zunge. (Es sind) sieben Kinder von der Spitzzüngigen (?) des Alls. (Ur III, FSB 49 Vs. 2–5)58

ME.TE unseres Textes könnte ein Synonym von me TAR sein und somit als me te „eine mit stechender Zunge“ (mit te als „stechen“) gedeutet werden.59 Dabei würde es sich also in CUSAS 32, 1a genauso wie in der zitierten Passage aus FSB 49 um eine Schlange und ihre Kinder handeln. me als eine Abkürzung von eme ist gut bekannt.60 Das Verb te ist hingegen nicht gut bezeugt und tritt in 57

Zur Lesung še26– für KA und še26 für KA×BALAĜ siehe Attinger in Mittermayer 2006, 124 Nr. 312 und 126 Nr. 317. 58 Rudik 2015, 298–302; CDLI: P273892. 59 In Analogie dazu wäre es vielleicht möglich, die Zeichenkombination ME.TE in dem UD.GAL.NUN-Text CUT 7 (die ich oben versuchsweise als idim „Quelle“ gedeutet habe) als eine Bezeichnung für Schlange zu interpretieren: ME.TE kur(UD)-kur(UD)˹ta˺ / ˹ki-gal˺ nam2-˹ta˺-e3(LAGAB) (Var.: ME.TE kur-kur-ta ˹ki nam2-ta˺-e3(LAGAB) (Zand 2009, 301, 81) „Die Spitzzüngige (?) ist von den Bergen, aus der Unterwelt wahrhaftig gekommen“. 60 Abgesehen von FSB 49 (Rudik 2015, 298–302; CDLI: P273892) kommt me als Abkürzung für eme „Zunge“ noch in FSB 70 Rs. 6 (Rudik 2015, 378; CDLI: P376869), einer Beschwörung gegen den Skorpion, vor: me-zu „deine Zunge“. Nebenbei möchte ich auch eine andere interessante Schreibung des Wortes eme „Zunge“ erwähnen, die höchstwahrscheinlich im sumerischen literarischen Werk „Enmerkara und der Herr von Arata“ in Zeile 466 des rekonstruierten Textes auftaucht. Mittermayer 2009, 142 und 207 (siehe auch den Kommentar auf Seite 288) liest die Zeile folgendermaßen: mir maḫ GIR2gunû.GIR2gunû-ta zi-ga-gen7 e2? ME MIN3? mu-un-ta-la2-la2 „wie bei einer zornigen Riesenschlange, die sich aus den Feldern herausreckt, hingen ... herab“ (Kursivschrift

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allen bekannten Belegen redupliziert als te-te auf.61 Darüber hinaus lässt sich MA bei dieser Auffassung nicht erklären, geschweige denn die Schreibungen der Beschwörungen aus Ebla. 3.1.2.2 CUSAS 32, 1a vs. FSB 2 und FSB 3 Wie sich in 3.1.2.1.1–3.1.2.1.5 herausgestellt hat, ist es schwierig, eine einzige plausible Erklärung für alle in 3.1.2.1.1 zitierten Schreibungen zu finden. Lohnt es sich denn überhaupt, diese Texte miteinander zu vergleichen? Könnte die Ähnlichkeit der behandelten Ausdrücke (siehe 3.1.2.1.1) nicht rein imaginär sein? Es zeigt sich allerdings, dass CUSAS 32, 1a, FSB 2 und FSB 3 noch andere Gemeinsamkeiten aufweisen, die uns zusätzliche Beweise dafür bieten, dass sich alle drei Texte auf eine einzige bzw. eine ähnliche Vorlage stützen. Deshalb halte ich es nun für angebracht, alle drei Beschwörungen abschnittsweise gegenüberzustellen und sie dabei zu kommentieren.62 3.1.2.2.1 Expositio: Einführung des Bösen und Konfliktauslösung Im ersten Abschnitt, in der Expositio, die nur in zwei Beschwörungen vorkommt (siehe Tabelle Nr. 4), wird der Bösewicht vorgestellt (als Kind nur in CUSAS 32, 1a) und seine Tätigkeit wird kurz beschrieben: in beiden Beschwörungen bedeckt er die Erde bzw. die Unterwelt (ki šuš2 = gi17 šuš2). Man beachte hiervon Mittermayer 2009, 143). Da die Rede von einer Schlange ist, liegt es nahe, e2? ME MIN3? als eine syllabische Schreibung für den Ausdruck /eme min/ „gespaltene Zunge/Doppelzunge“ (die hier jemand rausstreckt bzw. hängen lässt) anzunehmen. Für muš eme min siehe Beschwörungen (muš eme!(KA) min YOS 11, 32 Vs. 1 (CDLI: P309476); ˹muš˺ eme min YOS 11, 34 Vs. 1 (CDLI: P304424); muš eme min eme min RA 23, 42, Raptim 12 Vs. 1; ˹eme˺ min [muš?] ˹eme˺ min RA 23, 42, Raptim 12 Vs. 11–12; muš eme min eme min AMD 1, 241 Vs. 1; muš eme min-na VS 17, 1 iii 37 (CDLI: P343022); ka eme min-am3 „es gibt eine Doppelzunge im Maul“ DCS 158, 4 (CDLI: P355900); muš eme min PRAK B 086 (CDLI: P343903)) und lexikalische Listen (muš eme min MSL 8/1, 82 V38 Rs. ii 24 (CDLI: P228700); MSL 14, 21 Dg Rs. i 16 (CDLI: P229423) u. s. w.). Siehe auch Avila 2009, 492 und Pientka-Hinz 2009–2011, 210. In akkadischen Beschwörungen wird eme min mit dem Dualis wiedergegeben: 7 li-ša-na-šu AMD 1, 224 Vs. 8 (CDLI: P262058) „sieben von seinen gespaltenen Zungen“; li-ša-našu VS 17, 4 Vs. 4 (P343025). 61 Siehe Krebernik 2004, 236 für akkadische Gleichungen und Attinger 2019a für einen Verweis auf die Belege. 62 Möglicherweise gehört dazu auch FSB 1 (Rudik 2015, 100–102; CDLI: P010665). In dieser Beschwörung ist aber lediglich der Preis an die Tamariske erhalten, der Text ist aus diesem Grund für den Vergleich nutzlos. Aus dem Vergleich werden die Formeln ausgeschlossen, die zur Metasprache der Texte gehören (wie die Einleitungs- und Schlussformeln). Sie werden jedoch in 2.5 bei den Gesamtübersetzungen wiedergegeben.

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bei, dass ki „Erde/Unterwelt“ in FSB 2 in diesem Abschnitt mit dem Zeichen GI17 und später (in den Abschnitten 2 und 3) mit dem Zeichen KI geschrieben ist. Liegt diesem gi17 und dem ihm entsprechenden KI im Ausdruck GI17/KI šuš2 möglicherweise eine Abkürzung für GI17/KI TI MA zugrunde (dem nu-gi17 aus FSB 3A nicht unähnlich)? Andererseits kommt in FSB 3A NU GI17 neben ki šuš2 vor (siehe Abschnitt 4 in 2.4). CUSAS 32, 1a i 2–5

FSB 2 i 2–3

dumu (KI) TE MA ME

GI17 TI MA ME

dumu ki šuš2

gi17 šuš2

FSB 3A

FSB 3B

u4 piriĝ su e-gu7 lu2-ra ki-ba e-kux(DU) Tabelle Nr. 4.

Es besteht auch die Möglichkeit, die Zeichen in der Zeile i 4 unseres Textes, die ich als einen Temporalsatz auffasse (u4 piriĝ su e-gu7), in einer anderen Reihenfolge zu lesen. Vor allem sind SU und PIRIĜ im Kasten so angeordnet, dass sie zusammen als UG (= ug, ein löwenartiges Tier?) gedeutet werden könnten. Das Zeichen E kann dem Verb gu7 als ein Affix sowohl vorne als auch hinten hinzugefügt werden (= gu7-e „Fresser“ als ein Epitheton für einen Löwen?)63 oder sich auf PIRIĜ bzw. UG beziehen. Es scheint mir jedoch sinnvoll, in der Zeile eine abgeschlossene Phrase mit gu7 als einem finiten transitiven Verb in der Bedeutung „essen, fressen“ (welches ein Objekt braucht)64 anzusetzen. Eine ähnliche Beschreibung einer dämonischen Attacke findet man z. B. in den Beschwörungen gegen Udug ḫulu: su ba-ni-dab5-dab5-ba (UHF 16) „Als (ein böser Totengeist und der böse Galla) (seinen Körper) gepackt haben“. Die Zeichenanordnung in der folgenden Zeile (i 5) lässt ebenfalls mehrere Interpretationsmöglichkeiten zu. Das Zeichen RA steht dem Zeichen LU2 schräg gegenüber. Die Kombination lu2-ra wäre demnach möglich, ist aber nicht ideal. Das Zeichen BA steht zwischen KI und RA und könnte sich auf beide beziehen. Eine alternative Lesung wäre also lu2 ki ba-ra e-kux(DU). Man hätte dann zwei 63

Die Schreibung gu7-e ist nicht untypisch für die altsumerische Orthografie: nibruki u2 nu-še3-gu7-e Nippur Zylinder iv 11 „er versorgte Nippur mit dem Essen nicht“ (CBS 8383; CDLI: P222183. Für eine Edition siehe Alster / Westenholz 1994; Lisman 2016– 2017); še nu-gu7-e CT 50, 39 i 7 (BM 118094; CDLI: P221676); DP 149 (AO 13357; CDLI: P220799); i3-gu7-e RIME 1.9.4.2 viii 6 (En-anatum I. CDLI: P431099; P222496); e-da-gu7-e RIME 1.9.3.1 Vs. vi 15 (E-anatum, Geierstele. CDLI: P431075; P222399). 64 Siehe z. B. Jagersma 2010, 294: „the verb gu7 is always accompanied by a transitive subject expressing the eater and by a direct object expressing what is eaten“.

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Temporalsätze mit einem Subjekt: „Wenn der Löwe Fleisch zerfleischte, (wenn) er den Menschen dort schlug und trat ein, (dann…)“. Siehe dazu z. B. su8-ba kituš-ka mu-ni-in-ra-aš (UHF 772) „Sie (Dämonen) haben den Hirten in seinem Wohnort geschlagen“. Hier wird aber eine andere Deutung bevorzugt, und zwar eine, bei der jemand dem erkrankten Menschen (lu2) zur Hilfe kommt. Möglicherweise ist das ein gudu-Priester von Enlil, mit dem in allen Beschwörungen aus Ebla eine Tamariske verglichen wird (siehe 3.1.2.2.2). Auch dazu findet man ähnliche Passagen: [lu2 dur11-ra-še mu-na(-an)-te]-˹ge26˺-en-na / [e2-a-na mu-un-ši-in]˹ku4˺-re-en-na (UHF 7–8) „Als ich mich dem kranken Menschen genähert habe, als ich zu ihm in sein Haus eingetreten bin, (dann…)“. 3.1.2.2.2 Expositio: Einführung des Hilfsmittels Im zweiten Abschnitt, den nur die Texte aus Ebla aufweisen, wird die Tamariske gepriesen (für das Sumerische siehe Tabelle Nr. 5): Tamariske! Grüner65 Baum! Hoher Baum! Hinsichtlich ihrer Wurzeln unten (ist sie) Enki und Ninki! Hinsichtlich ihrer Zweige (ist sie) der fürstliche gudu-Priester! (Diejenige,) die sich über den reinen Kai ausbreitet! (FSB 2) Tamariske! Grüner66 Baum! Reiner Baum! Tamariske! Hinsichtlich ihrer Wurzeln (ist sie) Enki und Ninki Tamariske! Der gudu-Priester des Vaters67 Enlil! (FSB 3) CUSAS 32, 1a

FSB 2 i 4–iii 1

FSB 3A i 2–ii 1

FSB 3B i 2–ii 1

ĝeš šeneg ĝeš si22 ĝeš an / ur2-pi ki-še3 / d en-ki dnin-ki / papi-ta dgudu4-nun / ˹kar ku3˺ la2

ĝeš šeneg ĝeš zi ĝeš zi-kir / ĝeš šeneg ur2-be d en-ki d˹nin-ki˺ / ĝeš šeneg gu2-da d en-lilx(E2)

ĝeš šeneg ĝeš zi / ĝeš zi-˹kir˺ / ĝeššeneg ur2-be / den-ki / d nin-ki / ĝeššeneg gu2-da aia2 d en- lilx(E2)

Tabelle Nr. 5. 65

Gegen ge „einzelner/feststehender“ in Krebernik 1984, 99 und „fester“ in Rudik 2015, 103. Die Lesung si22 passt hier besser, da in FSB 3 an der entsprechenden Stelle zi, die syllabische Schreibung für si22, vorkommt. 66 Gegen zi „rechter“ in Krebernik 1984, 103 und Rudik 2015, 109. In Analogie zu FSB 22 wird zi hier als syllabische Schreibung für si22 „grün“ interpretiert. 67 Das Wort fehlt im Text A.

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3.1.2.2.3 Incantatio: „beim Leben beschwören“ Mit der Beschwörungsformel „beim Leben beschwören“, die in allen Beschwörungen vorkommt, wird die Incantatio eingeleitet, die dazu dient, das Böse zu beschwören und zu vertreiben (für das Sumerische siehe Tabelle Nr. 6): Tamariske! Beim Leben des Himmels, beim Leben der Erde habe ich (?) dich (?) (Bösewicht) beschworen! Beim Leben Enlils […] Beim Leben Utus habe ich (?) dich (?) (Bösewicht) beschworen. (FSB 2) Tamariske! Beim Leben des Himmels, beim Leben der Erde! Beim Leben Ans, Enkis und Ninkis! (FSB 3) CUSAS 32, 1a i 6–7 d

zi an / zi en-lilx(E2)

FSB 2 iii 2–iv 3

FSB 3A ii 2–3

FSB 3B ii 2–3

ĝeš

ĝeš

ĝeš

šeneg / zi an zi ki / aš ba4-aĝ2 zi den- lilx(E2) / […] / zi dutu / aš ba4-aĝ2

šeneg zi an zi ki / zi an den-ki d nin-ki

šeneg zi-an zi ki / zi an den-ki dnin-ki

Tabelle Nr. 6.

Möglicherweise handelt es sich dabei um die direkte Rede einer Gottheit bzw. eines Priesters. Dafür sprechen die an den Bösewicht gerichteten Anreden in der 2. Person, die in CUSAS 32, 1a und FSB 2 im nächsten Abschnitt (siehe 3.1.2.2.4) auftreten. Vergleiche dazu: i-re-ni-pa3 saĝ i-re-ni-pa3 zi an-na i-re-pa3 zi ki-[a i-re]-˹pa3˺ zi dḫendur-saĝ-ĝa2 ˹niĝir˺ [ĝe6 i-re-pa3] zi diĝir gal-gal-e-ne i-re-pa3 Ich beschwöre dich, als erstes (?) beschwöre ich dich! Beim Leben des Himmels beschwöre ich dich, beim Leben der Erde beschwöre ich dich! Beim Leben von Ḫendursaĝa, Nachwächter, beschwöre ich dich! Beim Leben der großen Götter beschwöre ich dich! (UHF 226–229)68

Interessanterweise tritt meines Wissens die Beschwörungsformel „beim Leben beschwören“ in den frühesten Beschwörungen bis einschließlich Ur III-Zeit nur in diesen drei Beschwörungen auf. 68

Siehe auch UHF [584], 614, 744, 855.

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3.1.2.2.4 Incantatio: Anrede und Wunschformeln In der Incantatio von CUSAS 32, 1a wird der Agent des Bösen angeredet (i 8– 10). Das Böse wird auch in den Beschwörungen aus Ebla angesprochen (siehe Tabelle Nr. 7). Dabei wird seine Tätigkeit kurz geschildert: ki šuš2 und ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2 (siehe dazu den Kommentar in 3.1.2.3.3). Zu den unklaren Zeilen in FSB 3 siehe die Fußnote. CUSAS 32, 1a i 8–10

FSB 3A ii 4–iii 2

FSB 3B iii 1–3

NU GI17

KI! DA MA MI

ki šuš2

ki šuš2

ki šuš2

ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2

SA10 KI NE SI UŠ70

AN KI NE / SI UŠ71

KI TE MA ME

FSB 2 iv 4 69

GI17 TE MA

Tabelle Nr. 7.

Danach wird der Bösewicht in CUSAS 32, 1a dadurch bedroht, dass er ohne Platz am Himmel (i 12) und ohne Ration (i 13) bleibt, wenn er den betroffenen Menschen nicht in Ruhe lässt (i 11). Die Zeile, die den Befehl an das Böse enthält, nie wieder zurückzukehren, wiederholt sich meines Erachtens fast wörtlich in allen angegebenen Beschwörungen (für das Sumerische siehe Tabelle Nr. 8): Bis du dich von (diesem) Menschen (nicht) abwendest, (dann…) (CUSAS 32, 1a i 11)

69

GE17 TE MA steht eigentlich in der nächsten Zeile: lu2 GE17 TE MA kur2 nu-gi-gi-na. Da sicherlich eine Anrede gemeint ist, die auch in den anderen Beschwörungen vorkommt, habe ich sie jedoch zum besseren Vergleich in der entsprechenden Zeile der Tabelle positioniert. 70 Diese Zeile und die Textparallele in FSB 3B bleiben nach wie vor unklar. Es ist daher unmöglich zu entscheiden, ob diese Zeilen ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2 aus CUSAS 32, 1a entsprechen oder etwas ganz anderes beschreiben. SA10 KI NE (= SA8(AN) KI NE, siehe Krebernik 1984, 104) und SI UŠ sind wohl zwei unterschiedliche Zeichenkombinationen, da SI UŠ in FSB 3B in der nächsten Zeile erscheint. Die erste könnte vielleicht als sa10/8 ki-li9, syllabisch für sa kilib „Schilfbündel“ (vergleiche dazu gesa kilib in HS 1867 + HS 1868 Vs. 9) oder als sa10/8 ke-izi, syllabisch für sa ge-izi(-la2) „Fackelbündel“ aufgefasst werden. Alternativ wäre anzunehmen, dass NE eine Einheit mit SI UŠ und somit eine Verbalform bildet. Es käme z. B. eine Interpretation des ganzen Satzes als sa10/8 ki bi2-/ši/-us2 „er hat ein Netz aufgestellt“ in Frage. Mit NE als bar7 könnte hier auch eine Verbindung bar7-si für /bar-še/ „zur Seite“ oder für /bara-ši-us/ „darf nicht folgen“ vorliegen. Keine der aufgezählten Auslegungen scheint jedoch über jeden Zweifel erhaben zu sein. 71 Siehe die vorige Fußnote.

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Zu (diesem) Menschen kehrst du in Zukunft72 nicht zurück. (FSB 2 Vs. iv 4–Rs. i 1) Zum kranken Menschen kehrst du nicht zurück. (FSB 3A iii 3–4 // 3B iii 3) CUSAS 32, 1a i 11–14 lu2-ta en-na ba-ta-gi4-na

FSB 2 Vs. iv 4–Rs. ii 1 73

lu2 kur2 nu-na-gi-gi

FSB 3A iii 3–4 74

lu2 du-ra / nux(LU2)?75-gi-gi

FSB 3B iii 3 lu2 dur276 nux(LU2)?-ki-gi17

an-na nu-bala niĝ2-ba den-lilx(E2) / šu-zu nu-ba-la2

a kar nu-su-su […] / DU-zu nu-DU Tabelle Nr. 8.

Der Satz i 11 in CUSAS 32, 1a ist ein Temporalsatz: en-na fungiert hier als eine Temporalsubjunktion und wird mit einer nominalisierten Verbalform in der 2. Person Singular kombiniert. In den Beschwörungen aus Ebla werden wohl einfache negative Sätze verwendet. -gi-gi und -ki-gi17 stehen dort syllabisch für gi4gi4. FSB 3 kommt mit der Aufforderung, nie wieder zurückzukehren, zum Schluss. Die Beschwörungen CUSAS 32, 1a und FSB 2 setzen sich dagegen weiter fort: die erste mit Bedrohungen (i 12–14), die zweite mit Verboten (Rs. i 2–ii 1; siehe dazu weiter unten). 72 Zu dieser Bedeutung von kur2 siehe schon Krebernik 1984, 99 und 313 mit Kommentar 62. 73 Hier ist der Platz der Zeichenkombination GI17 TI MA, die zum Vergleich mit den anderen Texten als Anrede in Tabelle Nr. 7 eingefügt wurde. 74 Syllabisch für dur11-ra „erkrankt“. 75 Die Lesung LU2 als nux ist vielleicht zu gewagt, ergibt aber unter Berücksichtigung der Textparallelen einen perfekten Sinn. Könnte man in diesem Fall vielleicht von einer Rebusschreibung sprechen? Dabei muss ich an solche eblaitischen Schreibungen wie nukitim für lu2-kitim(-ma) (ED Lu E 69), nu-diĝir für lu2-diĝir (ED Lu E 75) und nu-ga-timu-um für lu2-gidim(-ma) (Ebla Sign List 97) denken. Möglicherweise ließen sich auch nu-gu2-lum für lagar (Ebla Sign List 38) und na-ḫi-ru12-um für laḫar (Ebla Sign List 64) in diesen Kontext stellen (siehe auch Archi 1987, 92 zur Wiedergabe von /l/ als /n/ in der eblaitischen Zeichenliste). Alle Belege in dieser Fußnote sind nach DCCLT (http://oracc. museum.upenn.edu/dcclt/corpus) zitiert. 76 Syllabisch für dur11-ra „erkrankt“.

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In der altbabylonischen Zeit hat sich aus den Wunschformeln für die Beseitigung des Bösen, die sowohl in CUSAS 32, 1a als auch in FSB 2 und FSB 3 auftauchen, eine einzige Standardformel herausgebildet (nicht ohne Varianten), die ihren Sitz im Leben in den Beschwörungen gegen Dämonen hatte: en-na ba-ra-an-ta-˹ri˺-en-na-aš en-na ba-ra-˹an˺-ta-zi-ge-en-na-aš ˹u2˺ ba-ra-˹an˺-da-gu7-e a ba-ra-an-da-˹naĝ˺-en ˹a a˺-ab-ba a du10 a šeš-a a idigna a ˹buranuna˺ a pu2 a i7-da ba-ra-ab-šu2-šu2-de3-˹de3-en˺ lu2-lu7 dumu diĝir-na ba-ra-na- ba-ra-na-an-te-ĝe26-˹de3-de3˺-[en] Bis du dich von (diesem Menschen) nicht entfernst, bis du dich von ihm nicht abhebst, mögest du keine Nahrung in seiner Anwesenheit aufnehmen, mögest du kein Wasser in seiner Anwesenheit trinken. Das Meereswasser, das Süßwasser, das Brackwasser, das Wasser von Tigris, das Wasser von Euphrat, das Brunnenwasser, das Kanalwasser mögest du nicht durchkosten! Zu dem Menschen, dem Kind seiner Gottheit, mögest du nicht zurückkehren, du mögest dich ihm nicht nähern! (UHF 335–339 und passim, gegen Udug ḫulu)

Die unklare Verbalform in der Zeile a kar nu-su-su (FSB 2 Rs. i 2) kann jetzt mithilfe dieser späteren Textparallele aus der altbabylonischen Serie Udug ḫulu als syllabische Schreibung für nu-/šušu(-en)/ erklärt werden: „das Kaiwasser wirst du nicht durchkosten“.77 An einer Stelle des Udug ḫulu-Beschwörungskorpus wird die zitierte Formel mit der folgenden Zeile fortgesetzt: [ĝešbanšur] ˹aia˺ ˹uugu6˺-zu ˹šu˺-zu! ba-˹ra˺bi2-in-tum3?˺ (UHF 449) „mögest du deine Hand nicht auf den Tisch deines Vaters bringen, der dich gezeugt hat“. „Der Vater“ entpuppt sich in anderen altbabylonischen Texten als Enlil: en-na lu2-lu7 dumu diĝir-ra-na na-an-ga-til3-la u2 ba-ra-da-gu7-e a ba-ra-da-na8-na8

ĝeš banšur aia-zu en-lil2-la2-ka šu-zu ba-ra-bi2-in-tum4

77

Die gleiche Formel kommt auch in der kanonischen Serie (Edition in Geller / Vacín 2016) in UH 4, 174ʹ–175ʹ; UH 5, 71 und UH 6, 183ʹ–184ʹ vor. In UH 4, 175ʹ wird šu2-šu2 mit den akkadischen Verbalformen te-le-me und te-˹lam?˺ gleichgesetzt (Geller / Vacín 2016, 166), die wohl zu lemû I „essen (und trinken)“ AHw 543 und lêmu „essen (und trinken) zu sich nehmen“ AHw 543 gehören (gegen Geller 2007, 295: šu2-šu2 = lamû „surround“). Attinger 2019a, 187 führt dieses Verb als ŠU mit marû-Form šu2-šu2 „toucher (à de la nourriture)“ auf. Siehe auch Lackenbacher 1971, 127–128 Rs. ii 3ʹ–13ʹ für eine ähnliche Formel.

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Solange (dieser) Mensch, das Kind seiner Gottheit, lebt, mögest du keine Nahrung in seiner Anwesenheit aufnehmen, mögest du kein Wasser in seiner Anwesenheit trinken.

Mögest du deine Hand nicht auf den Tisch deines Vaters Enlil bringen! (TIM 9, 63 Vs. 8ʹ–13ʹ, gegen Lamaštu)78 en-na lu2-lu7 dumu-diĝir-ra-ni ki-be2 gi4-gi4-de3 u2 ba-ra-an-da-gu7-e a ba-ra-da-na8-na8 ĝeš banšur aia-zu en-lil2-le šu-zu ba-ra-bi2-du11 Bis du dich vom Menschen, dem Kind seiner Gottheit (nicht) abwendest (?), mögest du keine Nahrung in seiner Anwesenheit aufnehmen, mögest du kein Wasser in seiner Anwesenheit trinken. Mögest du den Tisch deines Vaters Enlil (mit) deiner Hand nicht berühren! (MLVS 2, 9 LB1005, 9–12, gegen Lamaštu)79

Enlils Tisch kommt auch in der kanonischen Serie Udug ḫulu in UH 4, 173ʹ und UH 5, 70ʹ mit der akkadischen Übersetzung für UH 4, 173ʹ vor:80 ĝeš

banšur aia ugu6-zu den-lil2-la2-ke4 šu ba-ra-de3-en-tum3 [ina pa-aš-šu-ri] a-bi den-[lil2 a]-˹li˺-di-ka qa-at-ka e tu-bil Mögest du deine Hand nicht auf den Tisch deines Vaters bringen, der dich gezeugt hat!

Die Drohung, dass Enlils Gunst dem bösen Geschöpf entzogen wird, so dass es nicht mehr an der Rations- bzw. Opfergabenzuteilung teilnimmt, falls es sich schlecht benimmt, galt also seit dem Frühdynastikum (CUSAS 32, 1a i 13–14) und über einen Zeitraum von mehr als 2000 Jahren als wirksam. Die Zeile DU-zu nu-DU (FSB 2 Rs. ii 1) bleibt nach wie vor problematisch. Krebernik (1984, 100) interpretiert sie aufgrund der Parallelität mit du-gu2-ba-ge in BFE 9 (= FSB 6) versuchsweise als du-zu nu-gub mit du syllabisch für tu6 „Beschwörung“. Der daraus resultierende Ausdruck „eine Beschwörung aufstellen“ wird von ihm aber angezweifelt. In Rudik 2015, 107 wurde der Satz als „deiner (= Ningirim) Beschwörung wird sie (Krankheit) nicht widerstehen (können)“ aufgefasst. Es wäre vielleicht hilfreich, vorübergehend auf den Vergleich mit du-gu2-bage in BFE 9 (= FSB 6) zu verzichten.81 Dann wäre man nicht gezwungen, in der 78

CDLI: P223432. Ediert in Tonietti 1979. CDLI: P355908. Siehe Tonietti 1979, 309 und Horowitz 2011, 366. 80 Siehe schon Falkenstein 1931, 42 und Geller 1985, 111. Die Edition der kanonischen Serie findet sich bei Geller / Vacín 2016. 81 BFE 9 (= FSB 6; CDLI: P241759) ist ganz anders aufgebaut, besitzt einen anderen Wortschatz und ein anderes Thema. Die Wunschformeln, in denen du-gu2-ba-ge vorkommt, unterscheiden sich ebenfalls von den Wunschformeln unserer Beschwörungen: 79

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Verbalform DU als gub zu lesen. Wie aus den Textparallelen klar geworden ist, setzt diese Zeile die Reihe von Verboten fort, die dem Bösewicht auferlegt werden. Das Böse unserer Beschwörung darf nicht zurückkehren und das Kaiwasser kosten. Was könnte ihm sonst noch verboten werden? In den altbabylonischen Beschwörungen gegen Udug ḫulu folgen nach den Verboten, zu trinken, zu essen und zurückzukehren, die folgenden Zeilen: ˹saĝ-zu˺ saĝ-ĝa2-na nam-ba-ĝa2-ĝa2-˹de3-en˺ ˹šu˺-zu ˹šu˺-na nam-ba-ĝa2-ĝa2-[de3-en] ˹gu2-zu˺ ˹gu2˺-na nam-ba-ab-gid2-˹i?˺-[de3-en] igi-zu na-ab-il2-en egir-zu-˹še3˺ igi ˹na˺-[an-ši-in-bar-re(-en)] Deinen Kopf darfst du nicht an seinen Kopf legen. Deine Hand darfst du nicht an seine Hand legen. Deinen Nacken darfst du nicht an seinen Nacken lehnen. Deine Augen darfst du nicht heben. Du darfst nicht zurückblicken. (UHF 341–344)82

Unsere Zeile DU-zu nu-DU würde zu diesem Schema als eine Abkürzung gut passen, eine plausible Interpretation im Sinne des zitierten Abschnitts kann ich jedoch nicht bieten. Möglich wäre vielleicht auch, in DU-zu nu-DU eine syllabische Schreibung für tu6-zu nu-tuḫ „deine (böse) Beschwörung wirst du nicht freilassen!“ zu sehen. 3.1.2.2.5 Gesamtübersetzung Zum Schluss werden die kompletten (und im Ausdruck etwas geglätteten) Übersetzungen der besprochenen Texte nochmals zusammengestellt. Die schwierige Zeichenkombination, die in 3.1.2.1.1–3.1.2.1.5 besprochen wurde, wird dabei versuchsweise als kitim-Geist wiedergegeben: LAK358-nu-ru Kinder (von?) kitim-Geister (?)! Kinder, die die Erde bedecken! Als der Löwe (sein) Fleisch zerfleischte, trat ich dorthin zu (diesem) Menschen ein. Beim Leben des Himmels! Beim Leben Enlils! (Du,) kitim-Geist (?)! (Du, der) die Erde bedeckt! (Du, der) auf der Erde herumwimmelt! sie beinhalten prekativische Sätze, die jeweils mit einem Vergleich beginnen. Eine Krankheit, die gelöst werden muss, wird also mit du-gu2-ba verglichen. 82 Ähnliche Passagen sind UHF 442–443; 537–544; Ni 630 (Geller 1985, 144–145) 168ʹ–178ʹ; Lackenbacher 1971, 126 Vs. 3–10; UH 4, 180ʹ–185ʹ (Geller / Vacín 2016, 168 + Kommentar mit Verweis auf weitere Literatur).

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Bis du dich vom Menschen (nicht) abwendest, wirst du den Himmel nicht überqueren! Enlil (wird) keine Ration dir zuteilen! (Das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim. Sie (die Beschwörung) ist betreffs kitim-Geister (?). (CUSAS 32, 1a) EN2-nu-E2-ru (Das sind) kitim-Geister (?), die die Erde bedecken. Tamariske! Grüner Baum! Hoher Baum! Hinsichtlich ihrer Wurzeln unten (ist sie) Enki und Ninki! Hinsichtlich ihrer Zweige (ist sie) der fürstliche gudu-Priester! (Diejenige,) die sich über den reinen Kai ausbreitet! Tamariske! Beim Leben des Himmels, beim Leben der Erde habe ich dich beschworen! Beim Leben Enlils […] Beim Leben Utus habe ich dich beschworen! Zu (diesem) Menschen kehrst du in Zukunft nicht zurück! Das Kaiwasser wirst du nicht durchkosten! Deine (böse) Beschwörung wirst du nicht freilassen! (Das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim. (FSB 2) LAK358-nu-ru83 Tamariske! Grüner Baum! Reiner Baum! Tamariske! Hinsichtlich ihrer Wurzeln (ist sie) Enki und Ninki Tamariske! Der gudu-Priester des Vaters84 Enlil! Tamariske! Beim Leben des Himmels, beim Leben der Erde! Beim Leben Ans, Enkis und Ninkis! Kitim-Geist (?), (Du,) der die Erde bedeckt, (Du,) der… Zum kranken Menschen kehrst du nicht zurück! (Das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim. (FSB 3)

83 84

Text B hat EN2-nu-E2-ru. Das Wort fehlt im Text A.

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3.1.2.3 Bildliche Sprache Um bei der Suche nach den Protagonisten von CUSAS 32, 1a alle Möglichkeiten auszuschöpfen, sollte man sich kurz der bildlichen Sprache dieser Beschwörung zuwenden und analysieren, wer sonst in den Beschwörungen so dargestellt wird. Dafür werden die Epitheta dumu und piriĝ sowie die Ausdrücke ki šuš und ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2 behandelt. 3.1.2.3.1 dumu Im Korpus der frühesten Beschwörungen des 3. Jts. (wie auch später) werden mit dumu am häufigsten positive Gestalten bezeichnet (z. B. dasal-lu-ḫi dumu d en-ki-ke4 passim oder dNE.DAG dumu eridu passim; siehe auch ga-da dumu d nin-girim (FSB 40) „gudu-Priester, das Kind von Ningirim“; dumu ab-zu umun7-na-ne (FSB 18) „sieben Kinder von abzu“). In drei Fällen werden mit dem Wort dumu aber auch Bösewichte beschrieben: zweimal Schlangen in Ur IIIzeitlichen Texten und einmal möglicherweise ein Sturm(dämon):85 dumu edin u4 ša3 mu-na-AK Das Kind der Steppe, der Sturm(dämon) (?), hat ihm den (kranken) Leib verursacht. (FD, FSB 5 viii 5)86 dumu am6-ma-na87 DILI+DILI-la2-˹X˺-[(x)]88

85 Unter den bösen Gestalten, die dumu als Epitheton nutzen, gibt es noch die Sänger nar-kur-ku5 umun7-na-ne-ne / dumu uru(IRI×UTU)2-a ba-du2-da-me (Ur III, FSB 104, Rudik 2015, 486–490; CDLI: P274441) „nar-kur-ku5(-Sänger), sieben von ihnen, sind die Kinder, die in der Stadt geboren wurden“, die wohl eine negative Rolle spielen. Der Inhalt dieses Textes weicht aber dermaßen ab, dass er wenig bis gar nichts zu unserem Text beitragen kann. 86 CDLI: P010644. Für andere Interpretationen siehe Krebernik 1984, 48–52 und Rudik 2015, 119–122. 87 Unorthographisch für ama-na? Siehe schon van Dijk / Geller 2003, 22. 88 Diese Beschwörung ist gegen Schlangen und ihren Biss gerichtet, siehe Incantatio (Rs. 4–6) und Kolphon (Rs. 12). Bei der Interpretation dieser Zeile stütze ich mich auf die folgenden Belege: ˹ibila˺ [dili-meš] ˹ama˺-dili-meš (UHF 470) (für die Interpretation siehe Geller 1985, 46–47 und Geller / Vacín 2016, 243); ur-saĝ dumu ama dili umun7me-eš (Gilgameš und Ḫuwawa A (ETCSL 1.8.1.5) 36) „sie sind sieben Krieger, die Kinder einer einzigen Mutter“; [dumu?] ama dili-meš Schramm 2008, 161, 3 „sie sind die Söhne einer einzigen Mutter“ (Beschwörung gegen gal5-la2-Dämonen; siehe auch Schramm 2008, 70 und 242). Für weitere mögliche Lesungen und Interpretationen dieser Zeile siehe van Dijk / Geller 2003, 20–25; Rudik 2015, 303–309. N. Veldhuis hat mir vor ein paar Jahren vorgeschlagen (private Kommunikation), diese Zeile folgendermaßen zu deuten: dumu an ma-na dili dil-la2-˹ne˺ „the daughters of An are two: one and one they are“ (mit ma-na syllabisch für „zwei“).

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Die Kinder ihrer Mutter (?) sind unterschiedlich (?). (Ur III, FSB 50 Vs. 2, 9)89 muš-e kur muš-ta še26–(KA)90 nam-ge4 me TAR an-ki-ka me ka ba-ni-AK dumu me TAR an-ki umun7-a-ne-ne Die Schlange hat von den Schlangenbergen gebrüllt. Die Spitzzüngige (?) des Alls züngelte (?) (hin und her) mit der Zunge. (Es sind) sieben Kinder von der Spitzzüngigen (?) des Alls. (Ur III, FSB 49 Vs. 2–5)91

Seit der altbabylonischen Zeit ist dumu ein häufiges Epitheton für Dämonen: Lamaštu z. B. wird fast immer als dumu an-na definiert.92 In den Beschwörungen gegen die Krankheitsdämonen Udug, den Vorläufern der kanonischen Serie, kommt der folgende Satz vor, wo Udug-Dämonen als Kinder der Erde markiert werden: a an-ne2 ri-a-meš dumu ki-in-du du2-da-meš Sie sind diejenige, die An gezeugt hat; sie sind Kinder, die die Erde geboren hat. (UHF 247, 367)

3.1.2.3.2 piriĝ piriĝ „Löwe“ ist ein typisches Epitheton, das Schlangen kennzeichnet: piriĝ-e a gal-a še e-ni-ib2-ge4 Ein Löwe brüllte im Hochwasser. (Ur III, FSB 45 Vs. 3, 10)93 piriĝ-e a gal-la ka ḫe2-ma-la2-˹e˺ Möge er dem Löwen im Hochwasser das Maul binden! (Ur III, FSB 50 Rs. 4)94

89

CDLI: P273901; van Dijk / Geller 2003, 20–25; Rudik 2015, 303–309. Zur Lesung še26– für KA und še26 für KA×BALAĜ siehe Attinger in Mittermayer 2006, 124 Nr. 312 und 126 Nr. 317. 91 Rudik 2015, 298–302; CDLI: P273892. 92 Siehe z. B. CUSAS 32, 89; 22c; 28c; 62 und passim in Lamaštu-Beschwörungen. 93 Rudik 2015, 282–287; CDLI: P134674. 94 Rudik 2015, 303–309; CDLI: P273901. 90

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zi piriĝ-˹piriĝ˺-[x (x)] ĝen-na-ĝu10-ne Nachdem ich (wegen) des Aufstandes (?) der Löwen eingetroffen bin… (Ur III, FSB 52 iii 1)95

Es gibt keine Zweifel, dass es sich in diesen drei Texten um Schlangen handelt: in FSB 50 und FSB 52 werden die Protagonisten als muš „Schlange“ und in FSB 45 als ušumgal „Drache“ bezeichnet. In FSB 45 und FSB 50 geht es um ka la2 „Maul binden“, in FSB 50 um uš „Gift“, in FSB 50 und FSB 52 um „Beißen“.96 In den bisher immer zum Vergleich herangezogenen späteren Beschwörungen gegen Udug ḫulu tritt kein piriĝ, sondern ug(4) (und nie im selben Kontext wie bei uns) auf.97 3.1.2.3.3 ki šuš2 und ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2 dumu (KI) ME TE MA bedecken die Erde und wimmeln darauf herum. Das Verb niĝen2 wird im Korpus der frühesten Beschwörungen wohl nur einmal in der Bedeutung „herumtreiben (als Zeitvertreib)“ in Bezug auf eine positive Schlüsselfigur verwendet: d

IG.DU kur bad3 niĝen2 Gottheit IG.DU, die sich im Hochgebirge herumtreibt, (sah…) (FD, FSB 17 Rs. i 3–4)

Das Verb šuš2 kommt im Korpus wohl nur in den Beschwörungen FSB 2 und FSB 3, die schon oben analysiert wurden, vor. Dafür üben die Dämonen in den altbabylonischen Beschwörungen gegen Udug ḫulu reichlich niĝen2 und šuš2 aus:98 ˹e-sir2-ra niĝen2˺-na-meš Sie (Dämonen) sind diejenige, die sich auf der Straße herumtreiben. (UHF 414)

95

Rudik 2015, 313; CDLI: P110905. Schlangen werden auch in anderen semitischen Sprachen als „Löwe“ bezeichnet (nēšu ša qaqqari „Löwe der Erde“ im Akkadischen). Siehe Roudik 2003; Pientka-Hinz 2009– 2011a, 210; Kogan 2011, 211. 97 UHF 592, 696, 705; UH 7, 31; 16, 9. Wie in 3.1.2.2.1 gezeigt wurde, könnte man in CUSAS 32, 1a i 4 allerdings auch ug statt piriĝ lesen. 98 Siehe auch die nach späteren Vorlagen rekonstruierten oder schlecht erhaltenen Zeilen UHF 2, 269 und 620 für niĝen2 und UHF 574 und 700 für šuš2. 96

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[udug ḫulu ĝal2 kalam-ma bi2]-˹in˺-ni10-ni10-˹e˺ Die bösen Udug treiben sich im Land herum. (UHF 549) lu2 an-na ni10-ni10-e-da Derjenige (= Dämon), der über den Himmel wandert.99 (Ni 630, 33ʹ; Geller 1985, 141) e-sir2-ra šu2-šu2 (Die bösen Udug) , die die Straße bedecken. (UHF 647 = 657)

3.1.2.4 Fazit Mehrere Hinweise deuten darauf hin, dass CUSAS 32, 1a und die mit ihm verwandten FSB 2 und FSB 3 gegen Dämonen, möglicherweise gegen Dämonen namens kitim, gerichtet sind. Vielleicht könnte man sie sogar ganz frech als Vorläufer zu den Vorläufern der kanonischen Serie Udug ḫulu bezeichnen. Die Zeichenkombination, die mutmaßlich für kitim steht, bleibt allerdings umstritten. Darüber hinaus scheint der Gebrauch des Wortes dumu in Zusammenhang mit kitim eigenartig. Einiges spricht aber auch dafür, dass diese drei Beschwörungen mit Beschwörungen gegen Schlangen verwandt sind.100 Diese entgegensetzten Indizien sind aber nur scheinbar widersprüchlich. Die Beschwörungen des 3 Jts. demonstrieren, dass sie sich, auch wenn unterschiedlichen Themen gewidmet, des gleichen Reservoirs an bildlichen Ausdrücken bedient haben. So werden sowohl in FSB 45 (gegen Schlangen) als auch in FSB 28 (gegen Namtar) die erschrockenen Gottheiten auf ähnliche Weise beschrieben: a-nun-na eriduki ninnu-bi šu4-tinmušen dal-la-gen7 du8-e ba-da-ab-ra-aš Die fünfzig Anunna von Eridu sind wie fliegende Fledermäuse in die Erdspalte gezogen.101 (Ur III, FSB 45, 4 = 11)102 99

Diese Aussage erinnert an die Zeile an-na nu-bala in CUSAS 32, 1a i 12. Dort wird dem Bösen damit gedroht, dass es den Himmel nicht überqueren wird. Die Zeile aus Ni 630 zeigt, dass es unter Dämonen eine normale Praxis war, über den Himmel zu wandern. 100 Dies gilt vor allem für das Auftreten von piriĝ, aber auch von dumu, besonders dann, wenn man die Zeile als dumu (ki)-idim-ma „Kinder der Unterwelt“ verstehen möchte (siehe den Kommentar in 3.1.2.1.2). 101 -ab-ra- in der Verbalform ba-da-ab-ra-aš wird hier als eine Variante des Verbes bala „durchqueren“ interpretiert (gegen Rudik 2015, 284–285).

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diĝir an-na-ke4 ˹ni2˺ / ba-ti an-na ba-˹e11˺ diĝir ki-ke4 ni2 ˹ba˺-ti ki-tum2-˹a˺ / ba-re7-re7 Die Himmelsgötter haben sich erschrocken und stiegen in den Himmel hinauf. Die Unterweltgötter haben sich erschrocken und liefen in die Gräber. (Ur III, FSB 28, 7–8)103

Des Weiteren scheint die Beschwörung FSB 29 sowohl gegen Dämonen (ib2ge17; kitim und saĝ-ge17) als auch gegen Schlangen (muš-ša3-AD) gerichtet zu sein.104 Schließlich wird die Phrase dumu am6-ma-na DILI+DILI-la2-˹X˺-[(x)] (FSB 50 Vs. 2; 9)105 „die Kinder ihrer Mutter (?) sind unterschiedlich (?)“, wenn richtig gedeutet, zum Standardausdruck der Beschwörungen gegen Dämonen: ˹ibila˺ [dili-meš] ˹ama˺-dili-meš (UHF 470);106 [dumu?] ama dili-meš Schramm 2008, 161, 3. Hierbei darf man auch nicht vergessen, dass die Udug ḫuluDämonen mit Schlangen verglichen werden (UHF 370; 607). Möglicherweise hat man bei bestimmten unglücklichen Vorfällen Schlangen (besonders mythische Schlangen wie ušumgal?) und Dämonen als mögliche Verursacher des Unglücks nicht voneinander unterschieden. 3.2 CUSAS 32, 1d (iv 7–v 3)107 Expositio iv 7 gag NE.GI-bar108 tur Der „Spieß“ (?), der das NE.GI-bar-Rohr bewohnt (?)! iv 8 ki-ta e3-a Der aus der Unterwelt kam!109 iv 9 ge4 nu-e3-a Der nicht aus dem Röhricht (?) kam! Incantatio iv 10 si nu-bad Er richtet(e) (seine) Hörner (noch) nicht nach vorne, iv 11 dasar abzu ĝiri3 i3-ma-ta3110 102

CDLI: P 134674; Rudik 2015, 282–287. CDLI: P273900; van Dijk / Geller 2003, 39–41; Rudik 2015, 199–203. 104 CDLI: P273889; P273898; van Dijk / Geller 2003, 31–36; Rudik 2015, 204–212. 105 CDLI: P273901; van Dijk / Geller 2003, 20–25; Rudik 2015, 303–309. Siehe dazu schon oben in 3.1.2.3.1. 106 Siehe auch UHF 410. 107 Für eine kurze Beschreibung des Textes siehe George 2016, 26. Einige Zeilen dieser Beschwörung hat auch Johandi in seiner Doktorarbeit kurz behandelt (Johandi 2019, 51). Aufgrund falscher Lesungen (kur-ta anstelle von kur-še3 in iv 12; ba-DU anstelle von baUD in v 2) sind seine Schlussfolgerungen mit Vorsicht zu genießen. 108 Zur möglichen Lesung zaḫ-ge-bar und Deutung „giant cane“ siehe Dornauer 2018, 67–69, 73. 109 Siehe schon George 2016, 26: „coming forth from the netherworld“. 103

132

Nadezda Rudik (aber) Asar trampelte (schon) mit Füßen in Abzu.

iv 12 utu kur-še3 AN-ni-ĝen111 Utu ging in die Unterwelt/zum Bergland. iv 13 amar gag bi2-keše2 (Damit) band er das Kalb-mit-Spitze (?). v1 kur-ta en-na ĝen112 Bis er (Utu) aus der Unterwelt/dem Bergland (wieder) kam, v2 amar gag ba-zalag reinigte er das Kalb-mit-Spitze (?). Legitimationsformel v3 KA+UD dnin-girimx(A.BU.ḪA.DU) (Das ist) der Spruch von Ningirim.

110 /ma/ in i3-ma-ta3 = /mu+a/ „für mich“? Oder /m(u)-ba/ „für sich selbst“? Das Verb ĝiri3—ta3 ist eine Variante des Verbes ĝiri3-saga11—du11/AK (Attinger 1993, 539 „frotter/presser(?) (avec) le pied = écraser du pied“; Attinger 2005, 215 „écraser du pied“). Als Beweis dienen die Belege aus den Textzeugen A und B der Beschwörung FSB 29: der Textzeuge B (CDLI: P273898) weist die Verbalform ĝiri3-dab6?-saga11 ba-ni-in-du11 auf, wobei der Textzeuge A (CDLI: P273889) an der entsprechenden Stelle ĝiri3-ta3 bani-du11 schreibt (van Dijk / Geller 2003, 35; Rudik 2015, 205 und 210). George 2016, 26 vergleicht das Verb ĝiri3—TAG mit ĝiri3—ul4 und interpretiert es als „to hasten“: „Asar hastened (from) the Abzu“. Die Verbalform i3-ma-ta3 würde der Regel der altsumerischen Vokalharmonie widersprechen. Die drei Verbalformen auf der Tafel CUSAS 32, 1, die eindeutig zu lesen sind und die für die Vokalharmonie diagnostischen Zeichen aufweisen (in der Schrift hervorgehoben), geben uns aber widersprüchliche Informationen: bi2-tuḫ in ix 10 (ki-a bi2-tuḫ „sie (Ningirim) ließ sie (die Krankheit) in der Unterwelt frei“) weist die Vokalharmonie auf; mu-da-ra-še3-gi4 in vi 10 und viii 2 („(zu seinem Vater Enki/Enlil) sandte er/sie (einen Boten)“) dagegen nicht. Das Verb keše2 in der Verbalform bi2-keše2 (iv 13) gehört wohl zu den Ausnahmen und kann nicht für die Analyse verwendet werden, siehe schon Jagersma 2010, 59 mit Verweis auf Keetman 2005, 4. Die Verbalformen e-gu7 (i 4) und e-kux(DU) (i 5) können möglicherweise auch anders gelesen/interpretiert werden und sollten deshalb hier unberücksichtigt bleiben. Bei der Entscheidung, wie man die Verbalformen auf unserer Tafel lesen soll, lohnt es sich meines Erachtens also nicht, die Regel der Vokalharmonie zu berücksichtigen. Nichtsdestotrotz könnte man ĝiri3 i3-ma-ta3 alternativ als ĝiri3-ni ma-ta3 „er trampelte mit seinen Füßen“ interpretieren. 111 Die Lesung der Verbalform ist unsicher. Wäre es vielleicht besser, sie als i3-ĝen-am6 zu lesen? Die Reihenfolge der Zeichen in dieser Zeile lässt beide Lesungen zu. Johandi 2019, 51 deutet ĝen-an-ni aufgrund seiner Übersetzung „when he came“ wohl als eine pronominale Konjugation. 112 Lesung nach Attinger (E-Mail vom 10.05.20) und Krebernik (E-Mail vom 11.05.20). en-na(-)ĝen ist möglicherweise als en-na i3-ĝen zu interpretieren.

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3.2.1 Zum Inhalt113 In der Expositio wird ein Wesen genannt (iv 7), dessen Verhalten oder allein dessen Natur zum Anlass für diese Beschwörung geworden ist. Dann wird davon berichtet, wo dieses Geschöpf momentan lauert (iv 7), woher es kam (iv 8) und wo es nicht Zuhause ist (iv 9). Die Incantatio dieser Beschwörung versetzt ihren Anwender in eine mythische Vergangenheit, als das gleiche Problem zum ersten Mal aufgetreten ist. Es wird wohl vorausgesetzt, dass durch das Nachahmen der Handlungen, die einst von Gottheiten vollzogen wurden, alle Schwierigkeiten bewältigt werden können. Um das Problem zu beheben, genügt es wohl in diesem Fall, mit den Füßen zu trampeln (iv 11) und nachfolgend ein Nachtritual (?) durchzuführen (iv 12–v 2), bei dem das Binden (iv 13) und das Reinigen (v 2) zum Ablauf gehören. 3.2.2 Zu den Protagonisten Der Bösewicht wird hier, im vierten Text der „Göttertafel“, mit einem Epitheton aufgeführt: KAK oder amar KAK ist das Thema dieses Textes. amar „Kalb“ ist neben gu4 „Stier“ bekanntlich das Standard-Epitheton für einen Skorpion. Beide, amar und gu4, sind seit frühdynastischer Zeit in Beschwörungen belegt.114 KAK kommt zwar nur an dieser Stelle vor, aber in einer Ur III-zeitlichen Beschwörung gegen Schlangen (FSB 45)115 findet sich der Ausdruck ĝeštukul-am3 „sie ist eine Waffe“. In Analogie dazu ließe sich amar KAK hier als „das bewaffnete Kalb“ oder „das Kalb mit Spitze“ deuten (mit KAK als gag „Spieß; Pfeil(spitze)“).116 Schließlich fällt auch das übliche Wort für einen Skorpion ĝiri2 (ab der altbabylonischen Zeit ĝiri2-tab) mit dem Terminus für „Schwert“ bzw. „Dolch“ zusammen.117 Allerdings wäre es vielleicht noch besser, KAK als du3 zu lesen und als Epitheton für einen Skorpion im Sinne von „sich aufbäumender“ zu verstehen (vergleichbar mit dem Akkadischen zaqāpu „aufrichten“ und zuqiqīpu „Skorpion“). Auf einen Skorpion verweist auch die Zeile si nu-bad. si „Hörner“ kommen in Beschwörungen sowohl in Zusammenhang mit Skorpionen als auch mit 113

Es handelt sich nur um einen ersten Interpretationsversuch. Andere Deutungen sind freilich nicht ausgeschlossen. 114 Im Korpus der früheren Beschwörungen (Rudik 2015) kommt amar als ein Epitheton für einen Skorpion in FSB 42 (FD) und FSB 68 (Ur III; CDLI: P142388) vor. gu4 als Bezeichnung für einen Skorpion erscheint häufiger: in FSB 47 (Ur III; CDLI: P273891), FSB 62 (FD; CDLI: P010631), FSB 63 (FD; CDLI: P242007), FSB 64 (Ur III; CDLI: P124790), FSB 68 (Ur III; CDLI: P142388); FSB 69 (Ur III); FSB 70 (Ur III; CDLI: P376869). 115 Rudik 2015, 282–287; CDLI: P134674. 116 Zu gag als „Spieß; Pfeil(spitze)“ siehe ausführlich Schrakamp 2010, 101–110. 117 Pientka-Hinz 2009–2011b, 577.

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Schlangen vor.118 In einer Ur III-zeitlichen Beschwörung (FSB 29)119 richtet ein Löwendrache piriĝ muš-ḫuš, geritten von Ninazu, seine Hörner nach vorne, si bad-bad, als eine bedrohliche Geste: d

nin-a-zu en-ne-ki-ta eriduki-še3 ĝen-a-ne2 piriĝ muš-ḫuš-a-na u5-a-ne2 ib2-ge17 kitimx(UR2×GI.IDIM) ḫulu piriĝ muš-ḫuš-a-ni-še3 du10-ge ba-ši-ib2-gilim piriĝ muš-ḫuš-a-ne2 si bad-bad-a-be2120 d nin-a-zu kitimx(UR2×GI.IDIM)-ba ĝiri3-ta3 ba-ni-du11121 Nachdem Ninazu von Enegi nach Eridu aufgebrochen ist, Nachdem er seinen Löwendrachen gesattelt hat, hat die Hüftenkrankheit, der böse Geist, seinem Löwendrachen die Knie verdreht. Nachdem sein Löwendrache die Hörner nach vorne gerichtet hat, trampelte Ninazu diesen Geist nieder. (Ur III, FSB 29A Vs. 8–12, FSB 29B Rs. ii 1ʹ)122

Beide Gottheiten, die hier erwähnt sind, nämlich Asar und Utu, kommen auch in anderen früheren Beschwörungen gegen Skorpione und Schlangen vor.123 In unserem Text reagiert Asar vorbeugend: bevor der Skorpion seine Hörner bedrohlich nach vorne richten kann, trampelt er schon mit den Füßen, scheinbar ohne Abzu dabei zu verlassen. Erhofft er sich damit, den Skorpion zu erschrecken und zu vertreiben? Oder zertrampelt er den Skorpion wie Ninazu in FSB 29 (siehe oben) den bösen Geist? In beiden Texten wird allem Anschein nach das gleiche Verb ĝiri3—ta3 (du11) verwendet (siehe die Fußnote zu iv 11 unseres Textes).

118

In den früheren Beschwörungen (Rudik 2015) kommt si „Hörner“ in den folgenden Texten gegen Skorpione vor: FSB 61 (FD, CDLI: P010644; P241191; P241295) und FSB 64 (Ur III, CDLI: P124790). In FSB 65 (FD; CDLI: P242007) stellt eine Schlange ihre Hörner nach vorne: muš si-pi pa-sal (Krebernik 1984, 180–183; Rudik 2015, 357– 360). Siehe auch si-bi ki ḫe2-la2 „möge er seine Hörner zu Boden drücken“ in CUSAS 32, 1i x 9, die eindeutig gegen einen Skorpion gerichtet ist (eine kurze Beschreibung des Textes findet sich in George 2016, 26–27). 119 Van Dijk / Geller 2003, 31–36; Rudik 2015, 204–212; CDLI: P273889; P273898. 120 Var. si bad-bad-da-be2. 121 Var. ĝiri3-dab6?-saga11 ba-ni-in-du11. 122 Hier führe ich den Komposittext an. Für die Partitur siehe Rudik 2015, 204. 123 Abgesehen von den typischen Beschwörungsformeln wie das Konsultationsschema oder die Schlussformeln tritt Asar in Verbindung mit Skorpionen in FSB 47 (Ur III, van Dijk / Geller 2003, 57–59; Rudik 2015, 292–295; CDLI: P273891) und mit Schlangen in FSB 50 (Ur III, van Dijk / Geller 2003, 20–25; Rudik 2015, 303–309; CDLI: P273901) auf. Siehe auch CUSAS 32, 1f vi 7–vii 4, wo Asar im Zusammenhang mit Schlangen erscheint (George 2016, 100). Utu kämpft gegen Schlangen und Skorpione in FSB 67 (aAkk, Maiocchi 2009, 227–228; Rudik 2015, 370–371; CDLI: P323974) und FSB 68 (Ur III, Rudik 2015, 372–375; CDLI: P142388).

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Utu (ohne Determinativ geschrieben, was im Frühdynastikum aber häufig der Fall ist)124 handelt, wie es für eine Sonne typisch ist. Er geht unter und danach wieder auf. Bis er aufgegangen ist (also während der Nacht), wirkt er auf den Zustand unseres Skorpions ein.125 Für alternative Interpretationsmöglichkeiten in Bezug auf die beiden Gottheiten und amar gag siehe den Kommentar unten. 3.2.3 Kommentar zu den noch offenen Passagen Expositio iv 7 gag(KAK) NE.GI-bar tur (mit tur syllabisch für das transitive Verb dur2 „(einen Platz) besetzen, sich niederlassen + ABS“)126 ist eine sehr vorläufige Interpretation, die keineswegs sicher ist. Die Deutung dieser Zeile hängt stark davon ab, ob man KAK hier als ein mit amar KAK identisches Wesen auffasst oder nicht.127 Im ersten Fall würde ein bedrohliches Spinnentier beschrieben, das pars pro toto durch seinen gefährlichsten Teil (Schwanz?, Schere?) bezeichnet wird. Ohne auf diese Idee verzichten zu müssen, könnte man die Zeichenfolge KAK GI BAR NE DUMU128 alternativ auch als gag si22 bar bi2-tur „der gelbgrüne129 Spieß ließ sich draußen nieder“ lesen. 124

Krebernik 1998, 284 und Zand 2009, 69. Wegen diesem Verhalten, das für die Sonne charakteristisch ist, deute ich das Zeichen UD hier als „Sonne“ bzw. als Name des Sonnengottes. Dafür spricht auch die Verbalform ba-zalag(UD), in der das Verb für „reinigen“ mit dem gleichen Zeichen geschrieben ist wie der Sonnengott selbst. Es wäre aber auch denkbar, dass im ganzen Text Asar die handelnde Person ist und UD als u4 einen Temporalsatz einleitet. Siehe den Kommentar zur Incantatio. 126 Die Deutung von dur2 richtet sich nach Attinger 2010, 75–76, 65. Siehe auch Attinger 2019a, 47. 127 Johandi 2019, 51 interpretiert das KAK-gi in dieser Zeile als „an unidentified illness“ (mit gi syllabisch für ge17(g) „Krankheit“), was meines Erachtens nicht in den Kontext passt. 128 Es scheint sicher zu sein, dass KAK am Anfang und TUR am Ende des Satzes stehen sollte. Dazwischen können die GI BAR NE unterschiedlich kombiniert werden, wenn sie zu einem Wort gehören. Die vorläufigen Schlussfolgerungen zur Zeichenanordnung in den frühdynastischen Beschwörungen werden in Rudik 2020, 634–636, 639–640 zusammengefasst. Zur Zeichenanordnung siehe auch schon Krebernik 1984, 217–222 und Johnson / Johnson 2012. 129 Das wäre eine typische Schattierung eines Skorpiones, siehe z. B. ĝiri2 kun si12 „Skorpion mit gelb-grünem Schwanz“ (Ur III, FSB 68, Rudik 2015, 372–375; CDLI: P142388). Siehe auch die mesopotamische Klassifizierung der Skorpione in der lexikalischen Serie Ḫḫ XIV 369 (MSL 8/2, 40): ĝiri2-tab si22-si22 „gelb-grüner Skorpion“. Siehe auch Pientka-Hinz 2009–2011, 577 und Rudik 2015, 342. Für einen gelb-grünen Skorpion in akkadischen Texten siehe z. B. wa-ru-uq i-na ba-aš-tim „er ist gelb-grün nach seinem Aussehen“ in einer altbabylonischen Beschwörung (RA 66, 141 Vs. 7; CDLI: 125

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Wenn das Thema dieses Textes aber nur KAK (und nicht amar KAK) sein sollte, bräuchte man sowohl für den ganzen Text (siehe dazu auch den Kommentar zur Incantatio) als auch für diese Zeile eine neue Erklärung. Es ließe sich z. B. KAK als ḫenbur „Spross; Halm“130 und die ganze Zeile als ḫenbur NE.GIbar tur lesen: „kleiner NE.GI-bar-Spross, (der aus der Unterwelt kam)“. Ein solcher Beginn würde diese Beschwörung in einen Zusammenhang mit Kultmittelbeschwörungen setzen, die oft Pflanzen und Bäume zum Inhalt haben, die für kultische Reinigungen verwendet wurden.131 Dazu würde die letzte Verbalform ba-UD (v 2) gut passen, die voraussichtlich als ba-zalag zu lesen ist und (auch wenn anders gelesen) einen Reinigungsprozess markieren dürfte. Diese Interpretation wird aber von jemandem auf die Hörner genommen, der sie in iv 10 (noch) nicht nach vorne richtet. Die Hörner würden schlecht in den Kontext einer Kultmittelbeschwörung passen. Das Verhalten von Asar, der mit den Füßen trampelt, verweist eher auf ein dramatisches Geschehen und nicht auf das friedliche Wachsen eines Schilfsprosses. Möglicherweise lassen sich aber beide Interpretationen zusammenbringen: KAK könnte ein Spross, aber auch eine Bezeichnung für ein Skorpion sein, wenn dieser Spross in einem Ritualgeschehen im Rahmen von Analogiezaubern symbolisch als Ersatz für das echte stechende Geschöpf in Beschlag genommen wurde. Verwendete man den spießartigen Spross im Ritual z. B. als das Abbild des Endstachels eines Skorpions, wirkte man dabei auf ihn selbst ein.132 iv 9 Die Zeile ge4 nu-e3-a ist trotz relativ sicherer Zeichenreihenfolge unklar. Steht ge4 syllabisch oder fehlerhaft für ge „Rohr“?133 In diesem Fall würde es darum gehen, dass ein Skorpion, der momentan im Röhricht sein Heim gefunden hat, ursprünglich nicht aus dem Rohr, sondern aus der Unterwelt kam (iv 8). iv 10 Aufgrund des Satzes si nu-bad „er richtet(e) (seine) Hörner (noch) nicht nach vorne“ fällt diese Beschwörung in die Kategorie „der präventiven

P355899) und wa-ru-uq i-na ṣe-e-[tim] CUSAS 32, 49 Vs. 1 (CDLI: P252069) „yellow in the open“ (George 2016, 113). 130 Diese Idee verdanke ich M. Krebernik (E-Mail vom 16.05.20). 131 Siehe z. B. Cunningham 1997, 27–30, 56, 80–83, 112–113, 116–117. Zur Edition einiger frühesten Kultmittelbeschwörungen siehe auch Rudik 2015, 382–412, 417–421. 132 Vergleiche z. B. FSB 26 (Ur III, van Dijk / Geller 2003, 42–47, Rudik 2015, 192– 195; CDLI: P273902). Die Krankheit wird dort mit Fangnetzen verglichen und Netze werden benutzt, um den Kranken zu behandeln. Siehe auch FSB 34 (Ur III, van Dijk / Geller 2003, 11–14, Rudik 2015, 230–236; CDLI: P273911; P250420), wo ein Gefäß zerbrochen wird, als es der von einem Dämon besessene Kopf. Dies sind nur zwei besonders eindrucksvolle Beispiele von vielen. Siehe auch Cunningham 1997, 171–176. 133 Für Belege zu ge4 als Schreibung für ge „Rohr“ siehe Attinger 2019a, 61. In v 7, v 8 und vii 8 der Tafel CUSAS 32, 1 wird „Rohr“ allerdings mit dem Zeichen GI geschrieben.

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Beschwörungen“, die zur Bewahrung und Schutz der Ordnung dienen.134 Mit diesem Text versuchte man möglicherweise, prophylaktisch auf einen Skorpion einzuwirken, damit er (auf dem Weg?) nicht steche. Incantatio iv 10–v 2 Meines Erachtens lässt der Abschnitt drei Interpretationsmöglichkeiten zu: 1. Das Zeichen UD steht für den Sonnengott Utu, der in der Incantatio aktiv ist und irgendein Ritual in Bezug auf amar gag durchführt. Da eine Reise nach kur (kur-še3) und zurück (kur-ta), sei es die Unterwelt oder das Gebirge, für den Sonnengott kennzeichnend ist, wurde diese Interpretation in der Übersetzung gewählt.135 2. Asar ist die einzige Gottheit in dieser Beschwörung. Er trampelt zuerst drohend mit den Füßen und geht dann in die Unterwelt und wieder zurück. Dabei bindet er amar gag und reinigt ihn. UD in iv 12 wäre dann als u4 und als Einführung eines Temporalsatzes zu verstehen: „als er (Asar) in die Unterwelt ging, band er amar gag. Bis er aus der Unterwelt wieder herauskam, reinigte er amar gag“. 3. amar und KAK sind nicht ein einziges Wesen (siehe schon den Kommentar zur Expositio), sondern zwei Aktoren, die miteinander interagieren: Entweder geht amar in die Unterwelt und zurück und bindet und reinigt dabei KAK (= ḫenbur „Spross“?) oder umgekehrt. Zu den Problemen dieser Interpretation siehe schon den Kommentar zur Expositio.

4 „Enlil-Tafel“: CUSAS 32, 3 (MS 4550 = P253642)136 Zum Schluss möchte ich den Anfang einer Beschwörung auf der „Enlil-Tafel“ präsentieren, der im Vergleich zum Rest der Tafel einigermaßen verständlich ist.

134

Zur Klassifizierung der sumerischen Beschwörungen in präventive (zur Bewahrung) und reaktive (zur Wiederherstellung der Ordnung) siehe Rudik 2015, 69 und 79. 135 Für den Sonnengott Utu, der in den frühesten literarischen Texten in Richtung kur und dann wieder weg zurück, siehe z. B. den UD.GAL.NUN-Text CUT 4 (Zand 2009, 208– 256). Dort sind mit kur die Bergländer gemeint, die Utu besucht, um von dort das Vieh herunterzubringen. 136 A. George beschreibt diese Tafel kurz in George 2016, 28. Meine Lesung dieses Abschnittes stützt sich auf Kollationen, die von mir in der Schøyen-Sammlung durchgeführt wurden, und stimmt nicht in allen Fällen mit der Kopie in George 2016, Plate V überein. Die endgültige Identifikation einiger Zeichen, bei denen ich nicht ganz sicher war oder sogar komplett falsch lag, verdanke ich M. Krebernik (E-Mail vom 11.05.20).

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4.1 CUSAS 32, 3 (Vs. vi 10 – Rs. ???) Einleitungsformel vi 10 LAK358-nu-ru Expositio (?) vi 11 ud5 ud5 si22-si22 EN.NUN-kam Die gelb-grünen Ziegen sind des EN.NUN (?). vi 12 ĝa2-ĝa2 daĝal-le137 den-lilx(E2)138 In den (zu) expandierenden (?)139 Ställen Enlils vii 1 […] ˹ki˺140 ba-ni-ta3 legte(n) (Priester?/Ziegen?) [… auf den Boden], vii 2 maš2 ki ba-ni-ta3 legte(n) (Priester?/Ziegen?) einen Ziegenbock auf den Boden. vii 3 u8 gegge TAG4?.LAK358-kam Das schwarze Mutterschaf ist des TAG4?.LAK358 (?). vii 4 ĝa2-ĝa2 daĝal-le den-lilx(E2)-ka In den (zu) expandierenden (?) Ställen Enlils vii 5 sila4 ki ba-ni-ta3 legte(n) (Priester?/Mutterschafe?) ein Lamm auf den Boden. vii 6 ud5 ud5 si22-si22 EN.NUN-˹kam˺ Die gelb-grünen Ziegen sind des Priesters en-nun. vii 7 ˹ĝa2-ĝa2˺ daĝal-le den-lilx(E2)-ka maš2 In den (zu) expandierenden (?) Ställen Enlils vii 8 [ki ba]-ni-ta3 legte(n) (Priester?/Ziegen?) einen Ziegenbock auf [den Boden]. vii 9 […-kam]141 […]. vii 10 ĝa2-˹ĝa2˺ daĝal-le den-lilx(E2)-ka ˹X˺ In den (zu) expandierenden Ställen Enlils vii 11 sila4 ki ba-ni-ta3 legte(n) (Priester?/Mutterschafe?) […] ein Lamm auf den Boden.

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Hier und in vii 4, vii 7, vii 10 gegen ama-tud in George 2016, 28. Zu dieser Schreibung von Enlil siehe den Kommentar zur ersten Beschwörung der „Göttertafel“. 139 daĝal-le ist schwierig. Ich setze versuchsweise ein marû-Partizip an, das aber dem Sinn nach nicht gut in den Kontext passt. 140 M. Krebernik schlägt vor (E-Mail vom 16.05.20), am Anfang der Zeile ˹SAL˺. [AŠ2.GAR3] „(weibliches) Zicklein“ zu lesen. 141 M. Krebernik (E-Mail vom 16.05.20) rekonstruiert diese Zeile als ˹SAL˺.[AŠ2.GAR3 ki] ˹ba˺-[ni-ta3], wobei sie die vorige Passage fortsetzen würde. Ich sehe hier aber den Anfang eines neuen Abschnittes, in dem eher das Mutterschaf wieder in Erscheinung treten sollte. 138

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4.2 Zum Inhalt Dieser Text ist unter den frühen Beschwörungen bisher einzigartig. Besonders hervorzuheben ist die repetitive Struktur des Textes. So ein poetischer Einschlag tritt in den früheren Beschwörungen nur selten zutage. Es handelt sich entweder 1. um die Vermehrung von Tieren;142 oder 2. um die Opferung von Tieren, die zum EN.NUN und zum TAG4?.LAK358, wohl den sakralen Räumen innerhalb Enlils Haushalt, gehören.143 Mit den beiden Logogrammen werden möglicherweise auch die Berufe der für die Tiere zuständigen Gottheiten/Personen bezeichnet. Man könnte z. B. EN.NUN als en-nuĝx(NUN) „Wächter“ (als Epitheton für eine Gottheit bzw. eine Kultperson) auffassen. 1. Bei der Vermehrung von Tieren würde das Verb ki—ta3 „werfen (von Tieren)“ bedeuten.144 In dieser Bedeutung tritt ki—ta3 beispielsweise in altbabylonischen literarischen Texten über Dumuzi HS 2940 und VS 10, 123 (VAT 6077) auf:145 u8-e sila4 2 ki ba-an-˹da˺-ta3 ud5-de3 maš2 3 ki ba-an-da-ta3 (Da) warf bei ihm das Mutterschaf zwei Lämmer, Bei ihm warf die Geiß drei Zicklein.146 (HS 2940, 13–14) u8-e sila4 ki ba-an-da-ab!-ta3 ĝuruš-e edin-na ud5-de3 maš2 ki ba-an-da-ab-ta3 ĝuruš-e edin-na Ein Mutterschaf warf ein Lamm; ein Junge in der Steppe. Eine Ziege warf ein Zicklein; ein Junge in der Steppe.147 (VS 10, 123 iiiʹ 8ʹ–9ʹ)148

Die positive Bedeutung des Verbes ki—ta3 („werfen“ im Sinne von „gebären“ von Tieren) im vorliegenden Kontext wird möglicherweise durch die Zeile iv 11 142

Der Vorschlag stammt von M. Krebernik (E-Mail vom 16.05.20). Zu LAK358 als Kulttoponym bzw. als ein Tempelbestandteil siehe Krebernik 1984, 200–201. 144 Zu ki—ta3 in anderen Bedeutungen siehe Civil 1985, 32. 145 Zur Edition von HS 2940 und den weiteren Textparallelen siehe Krebernik 2020. In der parallelen Passage aus dem Text „Mutterschaf und Getreide“ (ETCSL 5.3.2, 8–9) findet sich anstelle von ki—ta3 das Verb du2(d) „gebären“, was die Bedeutung von ki— ta3 an dieser Stelle bestätigt: u8-e sila4 2-bi nu-ub-du2-ud / ud5-e maš2 3-bi nu-ub-du2-ud (Krebernik 2020, 134–135). 146 Übersetzung nach Krebernik 2020, 137. 147 Die Übersetzungen von Civil 1985, 32 „to miscarry“ und von Limet 2014, 118 („Les brebis abandonnent leurs agneaux, le jeune homme dans la plaine, les chevres abandonnent leurs chevreaux“) sind wohl zu verwerfen. 148 CDLI: P342931. 143

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in einer anderen Beschwörung auf der gleichen Tafel MS 4550 bestätigt: ĝa2? d EN.E2-ka nunus? ki ba-ta3 „(ein Vogel?) legte Eier im Stall von Enlil“.149 Die geglättete Übersetzung des ganzen Abschnittes unter Berücksichtigung der Textrekonstruktion würde dann lauten:150 Die gelben Ziegen gehören zum EN.NUN. In den weiten Ställen Enlils haben sie [Zicklein] geworfen, haben sie Böckchen geworfen. Die schwarzen Mutterschafe gehören zum TAG4?.LAK358. In den weiten Ställen Enlils haben sie Lämmer geworfen. Die gelben Ziegen gehören zum EN.NUN. In den weiten Ställen Enlils haben sie Böckchen geworfen. [Die schwarzen Mutterschafe gehören zum TAG4?.LAK358]. In den weiten Ställen Enlils haben sie Lämmer geworfen.

Eine ähnliche pastorale Darstellung der glücklichen Vermehrung, die wohl auf das Böse positiv einwirken kann, kommt in mindestens zwei weiteren Beschwörungen des frühdynastischen Korpus vor: ama-LAGAB×A den-lilx(E2) ama nun-na ud5 maš2-bi2 buluĝ5 gi am6-si-ĝeš-da u2 sila4-bi2 buluĝ5 ge ma2-da-bi2 LAGAB×A-Frauenhaus von Enlil! Im fürstlichen Frauenhaus, wo die Ziege ihr Zicklein großzieht, wird die Krankheit gebunden; wo das Mutterschaf sein Lamm großzieht, wird die Krankheit gefangen. (FD, FSB 56A ix 2–viii 2)151 [tur3 am6-DU.DU] tur3 am6-sikil amaš am6-DU.DU 149

Für nunus ki—ta3 „Eier legen“ siehe z. B. Civil 1985, 32; Nippur Zylinder xiii 9 (CBS 8383; CDLI: P222183; Alster / Westenholz 1994; Lisman 2016–2017); Streitgespräch „Reiher und Schildkröte“ (ETCSL 5.9.2; Gragg 1973; Peterson 2007, 269–410) passim. 150 Mit Vorschlägen von M. Krebernik (E-Mails vom 16.05.20). 151 FSB 56A = CDLI: P241191; Siehe auch FSB 56B Vs. iʹ 1–2 (= CDLI: P243691; Krebernik 1984, 118–120; Rudik 2015, 318–320): u8 sila4-bi2 buluĝ5 / ki am6-ĝeš-ta „wo das Mutterschaf sein Lamm großzieht, / wird die Krankheit gebunden“.

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amaš am6-sikil u8 sila4 šum2 ud5 maš2 bi2-šum2 Sie ging in die Pferche; sie reinigte die Pferche. Sie ging in die Hürden; sie reinigte die Hürden. Sie gab dem Mutterschaf das Lamm; sie gab der Ziege das Zicklein. (FD, FSB 60 vʹ 1–5)152

Die Vermehrung von Tieren wird auch im UD.GAL.NUN-Text CUT 4 thematisiert: ˹u8˺ gegge kur-ta(TAgunû) nam2-ta(TAgunû)-e11(KU) en(GAL) sila4 ˹nam2-ma-lu˺ Er (Utu?) brachte aus dem Bergland schwarze Mutterschafe herab. Der Herr machte Lämmer zahlreich. (CUT 4 A iii 11–12)153

2. Weniger wahrscheinlich ist die zweite Interpretationsmöglichkeit, bei der es sich um eine Opferung von Tieren handelt: „(ein Priester?) legte das Böckchen bzw. ein Lamm auf den Boden (zum Opfern?)“. Momentan kann sie wegen des schlechten Erhaltungszustandes im restlichen Teil des Textes (der hier nicht mitaufgenommen wurde) weder bestätigt noch komplett ausgeschlossen werden.154 Sicherlich verbirgt diese Tafel noch weitere Schätze vor uns. Das gilt für alle drei Schøyen-Tafeln, aber speziell für diese, da sie besondere Eigenheiten aufweist. Möglicherweise reflektiert sie eine andere Tradition mit ihrem Enlil (kein Ningirim!) und dem Herrscherhaus. Obwohl sich diese Tafel noch beharrlich weigert, alle ihre Geheimnisse preiszugeben, hoffe ich mit der Zeit, ein besseres Textverständnis zu erzielen.

152

CDLI: P010631; Krebernik 1984, 82–84; Rudik 2015, 337–338. CUT 4A = CDLI: P010622; Siehe auch CUT 4B iv 1 (= CDLI: P010110; Zand 2009, 212): en(GAL) ĝa2 sila4 mu(NUN)-lu „Der Herr machte im Stall Lämmer zahlreich“. 154 ki ta3-ga kommt in Zusammenhang mit Opfergaben z. B. in YBC 4190 (BDTNS 074246 = CDLI: P200532; Sigrist 1999, 136–146) Rs. i 21 und Rs. iii 31 vor, eher aber in der Bedeutung „Beisetzungsort“, siehe Katz 2007, 175–176 (ki ta3-ga als „lyingplace“); Jordanova 2015, 168, 171. 153

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Nadezda Rudik

Glossar Gottheiten155

Geographische Namen

A-nun-na d Asal-lu-ḫi d Asar d En-lilx(E2), dEn-lil2 d En-ki d Ḫendur-saĝ-ĝa2 d IG.DU d NE.DAG d Nin-a-zu d Nin-girimx(A.BU.ḪA.DU) d Nin-ki (d) Utu

Buranuna Eridu(ki) En-ne-ki (syllabisch für Enegi, das Kultzentrum von Ninazu) Idigna Nibruki

Sumerische Wörter a a-ab-ba(k) a du10(g) a gal a—ri/ru a šeš ab-ra (für bala?) ab-zu (syllabisch für abzu) abzu aia(2) AK am6-ma (syllabisch für ama?) ama ama (syllabisch für ame2?) ama-LAGAB×A amar amar gag amaš ame2 an an-ki -(a)ni aš—aĝ2 ba 155

„Wasser; Samen“ „Meer“ „Süßwasser“ „Hochwasser“ „zeugen“ „Brackwasser“ siehe bala siehe abzu (der unterirdische Süßwasserozean, Enkis Wohnsitz) „Vater“ „tun, machen“ siehe ama „Mutter“ siehe ame2 (Kultgebäude (?) „Kalb“; Bezeichnung für Skorpione „Kalb-mit-Spitze (?) (= Skorpion (?)“ „Hürde“ „Frauenhaus“ „Himmel; hoch“ „das All; Himmel und Erde“ „sein“ „(be)schwören“ „zuteilen“

Hier werden nur die Gottheiten aufgezählt, die in besprochenen Texten vorkommen.

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr bad bala ĝeš banšur bar bar7 (syllabisch für bar?) -bi buluĝ3 buluĝ5 (syllabisch für buluĝ3) da-bi2 (syllabisch für dab5) da-ma (syllabisch für dim2-ma?) dab5, dab daĝal dal di4-di4 diĝir dili DILI+DILI(-a) dim2 du (marû von ĝen) du (syllabisch für tu6) DU.DU (Plural von ĝen) du-ra (syllabisch für dur11-ra) du2(d) du3 du6(d) du8(d) (syllabisch für du6(d)) du10(g/b) du10(g) dumu dur2 dur2 (syllabisch für dur11-ra) dur11-ra e-sir2 e2 e2-me (syllabisch für eme) e2-me min3 e3 e11 edin egir eme, e2-me, me eme min en en-na en-nuĝx(NUN) EN.NUN

143

„öffnen“ „überqueren“ „Tisch“ “Außenseite; draußen” siehe bar „sein; dieser“ „großziehen“ siehe buluĝ3 siehe dab5 „erschaffen (?)“ „packen“ „breit“ „fliegen“ „klein“ „Gottheit“ „ein; einzig“ „unterschiedlich (?)“ „schaffen; Geschöpf“ siehe ĝen siehe tu6 siehe ĝen siehe dur11-ra „gebären“ „sich aufbäumen“ „Kluft, Erdspalte“ siehe du6(d) „Knie“ „gut, süß“ „Kind“ „(einen Platz) besetzen; sich niederlassen“ siehe dur11-ra „erkrankt“ „Straße“ „Haus“ siehe eme siehe eme min „herausgehen; herauskommen“ „hinaufsteigen“ „Steppe“ „hinter; Rücken“ „Zunge“ „gespaltene Zunge, Doppelzunge“ „Herr“ „bis; solange“ „Wächter“ (Kultgebäude bzw. ein Epitheton für eine Gottheit oder eine Kultperson)

144 EN2-nu-E2-ru ga-da (syllabisch für gudu4) gag gal gal5-la2 ge ge (sylabisch für ge17(g)) ge(n) ge4 (syllabisch für ge) ge4 (ab Ur III für gi4 „wenden“)156 ge17(g) gegge(g) -gen7 gi gi-gi (syllabisch für gi4-gi4) gi-dim (syllabisch für kitim) gi4 (marû: gi4-gi4) gi17 (syllabisch für ki) gi17-ti-ma (syllabisch für kitim?) gid2 gilim GIR2.GIR2

GIR2gunû gu gu2 gu2-da (syllabisch für gudu4) gu4 gu7 gu7-e gub gudu4 d gudu4-nun ĝa2 ĝa2-ĝa2 (marû von ĝar) ĝal2 ĝar ĝe6 ĝen ĝeš ĝeš (syllabisch für keše2(d/r)) ĝiri2 ĝiri2 ĝiri2-tab 156

Attinger 2019b, 5.

Nadezda Rudik (Beschwörungseinleitungsformel) siehe gudu4 „Spieß; Spitze“ „gross“ (galla-Dämon) „Rohr“ siehe ge17(g) „fest“ siehe ge „Rohr“ siehe gi4 „Krankheit“ „schwarz“ „wie“ siehe ge (sylabisch für ge17(g)) siehe gi4 siehe kitim „sich abwenden; zurückkehren“ siehe ki siehe kitim „lehnen; strecken“ „verdrehen“ (Verb, das das Benehmen von Schlangen und Skorpionen in den frühdynastischen Beschwörungen beschreibt) (unklar); Mittermayer 2009, 143: “Feld (?)” „Schnur“ „Nacken“ siehe gudu4 „Stier“ „fressen“ „Fresser (?)“ „(wider)stehen; (auf)stellen“ (Bezeichnung für eine Priesterklasse) „fürstlicher gudu-Priester“ „Stall; Haus“ siehe ĝar „(zur Verfügung) haben“ „legen“ „Nacht“ „kommen, eintreffen“ „Baum“ siehe keše2(d/r) „Skorpion“ „Dolch; Schwert“ „Skorpion“

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr ĝiri3 ĝiri3-dab6?-saga11—du11 ĝiri3-saga11—AK ĝiri3-saga11—du11 ĝiri3—ta3 ĝiri3-ta3—du11 ĝiri3—ul4 ĝuruš ḫenbur ḫulu i7(d) ib2-ge17 ibila idim il2 igi igi—bar iri ka KA+UD, KA×UD kalam kar keše2(d/r) ki ki-ba ki-da-ma (syllabisch für kitim?) ki-gal ki-gi17 (syllabisch für gi4-gi4? marû für gi4) ki-idim ki-in-dar ki-in-du ki—la2 ki-maḫ ki-ME/MI (?) KI ME TE MA ki—ta3 ki-te-ma (syllabisch für kitim?) ki-tum2 ki-tuš ki—us2 kitim kitimx(UR2×GI.IDIM) ku3 ku4(r)

145

„Fuß“ „mit den Füssen trampeln; niedertrampeln“ „mit den Füssen trampeln; niedertrampeln“ „mit den Füssen trampeln; niedertrampeln“ „mit den Füssen trampeln; niedertrampeln“ „mit den Füssen trampeln; niedertrampeln“ „sich beeilen“ „Junge“ „Spross; Halm“ „böse“ „Kanal; Fluss“ „Hüftenkrankheit/Dämon“ „Erbe“ „Quelle“ „heben“ „Auge“ „sehen; schauen“ „Stadt“ „Maul; Mund“ „Spruch/Beschwörung“ „Land“ „Kai“ „fesseln“ „Erde; Unterwelt; dort“ „dorthin“ siehe kitim „Unterwelt“ siehe gi4 „Unterwelt“ „Unterwelt“ „Erde“ „zu Boden drücken“ „Unterwelt“ (unklar: Beiname für Unterwelt?) (Zeichenkombination, die einen Täter in CUSAS 32, 1a bezeichnet) „auf den Boden legen; werfen (= Junge bekommen (Tiere); (Eier) legen“ siehe kitim „Grab“ „Wohnort; Wohnsitz“ „aufstellen“ „(Toten)geist“ „(Toten)geist“ „rein“ „eintreten“

146 kux(r)(DU) kun kur kur bad3 kur idim kur ME.TE kur muš kur2 la2 LAK358-nu-ru lu lu2 lu2 dur11-ra lu2 kitim(-ma) lu2-lu7 ma-na (syllabisch für min(3)) maḫ maš2 maš2 šu gid2 me (syllabisch für eme) me ka AK me TAR ME.TE, ME+TE me te min(3) mir muš muš-ša3-AD na8-na8 (marû von naĝ) naĝ (marû: na8-na8) nar-kur-ku5 NE.GI-bar ni2—ti ni10-ni10 (marû von niĝen2) niĝ2-ba niĝ2-ba—la2 niĝar(ĝar/ĝa2) niĝen2(LAGAB) NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2 (freie Reduplikation von niĝen2) niĝir ninnu nu-gi17 (Abkürzung für nu-kitim?) nun nunus pa

Nadezda Rudik „eintreten“ „Schwanz“ „Berg(e), Bergland; Unterwelt“ „Hochgebirge“ „Quellenberg(e)“ (unklar) „Schlangenberg(e)“ „in Zukunft“ „binden; rausstrecken, hängen (lassen); sich ausbreiten; (Ration) zuteilen“ (Beschwörungseinleitungsformel) „zahlreich machen“ „Mensch“ „Kranke“ „Mensch-Geist (?)“ bzw. „Mensch des Geistes“ „Mensch“ siehe min(3) „erhaben“; Mittermayer 2009, 143: „zornig (?)“ „Ziegenbock; Zicklein“ „Omen verlangen“ siehe eme „züngeln“ „spitzzüngig (?)“ (unklar: Ortsbezeichnung (?)) „stechende Zunge (?)“ „zwei“ „Riesenschlange“ „Schlange“ (eine Schlangenart) siehe naĝ „trinken“ „kurku-Sänger (?)“ (eine Schilfart) „sich erschrecken“ siehe niĝen2 „Ration“ „Ration zuteilen“ „Cella“ „herumwimmeln; herumtreiben“ siehe niĝen2 „Wächter“ „fünfzig“ siehe kitim und lu2 kitim(-ma) „fürstlich“ „Ei“ „Zweig“

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr pa3(d) -pi (syllabisch für -bi) piriĝ piriĝ muš-ḫuš pu2 ra re7-re7 (für /(e)r(e)/? ḫamṭu Plural von ĝen) ri sa sa ge-izi(-la2) (ge) sa kilib sa2—du11 sa10/8 (syllabisch für sa?) sa10/8 ke-izi (syllabisch für sa ge-izi(-la2)?) sa10/8 ki-li9 (syllabisch für (ge)sa kilib?) saĝ saĝ-ge17 sal sila4 si si si—bad si(g) si12(g) si22(-ga), si22-si22 sikil sila4 silim—du11(marû: e) su su-su (syllabisch für šu2-šu2) su-tin(mušen) su8-ba ša3 še še(26)—ge4 ĝeš šeneg šeš ŠU (marû: šu2-šu2) šu šu—du11(g) šu2-šu2(r) (marû von šuš2) šu2-šu2 (marû von ŠU) šu4-tinmušen (Var. von su-tin(mušen)) šum2

„schwören“ siehe -bi „Löwe“ „Löwendrache“ „Brunnen“ „schlagen“ siehe ĝen „entfernen“ „Netz“ „Fackelbündel“ „Schilfbündel“ „ankommen, eintreffen“ siehe sa siehe sa ge-izi(-la2) siehe (ge)sa kilib „erster; Kopf“ „Kopfkrankheit/Dämon“ „(Hörner) aufstellen (?)“ „Lamm“ „füllen“ „Horn“ „Hörner nach vorne richten“ „hineinstecken, eintiefen“ „gelb-grün sein“ „gelb-grün“ „rein; reinigen“ „Lamm“ „begrüßen“ „Fleisch“ siehe šu2-šu2 „Fledermaus“ „Hirte“ „Mitte; Leib“ „Gerste“ „brüllen“ „Tamariske“ „bitter“ „(durch)kosten“ „Hand“ „berühren“ siehe šuš2 siehe ŠU „Fledermaus“ „geben“

147

148 šuš2 TAG4?.LAK358 TAR (ku5(d/r) oder tar?) te (marû: te-te) te(ĝ) te-ma (syllabisch für dim2?) ti-ma (syllabisch für dim2?) til3 tu6 tuḫ ĝeš tukul tum2 (marû: tum3) tum3 (marû von tum2) tum4 (syllabisch für tum3) tur (syllabisch für dur2?) tur3 u2 u4 u5 u8 ud5 udug (ḫulu) ug(4) (u) ugu6 umun7 ur-saĝ ur2 uru2 (Emesal für iri) us2 uš ušumgal zaḫ-ge-bar zalag zi zi—pa3(d) zi(d) zi (syllabisch für si22(-ga)) zi(g) zi-kir (syllabisch für sikil) -zu

Nadezda Rudik „bedecken“ (Kultgebäude bzw. Epitheton für eine Gottheit oder eine Kultperson (?)) „schneiden (über Zunge)“, siehe me TAR „stechen“ „sich nähern“ siehe dim2 siehe dim2 „leben“ „Beschwörung“ „freilassen“ „Waffe“ „bringen“ siehe tum2 siehe tum2 siehe dur2 „Pferch“ „Brot; Nahrung“ „Tag; als; Sturm(dämon)“ „satteln; reiten“ „Mutterschaf“ „Ziege“ (böser) Udug-Dämon) (löwenartiges Tier) „zeugen“ „sieben“ „Held“ „Wurzel“ siehe iri „folgen“ „Gift“ „Drache“ siehe NE.GI-bar „reinigen“ „Leben“ „beim Leben beschwören“ „recht“ siehe si22(-ga) „herausrecken; aufstehen; abheben“ siehe sikil „dein“

Semitische Wörter abu baštum

„Vater“ „Aussehen“

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr ina lamû lemû lêmu lišānu nēšu nu-ga-ti-mu-um (Eblaitisch für lu2 kitim(-ma)) paššuru qaqqaru qātu ṣētu ša ša eṭemmi wabālu (w)alādu (w)arāqu zaqāpu zuqiqīpu

149

„in“ „umgeben“ „essen (und trinken)“ „essen (und trinken) zu sich nehmen“ „Zunge“ „Löwe“ siehe lu2 kitim(-ma) „Tisch“ „Erde“ „Hand“ „Tageslicht“; ina ṣēti „im Freien“ „der“ „der des (Toten)geistes“ „bringen“ „gebären; zeugen“ „gelb-grün sein/werden“ „aufrichten“ „Skorpion“

Texte157 CUSAS 32 Texte CUSAS 32, 1a CUSAS 32, 1b CUSAS 32, 1d CUSAS 32, 1f CUSAS 32, 1i CUSAS 32, 2 CUSAS 32, 3

= MS 4549/1 i 1–ii 2 = CUSAS 32 Pl. I (Foto), Pl. II (Kopie) = P253640 (Foto) = MS 4549/1 ii 3–iii 7 = CUSAS 32 Pl. I (Foto), Pl. II (Kopie) = P253640 (Foto) = MS 4549/1 iv 7–v 3 = CUSAS 32 Pl. I (Foto), Pl. II (Kopie) = P253640 (Foto) = MS 4549/1 vi 7–vii 4 = CUSAS 32 Pl. I (Foto), Pl. II (Kopie) = P253640 (Foto) = MS 4549/1 x 5–11 = CUSAS 32 Pl. I (Foto), Pl. II (Kopie) = P253640 (Foto) = MS 4549/2 = CUSAS 32 Pl. III (Foto, Kopie) = P253641 (Foto) = MS 4550 Vs. vi 10–Rs. ??? = CUSAS 32 Pl. IV, VI (Fotos), Pl. V, VII (Kopien) = P253642 (Foto)

FSB-Texte FSB 1 (Rudik 2015, 100–102)

157

= VAT 12684 = BFE 381 (Kopie) = CDLI: P010665 (Fotos)

Die folgende Übersicht dient dazu, den Lesern einen schnelleren Zugriff auf die Kopien und Fotos von den im Artikel zitierten Texten zu ermöglichen. Die Einheitlichkeit und die bibliografische Vollständigkeit werden hierbei nicht angestrebt.

150

Nadezda Rudik

FSB 2 (Rudik 2015, 103–107) FSB 3 (Rudik 2015, 108–110)

= ARET 5, 12 = P241072 (Kopie) = A: ARET 5, 13; B: ARET 5, 14 = A: P241090 (Kopie); B: P241200 (Kopie) = VAT 12524 iʹ 1ʹ–ivʹ 5 = BFE 384–385 (Kopie) = P010631 (Fotos) = VAT 12597 viii 5–ix 7 = BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = P010644 (Fotos) = ARET 5, 11 = CDLI: P241759 (Kopie) = IAS 549 = Iraq 71, 26 (Foto), 31 (Kopie) = P010007 (nur Information) = VAT 12524 vʹ 8–viʹ 4 = BFE 384–385 (Kopie) = P010631 (Fotos) = VAT 12524 viiʹ 4–viiʹ 7 = BFE 384–385 (Kopie) = P010631 (Fotos) = A: VAT 12597 ii 1–9; B: TSŠ i 1ʹ–4’ = A: BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = A: P010644 (Fotos); B: P010769 (Fotos, Kopie) = A: VAT 12597 v 2–8; B: TSŠ 170 vii 4–viii 5 = A: BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = A: P010644 (Fotos); B: P010769 (Fotos, Kopie) = A: VAT 12597 iv 1–v 1; B: TSŠ 170 iii 1–iv 5 = A: BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = A: P010644 (Fotos); B: P010769 (Fotos, Kopie) = MRAH O.1920 i 1–iv 3 = CDLB 2006/002 = P272783 (Foto) = MRAH O.1920 v 1–vi 7 = CDLB 2006/002 = P272783 (Foto) = MVN 14, 712 = OrAnt 26, 298 (Kopie) = VAT 12597 ix 8–x 6 = BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = P010644 (Fotos) = VAT 12597 x 7–xi 9 = BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = P010644 (Fotos) = HS 1600 i 1–ii 8 = TMH 6, 121 (Kopie), 152 (Foto) = P273902 (Fotos, Kopie) = HS 1588 + 1596 = TMH 6, 120 (Kopie), 151 (Foto) = P273900 (Fotos, Kopie) = A: HS 1474+; B: HS 1573 Rs. i 10ʹ–Rand 2 = A: TMH 6, 112 (Kopie), 150 (Foto); B: TMH 6, 119 (Kopie), 150 (Foto) = A: P273889 (Fotos, Kopie); B: P273898 (Fotos, Kopie) = A: HS 2438; B: Ni 2187 = A: TMH 6, 125 (Kopie), 147 (Foto) = A: P273911 (Fotos, Kopie); B: P250420 (nur Information) = A: ARET 5, 19 viii 1–ix 3; B: ARET 5, 10 iii 2–v 1 = A: P242007 (Kopie); B: P241295 (Kopie) = TMH 6, 16 (Edition) = Trouvaille 1 = P134674 (Kopie)

FSB 4 (Rudik 2015, 111–118) FSB 5 (Rudik 2015, 119–122) FSB 6 (Rudik 2015, 123–128) FSB 8 (Rudik 2015, 131–133) FSB 11 (Rudik 2015, 140–141) FSB 12 (Rudik 2015, 142–143) FSB 13 (Rudik 2015, 144–146)

FSB 14 (Rudik 2015, 147–149)

FSB 15 (Rudik 2015, 150–153)

FSB 16 (Rudik 2015, 154–157) FSB 17 (Rudik 2015, 158–160) FSB 18 (Rudik 2015, 161–164) FSB 22 (Rudik 2015, 175–179) FSB 23 (Rudik 2015, 180–184) FSB 26 (Rudik 2015, 192–195) FSB 28 (Rudik 2015, 199–203) FSB 29 (Rudik 2015, 204–212)

FSB 34 (Rudik 2015, 230–236)

FSB 40 (Rudik 2015, 264–266) FSB 42 (Rudik 2015, 272–273) FSB 45 (Rudik 2015, 282–287)

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr FSB 47 (Rudik 2015, 292–295) FSB 49 (Rudik 2015, 298–302) FSB 50 (Rudik 2015, 303–309) FSB 52 (Rudik 2015, 313) FSB 56 (Rudik 2015, 318–320) FSB 57 (Rudik 2015, 321–326)

FSB 60 (Rudik 2015, 337–338) FSB 61 (Rudik 2015, 339–344)

FSB 62 (Rudik 2015, 345–346) FSB 63 (Rudik 2015, 347–349)

FSB 64 (Rudik 2015, 350–356) FSB 65 (Rudik 2015, 357–360) FSB 66 (Rudik 2015, 361–369)

FSB 67 (Rudik 2015, 370–371) FSB 68 (Rudik 2015, 372–375) FSB 69 (Rudik 2015, 376–377) FSB 70 (Rudik 2015, 378–381) FSB 71 (Rudik 2015, 382–384) FSB 79 (Rudik 2015, 413) FSB 84 (Rudik 2015, 434) FSB 85 (Rudik 2015, 435) FSB 104 (Rudik 2015, 486–490)

151

= HS 1497 = TMH 6, 114 (Kopie), 154 (Foto) = P273891 (Fotos, Kopie) = HS 1526 = TMH 6, 115 (Kopie), 150 (Foto) = P273892 (Fotos, Kopie) = HS 1473+ = TMH 6, 111 (Kopie), 148 (Foto) = P273901 (Fotos, Kopie) = ITT 2, 1036 ii 11–iii 3 = TCTI 1, 282 (Kopie), 295–296 (Foto) = P110905 (Foto) = A: ARET 5, 8 i 1–ii 5; B: ARET 5, 17 iʹ 1–iiʹ 3= A: P241191 (Kopie); B: P243691 (Kopie) = A: VAT 12597 vi 1–viii 4; B: TSŠ 170 iv 6–vii 3 = A: BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = A: P010644 (Fotos); B: P010769 (Fotos, Kopie) = VAT 12524 ivʹ 6–vʹ 7 = BFE 384–385 (Kopien) = P010631 (Fotos) = A: VAT 12597 i 1–9; B: ARET 5, 8 i 1–ii 5; C: ARET 5, 10 i 1–iii 1 = A: BFE 382–383 (Kopien) = A: P010644 (Fotos); B: P241191 (Kopie); C: P241295 (Kopie) = VAT 12524 viʹ 5–viiʹ 3 = BFE 384–385 (Kopie) = P010631 (Fotos) = A: ARET 5, 19 Vs. ix 4–Rs. x 4; B: VicOr. 10, 13 = B: Krebernik 1996, 13 (Kopie) = A: P242007 (Kopie); B: P241173 (nur Information) = CBS 8731 = PBS 1/2, 130 (Kopie); Or. 54, 218 (Kopie) = P124790 (Foto) = ARET 5, 19 xv 8–xvii 5 = P242007 (Kopie) = A: VAT 12597 iii 1–11; B: TSŠ 170 ii 1ʹ–3ʹ = A: BFE 382–383 (Kopie) = A: P010644 (Fotos); B: P010769 (Fotos, Kopie) = CUSAS 13, 193 (Kopie), Pl. XXXV (Foto) = P323974 (Foto) = MLC 1093 = RT 28 (1906) 214 (Kopie); YOS 11, 37 (Kopie) = CDLI: P142388 (Kopie) = IM 61749 = AMD 1, 247 Fig. 10 (Kopie) = BM 111089 = Fs. (R.) M. Sigrist 24 (Foto, Kopie) = P376869 (Foto) = OBC 14, 169 (Kopien) = A: P010610 (Fotos, Kopie); B: P010639 (Fotos, Kopie) = VAT 12524 Rs. ixʹ 1ʹ–ix 3ʹ = BFE 384–385 (Kopie) = P010631 (Fotos) = VAT 12524 viiiʹ 1–3 = BFE 384–385 (Kopie) = P010631 (Fotos) = IAS 319 = P010256 (Kopie) = Ni 2177 = P274441 (nur Information)

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UD.GAL.NUN-Texte CUT 3 (Zand 2009, 186–207)

CUT 4 (Zand 2009, 208–256) CUT 7 (Zand 2009, 291–310) CUT 9 (Zand 2009, 324–341) CUT 22 (Zand 2009, 431–437) CUT 24 (Zand 2009, 451–452) CUT 92 (Zand 2009, 531–533)

= A: VAT 12680; C: NTSŠ 117+314; D: IAS 114 = A: P010619 (Fotos); C: P010491 (Fotos); D: P010107 (Kopie) = A: VAT 12606; B: IAS 118 = A: P010622 (Foto); B: P010110 (Kopie) = C: IAS 116; D: IAS 117; N: IAS 318 = C: P010109 (Kopie); D: P225986 (Kopie); N: P010255 (Kopie) = A: NTSŠ 82 = P010488 (Foto) = A: IAS 392 = P010326 (Kopie) = A: TSŠ 846 (Kopie)158 = P010920 (nur Information) = A: IAS 253 = P010230 (Kopie)

Andere Texte AMD 1, 224 RA 66, 141 AOAT 25, 11 – 12 (Kopie) Nippur (Barton) Zylinder CT 16, 11 (von CT 16, 9–11) CT 16, 13 (von CT 16, 12–14)

CT 50, 39 CUSAS 23, 199 Ebla sign list DCS 158, 4 DP 149 MLVS 2, 9 MSL 8/1, 82 V38 MSL 14, 21 Dg PRAK B 086 RA 23, 42, Raptim 12 (Kopie) RIME 1.9.3.1 (Geierstele) RIME 1.9.4.2 RIME 1.9.4.12 RIME 1.9.5.23 158

= CBS 7005 = P262058 (Foto) = P355899 (nur Information) = IM 70209 = P274929 (Kopie) = CBS 8383 = ASJ 16, 41–42 (Foto); 43–46 (Kopie) = P222183 (Foto, Kopie) = P394365 (Kopie); Fotos der Manuskripte: P394299; P394525; P395669; P395749; P395869 = P394879 (Kopie); P464797 (nur Information); P464798 (nur Information); Fotos der Manuskripte: P394475; P394489; P394746; P394816; P395686; P395801; P395878; P238740; P398093; P398530; P399577; P399578; P400354 = BM 118094 = P221676 (Kopie) = P325553 (nur Information) = P218313 (nur Information) = P355900 (Foto, Kopie) = AO 13357 = P220799 (Foto, Kopie) = LB1005 = P355908 (Foto) = P228700 (Foto) = P229423 (Foto) = P343903 (nur Information) = P431075 (Kopie) = P431099 (Kopie) = P431109 (Kopie) = P431140

(Komposittext: nur Information); P222399 (Komposittext: nur Information); P222496 (Komposittext: nur Information); P222492 (Komposittext: nur Information); P222530

In TSŠ fälschlicherweise unter Nr. 845. Siehe Krebernik 1998, 359.

Herumtreibende Kinder, bewaffnete Kälber und Götter in Aufruhr TIM 9, 63 TIM 9, 66 VS 10, 123 VS 17, 1 VS 17, 4 YBC 4190 ASJ 15, 7 No. 4 YOS 11, 21 YOS 11, 32 YOS 11, 34

153

(Kopie) = P223432 (Kopie) = P223459 (Kopie) = VAT 6077= P342931 (Kopie) = VAT 8519 = P343022 (Kopie) = VAT 8363= P343025 (Kopie) = BDTNS 074246 = P200532 (Nur Information) = van Dijk / Geller 2003, 35 = P307728 (Nur Information) = P305832 (Kopie) = P309476 (Kopie) = P304424 (Kopie)

Bibliographie Alster, B., Proverbs from Ancient Sumer. The World’s Earliest Proverb Collections, Bethesda, MD 1997. Alster, B. / Westenholz, A., The Barton Cylinder, in: Acta Sumerologica (Japonica) 16 (1994) 15–46. Archi, A., The “Sign-list” from Ebla, in: Eblaitica 1 (1967) 91–113. Attinger, P., Elements de linguistique sumérienne. La construction de du11/e/di “dire” (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis: Sonderband), Fribourg, Schweiz / Göttingen 1993. — A propos de AK “faire” (I), (II), in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 95 (2005) 46–64, 208–275. — Racines carrées et racines cubiques, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 98 (2008) 12–19. — La base marû singulier de tuš, in: Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 2010/65 (2010) 75–77. — Lexique sumérien-français, 2019a. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2585683 (accessed in June 2020) — Liste des correspondances entre les lectures (le plus souvent) usuelles et les lectures adoptées dans aBZL (usuelles ou non), 2019b. http://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.2667745 (accessed in June 2020) Avila, M.A., Treading Upon Snakes: The Sumerian and Akkadian Snake Incantations from the Ur III to the Old Babylonian Periods, PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, CA 2009. Bramanti A., Some Thoughts on Chronological and Geographical Liminality in Early Mesopotamian Palaeography: The Case of Umma and Adab, in: Devecchi, E. / Mynářová, J. / Müller, G. (Hrsg.), Current Research in Cuneiform Palaeography 2. Proceedings of the Workshop Organised at the 64ᵗʰ Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Innsbruck 2018, Gladbeck 2019, 1–12.

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Bramanti, A. / Notizia, P., 2016, Remarks on the Paleography of the PreSargonic Cuneiform Tablets from the Umma Region, in: Notizia, P. / Visicato, G., Early Dynastic and Early Sargonic Administrative Texts Mainly from the Umma Region (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 33), Bethesda, MD 2016, 295–312. Cavigneaux, A., La Pariade du Scorpion dans les Formules Magiques Sumériennes (Textes de Tell Haddad V), in: Acta Sumerologica (Japonica) 17 (1995) 75–99. Civil, M., On Some Texts Mentioning Ur-Namma, in: Orientalia Nova Series 54 (1985) 27–45. Cunningham, G., “Deliver me from evil”. Mesopotamian incantations 2500– 1500 BC (Studia Pohl 17), Rom 1997. Van Dijk, J.J.A. / Geller, M.J., Ur III Incantations from the Frau Professor Hilprecht-Collection, Jena (Texte und Materialien der Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection 6), Wiesbaden 2003. Dornauer, A., Proso, Sorghum, Tiger Nut: Some Minor Crops in the Cuneiform Sources (Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 27), Gladbeck 2018. Falkenstein, A., Die Haupttypen der sumerischen Beschwörung literarisch untersucht, Leipzig 1931. Geller, M.J., Forerunners to Udug-ḫul: Sumerian Exorcistic Incantations (Freiburger Altorientalische Studien 12), Stuttgart 1985. — Evil Demons. Canonical Utukku-Lemnūtu Incantations (State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts 5), Helsinki 2007. Geller. M.J. / Vacín, L., Healing Magic and Evil Demons: Canonical Udug-hul Incantations (Die babylonisch-assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen 8), Boston / Berlin 2016. George, A.R., Mesopotamian Incantations and Related Texts in The Schøyen Collection (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 32), Bethesda, MD 2016. Gragg, G.B., The fable of The Heron and the Turtle, in: Archiv für Orientforschung 24 (1973) 51–72. Heimpel, W., Workers and Construction Work at Garšana (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 5), Bethesda, MD 2009. Horowitz, W., Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Mesopotamian Civilisations 8), Winona Lake, IN 2011. Jagersma, A.H., A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian, Leiden 2010. https:// openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/16107 (accessed in June 2020) Johandi, A., The God Asar/Asalluḫi in the Early Mesopotamian Pantheon, PhD Dissertation (Dissertationes Theologiae Universitatis Tartuensis 37), University of Tartu 2019.

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Johnson, A. / Johnson, J.C., Contingency and Innovation in Native Transcription on Encrypted Cuneiform, in: Englehardt, J. (Hrsg.), Agency in Ancient Writing. Louisville, CO 2012, 165–184. Jordanova, A., Untersuchungen zur Gestalt einer Unterweltsgöttin: Ereškigal nach den sumerischen und akkadischen Quellentexten, PhD Dissertation, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig 2015. Katz, D., Sumerian Funerary Rituals in Context, in: Laneri, N. (Hrsg.), Performing Death: Social analyses of funerary traditions in the Mediterranean (Oriental Institute Seminars 3), Chicago, IL 2007, 167–189. Keetman, J., Die altsumerische Vokalharmonie und die Vokale des Sumerischen, in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 57 (2005) 1–16. Kogan, L., Proto-Semitic Lexicon, in: Weninger, S. et al. (Hrsg.), The Semitic Languages. An International Handbook (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 36), Berlin 2011, 179–258 Krebernik, M., Zu Syllabar und Orthographie der lexikalischen Texte aus Ebla. Teil I, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 72 (1982) 178–236. — Zu Syllabar und Orthographie der lexikalischen Texte aus Ebla. Teil II (Glossar), in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 73 (1983) 1–47. — Die Beschwörungen aus Fāra und Ebla. Untersuchungen zur ältesten keilschriftlichen Beschwörungsliteratur (Texte und Studien zur Orientalistik 2), Hildesheim / Zürich / New York 1984. — Neue Beschwörungen aus Ebla, in: Vicino Oriente 10 (1996) 7–28. — Die Texte aus Fara und Tell Abu-Salabih, in: Attinger, P. / Wäfler, M. (Hrsg.), Mesopotamien. Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/1), Fribourg, Schweiz / Göttingen 1998, 237–427. — Nagbu, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 9 (1998–2001) 77. — Wörter und Sprichwörter: der zweisprachige Schultext HS 1461, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 94 (2004) 226– 249. — Syllables in Eblaite and their Representation, in: Matthiae, P. / Pinnock, F. / D’Andrea, M. (Hrsg.), Ebla and Beyond. Ancient near Eastern Studies after Fifty Years of Discoveries at Tell Mardikh. Proceedings of the International Congress Held in Rome, 15th-17th December 2014, Wiesbaden 2018, 169– 179. — Ein neues Dumuzi-Inanna-Lied aus der Hilprecht-Sammlung (HS 2940), in: Baldwin, J. / Matuszak, J. (Hrsg.), mu-zu an-za3-še3 kur-ur2-še3 ḫe2-ĝal2. Altorientalistische Studien zu Ehren von Konrad Volk (dubsar 17), Münster 2020, 131–147.

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Lackenbacher, S., Note sur l’Ardat-lilî, in: Revue d’Assyriologie 65 (1971) 119– 154. Lieberman, S., The Sumerian Loanwords in Old-Babylonian Akkadian (Harvard Semitic Series 22), Missoula, MT 1977. Limet, H., Un modèle culturel sumerien: l’élevage, in: Sassmannshausen, L. (Hrsg.), He Has Opened Nisaba’s House of Learning. Studies in Honor of Åke Waldemar Sjöberg on the Occasion of His 89th Birthday on August 1st 2013 (Cuneiform Monographs 46), Leiden / Boston 2014, 113–124. Lisman, J.J.W., The Barton Cylinder: A Lament for Keš?, in: Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Gezelschap Ex Oriente Lux 46 (2016–2017) 145– 178. Maiocchi, M., Classical Sargonic Tablets Chiefly from Adab in the Cornell University Collections (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 13), Bethesda, MD 2009. Michalowski, P., On Some Early Sumerian Magical Texts, in: Orientalia Nova Series 54 (1985) 216–225. Mittermayer, C., Altbabylonische Zeichenliste der sumerisch-literarischen Texte (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis: Sonderband), Fribourg, Schweiz / Göttingen 2006. — Enmerkara und der Herr von Arata: Ein ungleicher Wettstreit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 239), Fribourg, Schweiz / Göttingen 2009. Molina, M., Sargonic Cuneiform Tablets in the Real Academia de la Historia: The Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Madrid 2014. Nougayrol, J., Textes religieux (II), in: Revue d’Assyriologie 66 (1972) 141– 145. Peterson, J., A study of Sumerian faunal conception with a focus on the terms pertaining to the order Testudines, PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 2007. Pientka-Hinz, R., Schlange, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 12 (2009–2011a) 202–218. — Skorpion, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 12 (2009–2011b) 576–580. Roudik, N., alap erṣetim and nēšu ša ḳaḳḳari: Animals of the Ground or Beasts of the Netherworld, in: Kogan, L. (Hrsg.), Studia Semitica (Orientalia: Papers of the Oriental Institute 3), Moskau 2003, 378–388. Rubio, G., Šulgi and the Death of Sumerian, in: Michalowski, P. / Veldhuis, N. (Hrsg.), Approaches to Sumerian Literature. Studies in Honour of Stip (H.L.J. Vanstiphout) (Cuneiform Monographs 35), Leiden / Boston, MA 2006, 167–179. Rudik, N., Die Entwicklung der keilschriftlichen sumerischen Beschwörungsliteratur von den Anfängen bis zur Ur III-Zeit, Digitale Bibliothek Thüringen (DBT), Jena 2015. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:27-20150717-

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134812-0 (accessed in June 2020) — ‘Dieser Ziegel ist wie Lapislazuli…’. Ein bisher übersehenes Bauritual im Kontext der frühen sumerischen Beschwörungen, in: Attinger, P. et al. (Hrsg.), Text and Image. Proceedings of the 61e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Geneva and Bern, 22–26 June 2015 (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Series Archaeologica 40), Leuven / Paris / Bristol, CT 2018, 399–409. — Schnürchen gegen Schlangen: die frühdynastische Beschwörung MS 4549/2, in: Arkhipov, I. / Kogan, L. / Koslova, N. (Hrsg.), The Third Millenium. Studies in Early Mesopotamia and Syria in Honor of Walter Sommerfeld and Manfred Krebernik (Cuneiform Monographs 50), Leiden / Boston, MA 2020, 630–658. Schrakamp, I., Krieger und Waffen im frühen Mesopotamien: Organisation und Bewaffnung des Militärs in frühdynastischer und sargonischer Zeit, PhD Dissertation, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg 2010. — review of: Sumerian Chrestomathy by K. Volk, in: Archiv für Orientforschung 53 (2015) 393–396. Schramm, W., Ein Compendium sumerisch-akkadischer Beschwörungen (Göttinger Beiträge zum Alten Orient 2), Göttingen 2008. Sigrist, M., Livraisons et dépenses royales durant la Troisième Dynastie d’Ur, in: Chazan, R. / Hallo, W.W. / Schiffman, L.H. (Hrsg.), Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine, Winona Lake, IN 1999, 111–149. Steinert, U., Aspekte des Menschseins im Alten Mesopotamien: Eine Studie zu Person und Identität im 2. und 1. Jt. v. Chr. (Cuneiform Monographs 44), Leiden / Boston, MA 2012. Tonietti, M.V., Un incantesimo sumerico contro la Lamaštu, in: Orientalia Nova Series 48 (1979) 301–323. Wang, X., The Metamorphosis of Enlil in Early Mesopotamia (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 385), Münster 2011. Zand, K.V., Die UD.GAL.NUN-Texte. Ein allographisches Corpus sumerischer Mythen aus dem Frühdynastikum, PhD Dissertation, Friedrich-SchillerUniversität Jena, Jena 2009. Zgoll, A., Traum und Welterleben im antiken Mesopotamien. Traumtheorie und Traumpraxis im 3.–1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. als Horizont einer Kulturgeschichte des Träumens (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 333), Münster 2006.

Ebla(itologists) and Sumer(ologists): Reasons for a Dialogue Alfonso Archi (Rome)

The archives of Ebla have revealed 400 years of history that were previously unknown for the territory of Syria. On the one hand, the administrative documents rely heavily on logographic writing, while chancellery documents exhibit an abundance of phonetically written material. The rich lexicon, which also includes the data obtained from personal names and about 1,300 lemmata from the bilingual lexical lists, has allowed the Eblaite language to be classified as a branch of Northern Archaic Semitic, to which Old Akkadian also belongs.1 Some lemmata of Eblaite are also preserved in West Semitic, in documents from later periods. The archaeological and textual discoveries from Ebla provoked a real shock, and interest in Ebla grew rapidly after the publication of a selection of administrative texts by G. Pettinato (1980 = MEE 2), and his editions of the Sumerian unilingual (1981 = MEE 3) and bilingual lexical texts (1982 = MEE 4). The philologists of the Archaeological Expedition began a series of text editions (ARET 2 = Edzard 1981). The Ebla documentation, which can be dated to the 24th century BC, presents a writing system with elements that are different from the documents of Sumerian. Based on inscriptions from Abu Ṣalabiḫ, a few archaic texts from Mari (whose number has since increased by Charpin 1987 and Cavigneaux 2014), and the first edited texts from Ebla, I.J. Gelb (1977 and 1981) suggested that these regions shared cultural features that were common to a supra-regional linguistic area. Such features, like the decimal system and an orthographic tradition with several non-Sumerian logograms, which were supplied by lexical lists and literary documents, originally from Kiš, and transmitted to Ebla through Mari. These cultural aspects were an expression of what Gelb termed the “Kiš Civilization”. A plaque with a list of 36,000 prisoners brought to Kiš,

1

According to Tonietti (2017) Eblaite has to be considered a dialect or language of Northern Early Semitic, to which also Old Akkadian and Old Assyrian belonged. Chancellery documents present some graphic forms close to the spoken language. The VSO word order and the “wa(w) of apodosis” was maintained in West Semitic but not in Akkadian. Eblaite and Akkadian do not share some introduced innovations.

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which dates to ED II or possibly even earlier, is the only document from Kiš datable to the pre-Sargonic period (Steinkeller 2013). The first interest for Philologists and Semitists understandably concerned the classification of the Eblaite language in relation to other Semitic languages. Two congresses were organized: in Naples and in Florence, where several scholars from various fields of expertise presented their analysis (Cagni 1981; Fronzaroli 1984). Four other congresses focused on linguistic and philological subjects (Cagni 1984 and 1987; Archi 1988; Fronzaroli 1992). P. Fronzaroli produced several studies on the language of Ebla (e.g. 1979). It was M. Krebernik (1982 and 1983) who determined the syllabary in use at Ebla, making clear that one had to proceed from this syllabary in proposing valid Semitic etymologies. G. Conti (1990) gave evidence of a reform of this syllabary, studying the earliest source (manuscript D) of the lexical lists. Fronzaroli (1992, 178‒185) was able to date this reform of the syllabary to the beginning of the reign of Išʿar-damu, when Ibrium was the minister, about 32 years before the destruction of the city. The ritual and literary documents of Mesopotamian origin have been studied in detail by Krebernik (1984 and 1992), and by W. G. Lambert (1992), while Fronzaroli (1988) edited an Eblaite adaptation of an incantation of Sumerian origin. The present author (1981) edited the Ebla manuscript of the Names and Profession List already known from Abu Ṣalabiḫ, of non-Sumerian origin. A grammar of Ebla’s language has recently been presented by A. Catagnoti (2012). A first important study on the use of some sumerograms (e.g. LU2 for the pronoun šu, ša; ŠEŠ.MU meaning simply “brother”), and orthographic peculiarities (the use of MAḪ : al6, not AL; EN : ru12, which could have had its origin in Babylonia) was published by J. Krecher (1981). He later added a second more systematic study (1984) on the orthography of the Sumerian adopted at Ebla. On the other hand, M. Civil (1981) tackled instead the problem of discrepancies in the Semitic translations of Sumerian terms in the bilingual Lexical Lists. For example, ĜIŠ-u3-suḫ = u2-ri2-num2, Akk. erēnu, simply means that the Eblaite scribes thought that ĜIŠ-u3-suḫ5 was the Sumerian term for “cedar”. He devoted also a commentary to an early version of the Sumerian ḪAR-ra list, which he defined as “an encyclopaedic compendium … one of the great achievements of the Mesopotamian lexicographers” (Civil 1987).2 The political scenery in Syria was similar to the Mesopotamian one: many city-states ruled by a king, some of which (Ebla, Mari, and Nagar) showed a strong trend in establishing regional dimensions of their states. The societies of the Syrian cities had, however, different features from those of the states in southern Babylonia. The ruler’s lineage of Ebla is documented by a list of 26 names (Archi 2015a, 163‒164). This has to go back, therefore, to about the 27th 2

Civil (2008) edited this list (previously transliterated by Pettinato [1981] as MEE 3, 45 + 46; 61) some years later, having a duplicate at his disposal.

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century, proving that authority in the archaic period was based on descent, quite probably within a tribal framework. This was not the case of southern Babylonia.3 Taking into account the political situation documented by Ebla, the data produced by intense archaeological research in northern Syria, and the information on the subsequent period offered by the archives of the Third Dynasty of Ur (Owen 1992), one can deduce that the kings of the Akkad Dynasty controlled Mari, but not the territory north-west of it, where they only carried out raids. Ebla offers some contrasting elements in relation to the societies of southern Mesopotamia. The royal archive of Ebla is unique for its completeness, supplying an uninterrupted sequence of data for a period of over forty years (ca. 2375‒2335). That alone permits a quantification of the textile and metallurgic production controlled by the Palace, both as income and expenditure. Agricultural production data, on the other hand, are rather incomplete by comparison, because the documents were largely discarded from year to year, and texts of the first years of the archive are only randomly preserved. The regional state of Ebla, notwithstanding its dimensions (ca. 200 km from North to South and 180 km from East to West), presents a pyramidal society whose power was strongly concentrated in the capital. At its head was the king, who performed the religious duties month after month together with the queen and the other members of the royal family (Archi 2017a). At first, the administration was in the hands of a group of 15 to 20 “lords”, baʿālum / lugal), two of whom had pre-eminence. About forty years before the destruction of the city the control of the administration was assumed by only one of these lords, Arrukum. Five years later, upon his death, he was succeeded by another “lord”, Ibrium, who held this office for eighteen years. At Ibrium’s death, the office passed to his son Ibbi-zikir. These three men who exercised the function of a minister, are never qualified by a particular title. Ibrium’s family originally came from a village: Da-ra-umki, and family ties with the royal family were only established in the very last years of Ebla, when the crown prince Irʿak-damu 3

According to Steinkeller (2017, 28‒31), “although, in practice, hereditary principle prevailed [in southern Mesopotamia], in that the father was usually followed by his son, in theory the ruler ‒ usually bearing the title of ensik, ‘steward’ ‒ was elected to his office by the divine owner of the city state”. In relating the cult of the former rulers in Sumer with that at Ebla, Steinkeller quotes the interpretation by the present writer of the equivalences in the Bilingual List of Ebla nos. 800‒801: DIĜIR.EN / ma-ʾa3-um, DIĜIR.EN.EN / na-u9-lum, du-uš-da-i-i-lu-um “the sleeping one(s)”. This equivalence has to be interpreted instead: an-ru12 / *manḫalum(?) “donation”; an-ru12-ru12 / *tuštaḫḫilum “to give a donation”, forms to be derived from *nḫl, cf. Akk. naḫālum “to transfer (landed property)”, as Krispijn (2001, 258‒259) has shown.

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married Zaʿaše, Ibbi-zikir’s daughter. The minister was assisted by some of his relatives, such as his brother Uti, and his son Tubuḫu-Ḫadda who was designated to succeed him, although this was prevented by the destruction of the city. The princes of the royal family, with the exception of the crown prince, did not play any role other than a religious one. There is evidence to suggest that the king used to lead his army in war, as did the kings of Mari of during this period: Irkab-damu died while still young, probably because he was wounded in the battle in which Enna-Dagan of Mari was defeated (Archi 2019a, 148). His son Išʿar-damu (the last king of Ebla) ascended the throne at a very early age (about four years old), so it was the minister Ibrium who successfully led the army of Ebla, and consolidated its hegemony in northern Syria. Ibbi-zikir also led the army in major military campaigns, including the victorious expeditions against Mari three years before the fall of Ebla, and was occasionally joined by the king (Archi 2014 and 2018, 214‒215) About forty “elders”, abba2-abba2, “who sit (by) the throne”, came regularly to visit the king. They had to be representatives of the minor centres of the state, while a much larger group of “elders” (149 to 170 in number) seem to have been those who joined the army in military expeditions, accompanying the men enrolled in their villages (Archi 2018, 190‒191). The economy of the city of Ebla was based on a redistributive mechanism centred on the royal palace. Important temple communities, which have defined southern Babylonia for three millennia, did not exist in Syria. Only the temple of the Storm-god in Aleppo, and those of Dagan in Tuttul and Ištar in Ḫalabidu, both in the territory of Mari, played a certain role. The priests of these last two temples received gifts after a victory against Mari in an attempt to convince them to side with Ebla (Archi 2019a, 168‒169). Their title was pa4-šeš, the same as the priests of the temples in the territory of Ebla. Generally, a single pa4-šeš was devoted to a god, while female deities had a priestess pa4-šeš-munus. This title should be translated as “servant”, because king, queen, and other members of the elite also had many pa4-šeš(-munus) at their service (Archi 1996). The “man of the gods”, lu2 diĝir-diĝir-diĝir, had different functions, being in charge of offerings to the gods on particular occasions, as is shown by the ritual journey of the royal couple to the mausoleum of the ancestors in NEnaš to celebrate their marriage. It is he who offers rams, sheep, jewels, wine, and beer to the gods (ARET 11, 1 §§ 37‒38, 40‒50, 55, 60, 85‒93; 2 §§ 34, 40‒53, 58, 63, 89‒97). The pa4-šeš of the city-god Kura follows him in the list of the officials who took part in this journey (ARET 11, 1 obv. viii 24‒25; 2 obv. x 18‒20); he apparently had the duty of reciting invocations. Each of these two offices was usually assigned to a single person and was transmitted from father to son (Archi 2020, 67–68). In Mari the “father of the gods”, a-bu2 diĝir-diĝir-diĝir would have had similar functions. He is associated with a “priestess”, ama diĝir-diĝir-diĝir in

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ARET 13, 1, a copy of a document from Mari. The “father of the gods”, ˹ad˺-da diĝir-diĝir, is also mentioned in a text from Mari (Charpin 1987, 80 no. 20 vi 2). A distinctive feature of the cult organization was the confraternity of the šešII-ib, which young men of the elite had to join for a certain number of years in order to perform various cult duties. One of these duties included accompanying the image of ʾAdabal, one of the major gods, in a journey of thirty-nine days across the northwest region (Archi 2002). It seems quite possible that Nagar and Mari shared similar traits in economic structure as that which is documented at Ebla.4 Relations between states were determined by a system of alliances. A regional state like Ebla frequently conducted wars against minor centres in order to impose its hegemony. A war against Ibʿal (a tribal state in the southern region) lasted three years, and there were three wars against Mari, Ebla’s rival state (about 500 km to the East) which had control over the middle Euphrates, for a period of about fifty years (Archi 2019a). War was an important means of acquiring precious metals. In about 8 to 10 years Ebla paid Mari 1,028 kg of silver and 63 kg of gold in order to avoid Iblulil moving against Ebla (Archi 2016a, 2). Just after Iblul-il’s raid, Ebla defeated Abarsal and received 202.57 kg of silver (ARET 14, 1). An important lacuna in the documentation of Ebla is the major source for silver and gold. The annual documents of delivery (mu-DU) of metals register large amounts of these metals in the hands of the minister and much lower amounts delivered by the “lords”, who administered small settlements from which they collected a kind of tax. There was a considerable increase in these incomes over time. In year 9 of his mandate, Ibrium had 150 kg of silver, 35 kg of copper, and a few objects in gold at his disposal, while the fourteen lords contributed with just 32 kg of silver (ARET 14, 62). Nineteen years later, Ibbizikir collected 517 kg of silver, 470 kg of copper, and 5.80 kg of gold, while twelve “lords” gave only 27.10 kg of silver (ARET 14, 84). Delegations often travelled from one city to another, exchanging ceremonial gifts. The delegation from Mari, which reached Ebla at least once a year during its last fifteen years, brought mostly lapis lazuli, a gift reciprocated with silver. During the first thirteen years of Ibbi-zikir, the central administration received in total 72.18 kg of lapis lazuli, as well as beads and few objects. Mari was by far the major source for this lapis lazuli: in about the same period the quantity of lapis acquired in the valley of the Euphrates was 56.87 kg (Archi 2017b, 38). This is evidence that luxurious gifts were acquired mostly through exchanges between central administrations, and only to satisfy the needs of the elite. 4

At Ebla, the temple of Kura, the city-god, was on the acropolis; another important temple has been found in the lower city. According to the written sources, there were three temples inside the city: those of Kura, ʾAdabal and Ašdabil. Mari also had several temples.

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Merchants, however, are often mentioned, but only two documents concerning their activities were collected in the central archive. The only well documented intra-regional connection was that with Dugurasu (Tukriš in the writing of the 2nd and 1st millennia), an important city which was ruled by a king with a Hurrian name in the period of the dynasty of Akkad. Consequently, Dugurasu must be placed in the region East of Sulaymaniyya, between Iraq and Iran. A delegation from this city reached Ebla every year for over fifteen years, also providing in this case only ceremonial gifts (Archi 2016b). The only documented case of so-called long-distance trade (believed to have been a major factor in the development of urban settlements) was the considerable importation of mules from the area of the Khabur triangle, the territory of the regional state of Nagar (Tell Brak, ca 240 km North-East of Ebla as the crow flies). The breeding of mules is well documented in the texts of Nabada (Tell Beydar) (Archi 2019b, 46‒47). Long-distance trade therefore had a limited significance for Ebla society, an important point of comparison with other societies of this period.5 A major factor for the development of the state’s organization was the receipt of cuneiform writing from Mari, which seems to have been acquired through diplomatic relations. The regular use of logograms in administrative documents at Ebla has facilitated the interpretation their meaning, although it appears that it was possible to slightly modify signs and compounds, even those previously known from Early Dynastic texts (e.g. ANŠE.BAR.AN > BAR.AN “mule”). It is in this way that W. Sallaberger (2003) was able to explain the lemma NIĜ2.AN.AN. AN.AN as “news”, a good example of how necessary is collaboration with Sumerologists. This interpretation has been of capital importance for understanding numerous passages from the historical point of view. P. Steinkeller (1993), moreover, was able to identify the names of several singers (nar) from Mari as Sumerian or in any case from the Babylonian area. In adopting these names, the singers claimed to belong to the Kiš tradition, apparently rather illustrious in this art. Sumerograms, however, did not always maintain their exact original meaning: they had to adapt to the Semitic lexicon of Ebla.6 The classical case is that of LUGAL, which in Mesopotamia had as the Akkadian equivalent šarrum 5

Moorey (1993, 43) has already noted a similar situation for some eastern regions: “The place of Iran in Sumerian literature from an early date is alone indicative of the relationship’s centrality and vitality. Taken together the evidence of artefacts and texts sustains a minimalist rather than a maximalist view of the overland trade between them, a trade in luxuries for the privileged rather than in staples for the masses”.

6

For the adaptation of some sumerograms to the Eblaite terminology, see Archi 2020.

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“king”, and bēlum, baʿālum “lord”. At Ebla it was used with the second meaning for a group of 12 to 20 officials who had the functions of a governor or overseer. It was also given as an epithet to a god, like Dagan. “King” at Ebla was the West Semitic malkum (“queen” maliktum), for which the sumerogram EN was chosen. The scribes knew, however, that at Mari šarrum “king” was always written LUGAL. They were so acquainted with their own writing custom that they did not find it anomalous to use LUGAL in the same document with the two different meanings, a few lines apart: MEE 2, 13 obv. ii 6‒7: En-nad Da-gan lugal “Enna-Dagan king (of Mari)”; iii 7‒iv 1: lugal kas4-kas4 “the lord/overseer of the couriers”. Sumerograms used for names of gods (not in literary texts of Sumerian origin) cover different deities from those of Babylonia, although with similar functions, a widely diffused phenomenon which J. Assmann (1996) has defined “translation of gods”. The sun deity, dUTU, for example, although having the same name as in Babylonia, in Syria was female. In Mari, dEN.LIL2 meant Dagan, the god with whom he was equated, not the Sumerian god Enlil.7 Ebla allows us the unique opportunity to observe how cuneiform writing was acquired. Already in the last years of King Iblul-il people were sent to Mari to gain proficiency in writing. Among the earliest preserved documents are ARET 2, 4, dated to Iblul-il’s death, and the Treaty with Abarsal, ARET 13, 5, from about of the same time. It was in this period that scribes (some of whom are known by name) were sent to Mari where they copied Sumerian lexical lists, both of the southern tradition and of the so-called Kiš tradition.8 Some of these tablets were written calligraphically, reproducing even the physical aspects of the originals, while some of these, copied on smaller tablets, have syllabic versions in the ductus of Ebla (Archi 1992). It was also deemed necessary to have a list of sumerograms with translations in Eblaite. Source D (in five tablets) can be dated (as those mentioned above) to the period of King Irkab-damu (years 47‒36 before the destruction of the city) and includes ca. 840 Sumerian words arranged acrographically.9 Two unilingual Sumerian lexical lists, also arranged acrographically, seem to have been imported from a foreign scriptorium, which means that this kind of document was probably not an Eblaite creation. In the first years of Išʿar-damu, Irkab-damu’s successor, a unique tablet of 1,176 sumerograms was written as the basis for a bilingual list on a single tablet 7

Some of these cases are examined in Archi 2019b, 41‒44. For the use of the names of Enlil, Dagan, and Kumarpi in several writing schools of the second millennium, see Archi 2004. 8 For a classification of the lexical material from Ebla in relation with the Mesopotamian tradition, see Veldhuis 2014, 129‒139. 9 These sources have been extensively discussed in Archi 1992, where the reader can also find their inventary numbers and more literature.

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(so that the list could be consulted more easily). Source C presents an elegant writing on the obverse but cramped signs on the reverse, because the scribe had to write inside small cases in an attempt to include all the lemmata of the unilingual list. A tablet duplicating it was then drawn up in a more regular handwriting style, perhaps by the same scribe (source A). About twenty years later a larger tablet including 1,401 lemmata was drawn up in a smaller script (Archi 1992). There are nine large acrographical lists (one including about 1,500 lemmata), and five extracts. They follow different sequences both in choosing the first sign of each section and also the sequence of the lemmata inside the section, except for one, which is a duplicate. The scribes (a very restricted number considering the number appointed to the central archive) had to learn the written form of a lemma by heart, while at the same time keeping in mind its reading in relation to the different meanings (NIĜ2 = niĝ2, ĝar, ninda). It was a remarkable task which still challenges the competence of the Sumerologists (and Semitists) today. Archaeologists may also clarify some points of history, even the final outrage inflicted on Ebla by its rival city: Mari. The impressions of two similar seals with the name of “Išgi-Mari king of Mari”, found in the sector of the gate of Palace P‒1, show the ruler represented sitting on a stool and holding a mace. In the lower register a battle is represented and a chariot drawn by mules, with a naked captive trailing along behind, followed by a soldier. No person appears on the chariot; only a circular object hanging from the upper front of the box (Beyer 2007, 254).

Figure 1. Mari, detail of Seal no. 16 (Beyer 2007, 198).

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This object has to be interpreted as a human head turned upside down (Beyer 2016, 9‒10).10 This can only be the decapitaded head of Išʿar-damu, the last king of Ebla, or that of his minister Ibbi-zikir, who had defeated Mari three years earlier.11 Ibbi-zikir, having defeated Mari at Terqa, returned to Ebla taking the injured ḪI-dar with him as a prisoner, and later his wife Paba was allowed to visit him there (Archi 2019a, 174‒176). This act of generosity on the part of Ebla, however, was cruelly repaid. A terrible memento for posterity!

References Archi, A., La ‘Lista di nomi e professioni’ ad Ebla, in: Studi Eblaiti 4 (1981) 177‒204. — (ed.), Eblaite Personal Names and Semitic Name-giving. Papers of a Symposium Held in Rome, July 15–17, 1985 (Archivi Reali di Ebla, Studi 1), Rome 1988. — Transmission of the Mesopotamian Lexical and Literary Texts from Ebla, in: Fronzaroli, P. (ed.), Literature and Literary Language at Ebla (Quaderni di Semitistica 18), Florence 1992, 1–39. — Eblaite: pāšišu ‘colui che è addetto all’unzione; sacerdote purificatore; cameriere al servizio di una persona’, Vicino Oriente 10 (1996) 37‒71. — Two Heads for the King of Ebla, in: Lubetski, M. / Gottlieb, C. / Keller, Sh. (eds.), Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World. A Tribute to C. H. Gordon (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement 273), Sheffield 1998, 386–396. — ŠEŠ-II-IB: A Religious Confraternity, in: Eblaitica 4 (2002) 23‒55. — Translation of Gods: Kumarpi, Enlil, Dagan/NISABA, Halki, in: Orientalia Nova Series 73 (2004) 319–336. — Who led the Army of Ebla? Administrative Documents vs. Commemorative Texts, in: Neumann, H. et al. (eds.), Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien. 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006 (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401), Münster 2014, 19–25. — The Chronology of Ebla and Synchronisms with Abarsal, Tuttul, Nagar and Nabada, Mari, Kish, in: Sallaberger, W. / Schrakamp, I. (eds.), Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern

10

I owe this reference to M. Roaf. It was M. Halm (quoted by Beyer) who has identified this element as an upside-down head. Beyer compares this scene with the famous relief from Nineveh representing Assurbanipal banqueting with his spouse, and the head of king Teumman hanging from a tree. Beyer (2016, 9) remarks further that Išgi-Mari is represented with a beard also in the seal no. 17, correcting his previous drawing. 11 On the use of severing the head of an enemy, see Archi 1998 = Archi 2015b, 292‒300.

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Mediterranean. History & Philology (ARCANE 3), Turnhout 2015a, 163– 197. — Ebla and Its Archives. Texts, History, and Society (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 7), Boston, MA / Berlin 2015b. — Ebla and Mari ‒ Years 2381/2380–2369 BC, in: Patrier, J. / Quenet, Ph. / Butterlin, P. (eds.), Mille et une empreintes. Un alsacien en Orient. Mélanges en l’honneur du 65e anniversaire de Dominique Beyer (Subartu 36), Turnhout 2016a, 1–16. — Egypt or Iran in the Ebla Texts?, in: Orientalia Nova Series (2016b) 1–49. — Religious Duties for a Royal Family: Basing the Ideology of Social Power at Ebla, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 76 (2017a) 293–306. — Lapis Lazuli and Shells from Mari to Ebla, in: Maner, Ç. / Horowitz, M.T. / Gilbert, A.S. (eds.), Overturning Certainties in Near Eastern Archaeology. A Festschrift in Honor of K. Aslıhan Yener (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 90), Leiden / Boston, MA 2017b, 34–47. — Administrative Texts: Allotments of Clothing for the Palace Personnel (Archive L. 2769) (Archivi Reali di Ebla, Testi 20), Wiesbaden 2018. — The Defeat of Mari and the Fall of Ebla (EB IVA). Focusing on the Philological Data, in: Orientalia Nova Series 88 (2019a) 141‒190. — Šamagan and the Mules of Ebla. Syrian Gods in Sumerian Disguise, in: Valentini, S. / Guarducci, G. (eds.), Between Syria and the Highlands. Studies in Honor of Giorgio Buccellati & Marlyn Kelly-Buccellati (Studies on the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean 3), Rome 2019b, 38–55. — Eblaite Social-Administrative Terminology and the Sumerian Tradition, in: Sommerfeld, W. (ed.), Dealing with Antiquity: Past, Present & Future. RAI Marburg (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 460), Münster 2020, 55–78. Assmann, J., Translating Gods. Religion as Factor of Cultural (In)translatability, in: Budick, S. / Iser, W. (eds.), Translatability of Cultures. Figuration of the Space Between, Standford, CA 1996, 25–36. Beyer, D., Les sceaux de Mari au IIIe millénaire. Observations sur la documentation ancienne et les données nouvelles des Villes I et II, Akh Purattim 1 (2007) 231‒260. — Some Observations on the War Scenes on the Seal from Mari Cti II, in: Battini, L. (ed.), Making Pictures of War: Realia et Imaginaria in the Iconology of the Ancient Near East (Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 1), Oxford 2016, 5–12. Cagni, L. (ed.), La lingua di Ebla. Atti del convegno internazionale. (Napoli, 21–23 aprile 1980), Naples 1981. — (ed.), Il bilinguismo a Ebla. Atti del convegno internazionale (Napoli, 19–22 aprile 1982), Naples 1984. — (ed.), Ebla 1975‒1985. Atti del convegno internazionale (Napoli, 9–11 ottobre 1985), Naples 1987.

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Catagnoti, A., La grammatica della lingua di Ebla (Quaderni di Semitistica 29), Florence 2012. Cavigneaux, A., Nouveaux textes de Mari Ville II (campaignes 1998 à 2007), in: Butterlin, P. et al. (eds.), Mari, ni Est, ni Ouest. Actes du colloque “Mari, ni Est ni Ouest” tenu les 20‒22 octobre 2010 à Damas, Syrie (Syria, Supplément 2, volume 1), Beyrouth 2014, 291‒340. Charpin, D., Tablettes présargoniques de Mari, in: MARI. Annales de Recherches Interdisciplinaires 5 (1987) 65‒127. Civil, M., The Early History of HAR-ra: the Ebla Link, in: Cagni (ed.) 1987, 131–158. — The Early Dynastic Practical Vocabulary A (Archaic HAR-ra A) (Archivi Reali di Ebla, Studi 4) Rome 2008. Conti, G., Il sillabario della quarta fonte della lista lessicale bilingue eblaita (Miscellanea Eblaitica 3 = Quaderni di Semitistica 17), Florence 1990. Edzard, D.O., Verwaltungstexte verschiedenen Inhalts (aus dem Archiv L.2769) (Archivi Reali di Ebla, Testi 2), Rome 1981. Fronzaroli, P., Un atto reale di donazione dagli Archivi di Ebla (TM.75.G.1766), in: Studi Eblaiti 1 (1979) 3‒16. — (ed.), Studies on the Language of Ebla (Quaderni di Semitistica 13), Florence 1984. — Tre scongiuri eblaiti, in: Vicino Oriente 7 (1988) 11‒23. — (ed.), Literature and Literary Language at Ebla (Quaderni di Semitistica 18), Florence 1992. — The Ritual Texts of Ebla, in: Fronzaroli 1992, 163–185. Gelb, I.J., Thoughts about Ibla: A Preliminary Evaluation, in: SyrianMesopotamian Studies 1/1 (1977) 3‒29. — Ebla and the Kish Civilization, in: Cagni (ed.) 1981, Naples 9–73. Krebernik, M., Zu Syllabar und Orthographie der lexikalischen Texte aus Ebla. Teil 1, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 82 (1982) 178‒236. — Zu Syllabar und Orthographie der lexikalischen Texte aus Ebla. Teil 2 (Glossar), in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 83 (1983) 1‒47. — Die Beschwörungen aus Fara und Ebla: Untersuchungen zur ältesten keilschriftlichen Beschwörungsliteratur (Texte und Studien zur Orientalistik 2), Hideshaim 1984. — Mesopotamian Myths at Ebla: ARET 5, 6 and ARET 5, 7, in: Fronzaroli (ed.) 1992, 63–149. Krecher, J., Sumerogramme und syllabische Orthograhie in den Texten aus Ebla, in: Cagni (ed.) 1981, 135–154. — Sumerisch und nichtsumerische Schicht in der Schriftkultur von Ebla, in: Cagni 1984, 139–166.

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Krispijn, Th.J.H., The Sumerian Lexeme *urum, a lexico-etymological approach, in: van Soldt, W.H. et al. (eds.), Veenhof Anniversary Volume. Studies Presented to Klaas R. Veenhof on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday (Publications de l’Institut historique et archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul 89), Leiden 2001, 251–261. Lambert, W.G., The Language of ARET 5, 6 and 7, in: Fronzaroli (ed.) 1992, 41–62. Moorey, P.R.S., Iran: a Sumerian El-Dorado?, in: Curtis, J. (ed.), Early Mesopotamia and Iran: Contact and Conflict. 3500‒1600 BC. Proceedings of a Seminar in Memory of Vladimir G. Lukonin, London 1993. Owen, D.I., Syrian in Sumerian Sources from the Ur III Period, in: Chavals, M.W. / Hayes, K.L. (eds.), New Horizons in the Study of Ancient Syria (Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 25), Malibu, CA 1992, 107–176. Pettinato, G., Testi amministrativi della biblioteca L.2769. Parte I (Materiali Epigrafici di Ebla 2), Naples 1980. — Testi lessicali monolingui della biblioteca L. 2769 (Materiali Epigrafici di Ebla 3), Naples 1981. — Testi lessicali bilingui della Biblioteca L. 2769. Parte I: Traslitterazione dei testi e ricostruzione del VE (Materiali Epigrafici di Ebla 4), Naples 1982. Sallaberger, W., Nachrichten an den Palast von Ebla. Eine Deutung von NÍĜMUL(-AN), in: Semitic and Assyriological Studies Presented to Pelio Fronzaroli by Pupils and Colleagues, Wiesbaden 2003, 600‒625. Steinkeller, P., Observations on the Sumerian Personal Names in Ebla Sources and on the Onomasticon of Mari and Kish, in: Cohen, M.E. / Snell, D.C. / Weisberg, D.B. (eds.), The Tablet and the Scroll. Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo, Bethesda, MD 1993, 236–245. — An Archaic “Prisonerer Plaque” from Kiš, in: Revue d’Assyriologie 107 (2013) 131‒157. — History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia: Three Essays (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 15), Boston, MA / Berlin 2017. Tonietti, M.V., Some Reflections on Early Semitic in the Light of the Ebla Documentation, in: Agostini, A. / Amadasi Guzzo, M.G. (eds.), Afroasitica Romana. “Proceedings of the 15th Meeting of Afroasiatic Linguistics”, 17‒ 19 September 2014, Rome (Quaderni di Vicino Oriente 12), Roma 2017, 259‒275. Veldhuis, N., History of the Cuneiform Lexical Tradition (Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record 6), Münster 2014.

Ebla through Huwawa’s Gaze: Inner and Outer Perspectives on Early Syria, between Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia Marco Bonechi (CNR, Roma) Ryan Winters (Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena)

The discovery of Ebla’s third millennium archives threw open the door unto a totally new world.1 The Syrian region around Tell Mardikh, which one had previously believed to be a relatively empty and secondary part of the world,2 was instead revealed to be highly developed and politically complex.3 The Ebla Palace G records disclosed a staggering wealth. Quantities of silver, gold, lapis, and a wide variety of valuable exotic goods demonstrated Ebla’s involvement in long distance trading networks,4 while on a local level, Ebla’s size and importance was shown by its agricultural output, by its demographics, and by a busy manufacturing sector involving, above all, textile production.5 The texts themselves display an advanced and cosmopolitan state of knowledge in cuneiform writing, with a peculiar mix of careful reception of Mesopotamian material and features, and of local innovations, often with surprising idiosyncrasies. Some years ago D. O. Edzard closed his historical synthesis on Ebla by evoking unexpected fascination and risk: “Ebla war für uns das völlig Unerwartete in der Geschichte des Alten Orients. Deren großer Reiz, aber auch deren großes Risiko besteht darin, daß uns solches Unerwartete immer wieder zum Ändern und Umschreiben nötigen kann” (Edzard 2004, 68).

1

This article has been written in the framework of the activities of the Rome Unit of the PRIN (Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale – Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research) 2015 “Ebla e la Siria del Bronzo Antico: ricezione, circolazione e trasmissione di modelli culturali”. 2 See Fronzaroli 1960 and Gelb 1961. Cf. the discussion in Edzard 1994, 18–19. 3 See Edzard 1994 and 2004, 65–68. 4 See Winters 2019: passim; Steinkeller 2021; Biga / Steinkeller 2021. 5 A general overview of the agricultural and industrial dimensions of the Ebla Palace G period remains a desideratum, see for now Milano 1995. Economic studies on Ebla have generally been limited to specific selected topics (for instance, Pettinato 1999, 242–275; Archi 2015, 123–349; Matthiae 2008, 111–123).

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The Ebla texts reveal the existence of more than 1,500 named settlements and regions, with which Ebla had political relations of one sort or another.6 By far, most of these places seemed to have belonged to a world so far unknown, and at first glance little could be guessed about their size or location. Prominent among the recognizable places was above all Mari, and to a lesser extent Kiš, a situation, which of course belies the origins of Ebla’s cuneiform system. Ebla engaged in high-level political relations, and cultural and economic exchange with these great centers flourishing hundreds of kilometers away. But this is not all for the map of Ebla’s relations, not by far.

Figure 1. The Ebla world at the time of the last Palace G kings (Winters 2019, 13).

Ebla concluded a vassal treaty with the mysterious Abarsal (A-bar-sal4ki),7 probably somewhere in the Upper Euphrates region;8 and she engaged in a diplomatic exchange, reminiscent of the Amarna period, with Hamazi along the Upper Tigris, a place somewhat enigmatically known from Mesopotamian sources, but for which an exact identification with an ancient tell has so far

6

See Archi / Piacentini / Pomponio 1993 and Bonechi 1993 (however, both of these repertoires are now outdated). 7 On ARET 13, 5 see Fronzaroli 2003, 43–76. See also the recent discussion in Winters 2019, 166–167. 8 Winters (2019, 157–158) suggests an identification between Abarsal and Tell Banat / Tell Bazi, while Bonechi now tends towards the view that Abarsal was on the right bank of the Euphrates.

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eluded scholarship.9 The Ebla texts also attest relations with the kingdom of Nagar in the Upper Ḫabur region, with its center at Tell Brak.10

Figure 2. The “Great Caravan Route” of the EB III Period (Efe 2007, 61, fig. 17a).

A very powerful neighbor of Ebla was a place called Armi (Ar-mi(-um)ki), whose location remains debated.11 Characteristic for Armi are a group of exotic personal names, clearly not part of the Semitic family to which the onomastics of the rest of Ebla’s neighbors belonged.12 Armi was the special ally of Ebla alone, and in those instances when Armi interacted with the eastern, Euphratean powers, it mainly was through Eblaic intermediation.13 Although in this context we cannot too deeply delve into the debate on Armi’s location, we maintain that it was located to the northwest of Ebla, in Cilicia, constituting the link between

9

On ARET 13, 3 see Fronzaroli 2003, 30‒34 and the discussion in Bonechi 2016b, with literature. For the history of Hamazi see in general Steinkeller 1998, 79–87. Steinkeller 2010, 373 fn. 19 suggested the identification of Tell Haikal with Ḫamazi (the longstanding identification of that site with Ekallatum is no longer maintained in Ziegler / Langlois 2017, 94). 10 See Archi 1998 and Eidem / Finkel / Bonechi 2001, 99–101; see also Sallaberger 1999. 11 For Armi as a political superpower located in an area including (at least) Cilicia, the Amanus Range and the southern Antitaurus see Bonechi 1990, 34–37; 1993, 54; 1997, 508–517; 2001, 60; 2016a, 78 fn. 299 (“an early Kizzuwatna”). See most recently Winters 2019, 190–191 and Steinkeller 2021. The localization of Armi at Tell Banat / Tell Bazi, on the left bank of the Euphrates downstream of Karkamiš, has been proposed in Otto 2006 and Otto / Biga 2010, and that at Samsat, on the right bank of the Euphrates now in the area of the Atatürk Dam, has been proposed in Archi 2011, 29–32. 12 See Bonechi 1990, 35 and 1991, 73–79. 13 See Winters 2019, 190–191.

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the Aleppo region and the Anatolian plateau.14 As is apparent in figure 2, already in the 3rd millennium Cilicia constituted the starting point of a trade route that, after the Cilician Gates (Gülek Pass), stretched through inner Anatolia on to Troy.15 Cilicia itself and the Ebla region were linked through the Amanus Gates (Bahçe Pass) and the Syrian Gates (Belen Pass), which would have thus constituted key entrance points for Anatolian commodities entering into Western Asia. Another important, albeit smaller, kingdom was Kakmeyum (Kak-mi/-me-umki), occupying a crucial interstitial position, geographically and diplomatically, between Armi and Ebla.16 Ebla’s geographic horizon also extended to its south. At the borders of Ebla’s kingdom were the cities of Tunep and Hamat, known also from later periods.17 In our opinion located in the arid zone ‒ southeast of the line demarcated by the recently discovered Très Long Mur ‒ was the tribal confederation of “Ib-al6ki” (probably to be read Uraš-maḫ-ki), characterized by different Semitic onomastics than the Eblaic one, and a seminomadic lifestyle.18 The important trading and diplomatic partner of Ebla called DU-luki is, to us, localizable only to the southwest of Tell Mardikh, all but obliging the admittedly difficult reading of this place name as Gub-luki19 and the identification with the famous Byblos in Lebanon.20 DU-luki played the role of intermediary between Ebla and the place known as Dugurasu (Du-gu2-ra-suki), for which an, in our view convincing, identification with Old Kingdom Egypt, or a place somehow connected with it, has been proposed.21 Since Ebla was defined decades ago as the grande surprise of Ancient Near Eastern studies by Edzard (1994), our goal with the present contribution is to make an initial attempt at harmonizing those external sources shedding light on the existence and importance of Ebla with the Ebla evidence itself.

14

The alternate proposal to seek Armi at the ancient mound of Samsat on the Upper Euphrates would still place it at a key crossing point from the east into Anatolia and so would not drastically alter our picture from a geopolitical standpoint. On the other hand, the suggestion to locate Armi at Tell Banat / Tell Bazi is in our view geopolitically unlikely. 15 See the discussion in Genz 2011, 847: “That the contacts between Syro-Mesopotamia and the Aegean were established by a route overland from northern Syria and Cilicia through Anatolia towards the northern Aegean has gained strong support in recent years”. 16 See Winters 2019, 341–342; see also Bonechi 2016a, 81 and Catagnoti 2016: 47. 17 See Bonechi 2016a; see also Archi 2010. 18 On this GN see for the moment Biga 2014, Winters 2019, 18–20, and Catagnoti forthcoming. 19 See, for the moment, D’Agostino 1993 and Bonechi 1993, 112, both with literature. 20 See Bonechi 2016a, 30 and fn. 3; Winters 2019, 18–19; Biga / Steinkeller 2021. 21 See Biga / Roccati 2012 and Biga / Steinkeller 2021.

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We begin thus with Ḫuwawa, and hope to gain an idea of what Ebla may have looked like through his eyes. Of course, Ḫuwawa and his place in the Gilgameš narrative are not yet attested for several centuries at the time of the Ebla Palace G archives. But the real life version of the forest, which Ḫuwawa was said to have guarded, was certainly already there. Palaeoecological evidence shows that, by the time of Ebla Palace G, an anthropogenic deforestation in the Amanus, Jebel Ansariyah, and Lebanon ranges had already been underway for several centuries (Yasuda / Kitagawa / Nakagawa 2000). The presence of cedar, eastern Mediterranean pine, juniper, and elm among the materials recovered from the Eanna precinct at Uruk, dating to the second half of the fourth millennium, shows that some of this deforestation was already the result of timber making its way down from northwest to southeast, to Gilgameš’s homeland, to serve as construction material for monumental temples and palaces (Heussner 2015). In this connection, it is very noteworthy that the oldest Akkadian version of the Gilgameš epic – which has only recently become available from an Old Babylonian tablet in the Schøyen collection – informs us that Gilgameš and Enkidu passed through “the Land of Ebla” on their way to Ḫuwawa’s domain (George 2009, 29–41). Having reached “the Land of Ebla”, Gilgameš was able to climb up a hill, from which he could see the heavily forested mountains that were their destination. This suggests, as rightly observed by George, that the cedars of this old version of the epic were located in the Amanus, not the Lebanon, as in the first millennium (2003, 226). Ebla herself was not the location of Ḫuwawa’s forest, but was directly on the way to it for a traveler coming from Uruk. As we will see, in Mesopotamia Ebla was above all remembered in connection with timber, and this new information from the OB Gilgameš epic fits with this general picture. The manuscript goes on after Ebla to mention a second place called Ḫamran, one which, according to George, remains an enigma (2009, 29). Although Ḫuwawa’s domain could be sighted from an Eblaite hilltop, it was first upon reaching this second location of Ḫamran that the two adventurers were near enough to hear his roar. See lines 25‒28 and 54‒60 of Schøyen 3025 (George 2009, 29–36): “A journey of one whole day, two and three, they drew near to the Land of Ebla (a-na ma-ti Ib-la). Gilgameš climbed up to the top of a hill, he looked around at all the mountains. [...] On they sped that day and night, to Ḫamran (a-˹na Ḫa˺-am-ra-an) they drew near, on the summit sat down(?), the [mountain] where the Amorite dwells, daily hearing the voice of Ḫuwawa. He watched them, the guardian of the cedar, he that repels every advance, [Ḫuwawa, the] guardian of the cedar, he that repels every advance”. Importantly, the recently published Neo-Babylonian Gilgameš tablet of Suleimaniyah (Al-Rawi / George 2013) shows that Ḫuwawa was not a monster

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or the personification of chaotic forces, but the legitimate ruler of a well-ordered kingdom that aroused the wonder of the two heroes. See the lines 1‒9 of the 5th Tablet of the Standard Babylonian Epic in the source Suleimaniyah Museum T.1447 (Al-Rawi / George 2013, 76–77): “They stood there marveling at (the edge of) the forest, observing the height of the cedars, observing the way into the forest. Where Ḫuwawa came and went there was a track, the paths were in good order and the way was well trodden. They were gazing at the Cedar Mountain, dwelling of gods, throne-dais of goddesses: [on the] face of the land the cedar was proffering its abundance, sweet was its shade, full of delight”. The idea that Ḫuwawa was the ruler of a foreign kingdom could, in some sense, be seen as matching the reality revealed by Ebla palace G texts. Any timber, which was at this time making its way down to southern Mesopotamia, would have not been fetched from the source by a hero, but would have passed through the control of real human political intermediaries, of which Ebla was certainly one.22 While enigmatic, the mention of Ḫamran in the Schøyen tablet also matches with another general pattern about the Mesopotamian perception of Ebla. Both Sargon and Naram-Sin mentioned Ebla alongside a second, more mysterious entity. The context in both cases suggests that this was a kind of partner or ally of Ebla. For Sargon it was Armuti(um) (generally read up until this point as Yarmuti),23 while for Naram-Sin this partner was called Armanum. Sargon describes how he did obeisance before Dagan in Tuttul on the upper Euphrates, and as a result Dagan gave him “the upper land: Mari, Armuti(um), Ebla, including the Cedar forest and the Silver mountains”, see the lines 20‒28 // 24‒ 35 of RIME 2 1.1.11, Sum.: kalam igi-nim mu-na-sum Ma-ri2ki NI-ar-mu-tiki Eblaki tir gišerin ḫur-sag-kug-ga-še3 // Akk.: ma-˹tam2˺ a-li2-tam2 i-di3-šum Ma-ri2-

22

On Ebla as an “intermediary” see Winters 2019, 22; 199–200; 368; see also Steinkeller 2021. 23 In the spelling NI-ar-mu-tiki, NI-ar- hardly represents /yar-/. According to Hasselbach 2005, 34 and 87, in Sargonic Akkadian the sign NI alone cannot stand for /yV/, but only has this function in the combination NI-A = i3-a, (the functional forerunner of the later Akkadian ia = I+A). No examples of NI+aC standing for /yaC/ are provided. On the other hand, the use of i3 for /ʾi/ and /ʿi/ is common, as also at Ebla, where NI is never used to express /yV/, only /ʾV/, /ʿV/, /hV/, and /ḥV/ (Catagnoti 2012, 16). In NI-ar-mutiki, NI-ar- is thus more likely to represent /ʿar/ (see below fn. 27), even if the value ʾa5 (common at Ebla, above all in the preposition ʾa5-na, /ʾana/, where it is considered to represent an Akkadianism corresponding to later a-na, ana, “to”), is not usual for the Sargonic period. Note that ʾa5-na occurs in the Ebla manuscript ARET 5, 7 of the Hymn to Nisaba of Ereš (Krebernik 1992, 102), a text certainly of Mesopotamian (i.e. PreSargonic Akkadian, Kishite) origin.

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amki NI-ar-mu-ti-a-amki Eb-laki a-di3-ma gištir gišeren u3 kur-kur kug.24 NaramSin claims to have “defeated (the forces of) Armanum and Ebla”, after which Dagan grants him the people “from the banks of the Euphrates up until Ulišum”,25 upon whom Naram-Sin imposes a corvée obligation. Finally, NaramSin “completes (an expedition)” to the Amanus, the Cedar Mountain, and the Mediterranean shores. See lines ii 2‒28 of RIME 2 1.4.26 (Gelb / Kienast 1990, 256): “Whereas, for all time since the creation of mankind, no king whosoever had attacked (lapātum, usually translated: destroyed) Armanum and Ebla, the god Nergal, by means of (his) weapons opened the way for NaramSin, the mighty, and gave (nadānum) him Armanum and Ebla. Further, he granted (qiāšum) to him the Amanus, the Cedar Mountain, and the Upper Sea. By means of the weapons of the god Dagan, who magnifies his kingship, Naram-Sin, the mighty, defeated (neʾārum, usually translated: conquered) Armanum and Ebla. Further, from the side of the Euphrates River as far as (the city of) Ulišum, he smote (râšum) the people whom the god Dagan had given to him for the first time, so that they perform service for the god Ilaba, his god. Further, he completed (an expedition) (gamārum) to the Amanus, the Cedar Mountain”.26 A year name of Naram-Sin also refers to an expedition to Lebanon to fell cedars.27 Considering the very close relationship between Ebla and Armi as revealed by the Palace G texts, with Ebla and Armi even having participated as allies in one or more military episodes, we wonder if these spellings – Armuti(um), Armanum, and Ḫamran(um) ‒ all refer to one and the same land, the same one that is called Armi(yum) in the Ebla texts themselves.28 24

Note that the Akkadian version records Armutium, with mimation in the accusative. Archi 2011, 29 identified Naram-Sin’s *U3-li-su-umki with Ebla Ur-sa2-umki (“between Gaziantep and Birecik on the Euphrates, or at Gaziantep itself”), later Uršû, a view accepted in Winters 2019, 122 and 284 (Bonechi thinks this is uncertain). 26 Gelb / Kienast 1990, 256: dNa-ra-am-dEN.ZU / da-num/ Ar-ma-namki / u3 / Ib-laki / enar / u3 / iš-tum-ma / pu-ti / UD.KIB.NUNÍD / a-di-ma / U-li-si-imki / NI-SI11 / ša-at / dDagan / gibil-iš / i-qi2-su-sum / u-ra-iš-ma / giš-IL2 / Il2-a-ba4 / i3-li2-su / na-si2--nim / u3 / A-ma-nam / sa2-tu / gišeren / i-ig-mu-ur. 27 OSP 2, 16 rev. 1–8 (= Westenholz 1987, 39‒41): [in DIŠ mu] / [dNa-ra-am-dEN.ZU] / […]-atki / [ka2]-˹gal˺-atki / [iš11]-a-ru / [u3 su4-ma?] in [kur La]-˹ab˺-na-an / gišeren / ibdu-kam, “[In the year when Naram-Sin conquered ...]-atki and Abullat, [and he?] cut cedars in [the mountains] of Lebanon”. 28 See Bonechi 1997, 516–517 and Archi 2011, 28; differently, Marchesi 2015, 424 fns. 10–13 and Steinkeller 2017, 155 fn. 431. If all of the four various spellings indeed refer to the same place, Ḫamranum could be explained as a metathesis from Armanum, while the spelling in Ḫa- agrees with Sargon’s ʾA5-ar-mu-ti-(um) – note that in Old Babylonian 25

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Both Sargon and Naram-Sin mention Ebla and its ally in close connection with the forested mountains to Ebla’s northwest: for Sargon these were the “Forests of Cedar and the Silver Mountains”, while Naram-Sin specifically identifies the “Mountain of Cedar” as the Amanus. Later legends and omens about Sargon make him the Akkadian counterpart of Gilgameš as far as these forests are concerned. There is a consistent motif about Sargon and his army having experienced a long period of “darkness”,29 presumably while in a forest. An Old Babylonian legend tells how “the forest waged war against (Sargon), it set darkness in place of the light of the heavens” (Goodnick-Westenholz 1997, 68–71). Another tale, excavated from the Old Assyrian trading colony in Anatolian Kaneš, probably tells how Sargon “dwelled in darkness” (which is perhaps meant to say, a dark forest) “for seven years, one month, and fourteen days” – an ordeal from which he emerged with carnelian and lapis lazuli in hand, and after which he then “split the Amanus in two” and set up a representation of himself there.30 It is quite possible that these legends preserve a trace of a real historical memory of Sargon’s experience in this forested landscape, lying on the opposite side of Ebla from the Mesopotamian perspective. On the other hand, according to George, the mention of Ebla in Gilgameš “suggests very strongly that the tale of the heroes’ expedition to the mountains of the far northwest was informed by the memory of historical events in the reigns of those (Sargonic) kings” (2003, 94). The image of Ebla as a source of timber persisted in the later third and early second millennium. Especially noteworthy is a passage from the Sumerian texts, Semitic terms of western origin in /ʿ-/ are spelled with signs in ḫ- (e.g., ḫa-ab-du or ḫi-ib-du for ʿabdum, ʿebdum, “slave”). Nor would the differences in /-y-/ (Ebla), /-t-/ (Sargon), /-ān-/ (Naram-Sin, Gilgameš) present any insurmountable difficulties, since these could all result from alternate nominal derivations. In light of these considerations, the name of Armi and its variants could represent a Semitic descriptive exonym for a land where a different language was spoken, but this remains speculative (for a discussion of geographical exonyms in cuneiform sources, and the possibility that Dugu2-ra-suki represents an exonym for Egypt at Ebla, see Biga / Steinkeller 2021). 29 See in Glassner 1985, 124 the two Old Babylonian omina “Omen of Sargon, who walked in the darkness, and for whom a light shone forth” and “Omen of Sargon, who overcame the darkness and saw the light”; see also Alster / Oshima 2007, 14. 30 See Kt. j/k 97 ll. 40–50 in Alster / Oshima 2007, 9: “I swore by Adad and Istar: I sat in darkness (or: at the meal) for seven years, a month, and fifteen days with my troops! When I came out, I bound a rod of carnelian and lapis lazuli, and distributed it to the land. I smote the Humanum mountain into two parts and I set up my statue like a peg between them”. (dIM / u3 Iš8-tar2 at-ma mu 7-še3 iti-kam u3 ša-pa2-tam2 i-na i-ki-il5-tim qa2-du um-mi3ni-ia lu u2-ši2-ib i-na wa-ṣa-i-a ša na4gug u3 na4za-gin3 qa2-nu-a-am lu ar-ku-us2-ma a-na ma-tim lu u2-za-iz ša-du-a-am Ḫu-ma-nam a-ši2-ni-šu am-ha-su2-ma ki-ma si2-ki-tim iba-ri-šu-nu ṣa-al-mi3 u2-ša-zi-iz). Cf. Dercksen 2001 and Haul 2009, 342–343, 348–349.

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composition Nanna-Suen’s Journey to Nippur, where in the lines 68‒72 the “Forest of Ebla” is mentioned in between the “Mountain of Cedar” and the “Forests of Cedar”: “Rafts and boats brought it down from the ‘Mountain of Cedar’ for Dilim-babbar, They brought down the Aleppo Pine from the ‘Forest of Ebla’ for Dilim-babbar, They brought down the Aleppo Pine from the ‘Forest of Cedar’ for Nanna-Suen”.31 For the author of this composition the land Ebla could thus be directly identified with a “forest” and was the source of gišu3-suh5 or “Aleppo pine”, while the cedar forest itself apparently also counted as a source of gišu3-suh5. Gudea, for his part, in his Statue B identified Ebla in association with a “mountain range”, and likewise as a source of “large Aleppo Pine” (gišu3-suh5 gal-gal) as well zabalum (gišza-ba-lum) and dul(u)bum (gištu-lu-bu-um), possibly “(a kind of) juniper” and “oriental plane tree” respectively.32 Gudea’s most monumental trees, however, were the cedar and the gištaškarin trees, which he obtained from “the Amanus, the mountain range of cedar”.33 He emphasized the size of these timber logs, 50 and 60 cubits (ca. 25 and 30 meters) for the cedar and 25 cubits or around 13 meters for the gištaškarin. Although gištaškarin has long been traditionally translated by Assyriologists as “boxwood”, such an identification seems unlikely in light of these dimensions, considering that boxwood is hardly even a tree, but rather small to medium sized, shrublike bush. Boxwood is also too dense to float, contradicting Gudea’s claim of having made his timber into rafts to float back down the Euphrates (Winters 2019, 128–129). As suggested by Steinkeller (2019), more likely identification for gištaškarin could be Cilician fir.34 According to recent archaeological analysis, Cilician fir was the second most common type of tree remain recovered from Ebla Palace

31

See ETCSL 1.5.1: giša-da (var.: giš˹ad˺) ma2-bi kur šim-gišeren-na-ta dDil2-im-babbar-ra! mu-na-da-an-ri-am3 gišu3-bi tir Ib-la-ta (var: Ib2-la) dDil2-im-babbar-ra mu-na-daan-ri-a / gišu3-suh5-bi gištir gišeren-na-ta / dNanna-dSuen mu-na-da-an-ri-a. 32 RIME 3/1 1.7.StB v 53–vi 2, “From the city of Ursu and the mountain range of Ebla he (brought) juniper, large Aleppo pine, as well as plane trees – mountain wood – joining them to form rafts, and he used them as roof beams (for Ningirsu) in the Eninnu“ (uru Ur-suki ḫur-sag Eb-la-ta gišza-ba-lum gišu3-suḫ5 gal-gal gištu-lu-bu-lum giš kur ad-še3 muAK-AK E2-ninnu-a gišur3-še3 mu-na-gar). For dulbum “oriental plane tree” at Ebla cf. the lexical entry VE 292 (see Krebernik 1983, 13). 33 RIME 3/1 1.7.StB v 28–36), “From the Amanus, the cedar mountain, he cut cedar logs of 60 and 50 cubits length, and taškarin-wood of 25 cubits length, and he joined them into rafts, and made them thus come ‘up’ (to Lagash) from their mountains” (Ama-anum2 ḫur-sag-eren-ta [giš]˹eren˺ [gid2]-˹bi 60˺ kuš3 [giš]eren [gid2]-bi 50 kuš3 [giš]taskarin gid2-bi 25 kuš3 ad-še3 mu-AK-AK kur-bi im-ta-e11). 34 See also Winters 2019, 127–129.

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G, next to cedar.35 Cilician fir can reach heights of 40 meters, and is, again, the second most common type of tree next to cedar, growing in the Taurus region today. This makes it the far more appropriate lesser counterpart to Gudea’s giš erin. Returning to Ebla itself, an important and well known mention of gištaškarin wood comes from the Ḫamazi Letter (ARET 23, 3). Logs and wheels of giš taškarin were apparently the most precious gift the king of Ebla was able to offer the king of Ḫamazi, in exchange for the most prized commodity of Upper Mesopotamia, a special type of equid, probably the “mule” (kunga2).36 One unique document (TM.82.G.266), discovered apart from the main archives, seems to prove that Ebla took part in a trade in cedar and fir wood that involved enormous monetary sums. It lists an unspecified quantity of gištaškarin and giširnun,37 (where gišir-nun either stands for cedar itself, or an aromatic essence), and identifies these goods as having a “price” of 1,700 minas of silver.38 In several administrative sources, gištaškarin-wood is listed only indirectly, in that the occurrences consist of textile rewards for individuals who were involved in the delivery of an unspecified amount of fir. Striking among such sources is the involvement of men from Armi. Three instances, and probably a fourth to be restored, record textiles for a “custodian of the Mountain of fir” from Armi.39 A fifth source, in addition to mentioning a custodian of fir of Armi, mentions a “transport driver” (u5) of Armi who delivers (šu-mu-taka4) this wood.40 A sixth occurrence, probably the oldest of this group, rewards an Ebla man for bringing fir whose origin is specified as Kakmeyum.41 Clearly, Armi and Kakmeyum were located closer to the “Mountain of fir” than Ebla.42 Armi’s role as “custodian” and “transport driver” implies it exercised some level of control over the transport and trade in this material. With little doubt, the “Mountain of fir” is to be identified with the Amanus, where Gudea also claimed to have obtained this material.

35

See Caracuta / Fiorentino 2013, 405 and Peyronel / Vacca 2013, 434 and 443. See Winters 2019, 125–127 and Bonechi 2016b, 11‒13. 37 Archi 1993, 10–11, rev. v 4–7. 38 See the discussions in Archi 1993, 17–18; Catagnoti 2014, 231–232; Winters 2019, 365–376; Steinkeller 2021. We cannot spend too much time deliberating the exact economic significance of this information – did Ebla pay a third party for this timber, or did this price represent a profit that Ebla had either recently received or expected soon to receive? 39 See Catagnoti 2019, 30–31 for ARET 15, 9; 38; 51; and ARET 3, 235. 40 See Winters 2019, 124–125 for ARET 15, 51. 41 See Winters 2019, 346–347 for ARET 12, 807. 42 See the complementary remarks in Bonechi 2016a, 59 fn. 193; Catagnoti 2016, 47–48; Bonechi 2018, 93 fn. 11; Winters 2019, 189–285; Steinkeller 2021; Biga / Steinkeller 2021. 36

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Now, Gudea and the Sumerian Nanna-Suen composition both are in agreement that the wood was transported to Mesopotamia by means of boats and rafts of logs. This image is also already present in the Hymn to Šamaš of Sippar known from Abu Ṣalabiḫ and Ebla: “He (the Sungod) caused the products of the foreign lands to be hauled on his rafts (ad, Abu Ṣalabiḫ) / boats (ma2-gur8, Ebla)”.43 Gudea even left behind a pictorial representation of this activity, and was even so kind as to provide the rafts with a label, ad giš˹taskarin˺ (Suter 2000, 354–357). With little doubt, the timber which was making its way from Armi and the “Mountain of fir” through Ebla towards the south was also transported in this way, along the Euphrates. This in part explains Ebla’s great interest in that region, controlling a port called Ma2-NEki and gaining control over places like Abarsal and Emar (Winters 2019, 14–16 and 58–61). Other Ebla sources reveal that olive oil and textiles were among the other commodities shipped by Ebla south towards Mari using boats that travelled along the Euphrates (Winters 2019, 114–118). Ebla is mentioned about 40 times in the corpus of Ur III texts.44 One critical reference, on a tablet excavated from Nippur, proves that Ebla counted in this period too as a source of timber; it lists 1,000 wooden objects, defined as the “tribute of the man of Ebla”, which probably is meant to say, its ruler.45 Very often, Ebla individuals co-occur in Ur III texts with individuals from centers of the surrounding regions, many of the same ones with which Ebla was in diplomatic contact during the Palace G period, including Mari, Tuttul, and Uršû.46 Quite strikingly, a messenger of the ruler of Gubla or Byblos appears alongside men of Ebla, Mari, and Tuttul.47 These all formed a kind of diplomatic cohort, with Mari as the intermediary between Ur and the world of the northern Levant. All this fits well with an image of continuity between the end of Ebla Palace G and the transition from the third to the second millennium. Given that Byblos and Ebla were part of a diplomatic cohort in the Ur III period, it would be surprising not to find such contacts already in the Palace G period. Whether or not the identification of DU-luki as Byblos and Dugurasu as Egypt is correct, on a practical level Byblos certainly constituted the main 43

See Krebernik 1992, 74 and 82–83; Steinkeller 2013, 149 and fn. 72; Bonechi 2016c, 149; 2016d, 20 fn. 16. 44 See Owen 1992; for the fullest up-to-date list of attestations, consult the BDTNS database (http://bdtns.filol.csic.es) under Eb-laki. 45 TMH NF 1–2, 313 obv. 1–3: 500 giš-RU zum-ti-a-num2 / 500 giškab2-kul zum-ti-anum2 / gu2 lu2 Ib-laki, “500 throwing sticks of zumtianum-wood, 500 containers of zumtianum-wood, tribute of the ‘man’ (i.e., the ruler) of Ebla”. That the very rarely mentioned zumtianum (reading uncertain) designated a type of wood seems to be demonstrated by UET 3, 182, where, in another list of giš-RU, zumtianum occurs among other known types of wood, including taškarin (fir) and al-la-num2 (oak). 46 See e.g. Owen 1992, 152, text 55 (mentioning Mari, Uršû, Tuttul, and Ebla). 47 See Owen 1992, 152, text 60 and 155, text 70.

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interface point between the worlds of northern Syria and the southern Levant on into Egypt. The recently recovered Autobiographic Inscriptions of Iny48 enriches the picture of what is presently known about 3rd millennium travels of Egyptians in the Levant in order to obtain prized goods. The sealbearer Iny worked for the 6th Dynasty pharoahs Pepi I, Merenre, and Pepi II, placing him thus in the 23rd century BC, just after the fire which destroyed Ebla Palace G. Together with resinous oil, Byblos-ships, and slaves, Iny brought from Byblos to Egypt lapis lazuli, silver, and tin. Remarkably, these latter three commodities are precisely those which the Ebla texts record as having been sent to Dugurasu (Biga / Steinkeller 2021). Iny does not specifically mention timber, although the “Byblos-ships” could themselves be considered as referring to timber. Lebanese cedars and other Levantine coniferous woods were well known in Egypt already centuries before, for instance as reported by the 4th Dynasty Palermo Stone, and confirmed by the 30 tons of cedar timber used to build the boats buried beside the Great Pyramid at Giza (Creasman / Doyle 2017, 22). According to Egyptological colleagues, it is certain that Iny mentions Byblos (Kbn) and Lebanon (Ḫntš).49 The reading and identification of the two other toponyms recorded in his autobiography (ʕmꜢꜢw or ʕmꜢw and PꜢws[?] or PꜢw[…]ś) is less certain, but it is thought that both were located on the coast, north of Byblos.50 In any case, while a network of overland routes linked coastal and inner Levant with the Egyptian Delta, maritime trade was also practiced by Egyptians and Levantines alike, as depicted for instance in 5th dynasty monuments from Saqqara of the Pharaohs Sahure and Unas.51 It has been argued that “by that time, the presence of Asiatic sailors with their special expertise had become a usual occurrence in Egypt, and that they had found a place in the Egyptian social system”.52 The precise modalities of the commercial exchange between Levant and Egypt before the fall of Palace G Ebla remains to be fully investigated, but one should assume the existence of a rather complex network, interestingly sometimes disturbed by local unrest, as in the case reported by another Egyptian official, Weni, sent to the southern Levant to restore order (Mark 2017, 123). The native Egyptian designation “Byblos boat”, also used for their own ships that sailed the Red Sea, implies that Byblos held a preeminent role in Egypt’s trade interactions with the Levant, the hub towards which Ebla likely shipped prized goods that would eventually make their way onto Egypt itself. If true, 48

See Marcolin 2006 and Marcolin / Espinel 2011. See Marcolin / Espinel 2011, 581–582, 591–592, and 607; Schneider 2015. 50 See Marcolin / Espinel 2011, 590–591 and 593; Schneider 2015, 441–447. 51 See for instance Schneider 2015, 436–437. See also Saretta 2016, 59–61. 52 See Bader 2017, 72, making reference to the remarks of M. Bietak. 49

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such a regional role for Byblos reminds one of the Treaty between Ebla and Abarsal, where it is declared that Ebla is to have preeminence over Abarsal in matters concerning Euphratean commerce (Winters 2019, 173–176). Such trade schemes would have been difficult to enforce practically, but on the diplomatic level of long distance political exchanges, it is easier to see how such arrangements could have functioned. Anyway, direct or indirect elite contacts between Ebla and Memphis would likely have been continuous at the time of the Pharaohs of dynasties 4th through 6th, as suggested by royal objects inscribed with the names of Khufu and Pepi I that have been found in the Palace G (Matthiae 2013, 190).

Figure 3. Maritime exchange routes in the Eastern Mediterranean around 2500 BC (Sowada 2009, fig. 47).

Currently Byblos and Ebla are considered the Asiatic terminals of the EgyptoLevantine trade of the Early Bronze age (see figures 3 and 4), but one should also take into account an important complementary role of Armi (north of Ugarit

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and Alalaḫ), Kakmeyum (between Ugarit and Alalaḫ), and also of Mari. Note here, that Mari merchants are attested as residing under Ebla auspices at Tunep, on the Middle Orontes, where they were, intriguingly, provided with axes or hatchets by the Ebla palace, strongly suggesting a possible connection with the timber industry.53

Figure 4. Maritime exchange routes in the Eastern Mediterranean around 2500 BC (de Miroschedji 2015, 1033).

Although from the strictly Mesopotamian perspective, Ebla could be considered as having belonged to the periphery, we hope to have demonstrated through this brief study that in another sense, Early Bronze Ebla could be considered as occupying the center of the Ancient Near Eastern world. Here we have been able to offer but a survey as to Ebla’s connections with the entire surrounding world of the era. Further research in the coming years will surely expand our knowledge of these complex interlinking worlds and demonstrate that the era of 53

See Bonechi 2016a, 48‒50 and 87, and Winters 2019, 357–364. For a different view, see Archi 2018, 34 and 40. Also note these remarks in Bonechi 2016a, 86: “at Tunep—as well as certainly at Ḫaššuwān as for the Anatolian silver—the men from Mari not only traded precious goods coming from as far away as the Egyptian gold (which should indicate that Ebla did not, in fact, monopolize the gold-and-linen vs lapis lazuli-and-tin trade with the kingdom of the Pharaoh and his northernmost neighbours). Most likely, these traders also supplied their capital on the Euphrates with the highly prized timber of the nearby forests along the Mediterranean coast”.

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the Palace G archives was already a fully-developed international one, comparable to Late Bronze Age Amarna.

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— Sorveglianti e custodi nei testi di Ebla, fra lessico e prosopografia, in: Asia Anteriore Antica 1 (2019) 21–42. — Tell Al-Rawda: une ville de la région d’Ibʿal dans les archives d’Ebla?, in: Castel, C. / Barge, O. / Awad, N. (eds.), Une ville neuve du IIIe millénaire aux franges du désert de Syrie: Travaux de la mission archéologique francosyrienne de Tell Al-Rawda 2002–2010 (3ème partie) (Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée), Lyon forthcoming. Creasman, P.P. / Doyle, N., Paths in the Depths. Maritime Connections, in: Creasman, P.P. / Wilkinson, R.H. (eds.), Pharaoh’s Land and Beyond. Ancient Egypt and Its Neighbors, Oxford 2017, 19–34. D’Agostino, F., On the reading /gub/ of the sign /DU/ in Ebla, in: Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 1993/75 (1993) 59–60. Dercksen, J.G., The King That Walked in Darkness, in: Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 2001/100 (2001) 96–97. Edzard, D.O. Ebla ou la grande surprise de l’histoire du Proche-Orient ancient, in: Akkadica 88 (1994) 18–29. — Geschichte Mesopotamiens. Von den Sumerern bis zu Alexander dem Großen. München 2004. Efe, T., The Theories of the ‘Great Caravan Route’ between Cilicia and Troy: The Early Bronze Age III Period in Inland Western Anatolia, in: Anatolian Studies 57 (2007) 47–64. Eidem, J. / Finkel, I. / Bonechi, M., The Third-millennium Inscriptions, in: Oates, D. / Oates, J. / McDonald, H. (eds.), Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 2: Nagar in the Third Millennium BC (McDonald Institute Monograph), Cambridge, UK / London 2001, 99–120. Fronzaroli, P. Le origini dei semiti come problema storico, in: Rendiconti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 8/15 (1960) 123–144. — Testi di cancelleria: i rapporti con le città (Archivi Reali di Ebla, Testi 13), Rome 2003. Gelb, I.J., The Early History of West Semitic Peoples, in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 15 (1961) 27–47. Gelb, I.J. / Kienast, B., Die altakkadischen Königsinschriften des dritten Jahrtausends v.Chr. (Freiburger Altorientalische Studien 7), Stuttgart 1990. Genz, H., Restoring the Balance: An Early Bronze Age Scale Beam from Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, Lebanon, in: Antiquity 85 (2011), 839–850. George, A., The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, Oxford 2003. — Babylonian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 10), Bethesda, MD 2009. Glassner, J.-J., Sargon “roi du combat”, in: Revue d’Assyriologie 79 (1985) 115–126.

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Goodnick-Westenholz, J., Legends of the Kings of Akkade (Mesopotamian Civilization 7), Winona Lake, IN 1997. Hasselbach, R., Sargonic Akkadian. A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts, Wiesbaden 2005. Haul, M., Stele und Legende. Untersuchungen zu den keilschriftlichen Erzählwerken über die Könige von Akkade (Göttinger Beiträge zum Alten Orient 4), Göttingen 2009. Heussner, K.-U., Dendrochronological Analysis of Charcoal Samples from Uruk, in: Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 8 (2015) 22–32. Krebernik, M., Zu Syllabar und Orthographie der lexikalischen Texte aus Ebla. Teil 2 (Glossar), in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 73 (1983) 1‒47. — Mesopotamian Myths at Ebla: ARET 5, 6 and ARET 5, 7, in: Fronzaroli, P. (ed.), Literature and Literary Language at Ebla (Quaderni di Semitistica 18), Florence 1992, 63–149. Marchesi, G., History and Philology, in: Finkbeiner, U. et al. (eds.), Middle Euphrates (Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East 4), Turnhout 2015, 423–429. Marcolin, M., Iny, a Much-traveled Official of the Sixth Dynasty: Unpublished Reliefs in Japan, in: Bárta, M. / Coppens, F. / Krejčí, J. (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2005. Proceedings of the Conference Held in Prague (June 27–July 5, 2005), Prague 2006, 297–310. Marcolin, M. / Espinel, A.D., The Sixth Dynasty Biographic Inscriptions of Iny: More Pieces to the Puzzle, in: Bárta, M. / Coppens, F. / Krejčí, J. (eds.), Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2010/1, Prague 2011, 570–615. Mark, S. The Long Arm of Merchantry. Trade Interactions, in: Creasman, P.P. / Wilkinson, R.H. (eds.), Pharaoh’s Land and Beyond. Ancient Egypt and Its Neighbors, Oxford 2017, 115–151. Matthiae, P., Gli Archivi Reali di Ebla. La scoperta, i testi, il significato, Milano 2008. — The IIIrd Millennium in North-Western Syria: Stratigraphy and Architecture, in: Orthmann, W. / Matthiae, P. / al-Maqdissi, M. (eds.) Archéologie et Histoire de la Syrie I. La Syrie de l’époque néolithique à l’âge du fer (Schriften Zur Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 1/1), Wiesbaden 2013, 181– 198. Milano, L., Ebla: A Third-Millennium City-State in Ancient Syria, in: Sasson, J. (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, New York, NY 1995, 1219– 1230. de Miroschedji, P., Les relations entre l’Égypte et le Levant aux IVe et IIIe millénaires à la lumière des fouilles de Tell es-Sakan, in: Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (2015) 1003–1038.

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Otto, A., Archaeological Perspectives on the Localization of Naram-Sin’s Armanum, in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 58 (2006) 1–26. Otto, A. / Biga, M.G., Thoughts about the Identification of Tall Bazi with Armi of the Ebla Texts, in: Matthiae, P. et al. (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Volume 1, Wiesbaden 2010, 481–494. Owen, D.I., Syrians in Sumerian Sources from the Ur III Period, in: Chavalas, M. / Hayes, J. (eds.), New Horizons in the Study of Ancient Syria (Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 25), Malibu, CA 1992, 107–175. Peyronel, L. / Vacca, A., Natural Resources, Technology and Manufacture Process at Ebla. A Preliminary Assessment, in: Matthiae, P. / Marchetti, N. (eds.), Ebla and Its Landscape. Early State Formation in the Ancient Near East, Walnut Creek, CA 2013, 431–449. Pettinato, G., La città sepolta. I misteri di Ebla, Milan 1999. Sallaberger, W., Nagar in den frühdynastischen Texten aus Beydar, in: van Lerberghe, K. / Voet, G. (eds.), Languages and Cultures in Contact. At the Crossroads of Civilizations in the Syro-Mesopotamian Realm. Proceedings of the 42nd RAI (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 96), Leuven 1999, 393– 407. Saretta, P., Asiatics in Middle Kingdom Egypt: Perceptions and Reality, London / New York, NY 2016. Schneider, Th., The Old Kingdom Abroad: An Epistemological Perspective With Remarks on the Biography of Iny and the Kingdom of Dugurasu, in: Der Manuelian, P. / Schneider, Th. (eds.), Towards a New History for the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Perspectives on the Pyramid Age (Harvard Egyptological Studies 1), Leiden / Boston, MA 2015, 429–455. Sowada, K.N., Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean During the Old Kingdom: An Archaeological Perspective (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 237), Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen 2009. Steinkeller, P., The Historical Background of Urkesh and the Hurrian Beginnings in Northern Mesopotamia, in: Buccellati, G. / Kelly-Buccellati, M. (eds.), Urkesh and the Hurrians. Studies in Honor of Lloyd Cotsen (Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 26), Malibu, CA 1998, 75–98. — On the Location of the Towns of Ur-Zababa and Dimat-Enlil and on the Course of the Arahtum, in: Fincke, J. (ed.), Festschrift für Gernot Wilhelm anläßlich seines 65. Geburtstages am 28. Januar 2010, Dresden 2010, 369– 382. — An Archaic “Prisoner Plaque” from Kiš, in: Revue d’Assyriologie 107 (2013) 131–157. — History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia. Three Essays (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 15), Boston / Berlin 2017.

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— International Trade in Greater Mesopotamia during Late Pre-Sargonic Times: The Case of Ebla Illustrated by Her Participation in the Euphratean Timber Trade, in: Rahmstorf, L. et al. (eds.), Merchants, Measures and Money: Understanding Technologies of Early Trade in a Comparative Perspective. Weight & Value 2, Kiel / Hamburg 2021, 173–197. Suter, C., Gudea’s Temple Building. The Representation of an Early Mesopotamian Ruler in Text and Image (Cuneiform Monographs 17), Groningen 2000. Westenholz, A., Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts in Philadelphia. Part 2. The ‘Akkadian’ Texts, the Enlilemaba Texts, and the Onion Archive (Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 3), Copenhagen 1987. Winters, R.D., Negotiating Exchange: Ebla and the International System of the Early Bronze Age, PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 2019. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/41121311 (accessed in September 2020) Yasuda, Y. / Kitagawa, H. / Nakagawa, T., The Earliest Record of Major Anthropogenic Deforestation in the Ghab Valley, Northwest Syria: A Palynological Study, in: Quaternary International 73/74 (2000) 127–136. Ziegler, N. / Langlois, A.-I., Les toponymes paléo-babyloniens de la HauteMésopotamie: La Haute-Mésopotamie au IIe millénaire av. J.-C. (Matériaux pour l’étude de la toponymie et de la topographie 1/1), Paris 2017.

An Addition to the Early Dynastic Lexical Tradition: Early Dynastic Personal Names A (Word List Z) Nicholas L. Kraus (Freie Universität Berlin)

Originating from excavations at the sites of Fara and Abu Ṣalabiḫ in southern Iraq, the lexical and literary texts that date to the middle of the third millennium (ca. 2600–2500 BC) have formed the basis for our understanding of scribal culture and written knowledge in the early periods of Mesopotamian history.1 Much of this material has been studied and surveyed since its discovery, and organized into various traditions, linking texts with earlier and later manuscripts into a string of transmission that spans from the earliest written texts of the late Uruk period to the early half of the second millennium. Still, the meaning and use for some of these texts, especially the oddities and unusual lists found only in single copies, continues to elude scholars. Among such mysteries is a lexical text that was enigmatically dubbed Word List Z in 2014 by Veldhuis in his study of the cuneiform lexical tradition (2014, 128). In his survey of Word List Z, Veldhuis presented a succinct overview of the manuscripts of the text and its interpretations to date. Shortly after, Wagensonner (2015) published a more detailed overview of the text, highlighting one of the Old Babylonian manuscripts that contained Word List Z on one side of the tablet and a series of Early Dynastic proverbs on the other. In his study, Wagensonner also gave an overview of the manuscripts of the text, and a discussion of the theories of its interpretation, elements of its structure, and pointed out a few of the more interesting phonetic and semantic elements within the text. Other than these two summaries of the text, the most comprehensive treatments have included a short mention of one fragmentary manuscript that dates to the Fara period by Van Dijk (1960, 57–60), and a study of the manuscript from Abu Ṣalabiḫ by Bauer (2014). The interpretations of the two stand in stark opposition; Van Dijk interpreted the text as a piece of early literature, while Bauer viewed it as a list of personal names. Yet, both scholars worked with only a single manuscript of the text and did not attempt to reconstruct it in its entirety. Two other brief mentions of manuscripts of Word 1

On the discovery of these two groups of texts and their contents see the overviews Biggs 1974 and Krebernik 1998.

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List Z should be noted: Cohen (1993, 71) speculated that the list was comprised of personal names because he discovered that three lines of Word List Z also appeared in two other name lists, and the other remark was by Civil (2008, 146) who noticed a possible Semitic word in this text, which also appears in Early Dynastic Practical Vocabulary A. Recently, a complete edition of the Word List Z became available in a study by Kraus (2020, 144), where it has been argued that the most plausible interpretation of the text, as Cohen suspected and Bauer confirmed, is that it is indeed a list of personal names. Furthermore, because the manuscripts of the lexical list span nearly a millennium, from the Early Dynastic IIIa (ca. 2600) to the early Old Babylonian (ca. 1800), and have a comparable geographic distribution, the text probably belongs to the so called All Babylonian Tradition (Kraus 2020, 147).2 In light of this, the list has been redubbed Early Dynastic Personal Names A (EDPNA). The manuscripts can be broken down by period and provenance as follows:3 Manuscript

Period (Provenance)

TSŠ 1003+984

Early Dynastic IIIa (Fara)

OIP 99, 328

Early Dynastic IIIa (Abu Ṣalabiḫ)

MDP 14, 1

Old Akkadian (Susa)

YOS 1, 11

Ur III (Nippur?)4

Wilson 2008, no. 134

Old Babylonian (Unprovenanced)

Ferrini Prism (unpublished)

Old Babylonian (Unprovenanced)

Structure and features of the text There are several methods that the ancient scribes appear to have employed whilst developing the structure of lexical lists in the third millennium. Nearly all lists are arranged around a thematic element such as professions, plants, animals, types of jars, textiles, or metal and wooden objects, among others. In some instances those themes were combined in a single list, and drew upon preexisting lists in order to create a new list, such as Early Dynastic Practical Vocabulary A, but these are rare occurrences. It is no surprise then that EDPNA

2

On the All Babylonian Tradition and the texts which make up this group of texts see Veldhuis 2014, 71. 3 The manuscripts are available on CDLI under the composite number Q000292. 4 The suggestion that this text may stem from Nippur is highly tentative and is made only on the evidence that the prism was purchased in a lot of tablets that were said to have come from Nippur (Wagensonner 2015, 2). Contra Veldhuis 2014, 128, the text probably belongs to the Ur III period rather than the Sargonic on the basis of its palaeography.

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should be likewise limited to a single organizational theme, namely personal names. In any case, these lexical lists share a similar methodology by which entries within a list could be structured. These schemes are predominantly built upon the repetition of phonemes and graphemes in sequences of two to four entries in a list. EDPNA makes regular use of these this repetitive structure throughout the text. For example: Phonetic Repetition

Graphic Repetition

Cascade Repetition

86. lib4(IGI)-bi

122. zi-la

20. en-gul

87. lib3(ŠA3)-bi

123. mi-la

21. en-šimbi

88. lib(NAR)-šu2

124. la-la

22. dinanna-šimbi 23. dinanna-ga2-diri

In each of the above examples a sign (or sign reading) is repeated throughout a sequence. In the example demonstrating phonetic repetition line 86 begins with the sign IGI, which can be read lib4, and the same phoneme is then repeated in the subsequent lines; the structure of this segment is built around the repetition of the phoneme /lib/. The example of graphic repetition is similar to the phonetic example, except in this case it is the sign which is a single sign which is repeated in each line, without any alteration to the reading of that sign. In the case of cascade repetition, one sign is chosen from the line above to be repeated, but then it is the new sign that is repeated in the line below, creating a cascade effect of repeating a sign only once before a new sign is repeated and so forth.5 Another device less often used in lexical lists is the mnemonic triplets. Examples of this are rare, but EDPNA appears to have at least two short entries where the lines almost read as if a narrative. This is best demonstrated by the very beginning of EDPNA, which reads: 1. dAma-si / 2. ki gal DU / 3. munus ki gal DU, and has been interpreted as a narrative. Van Dijk (1960, 58–60) translated these opening lines as: “Ama-si, (who) went to the nether world, the woman (who) went to the netherworld.” But, as Kraus (2020, 145) has pointed out, the narrative ends abruptly there and the following lines do not offer any possibility of narrative interpretation. Moreover, the lack of any narrative structure (e.g. syntax and verbal forms) within the remainder of the text makes it highly unlikely that EDPNA is a literary text. Instead, the narrative quality of the opening lines is probably due to the semantic clarity of Sumerian personal names, and it seems possible that the scribes deliberately chose these lines deliberately as a mnemonic start to the text.

5

The same sequence was noted by Wagensonner (2015, 7) who coined the term “cascade” as a characteristic of early lexical lists.

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In addition to this episode, one other two line sequence in the text seems to exhibit a thread of literary structure; the lines read: 130. dIštaran / 131. di nu-mekud “Istaran did not reach a verdict.” Wagensonner (2015, 7) has suggested that these lines could be interpreted as a type of commentary or description of the preceding lines, citing an episode in the list ED Plants where descriptions of onions are given, or in ED Officials, where professions are given qualifying remarks. While there is certainly a possibility that this feature may be underlying the text, it is the only recorded instance of it in the text. Finally, some authors have suggested the possibility that a Semitic link can be traced to the structure of EDPNA. Civil (2008, 146) noted in his edition of Early Dynastic Practical Vocabulary A that the compound gišE2×AŠ(tenû) also appeared in EDPNA (line 105).6 Civil then interpreted the line which follows, ala-lum, as Akkadian alallûm “drain, water pipe,” which accords with attestations of this word in Ur III documents. While Civil makes an excellent point about the interpretation of these two lines, some doubt may be cast when one considers the lines which follow: 107. giš-e2 108. a-la-LUM 109. nag-si 110. tir-si 111. giša-tu-nir

Line 111 contains the word for a type of tree, “poplar” ṣarbatum. The line above, 110, also contains the Sumerian word for forest, tir. Moreover, while no connection to wood or plant types can be made for nag-si, if line 108 is read ala-num2, the word could be understood as Akkadian allānum “oak”. Thus, it may be that types of trees and words for the forest are what inspired this section of EDPNA, rather than a Semitic reading of gišE2×AŠ(tenû). That being said, it may be that both possibilities are at work here, and that the scribe easily pivoted from one reading and interpretation of a-la-LUM to another. Two further Semitic possibilities have been highlighted by Wagensonner in his study of the text. Wagensonner (2015, 8) noticed that a few lines from EDPNA are found in the same order in a later bilingual version of the lexical list Nig2-ga:

6

Civil cited the Abu Ṣalabiḫ, Fara, and YOS manuscripts of the text. Note that the Abu Ṣalabiḫ version (OIP 99, 328) only partially shows an E2 sign, which, as the copy shows might possibly even be interpreted as E instead, and the Fara version (TSŠ 984+1003) has no internal AŠ wedge.

An Addition to the Early Dynastic Lexical Tradition EDPNA

Bilingual Nig2-ga

39. šu-aš3

122. šu-[aš3]

˹su2˺-us-˹sa3˺-nu-um

40. šu-la2-la2

157. šu-la2-la2

uṣ-[ṣu]-lum

195

Wagensonner further showed that line which follows these two may have been chosen because of a Semitic reading of the text, rather than a shared graphic connection. In EDPNA the following line is ur-ge6 which is translated as ṣalmu in the later lexical text HAR-ra = hubullu (see MSL 8/2, Hh XIV 90). EDPNA

HAR-ra XIV

41. ur-ge6

90. ur-ge6

ṣal-mu

Thus, lines 40 and 41 might be related not because of their Sumerian readings or a graphic similarity, but rather by a phonetic similarity found in their Semitic translations that would have been known to the scribes. Finally, Wagensonner presented another possible Semitic sub-stratum to EDPNA when he noticed a possible comparison to the Ebla Vocabulary. The Ebla Vocabulary is a text that gives a cuneiform sign or compound followed by a Semitic gloss or pronunciation.7 In EDPNA, Wagensonner suggested that lines 89–90 might show another example of a Semitic relationship: EDPNA

Ebla Vocabulary

89. ur2-ku3

1042. ir-nun / ar-gu2-um

90. ir-nun

If line 89 is taken as an approximation of ar-gu-(um), then it could be said there was a Semitic substrate that links the two entries in EDPNA, albeit it is a rather tenuous connection. Nevertheless, these examples demonstrate that the structure and underlying organizational principles behind EDPNA are multilayered; the scribe(s) who first crafted EDPNA had at their disposal numerous mechanisms by which they could order the list, expanding beyond simple phonetic and graphic similarities to mnemonic devices and possibly drawing from another language altogether.

Text transmission That EDPNA appears in copies from the Early Dynastic IIIa, Sargonic, Ur III, and Old Babylonian periods is not a negligible point. Compared to other lexical lists from the All Babylonian Tradition, only ED Lu A and ED Food are attested in manuscripts from all of the same periods as EDPNA. Whereas, the remainder of the All Babylonian lexical lists appear distributed as follows: Vessels and 7

For more on this text see Veldhuis 2014, 135.

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Garments (ED/OB), Word List C (ED/Ur III/OB), Metals (ED/OAkk/Ur III), Wood (ED/Ur III/OB), Cattle (ED), Officials (ED/OB), Fish (ED/Ur III/OB), Cities (ED/OB), Word List F (ED/OAkk/OB), Birds (ED/Ur III/OB), and Plants (ED/Ur III/OB).8 While there is the possibility that an accident of discovery is to blame for the distribution of these lexical texts, it is clear that EDPNA belongs to this same group, rather than the Northern/Kish Tradition or to a particular local tradition, as is the case with other texts.9 Yet, this comes as no surprise given the content of EDPNA. Because much of the early lexical tradition revolves around words used in administrative texts, and personal names are an important component of administration, it is not difficult to imagine that these texts began as a method for training new scribes in the written arts. Once part of the scribal tradition, they became crystalized as heritage pieces of the scribal community. By the late third millennium many of the words of these lists (especially ED Lu A) had become obsolete to the needs of a scribe, and were superseded by new lists (Veldhuis 2014, 71).10 Indeed, EDPNA demonstrates the same pattern of replacement of personal names, as new naming practices (and languages) become popular later in the third millennium. Kraus (2020, 146) has shown that 148 names from the list can be connected to genuine personal names found in administrative texts. Of those names, the majority appear in administrative records from the Early Dynastic IIIa and IIIb periods, indicating that EDPNA was also slowly becoming obsolete as a list of relevant names. Generally speaking, the redundancy of the terms within the lexical lists over time is a sign that their cultural significance was more important than their practical use as lists of words that a scribe would expect to encounter in everyday life. Nevertheless, these lists were composed with many common signs that a scribe would be expected to know. So from the point of view of writing as a technical skill it cannot be said that they had little or no practical use (Kraus 2020, 140). Concerning the particular details of the transmission of EDPNA and how the text itself changes over time, it is remarkable that, like other early lexical lists, there are only a few instances of major discrepancy across manuscripts. Minor, and expected, changes are noticeable, such as the reversal of orthography from the early to the later manuscripts. Examples of these minor deviations include graphic and semantic changes, such as:

8

See Taylor 2008, 204 for the number of attested manuscripts of the texts that survived to the Old Babylonian period. These numbers have since been updated by Veldhuis (2014, 71–72). 9 On other regional lexical traditions see Veldhuis 2014, 103–138. 10 From a content point of view, new lists such as ED Lu B were more useful for a scribe operating between the Early Dynastic III and Ur III periods.

An Addition to the Early Dynastic Lexical Tradition

88.

197

OIP 99, 328

TSŠ 984+1003

YOS 1, 11

Wilson 2008, no. 134

nar-šu2

nar-šu2

nar-ni-ni-šu2

nar-u

In this example, the two earliest manuscripts have nar-šu2 as the name in the list, while the Ur III manuscript has inserted -ni-ni- within the name, and the later Old Babylonian copy has removed the addition but then changed the ŠU2 sign to U. The same can be seen in lines 54, 118, 119, 151 (signs inserted), and in lines 150 (ŠU2 changed U in Wilson 2008 and Ferrini manuscripts). Other changes seem to show that the text was copied from phonetic memorization, rather than by remembering the correct signs, which is especially apparent in the Old Babylonian manuscripts. Veldhuis (2014, 129) has already pointed one good example of this in line 60 and 61: OIP 99, 328

YOS 1, 11

TSŠ 984+1003

Ferrini Prism

60.

[…]

dim2-ma

dim2 ga2

dimma (KA.HI)-ma

61.

[…]

nu-dim-ma

dim2 ga2

nu-dimma (KA.HI)-ma

Further examples of this phonetic variation can be seen throughout the text: OIP 99, 328

YOS 1, 11

TSŠ 984+1003

MDP 14, 1

55.

nun-pi-an

nun-bi-an-na

an-nun

120.

giš-mi

kiš-mi

kiš-mi

kiš-mi

123.

ga2-[x]

mi-[x]

ga2-la

mi-la

157.

me-dur-ga2

[…]

me-dur-ga2

163.

[…]

mes-me-an-na

Ferrini Prism

mi-la me-dur-ba

mes-me-a-na2

These instances suggest that the text might have been memorized by its phonetic components, rather than by graphemes. Quite interestingly the variation sometimes occurs early on in the manuscript tradition, such as line 120 where the Abu Ṣalabiḫ manuscript (OIP 99, 328) has giš-mi, while Fara and the later texts all render kiš-mi. Furthermore, these differences in sign use can indicate the intended phonetic reading of a sign, such as in line 123 where the two early manuscripts use the GA2 sign, while the later versions use MI. That variance suggests that the anticipated phoneme is probably /ĝe/, as GA2 can be read ĝe26 and MI can be read ĝe6. There is only one section of the text where a discrepancy occurs across nearly all manuscripts:

Nicholas L. Kraus

198 OIP 99, 328

YOS 1, 11

TSŠ 984+1003

MDP 14, 1

Wilson 2008

132.

an-ka

[x?]-an-ka

Ferrini Prism ka-an

133.

aš2-lul-la

x-˹sa˺-[x]

aš2-šul-la

134.

[x]-an-ku

dilmun-[x]

e2-an-bu

135.

e2-man

ku-li-˹tur˺

tur-[dilmun]

ga2-ku-man

136.

dilmun-tur

a-zal-[x]

ni-[…]

[…]-˹ki˺

137.

ni-ša4-˹ama˺

ni-ša-[x]

aš2-˹lul˺-[x]

break

138.

e2-[x]-la

e2-tim-[x]

e2-[x]-tim

e2-tim-ur2

139.

[…]

numun-zi

numun-zi

numun-zi

From line 133 to line 138 there appears to be more than a simple break in the text or solitary addition. The Ur III manuscript (YOS 1, 11) adds two additional names in lines 135–136 that occur in another name list (Cohen 1993, 79).11 Additionally, it appears to have completely skipped the entries that appear in the Abu Ṣalabiḫ copy between an-ka (132) and dilmun-tur (136), but which are preserved in the Old Babylonian copy. The Fara manuscript (TSŠ 984+1003), however, has misplaced aš2-lul-la four lines below where it appears in the other texts. The Abu Ṣalabiḫ copy (OIP 99, 328) has a clear LA in line 138 and, based on the other manuscripts, the missing sign should be TIM. Yet, the only manuscript which preserves all three signs has UR2 instead of LA, which cannot be reasonably explained at this time. What stands out from this sequence is the remarkable stability of lines between the Old Babylonian and Abu Ṣalabiḫ copies; there are a few changes, such as ŠUL for LUL in line 133 and GA2 instead of E2 in 135, but otherwise the same entries more or less appear as they do in the early manuscript. Furthermore, the Old Babylonian changes may assist in clarifying the readings for particular signs, such as line 134 where OIP 99, 328 has KU while the later manuscript has BU. Thus, the intended reading for KU in this name may have been bu7. Despite the discrepancies that occur in EDPNA throughout the nearly one thousand years of its transmission, like many other early lexical lists the text remains incredibly stable.12 Nevertheless, the variants that can be seen are useful for our understanding of the modes of communicating and preserving lexical texts by the scribal community.

11

This feature is highlighted by Kraus (2020, 146), as a particularly strong piece of evidence in favour of this text being a list of personal names. 12 Taylor (2008, 203) has noted the same consistency and standardization for ED Lu A.

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The significance of name lists It is an interesting detail that in the history of cuneiform scholarship surrounding the education of scribes, lists of personal names are often neglected in the discussion. Since Chiera’s (1916–1919) publication of Old Babylonian personal name lists, there has been little mention of this important group of texts.13 The most recent treatment by Peterson (2011) has been successful in an attempt to compile these lists and organize them into coherent categories, although there is still much work to be done. Veldhuis (2014, 148–149) has stressed the importance of name lists in scribal training and noted their appearance on school tablets, parallel to lexical exercises in the Old Babylonian curriculum. Likewise, Peterson (2011, 256) posits that these lists very likely formed some of the earliest linguistically cogent material, especially of Sumerian, that was studied by young scribes. Indeed, in addition to the Old Babylonian material, a recent study by Kraus (2020, 52) has shown that name exercises were prevalent in scribal education centuries earlier, in the Sargonic period. From a broader perspective, when one compares the the lexical material from the Early Dynastic IIIa with that from the Old Babylonian period, there are significant thematic overlaps between the lexical lists of the two periods. Absent from the Early Dynastic All Babylonian Tradition, however, is a list of personal names that would serve the same function as the name lists from the Old Babylonian school corpus. The closest parallel is the list known as ED Names and Professions, found among the texts belonging to the Northern Tradition, which, as the title implies, is a list of personal names (many of which are Semitic) and professions. But EDPNA is the only list of personal names with the same temporal and geographic spread to suggest that it belongs to a larger tradition. In light of what has been said about EDPNA, it is easy to see that it, like the other lexical texts of the Early Dynastic period, is rich and multi-layered. Within the All Babylonian Tradition as a whole, there is a diversity of themes represented with which trainee scribes could learn to write, as well as a complexity to the organization and structure of a list. While some of these lists may have become outdated by the middle of the third millennium, EDPNA was still a useful and practical text, as most of the names in the list can be found in contemporary administrative documents from Fara and Abu Ṣalabiḫ.14 Hitherto, there are few examples of practice versions of these lexical texts, so it cannot be determined at what stage personal names, or any of the other topics of the lexical lists, were learned. By contrast the Old Babylonian curriculum, and the 13

Veldhuis (1997, 45) has briefly mentioned them in reference to the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum. Also see a short overview by Cavigneaux 1983. 14 See the commentary in Kraus 2020, 153 for the names in the list and administrative parallels.

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place of personal name lists within it, has largely been revealed, which demonstrates that names were some of the earliest exercises studied by scribes after sign lists and simple wedge exercises. Given their simplicity, it might be then, that personal names were likewise some of the earliest lists studied by junior scribes of the third millennium.

References Bauer, J., IAS 298 und IAS 328, in: Sassmannshausen, L. (ed.), He Has Opened Nisaba’s House of Learning. Studies in Honor of Åke Waldemar Sjöberg on the Occasion of His 89th Birthday on August 1st 2013 (Cuneiform Monographs 46), Leiden 2014, 11–23. Biggs, R., Inscription from Tell Abū Salābīkh (Oriental Institute Publications 99), Chicago 1974. Cavigneaux, A., Lexikalische Listen, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 6 (1983) 609–641. Chiera, E., Lists of Personal Names from the Temple School of Nippur (University of Pennsylvania, Publications of the Babylonian Section 11/1–3), Philadelphia 1916–1919. Civil, M, The Early Dynastic Practical Vocabulary A (Archaic HAR-ra A) (Archivi Reali di Ebla, Studi 4), Rome 2008. Cohen, M., Two Versions of a Fara-Period Name-List, in: Cohen, M.E. / Snell, D.C. / Weisberg, D.B. (eds.), The Tablet and the Scroll. Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo, Bethesda, MD 1993, 79–86. Kraus, N., Scribal Education in the Sargonic Period (Harvard Semitic Series 67), Brill 2020. Krebernik, M., Die Texte aus Fara und Tell Abū Salābiḥ, in: Attinger, P. / Wäfler, M. (eds.), Mesopotamien. Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/1), Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen 1998, 237–427. Peterson, J., The Personal Name Lists in the Scribal Curriculum of Old Babylonian Nippur: an Overview, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 101 (2011) 246–273. Taylor, J., Lexicographical Study of the Already-Ancient in Antiquity, in: Biggs, R.D. / Myers, J. / Roth, M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago July 18–22, 2005 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 62), Chicago, IL 2008, 201–208. Van Dijk, J., Inschriftliche Funde, in: Lenzen, H. (ed.), XVI. Vorläufiger Bericht über die von der Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft in Uruk-Warka unternommenen Ausgrabungen (Abhandlungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 5), Berlin / Saarbrücken 1960, 57–60.

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Veldhuis, N., Elementary Education at Nippur. The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects, PhD Dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit, Groningen 1997. — History of the Cuneiform Lexical Tradition (Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record 6), Münster 2014. Wagensonner, K., A, B, C … Word List Z, in: Cuneiform Digital Library Notes 2015:8 (2015). Wilson, M., Education in the Earliest Schools. Cuneiform Manuscripts in the Cotsen Collection. Los Angeles, CA, 2008.

The Making of a Sign List: Toward a Paleography of Early Dynastic Umma Armando Bramanti (CCHS – CSIC, Madrid)

Introduction1 As the contributions in this volume show, Early Mesopotamia has recently received the renewed attention of Assyriologists. This is also due to the generous amount of epigraphic material which has come to light in the last few decades. The publication of hundreds of texts has prompted the study of new socio-economic realities which have progressively assumed relevance in the general landscape of third millennium studies. Epigraphy, paleography, and diplomatics2 have also played an important role in the last years, and there has been increasing interest in the study of the metatextual features of older and newer corpora. A significant portion of these studies aims to produce new syllabaries and sign lists.3 The following pages disclose the making of one of these sign lists, presenting the ongoing work together with some preliminary results.

1 The corpus The syllabary and sign list presented in this article will serve as an important tool for the study of the Early Dynastic Umma corpus, a group of ca. 1,100 administrative documents originating from the Umma region. In order to increase the reliability of the final product and to provide diachronic continuity, 1

This article is an extended and revised version of the conference paper presented at the workshop “Current Research in Early Mesopotamian Studies” during the 65ᵗʰ RAI in Paris. I hereby thank the fellow organizers of the workshop and fellow editors of this volume N. Kraus and P. Notizia for their most appreciated collaboration. I also thank F. D’Agostino, who read an early version of this article. Needless to say, I bear the full responsibility for any mistakes or inaccuracies. 2 On diplomatics in cuneiform studies, see recently Charpin 2018 and Bramanti 2018, esp. 29–30, with previous literature 3 For a Forschungsgeschichte of Early Mesopotamian cuneiform sign lists – with particular regard to the regions of Umma and Adab – see Bramanti 2019, 2–4.

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both the syllabary and the sign list have been compiled on the basis of a smaller, coherent group of texts within this corpus, i.e. the so-called Archive of Lugalzagesi. The 106 texts of this reconstructed archive originate from the temple of Inanna in Zabala – a smaller center in the region of Umma – and deal mostly with the management of land, grain, metal, and personnel at the end of the Early Dynastic IIIb period.4

2 The methodology 2.1 The premises When the present author first approached the study of the Early Dynastic Umma corpus, he was soon confronted with the absence of a reference sign list for this group of texts. RSP (= Rosengarten 1967) was at that time, and still is, the most relatable tool for the epigraphic interpretation of ED IIIb texts. This list was compiled more than fifty years ago on the basis of the Early Dynastic texts from Lagaš. As expected, sign forms often did not match with Rosengarten’s list. Sometimes they even differed substantially and occasionally signs were not even attested in the list. It was not infrequent that texts called for readings that were not listed in RSP, and other sign lists did not help either. These premises justify the creation of a tool to assist further study on one of the most important, growing cuneiform corpora of third millennium Mesopotamia. A thorough epigraphic and paleographic approach to these texts is primarily meant as a means to ease future text editions and to improve the work done so far. Due to the nature of the corpus, which stems almost entirely from non-scientific excavations, the documents must be set within a relative chronological and geographical framework.5 At present, the Archive of Lugalzagesi is the only archive to have been successfully reconstructed within the broader Early Dynastic Umma corpus. The compilation of a sign list referring to an internally coherent archive will therefore provide a solid starting point toward the reconstruction of other archives and dossiers.

4

For a complete study of the Archive of Lugalzagesi, see Bramanti 2017a. Texts have been fully collated and photographed by the present author. 5 On provenanced and unprovenanced documents within the Early Dynastic Umma corpus see most recently Notizia / Almamori 2021 with previous literature.

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205

2.2 The structure of the work The first step toward the creation of a sign list is the compilation of a syllabary. This is like a census of the whole population of signs of a given group of texts, showing precisely which sign appears where and with which reading.6 In this syllabary signs are listed alphabetically according to their conventional names. Each sign comes with a list of the readings attested in the Archive of Lugalzagesi, and each reading is paired with the contexts of its occurrences. For the reader’s convenience, occurrences are divided into categories such as personal names, professional names, divine names, geographical names, and vocabulary. If necessary, signs are cross-referenced with their compound signs (e.g. the sign A is cross-referenced with the compound signs A.ENGUR, A×SUDtenû, ḪA.A, and SI.A). The sign list presents one main sign form and several variants for each sign. The main sign form is either the most attested throughout the archive or the most neutral, which combines the features of several other variants. Not every small variant made it to the final cut of the sign list, where groups of variants may be represented by only one of them. Relevant variant clusters, sign forms, and paleographic and philological matters are then discussed in an appendix, according to the model of Mittermayer 2006, 193–205 and to the methodology already outlined in Bramanti / Notizia 2016. Tables of concordances of texts, signs, and readings conclude the work.7

3 Some preliminary results As already said, this work will ideally serve as a tool to assist the reading and further study of the Early Dynastic Umma corpus. Nevertheless, it also raises and attempts to answer some questions not only about the paleography of the corpus, but also about its composition and general structure. More results will be evident upon the publication of the syllabary and sign list. Here follow some statistics originating from an early version of the manuscript.

6

In this syllabary the names of the signs and the readings follow the conventions of Mittermayer 2006. This project has been partially funded by the Swiss Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation – SBFI through a postdoc excellence scholarship at the Université de Genève in the academic year 2018/2019. I hereby thank C. Mittermayer for her friendly reception in Geneva. 7 A similar methodology has been recently used by the present author to compile another syllabary and sign list based on a corpus of Neo-Sumerian texts (see Bramanti apud D’Agostino et al. 2019, 276–319).

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3.1 Number of signs and readings The Archive of Lugalzagesi presents a total of 284 signs (56 of which are compound signs), a bit less than two thirds of the 468 signs listed by Rosengarten in RSP for Early Dynastic Lagaš.8 A much higher figure is not anticipated for the entire ED Umma corpus, although the Archive of Lugalzagesi only constitutes a portion of it. This relatively low number of signs can be explained according to the limited scope and variety of textual genres of the corpus. Texts deal mostly with agricultural activities and use a limited vocabulary: verbal forms are poorly attested and items are often ill-defined, using the least possible amount of words – and therefore of signs. This often leads to a general lower level of comprehension of the texts by the modern reader, compared to other Early Dynastic corpora. Therefore, personal names account for a significant portion of the sign repertoire. The magnitude of the prosopography of the Archive of Lugalzagesi, and more generally of the Early Dynastic Umma region, is not comparable to the much more complex and broader social structure of Early Dynastic Lagaš. This, together with the obvious smaller scale of the archive, is one of the reasons for the limited number of the actors in the analyzed corpus, where personal names and professions are often repeated and therefore scribes are expected to use a smaller sign repertoire. Out of 284 signs, 21 signs are only attested once in the whole archive. This makes their forms statistically less relevant in a paleographic discourse. 9 The repertoire of the signs presents a total of 422 readings. Some signs only have one reading, whereas some others are particularly productive and can have four of more readings, e.g. ŠE3 with eš2, ḫuĝ, še3, and ub2.10

8

This list differs from RSP as the abundant and sometimes peculiar numeric signs and signs expressing the notation of units (like areas, lengths, and weights) are grouped in a separate list. It is also worth noting that, although the ED Lagaš corpus was already fifty years ago significantly broader than the current ED Umma corpus, it is not possible to know the exact amount of texts used by Rosengarten to produce her list. 9 These 21 signs are, alphabetically: ASARI, AŠ, AZ, DUG, EDIN, GIBIL, GIG, GUDU4, KEŠ3, LAL3, NAĜA, NUMUN, SUD3, ŠIR, ŠUL, TAB, UB, UL, UR3, LAK63, LAK309. A few other compound signs are also attested once as compounds, but their components occur multiple times in the corpus and their sign forms are therefore paleographically more relevant. 10 Nota bene: sometimes it was impossible to determine the reading of a sign, as e.g. in the case of the geographical name ŠE3-KU. Non-readings like ŠE3 have been conventionally included in the number of the readings, since they might stand for a different value of the sign.

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3.2 The frequency of the signs Already more than twenty years ago R.K. Englund stated that “counting signs might seem an effete exercise, yet we know that such efforts can tell us much about the purpose of the texts these signs appear in” (1998, 70). Contextually, he compiled a list of non-numerical signs of greatest frequency in the Uruk IV–III corpus.11 Following in Englund’s footsteps, the present author also compiled a similar list for the Archive of Lugalzagesi. Out of the thirty most attested signs, the first twenty occur more than 100 times in the corpus, whereas the following ten, in spite of a lower number of attestations, are also quite relevant in the general economy of the archive for reasons that will be illustrated below. Here follow the statistics. E2

333

KI

133

ZI

98

ŠE

285

LU2

133

KA

91

LUGAL

274

GAN2

133

DU

91

AN

240

ĜIŠ

131

NAĜAR

90

LAL

188

EN

122

SI

90

MAḪ

180

MA

107

TAR

87

DA

163

BA

104

TUR

85

UD

163

UŠ

103

NU

84

NI

154

SAĜ

103

PA

79

A

140

BU

102

ME

79

This dataset suggests a few conclusions. The high frequency of some signs can be explained based on the onomastics and prosopography of the archive. In fact, some signs are extremely productive in terms of onomastics (e.g. LUGAL, attested as the initial element of 60 personal names, from lugal-a-bar-ra to lugalzi), and some others form part of the personal names of recurring characters. This is the case, among others, of E2 in e2-kur, the livestock administrator (šuš3) and e2-ki, the merchant (dam-gara3); DA in inim-zi-da, the purification priest (išib) and ur-e2-zi-da, the scribe (dub-sar); LU2 in e2-lu2 and lu2-igi-ma, occasionally identified as a field surveyor (lu2-eš2-gid2) and as a purification priest (išib) respectively. Similarly, onomastics also justify the high frequency of the sign AN, the most iconic component of more than 50 theophoric personal names within the archive. The administrative nature of the archive explains the otherwise unexpected high figure for the sign LAL, which often stands for the word “minus” (la2) in 11

This methodology has been recently used for the same corpus by Kelley / Born 2021 and Kelley in this book, with new statistics that supersede those presented in Englund 1998.

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the computation, among others, of the amounts of grains and land parcels. The mention of these goods is responsible for the frequent occurrence of the signs ŠE (as in še, “barley”), MAḪ (as in maḫ, another type of cereal crop which recurs in the archive), and GAN2, identifying field names and surfaces of parcels of land. In calculating the total attestations of signs like UD, UŠ, and NAĜAR one should also take into account the compound signs of which they form part. Signs like UD.DU (for the verb e3, “to leave”), UŠ.DUR2 (for the profession gala, “lamentation priest”), and NAĜAR.BU (for the geographical name dulum2) double the attestations of the original simple signs. Once again, the internal features of the corpus under study influence the frequency of a sign, as the toponym dulum2 is mostly attested in texts from the Early Dynastic Umma region and more specifically from Zabala, where it also occurs in the personal names igi-dulum2, lugal-dulum2, and ur-dnin-dulum2.12 On the contrary, the frequent attestation of a sign like NI does not refer to any specific feature of the corpus under study and can be rather ascribed to the particular versatility of this sign in the Sumerian tradition. The high number of its readings (i3, li2, ne2, ni, ux) multiplies the occurrences of NI in virtually any corpus of Sumerian texts, where it can form part of personal names, professions, elements of the verbal chain, the enclitic possessive pronoun, and much more.

4 Conclusions In recent years, it has become apparent that cuneiform epigraphy and paleography are legitimate companions to Mesopotamian philology and history,13 and yet modern, updated paleographic studies are rare and the field might benefit from the publication of more sign lists. In fact, despite the renewed attention of Assyriologists toward Early Mesopotamian Studies, third millennium cuneiform paleography is still in its infancy. The scarcity of date formulae, the frequent obscurity of the contents of documents, our still rudimentary knowledge of the prosopography, and above all the lack of archaeological context and the unprovenanced nature of a huge percentage of Early Dynastic and Sargonic texts demonstrate the need for the development of new paleographic diagnostic tools. These will support the reconstruction of the 12

The high frequency of the personal name ur-dnin-dulum2 in the Early Dynastic texts from Zabala had already been noted by Powell (1976, 102–103), who therefore suggested a local cult of the “god of carpentry or something similar”. On this deity, see also Cavigneaux / Krebernik 1998–2001. For a status quaestionis of dulum2 as a geographical name, see Bramanti forthcoming with previous literature. 13 As a result of this trend see, among others, Devecchi / Mynářová / Müller 2015 and 2019. The present author also embraced this line of thought, see e.g. Bramanti 2015, 2017b, 2019, and Bramanti / Notizia 2016.

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archives and ultimately lead to a better understanding of the history of Early Mesopotamia. In this spirit, the creation of a syllabary and a sign list of a coherent group of texts such as a late Early Dynastic archive from the region of Umma only constitutes one little step in the direction of a bigger common paleographic goal and will hopefully inspire the undertaking of similar projects for other corpora in other periods and regions of Early Mesopotamia.

References Almamori, H.O. / Notizia, P., The City-State of Umma in the Pre-Sargonic Period. New Tablets from the Iraq Museum, in: Akkadica 142 (2021) 1–30. Bramanti, A., Rethinking the Writing Space: Anatomy of Some Early Dynastic Signs, in: Devecchi, E. / Mynářová, J. / Müller, G. (eds.), 2015, 31–47. — Land Management in the Early Dynastic Umma Region: The Case of the Archive of Lugalzagesi, PhD Dissertation, Sapienza – Università di Roma / Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Roma / Jena 2017a. — Three Administrative Texts from the Time of Me’annedu, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 69 (2017b) 33–47. — Dall’Antico Oriente alle nostre mani. La materialità del cuneiforme, Forma Urbis XXIII/10 (2018) 27–32. — Some Thoughts on Chronological and Geographical Liminality in Early Mesopotamian Paleography: The Case of Umma and Adab, in: Devecchi, E. / Mynářová, J. / Müller, G. (eds.), 2019, 1–12. — L’amministrazione dei centri minori della regione di Umma nel periodo protodinastico, in: Revista del Instituto de Historia Antigua Oriental (nueva serie) 22 (forthcoming). Bramanti, A. / Notizia, P., Remarks on the Paleography of the Pre-Sargonic Cuneiform Tablets from the Umma Region, in: Notizia, P. / Visicato, G., Early Dynastic and Early Sargonic Administrative Texts Mainly from the Umma Region in the Cornell University Cuneiform Collections (CUSAS 33), Bethesda, MD 2016, 295–312. Cavigneaux, A. / Krebernik, M., Nin-duluma, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 9 (1998–2001) 340–341. Charpin, D., Schriftkultur in Babylonien: Plädoyer für eine Diplomatik der Keilschrifturkunden, in: Cancik-Kirschbaum, E. / Schnitzlein, B. (eds.), Keilschriftartefakte. Untersuchungen zur Materialität von Keilschriftdokumenten (Berliner Beiträge zum vorderen Orient 26), Berlin 2018, 145–160. D’Agostino, F. et al., La lingua dei Sumeri, Milan 2019. Devecchi, E. / Mynářová, J. / Müller, G. (eds.), Proceedings of the workshop “Current Research in Cuneiform Paleography” held in Warsaw, July 23rd 2014, Gladbeck 2015.

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— (eds.), Current Research in Cuneiform Palaeography 2. Proceedings of the Workshop organised at the 64th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Innsbruck 2018, Gladbeck 2019. Englund, R.K., Texts from the Late Uruk Period, in: Attinger, P. / Wäfler, M. (eds.), Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/1), Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen 1998, 15– 217. Kelley, K. / Born, L., A Quantitative Analysis of Proto-cuneiform Sign Use in Archaic Tribute, in: Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin 2021:6 (2021). Mittermayer, C., Altbabylonische Zeichenliste der sumerisch-literarischen Texte (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Sonderband), Fribourg, Switzerland /Göttingen 2006. Powell, M.A., Evidence for Local Cults at Presargonic Zabala, Orientalia Nova Series 45 (1976) 100–104. Rosengarten, Y., Répertoire Commenté des Signes Présargoniques Sumériens de Lagash, Paris 1967.

More Points of Grammar in Gudea: Resuscitating the Dynamic Mode J. Nicholas Postgate (Cambridge)

Abstract This article advances a new interpretation of the verbal preformative /i/ using the inscriptions of Gudea as the source material, and in the process advocates the following propositions, some old, some new: §3 In analysing the Sumerian verbal prefix chain it is important to distinguish strong from weak syllables. §4 In Sumerian, as in Akkadian, the vowel of a second consecutive weak syllable is frequently if not always elided. §4.1 This elision is occasionally apparent in compound nominal forms, but regularly applies to certain dimensional suffixes such as /r(a)/ and /(e)š(e)/. §4.2 It is also apparent in verbs, leading to the depletion of /ba.ni/ and /i.mma.ni/ to /ba.n/ and /i.mma.n/, and of /i.mu/ to /i.m/ (and /u.mu/ to /u.m/). In the cases of /i.mu.na/ and /i.mu.ni/ the loss of the /u/ brings /m/ and /n/ in contact and results in /inna/ and /inni/. §5 As has been recognized for almost a century, /i.ba/ and /i.bi2/ are realized as /imma/ and /immi/ respectively. §§6–8 Having defined the realization of /i/ in the verbal prefix chain, its semantic function, as to which no unanimity has been achieved, is then addressed. It is identified as the marker of a dynamic mode, to be contrasted with forms lacking a preformative in this rank which may be described as static or neutral (the preformative /a/ similarly marks a mode but is not further discussed). The dynamic mode directs the listener’s attention to the performance of the action of the verb, whereas static forms focus more on the result. In this way they mirror a very similar contrast in North-West Caucasian languages, where linguists also use the terms dynamic and static (or stative) to describe the two modes. In §8 illustrations are given of the various syntactic contexts in which the /i/ mode operates, principally but not exclusively from the Gudea corpus.

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1 Preliminaries1 The interpretation and linguistic analysis of the verbal prefix chain remain the aspect of Sumerian most resistant to the efforts of generations of Sumerologists. In my case a short stay in Munich at the feet of D.O. Edzard led to an article entitled “Two points of grammar in Gudea” (Postgate 1974), and it is none too soon to pick up some loose threads from there. I am of course mindful that in Alexander Pope’s words “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”, but my nerve has been stiffened because most of the individual proposals here have been advanced or endorsed at one time or another by one or another fully paid up Sumerologist: from A. Poebel through Th. Jacobsen, J. Krecher, C. Wilcke, M. Yoshikawa, M.-L. Thomsen and P. Attinger to B. Jagersma, even if they have not been brought together in this way.2

2 The sources It is difficult to operate across the full time span of Sumerian from Fara to late Old Babylonian because there were probably changes in the spoken language, and there were certainly changes in how the script represents it. Thus different scribal conventions, especially in respect of how accurately the signs reproduce the sequence of phonemes, might suggest changes in the spoken language when in fact the change is a graphic one. For this reason I am sticking to my previous plan of using the Gudea texts as a corpus from which to extrapolate the grammar. This has the disadvantage of ruling out consideration of other texts, but the overriding advantage that it is internally consistent and the results, applying to the single data set, should give a robust base from which to address earlier and later stages of the language. Clearly we will need to test the earlier and later texts also to see if Gudea results can be applied there too. This would 1

Heartfelt thanks to colleagues who have encouraged, corrected and cautioned me during the composition of this article: C. Wilcke, W. Sallaberger, P. Delnero, M. Weeden, S. Wisnom, G. Hewitt and to my two friends without whom this article would not have been possible, but who are not here to read it, J.A. Black and D.O. Edzard. 2 I adopt the transliterations of Edzard 1997 as far as possible so as not to be sidelined by issues immaterial to the argument, and for the same reason translations are not included in the tables, to avoid introducing distractions from the raw Sumerian text. Edzard offers translations which I use, and where these are cited minor deviations from his renderings are usually only to save space. Likewise, citations from later literary texts which follow ETCSL only diverge from it in rare cases where necessary. Squares (☐) stand for any verbal root, V being reserved for v(owels). Asterisks are used to mark non-existent forms. Sumerian words or morphemes which are abstractions and not transliterated cuneiform signs are enclosed by slashes: /mu/ is a grammarian’s morpheme, mu- is a cuneiform sign. Citations from Cylinders A and B are given simply as A or B, while St. A, B etc. refer to the statues.

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be a major undertaking, but I am not aware of anything in such texts which fatally contradicts any of these proposals, and time and space do not allow me to do more here than enlist random examples from the different periods when these are helpful. Much useful analysis of our Old Babylonian Sumerian literary corpus has been carried out recently by P. Delnero (2010 and 2012). His articles have made it easier to harvest this material for illustrative examples, but neither his corpus of 33 texts nor my exploitation of it is comprehensive.

3 Syllable strength and weakness The ultimate objective is to determine the function of the prefix /i/, but in the process much preliminary work is needed both to identify it and to establish its environment in the verbal chain. The first essential proposition is that syllables can be either short or long. Krecher addressed this issue and I cite his definition: “lange Silbe (lang = naturlang durch Länge des Vokals oder positionslang durch konsonantischen Schluss)” (1969, 165). In other words, long syllables may either result from a long vowel or from two consonants creating a closed syllable. With Jagersma and others (cf. Jagersma 2007, 143 on Edzard’s “primary long vowels”) I consider that there were phonemically long and short vowels and that some signs may expressly render long vowels (cf. Jagersma 2010, 24 §3.9.2 for three examples), but this is not critical to my argument. However it is important that long vowels should not be confused with long syllables (although they do cause them): following Krecher (see above) a closed syllable can be treated as a long syllable even if the vowel itself is short. So, to avoid any confusion, I here refer to strong (long) and weak (short) syllables.

4 Elision of second weak syllables My second proposition, which depends on the first, but is probably more controversial, is that a sequence of two weak syllables results in the elision of the vowel in the second syllable. If this sounds familiar, that is because the same applies in Akkadian, where the second of two consecutive short open syllables is regularly elided:3 *iptarasū > iptarsū *šakinat > šaknat

3

It is of course essential to differentiate short from long vowels in Akkadian because length is phonemic, so that pārisum provides the active participle whereas par(i)sum gives the verbal adjective. This does not of course prove that the same is true of Sumerian, nor that ellipsis of a short open vowel would apply in Sumerian.

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Similarities between Sumerian and Akkadian in matters of stress were long ago pointed out by Krecher: “Das Sumerische und das Akkadische haben beide ein starken Iktusakzent besessen. Dies ist seit langem bekannt, ohne dass meines Wissens diese Gemeinsamkeit bisher festgestellt und zum Ausgangspunkt weitere Überlegungen gemacht worden wäre. Tatsächlich könnte man Teile von GAG §38 d–e. h. j mutatis mutandis auf das Sumerische beziehen” (Krecher 1969, 164). I realize that the “two short open syllables” rule has never been formalized for Sumerian, but I hope to show that it applies in a variety of environments. This shared feature of the two languages may be added to Edzard’s short survey of the “Sumero-Akkadian linguistic area” (2003, 173–178), on which see Jagersma 2007, 147. 4.1 Elisions in nominal forms Our principal obstacle here has been the predominantly logographic orthography of standard Sumerian, which means that we only rarely encounter a sequence of two syllabograms. There are occasional hints in compound nominal forms, such as /nam.erim/> nam-ri (Falkenstein 1956–1957 vol. 1, 64), and /ki.sikil/ > kiskil (Krecher 1969; Civil 1973, 22, who also lists /salgud/ from /sa.lugud/), and /ama.ra gi/ > /amargi/ are well known. The Sumerogram for Akkadian ašlāku(m) LU2.TUG2.ZALAG is glossed both a-za-lag and az-la-ag (CAD A2, 445 s.v. b), while the word for threshing-floor written KI.UD (or rather KI.ZALAG), glossed ki-iz-laḫ1/3 and translated maškanum in the lexical texts, must in origin be /ki.zalag/ “clear ground”.4 See also Foxvog 2016, 21 on “stress related phenomena” where it is suggested that the word for “strong” (written kalag-ga) when ending in an -a should be rendered as /kalga/, losing its second short open syllable, and note that /dili.dili/ becomes /didli/, eliding one or two short vowels in the process. The process of elision is particularly evident in the verbal prefix chain (see §4.2), because there of necessity most of the morphemes are written as syllabograms, but the example /amargi/ suggests that dimensional postpositions also obey the general principle that the vowel of a second weak syllable is elided. This is indeed illustrated by Gudea in person: /gu.de.a.ra/ > gu3-de2-a-ar (A xiii 11; xx 1; B vi 17) /gu.de.a.še/ > gu3-de2-a-aš2 (A ii 21; iii 29; iv 2; B iii 4) The same effect is regularly seen with /r(a)/ and /š(e)/ elsewhere in Gudea, and is duly noted by Jagersma: “Loss of a final vowel is attested for the case markers 4

Also from the lexical tradition note tug2-mumu-ud-radur7(BU) and a2aš-tešita4 (Finkel 1982, 85 ll. 226 and 238).

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{ra} (§7.5.1), {da} (§7.1.1), and {še} (§7.8.1), which become /r/, /d/, and /š/ after a vowel.” (2010, 62). So for example Gudea gives us: /ra/ after /bi/ (better /be/)5 and /ani/ /lugal.bi.ra/ > lugal-bi-ir (A xiv 15) /lugal.ani.ra/ > lugal-ni-ir (A i 17) The loss of the /a/ of /ra/ is well known to us all from later texts too, and because Gudea himself in the terminative ends in -aš2 we can see that the /e/ of -še3 could be lost in the same way. Other examples: /še/ after nominalizing /a/ /e.libir.a.še/ > e2-libir-ra-aš2 (A xvii 29) /mu.na.dug.a.še/ > mu-na-du11-ga-aš (A vii 11) Thus in these cases, and at least 13 others, after /a/ the loss of the second vowel is apparent.6 After /e/ and /i/, however, the protean multivalency of ŠE3 means that we do not know a priori if we are looking at še3, eš2 or even eše2 (the “quotative”). However, the unusual saĝ-biš of B ii 18 allows us to deduce that the final /e/ will be dropped after other instances of /bi/ and no doubt similarly after /ani/: /saĝ.bi.še/ > saĝ-biš (B ii 18), saĝ-bi-eš2 (A iv 11) /iri.ani.še/ > iri-ni-eš2 (B iii 7) /nam.til.ani.še/ > nam-ti-la-ni-eš2 (St. T iʺ 4ʹ; passim)

The ambiguity of ŠE3 is not of course a problem in the one instance in Gudea where /še/ follows an /u/, if like Jagersma (2010, 183) and others we accept von Soden’s reading (cited by Krecher 1985, 147; missed by Edzard): /e.ninnu.še/ > e2-50-u[š2] The critical point in all these instances is that the final vowel was the second of two weak syllables. By contrast, where the first syllable has an /a/ but it is in a closed and thus strong syllable, e.g. the genitive /ak/, we get not -aš but -še3: /nin.ĝirsu.(a)k.a(k).še/ > nin-ĝir2-su-ka-še3 (A xii 14)

5

There is increasingly good reason to think that the sign BI when the 3rd person inanimate suffix should be normalised as /be/ (and transliterated be2), cf. Jagersma 2010, 26; Meyer-Laurin 2011, 39–40, but in the interests of familiarity where it is not harmful, I will (like others, e.g. Attinger 2004, 77) retain the more current /bi/ and bi. 6 Four apparent exceptions are attributable to the “quotative” (A iv 15, v 13, 15, vi 10) for which see Edzard 2003, 157 citing the Akkadian equivalent mi-i from the NeoBabylonian Grammatical Texts; two or three real exceptions are grouped in St. B v 26 and vi 9, 17, leaving just igi mi-ni-ĝal2-la-še3 in A viii 7.

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/lugal.an(i).a(k).še/ > lugal-la-na-še3 (A xv 24)7 In the light of this, as was already noted by Jagersma (2010, 183 §7.8.1), we should no doubt see the 1st and 2nd person suffixes /ĝu/ and /zu/, and the common nouns /šu/ and /lu/ (among others) as strong syllables (since a weak syllable would have elided to /uš/). For example: /igi.ĝu.še/ > igi-ĝu10-še3 (A v 5) /gissu.zu.še/ > gissu-zu-še3 (A iii 14) /lu.še/ > lu2-še3 (A xxvi 29) /šu.še/ > šu-še3 (A ix 24; B vii 19) Readers will appreciate that the implication is that some open syllables with /a/ (but perhaps not all) have a short vowel and are therefore weak, whereas some with /u/ have a long vowel which makes them strong: this is an avenue which it would take too long to pursue here, for we must turn our attention to examples of the two weak syllables rule in other contexts. 4.2 Elision in verbal forms One such example is the sequence /ba.ni.☐/ which contains the locative infix /ni/ but is often realized in the script from at least Ur III onwards as ba-an-☐. /ba.ni.☐/ > ba-an-☐ That this /n/ may be an allomorph of /ni/ and not the 3rd person animate ergative infix was already seen by Falkenstein 1959, 104, and thereafter widely accepted (e.g. by Wilcke 1988, 37–38; Attinger 2004, 75 “chute du [i] en syllabe ouverte atone”; Jagersma 2010, 331, 468; Foxvog 2016, 87). It is frequently observed in Ur III documents, and a good Old Babylonian example, cited by Foxvog (2016, 108), is kur-ra ga-an-ku4 mu-ĝu10 ga-an-ĝar, “I want to go into the mountains, I want to establish my reputation there!” (Gilgamesh and Huwawa A, Edzard 1991, 168). It has not always been pointed out that the same applies to /i.mma/ which, as discussed below in §5, corresponds to /i+ba/ (/i.mma.ni.☐ > im-maan-☐),8 and to ma-an-ĝal2 (for the context, see A vi 7 cited below in §8.3). Both /ba.ni/ and /i.mma.ni/ have a sequence of two weak syllables, hence in each case the second vowel is elided. It is important to note that a comparable

7

Likewise with /r(a)/: coming straight after gu3-de2-a-ar in St. D v 7 the phrase lu2 e2du3-a-ra (also in A xv 13) conceals a genitive /ak/, as is shown by lu2 e2-du3-a-ke4 in A xx 24; B xiii 14; xiv 9; and St. E vii 20. 8 None in Gudea but frequent in Old Babylonian cf. dgilgameš2 bad3-da gu2-na im-maan-la2 (Gilgameš and Aga 89) or an lugal diĝir-re-e-ne-ke4 šu-za im-ma-an-šum2 (Šulpa’e A 38).

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elision does not happen with /ba.na/ and /i.mma.na/ or with /i.mmi.ni/. This is because, unlike the /ni/ infix, both the /na/ and the /mi/ are strong syllables.9 4.2.1 im- before dimensional infixes It is generally assumed that prefix chains beginning ib2-,10 im- and in-, contain the /i/ morpheme which is written independently as i3-. Of these three, in- and ib2- are uncontroversially analysed as /i+n/ and /i+b/ where /n/ and /b/ are either the 3rd person animate and inanimate pronominal verbal prefixes with ergative or absolutive value (e.g. in-du3-a), or act as the pronominal element attached to a dimensional infix (e.g. šu ib2-ta-ab-uru12-a St. B viii 9). On the other hand im-, has been the subject of lengthy discussion and speculation, especially on the part of Yoshikawa (1978 and 1979), Krecher (1985), and Wilcke (1988). It was suggested already in 1974 that “after /i/ the /u/ of the prefix mu- drops out if in an open syllable followed by a consonant”.11 A similar observation is made by Jagersma: “The basic form of the ventive prefix is /mu/, but the /u/ of the prefix is lost in the sequence /muCV/, that is, if followed by a consonant and a vowel”,12 to which I would add “a short vowel” (e.g. it is not lost in mu-našum2). Moreover, if we take this insight together with Jagersma’s observation (2010, 526) that: “{ˀi} and {ˀa} […] are never found before a prefix with the shape /CV/”, we can then generate a revised rule that “the /u/ of the prefix /mu/ is lost in the sequence /VmuCV/, where it is the second of two weak syllables”.13 The essential point is that /mu/ loses its vowel when it is preceded, rather than followed, by a weak syllable.14 9

It is not entirely clear that for a syllable to be weak it must also be open, followed only by a single consonant, but conceivably it was enough for the vowel to be short (and unstressed). If this were the case, it might allow us to see /mu/ followed by a morpheme /nna/, if correctly reconstructed by Jagersma (2010, 401–403 §17.2.2), as constituting a weak syllable. Compare the personal name /nam.maḫ.ani/ > nam-ḫa-ni (Falkenstein 1959, 104; Jagersma 2010, 61), and cf. fn. 19. 10 A superficial trawl of the Old Babylonian literary texts in ETCSL indicates that /ib/ directly before the verbal root can be written equally with ib or ib2, whereas before a dimensional infix, as in /ibta/, only the sign TUM (with the reading ib2) is used (cf. Thomsen 1984, 162). Whether this reflects a phonemic difference or is a morphophonemically conditioned graphic device remains to be examined. 11 Postgate 1974, 24 fn. 18. Forms beginning im-mu- are found followed by a vowel (e) in both Old Babylonian literary texts and the Old Babylonian Grammatical Texts (examples Yoshikawa 1978, 462–463), hence the words “followed by a consonant”. 12 Jagersma 2010, 497 §22.2, with refinements 499–501 and 503–541; see also p. 61 on the “loss of initial and medial vowels”. 13 See §7 below with fn. 35 for reasons to believe /i/ is a short syllable. 14 The idea that the /m/ here is in fact /m(u)/ is doubted by Thomsen (“im- seems rather to be in contrast to mu- before case elements”), noting that “im- is, however, used before

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This can be most easily illustrated with the dimensional infixes: /i.mu.da/ > im-da/i.mu.ši/ > im-ši/i.mu.ta/ > im-taFor this to hold good, we need to cite forms both with and without an initial /i/, and Table 1 illustrates how the addition of a weak syllable at the start of the verbal chain triggers the expected elision. Ex. 1

/da/

2

/ši/

3

/ta/

muke-en-gi-ra i3-diri mu-da-de2 gu3-de2-a dnin-ĝir2-su-ke4 igi zi mu-ši-bar šul dutu si-muš3 ku3-ga-na an-ta mu-ta-la2

A xi 16 A xxiii 17 Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave 232

imsipa zi gu3-de2-a an-ki im-da-mu2 igi zi im-ši-bar-ra im-ta-sikil-e-ne

A xxiv 9 St.B iii 7 B iv 11

Table 1. mu- and im- before dimensional infixes.15

4.2.2 im- immediately before verbal root These parallels do not of themselves prove the hypothesis, but their existence is a necessary precondition: without them it would not be valid. It might seem less obvious that the /u/ of /mu/ should be elided where it falls immediately before the verbal root, giving a pattern like /i.mu.si/ > im-si. However a survey of the relevant forms in the Gudea corpus suggests that this is also what happens. /i.mu.☐/ > im-☐ Forms beginning *i3-mu- are absent, but Table 2 shows that mu-☐ forms can be matched by corresponding im-☐ forms of the same verb deriving from /i.mu.☐/. The semantic parallels between the two e3 passages in Ex. 5, and the us2 passages in Ex. 8 (especially B ii 10) are particularly suggestive. There are a further seven verbs in the Gudea texts which have the im- prefix but do not occur with mu-, and eighteen verbs which show the mu-☐ pattern but are not

case elements referring to inanimate and thus in opposition to mu- which occurs before animate (see §§ 341–346)” (1984, 162 and 173), but I have not been able to verify this on the basis of the Gudea corpus. 15 Here and elsewhere if the Gudea corpus doesn’t have a relevant form I have had recourse to forms taken from Ur III documents or Old Babylonian literary texts.

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attested as im-☐. Given the relatively small corpus involved, this does not appear to undermine the proposed association.16 Ex. 4 5 6 7 8

mu-☐ saĝ-ĝa2 e3 ki-karadin mu-a5 ša3 lugal-na u4-dam mu-e3 uz-ga-ku3-ge eš3 mu-ga2-ga2 e2-a den-ki-ke4 temen mu-si-ge ensi2-lagaški-ke4 temen-bi mu-si ĜIŠ.UL4-gal-ĝu10-me za3-ĝu10 mu-us2

A iv 24 A xix 28 A xx 14 A xx 15 A xxx 5 A iii 11

im-☐ dim2-sa-bi im-a5 ur-saĝ dnin-ĝir2-su u4-de3-eš2 im-e3 e2-a ĝiš-ḫur-bi im-ga2-ga2 dutu-am an-ša -ge im-si 3 3 me-lim5-ḫuš-bi an-ne2 im-us2 e2-kur-gal-am3 an-ne2 im-us2 dlama-sa -ga-ni egir-ni 6 im-us2

B xvi 6 B xvi 8 Av4 Bi7 A ix 16 Bi6 B ii 10

Table 2. mu- and im- before verbal root.

4.2.3 Elision of /m(u)/ before -na- and -niTurning to mu-na- and mu-ni- the position is less immediately evident. Such forms are present in Gudea, e.g. šu-nir ki-aĝ2-ni mu-na-dim2, “he fashioned for him his beloved standard” (A vii 22) or uruda-bi gi-si-a-ba mu-ni-ba-al, “he dug its copper into baskets” (A xvi 17), but if one expects to see /i+mu+na/ > *im-na- and /i+mu+ni/ > *im-ni- there will be disappointment. Such forms do not occur in Gudea (nor indeed in ETCSL), yet verbs introduced by mu-na- are very common so that we would certainly have expected to find the equivalent forms with the /i/ prefix. The solution was already seen by Wilcke (2010, 55): “May /-m-/ perhaps assimilate to the 3rd person dative: /-m-/ + /-na-, -ne(-a)-/ > [-nna-; -nne(-a)-]?” It is true that the grammars (Thomsen, Edzard, Jagersma, Foxvog) do not mention the assimilation of /m+n/ > /nn/ (very familiar in Akkadian) and such consonantal assimilations are rare in Sumerian because the word structure does not usually locate one consonant next to another, except for prefixes in the verbal chain. Yet, according to Attinger “devant dentale, [m] s’assimile parfois en [n]” (Attinger 1993, 277 and 209 fn. 456). There are few plausible examples: the best etymology of the word for a “dyke”, in-dub-ba, is doubtless /im.dub.a/ “heaped clay”. Within the prefix chain Krecher (1985, 143) mentions the possibility that the Ur III name in-ta-e3(-a) derives from im-ta-.

16

In parenthesis we may note that just as im- forms derive from /i+mu/ the /u/ preformative yields forms like um-tum2 (B xi 21) or um-ši-mi-ri2-a (A x 22), which surely represent /u+mu+☐/ and /u+mu+ši+☐/ respectively; see also Ur III u3-um-ře6, as cited by Jagersma 2010, 518).

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Furthermore, where in the Old Babylonian Grammatical Texts the addition of /i/ leads to the elision of the /u/ of /mu/, /md/ assimilates to /nd/: OBGT X 37: /mu.di.ni.b.gub/ > mu-di-ni-ib2-gub = uš-zi-iz-zu OBGT X 31: /i.mu.di.ni.b.gub/ > in-di-ni-ib2-gub = uš-zi-iz-zu However, clear instances of /m+n/ > /nn/ outside the verbal chain are lacking, though Edzard notes /m/ and /n/ alternating in several Sumerian words (Edzard 2003, 16). Nevertheless, in view of the comparable pairs cited below in Table 3, Wilcke’s tentative proposal that m+n > nn makes perfect sense: /i.mu.na/ > /i.m.na/ > in-na/i.mu.ni/ > /i.m.ni/ > in-niThe prefix sequence in-na- is not attested in Gudea, but in the Old Babylonian literary texts we do find some in-na- forms,17 though it is less frequent than forms with mu-na-. Pairs with and without /i/ can be set up using ETCSL (see Table 3), and we find the form in-na-an-dug4, alongside the marû form in-naan-ne-eš in Inanna’s Descent (ll. 275, 278). Both forms are also found in the Nippur Lament, which also has the compound verb si in-na-an-sa2-am3, paralleled by si mu-na-an-sa2 in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (Table 3, Ex. 12), and si mu-na-ni-in-sa2 in Šulgi P 10. Though these in-na- forms are relatively rare, they are frequent enough to show that there could be pairs of /ø+mu+na-☐/ and /i+mu+na-☐/ in the same way as other forms, but it remains the case that we cannot point to any instance of /i+mu+na-/ realized as in-na- in Gudea. While on one level the infrequency of in-na- in ETCSL is a partial explanation of its total absence in Gudea, the wider question remains as to why it is so rare in both corpora, when mu-na- is very frequent. We have to assume that there may be semantic reasons why muna- forms are so rarely preceded by /i/. Ex. 9

17

mu-na[d]li-pi2-it-eš4-tar2 u2-a-zu ḫe2-am3 e-ne-ra mu-na-an-dug4

Lipit-Eštar E 2

gu2 ĝar-ra-ni sag2 mu-na-ab-dug4

The Cursing of Agade C 2

in-naa-ba-am3 ki-bi sa2 in-na-an-dug4

Inanna’s Descent 194

in-na- also in the Ur III ditillas (Falkenstein 1956–1957), and there are plenty of occurrences of e-na- in the Pre-Sargonic Lagash inscriptions, where it is of course hard to know whether we are seeing /e.na.☐/ or /e.m(u).na.☐/.

More Points of Grammar in Gudea: Resuscitating the Dynamic Mode Ex. 10

mu-naa2-še3 ama-ĝu10 lu2 mu-na-be2

11

dnanibgal

12

ud-da arattaki aga kug an-na-gin7 si mu-na-an-sa2

13

mu-na-an-gub = iz-zi-iz-zum

sukkal-ra inim mu-[na]-ab-sag9-sag9

Gilgameš, Enkidu and the Netherworld 40 Enlil and Sud 60

Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 276 OBGT X 38

in-nalu2 lu2-u3 in-na-ab-e

eĝer-bi in-na-sag9 in-na-sag9

erim2-e šu ḫul bi2-in-dug4-ga si in-na-an-sa2-am3 in-na-an-gub = iz-zi-iz-zum

221

Grain and sheep 179

Balbale to Inanna (DumuzidInanna C) 48 The Lament for Nibru 299 OBGT X 32

Table 3. Pairs of mu-na- and in-na- from ETCSL and OBGT.

The same has to apply to mu-ni-: this is not infrequent in ETCSL, and there are 11 instances in Gudea. The expected in-ni- from /i+mu+ni-/ does not occur in either corpus, but it is found in Ur III legal documents,18 while i3-ni- (i.e. /i+ni-/ without /mu/ or a defectively spelt /inni/) is found in ETCSL about 11 times and never in Gudea. A hypothetical *i3-na- (without /mu/) is not attested, but this may be due to a close affinity between the /mu/ prefix and the dative infix. At this juncture, when the semantic functions of both /mu/ and /i/ remain elusive and there is no consensus as to their roles, the question has to be left up in the air. Interpreting in-na and in-ni as deriving from /i.mu.na/ and i.mu.ni/ may seem far-fetched, but two identical /n/ morphemes with different functions side by side seems highly improbable. Consider too how readily Assyriologists accept the assimilated consonants in Akkadian N-stems like ipparis or ipparras, or the assimilation of n to a following t in the forms with infixed t. Readers will mostly be aware that the apparent occurrences of /nn/ have been interpreted very differently by Jagersma, and in view of the status of his grammar as a guide to classic Sumerian, it does seem desirable to address this point. Jagersma sees forms like in-na-šum2 as displaying a morpheme /nna/ (2010 §7.2.2, 401–403) and in-ni-pa3 as containing /nni/ (2010 §18.2.3, 421–423). The prehistoric etymology suggested for /nna/ as /*n+ra/ is hardly secure, and without dismantling the whole argument it is fair to say that alternative explanations could be entertained. In favour of /i.mu.na/ consider that surprisingly the Neusumerische Gerichtsurkunden published by Falkenstein 1956–1957 show no instances of the mu-na-šum2 which is so familiar from other contexts. It is hard 18

Falkenstein 1956–1957, no. 80: 4 inim in-ni-ĝa2ĝarar, with several other examples before ĝar, Vol. III, p. 12.

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to see why the /mu/, whatever its precise force is, should be dropped in such cases, but if we recognize that /m(u)/ was in fact represented in these forms by the first /n/ of in-na-šum2, then we need only explain why the additional dynamic prefix was regularly applied there. It will become apparent below in §8 that it is not difficult to see that in these judicial contexts emphasis on the verb’s enactment would indeed be appropriate. On the other hand, while Falkenstein 1956–1957 no. 210 (vol. 2, 363–367) gives us in i 7ʹ in-na-an-ba, which may very well represent /i.mu.na.n.ba/ and in-na-du11-ga>/i.mu.na.dug.a/ in ii 2ʹ, we meet ba-an-na-ši-ĝar in i 10ʹ and ba-an-na-gi-in in ii 12ʹ, both of which can hardly conceal a /mu/.19 One has to admit that the writing system sometimes shows us single consonants where we would prefer double, and vice versa. As for /inni/ the same problems with its graphic representation pertain (whatever function and phonemic value we may assign to the -ni-), and Jagersma’s proposed etymology is one step further down the line since it is thought to have been generated by analogy with /nna/ (2010, 423). I think it is not unfair to say that this remains hypothetical, but it is also prudent to accept that a derivation from /i.mu.na/ and /i.mu.ni/ may only be one source of forms apparently including /nna/ and /nni/.

5 /ba/ and /imma/, /bi/ and /immi/ The close association of /ba/ with /imma/ and likewise /bi2/20 with /immi/ was already evident to Poebel (1923, 240–243) and has been restated several times since, by Falkenstein (1950, 230), and most recently by Delnero (2010).21 But, because it is so crucial to the entire argument, it is desirable to rehearse the evidence here once more. The simplest (though not the only proposed) formulation is: /i.ba/ > im-ma/i.bi2/ > im-miEx. 14

19

/ba/

bae2-libir-ra arax-zu-a ba-ĝen

A xvii 29

im-mae2-a lugal-bi im-ma-ĝen

Bv2

For several other instances of ba-an-na- see Wilcke 2010, 55 fn. 161. One might entertain the idea that a geminated consonant (or more precisely a geminated n or m) does not effectively create a “closed” syllable in the same way as two different stops; see fn. 9. 20 To emphasise that NE when read bi2 represents a different sound from that represented by BI (Kogan 2011, 33; Hasselbach 2005, 41–44) I have unconventionally retained its index number between the “morphemic slashes”. 21 E.g. Yoshikawa 1978, 467; Thomsen 1984, 161; Rubio 2005, 31.

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/ba/

baki-na2-a-ni ba-gub

A ii 24

16

/ba/

sig4 u4-de3 ba-šub

A xix 3

17

/ba.da/

e-ne ur2-bi ĝišellag-a-ni-še 3 ba-da-ab-dim2-e

18

/ba.na/

ĝišḫašḫur

gu ul-ul-ba ba-na-ab-šum2-mu

19

/ba.na.ni/

inim ba-na-ni-in-dug4

Gilgameš Enkidu and the Netherworld 149 Enki and Ninhursaga 175 Hymn to Nanše 218

20

/ba.ni/

A x 26

21

/ba.ši/

di iri-ĝa si ba-ni-ib2-sa2-e igi-zi ba-ši-bar

22

/ba.ta/

iri-ta ba-ta-e3

A xiii 15

A xix 5

im-mau3-šub-e im-ma-gub ĝiš-e im-ma-šub e2-50 dEN:ZU u3-tu-da saĝ im-ma-da-ab-sa222

gu3-de2-a en dnin-ĝir -su -ra 2 2 im-ma-na-us2 sipa-zi gu3-de2-a ḫul2-la-gin7 im-ma-na-ni-ib2-ĝar an-ra den-lil2 im-ma-ni-us2 niĝ2-gi-gi-na dnanše dnin-ĝir -su-ka-še 2 3 en3 im-ma-ši-tar iri mu-ku3 izi im-ma-ta-la2

223 A xviii 23 A xxi 17 B iii 12

A xvi 12 A xiv 6

B xix 19 St. B vii 41 St. B iii 12

Table 4. ba- and im-ma-.

The ba- forms and their corresponding im-ma- forms occur with various dimensional infixes, and for any form beginning ba- we can find a corresponding im-ma- form (see Falkenstein 1950, 168–171 for further examples of ba- // im-ma- and bi2- // im-mi-), but there are not hundreds of examples to select from and only in three cases (Ex. 14–16) do the two parallel forms use the same verb (ĝen, gub, and šub). As before, the table is not proof but it is a necessary precondition.23 As for bi2-, it does not occur with the same range of dimensional infixes, perhaps because it has a dimensional force itself, but it offers such telling parallels with im-mi-, that it makes the close relationship virtually certain. The locus classicus comes from Gudea’s dream in Cylinder A, three motifs from which are quoted in Table 5. Here I have put the /i/ forms on the left because

22

This form in accordance with Thureau-Dangin’s copy; Edzard 1997 erroneously has the verb as im-da-ab-sa2. 23 Forms beginning ib2-ta-, such as ib2-ta-ab-uru12-a (St. B viii 9) can be analysed as /i.b.ta/, and do not involve the prefix /ba/. Since we have reason to think /ba/ is a weak syllable (unlike /ta/), we might expect the sequence /i.ba.ta/ to be elided, also resulting in /i.b.ta/. It may therefore not be coincidental that the form im-ma-ta-, however it is to be analysed, avoids homophony.

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they come first in the cylinder’s narrative. As you see, im-mi- and bi2- occur in otherwise identical phrases referring to the same actions. Ex.

im-mi-

bi2-

23

li-um-za-gin3 šu im-mi-du8

A vi 4

li-um-za-gin3 šu bi2-du8-a

Av3

24

gi-dub-ba ku3-NE šu im-mi-du8

A v 22

A iv 25

25

dub mul-an du10-ga im-mi-ĝal2

A v 23

26

sipa-bi im-mi-us2

St.F iv 13

gi-dub-ba ku3-NE šu bi2-du8-a dub mul du10-ga bi2-ĝal2-la na-gada-bi bi2-us2

A iv 4

kar-niĝinki-na-ke4

B i 14

27 28

siskur2 ra-zu-a niĝ2-DUN-a ki im-mi-us2-us2 im-mi-ni-ib2-diri-diri-ne

A xxi 20

ma2 bi2-us2 saĝ an-še3 mi-ni-ib2-il2

A iv 26 St. F iv 4

Ai2

Table 5. im-mi- and bi2-.

While the Gudea corpus is qualitatively superior for this purpose, similar parallelisms can be seen in the earlier or later sources. From Enannatum I compare bi2-du11 and i3-mi-du11 (RIME 1.9.4.2 viii 7 and ix 9) or na bi2-ri and na i3-mi-ri in Bau Temple administrative texts (cited by Jagersma 2010, 506).24 The issue was summarized by Thomsen as follows: “it seems rather certain that im-ma- and im-mi- can be derived from /ĩ-ba-/ and /ĩ-bi/” (1984, 161).25 For the Old Babylonian literary corpus note Delnero’s conclusion that “the distribution of im-ma- and im-mi- bears little resemblance to that of mu-, but is similar, to the point of being identical, to that of ba- and bi2-” (2010, 550). Attinger supplies a further argument for treating ba- and im-ma- as parallel, by noting that “De même que {b+a}, im-ma- peut être suivi de -an-da/ši/ta-, mais pas de ab-da/ši/ta-” (1993, 280 §181; cf. also 261 §172). Although he favours the analysis {(i+)m+b(+)a} (on which see below), he notes “le comportement syntaxique identique de ba- et de im-ma- d’une part (…) de bi2- et im-mi- de l’autre” (1993, 280–281). However, although for nigh on a century there has been agreement among most Sumerologists about the role of /imma/ and /immi/, there is not complete unanimity, and it is an important issue. In brief, I am in agreement with those who accept that /imma/ and /immi/ have to be analysed as, or be seen as equivalent to, /i+ba/ and /i+bi/, and do not incorporate either /mu/ or a ventive /m/, as has been suggested e.g. by Black (1984, 24): “it is a permissible conclusion to deduce that im-ma and am3-ma represent respectively i+m+ba 24

Likewise Jacobsen (1970, 257) cites i3-mi-du11 (Enmetena Cone A iv 83) as against bi2-du11 in a similar context (Urukagina, Plaque Ovale iv 9). 25 It has sometimes been suggested that there was a nasal component to the i3 prefix, which would account for the /m(m)/ in im-ma- and im-mi- (cf. Thomsen 1984, 163), but this is no longer generally accepted (see Edzard 2003, 110).

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and a+m+ba”. Attinger tended in the same direction, and more recently Jagersma’s analysis (2010, §22.2) sees e.g. im-ma- as deriving from /i+mu+ba/. This appears to me unconvincing. For one thing, it would mean /imma/ (and /immi/) are the only context in which /mu/ or /m/ co-occurs with /ba/ or /bi2/, and runs counter to the well-recognized contrast between “mu- forms” and “baforms”.26 We would also need to ask ourselves whether /m+b/ would yield /mm/ rather than /bb/.27 Furthermore, if we accept Black or Jagersma’s position, we have to account for the addition of two morphemes (both an /i/ and a /m(u)/) to /ba/ or /bi2/, as opposed to the single morpheme /i/. Where are the verbal forms beginning with /*mu.ba/ or /*mu.bi2/? And why do we not have /*i.ba/ and /*i.bi2/ forms without the /mu/ or /m/ morpheme? Admittedly neither the phonetics nor the graphics of the apparent shift from a /b/ to a double /mm/ are well understood, but we only have to look at Akkadian to see the potential phonetic complexities of /m/, /b/, and /w/ (e.g. the forms of lawûm). The simplest explanation, therefore, is that we have ba- and bi2- prefixed by /i/, a morpheme which when written independently in Gudea and later appears as i3-. The /i/ in im-ma- and im-mi- occupies an earlier rank in the verbal chain than ba- and bi2-. It is reasonable to extend this conclusion to mu-, which is generally recognized to occupy the same rank as ba- and bi2. This may seem obvious, but in the past i3- was frequently (mis)understood as sharing the same rank as mu-.28 The varying approaches were summarized in Wilcke 1988, 3–4, where it is noted that, in contrast to over a dozen Sumerologists including Thureau-Dangin and Falkenstein, no lesser minds than Poebel and Jacobsen had recognised that i3- and mu- occupy different ranks in the verbal chain and even contemplated the possibility of their combination in a single prefix chain.29 The consequence is that the many attempts to find the difference between i3- and mu- were misconceived. What we have to recognize is that they are not alternatives but complementary: /i/ is opposed to /ø/ (but also to /a/) and can stand before mu- in a single prefix chain, as §4.2.3 shows. For present purposes, the critical point is simply that verbs introduced by one of the three equal 26

Cf. “the basic distinction with verbs of motion between the prefixes mu-/im-, on the one hand, and ba-, on the other”, and further down the page “imma-, having no functional or semantic overlap with the active, agent-oriented prefix mu-, has presumably no etymological connection with the latter – rather, the affinities of immaare with the medio-passive prefix ba-” (Woods apud Rubio / Woods 2013, 199). 27 Note Black 1984, 24 fn. 38 citing Edzard’s observation that Akkadian appāru is “derived from Sumerian ambar, where it is the nasal that assimilates to the plosive”. 28 E.g. Vanstiphout 1985; and more recently i3-/e- still shares a slot with mu-, ba-, and bi2- in Smith 2007, 22! 29 Note the well-balanced account of this issue in Thomsen 1984, 161–162. Wilcke 1990, 479 wrote: “Vieles spricht dafür, dass /mu/- und /i,e/- kein Oppositionspaar bilden und ihre Unvereinbarkeit in voraltbabylonischen Quellen anderweitige Gründe hat”. See also Edzard 2003, 110, cited (with approval) in Jagersma 2007, 145.

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ranking (and mutually exclusive) prefixes /ba/ (ba-), /bi2/ (bi2-) and /mu/ (mu-) may be extended by the addition of the preformative /i/, which in each case alters their graphic representation if not also their phonetic identity. This accounts for all forms introduced by the grapheme im- (although its etymology differs between /imma/ and /immi/ on the one hand, and all other instances) and it relieves us of any compulsion to speculate about a morpheme /m/ distinct from /mu/. This clears the ground for the exploration of the function of /i/ in our next section. It also means that the differences between /mu/, /ba/ and /bi2/ need to be revisited, but this is not the time or place.30 The view that mu- is a “ventive” morpheme is now widespread in the literature although it was questioned by Yoshikawa (1978, 462 and 466). Further discussion should involve a renewed examination of the Old Babylonian Grammatical Texts, which prompted Black’s strictures on the use of the term “ventive” (1984, 23). It does seem rather unfortunate that the term ventive has been borrowed from descriptions of Akkadian grammar,31 which preempts an unbiased analysis, but these issues are for another occasion.

6 The function of /i/ What precedes is intended to identify the /i/ morpheme, and the second part of this article is devoted to proposing its function. I suspect that the one indisputable point is that unanimity on the function of /i/ has eluded us. Witness the following collection of opinions, which is by no means exhaustive. Thomsen 1984, §311: “It is difficult to attribute any characteristic function or meaning to the prefix /ĩ/. It seems to be the most neutral prefix, used where the other presumably more specific conjugation prefixes are not necessary.” Vanstiphout 1985, 14: “I regard the /i/ prefix […] as a neutralizing prefix opposed to the group /mu/-/b-/, which is marked for focus, which functions as a backgrounding device” (his italics). Wilcke 1988, 2–3: “Das ‘Konjugationspräfix’ /i/-, dem D. Foxvog 1975 seinen Lehrer W. Heimpel folgend jegliche Bedeutung absprechen wollte, dem dann 1985 H. Vanstiphout in einer umfangreicheren Studie eine neue Bedeutung zuwies, ist noch im selben Jahr in weit grössere Bedrängnis geraten, als

30

Note on mu- vs. ba, bi2 Wilcke 1990, 479 “Ebensowenig scheint mir bislang nachweisbar zu sein, dass /mu-/ denselben Rang einnehme wie die Präfixe ba- and bí-”; Wilcke 2010, 53–56, 62 on slots 7 (/-m-/, /-mu-/) and 6 (-ba-). Since I do not see cases where /mu/ occurs in the same chain as /ba/ or /bi2/ I do not share this qualm, and I see no necessity to follow Jagersma in placing /mu/ in a rank of its own to the left of ba-. 31 On the earlier history of the term “ventive” back through Landsberger to Poebel cf. Johnson 2013, 23 fn. 10.

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J. Krecher die These vom ‘silbische(n) Charakter der sumerischen Morpheme’ aufstellte”. Attinger 1993, 267: “En ce qui concerne {i}, rappelons qu’il ne semble pas avoir de ‘sens’, et que sa seule fonction est de dénoter qu’un verbe est fléchi ({i+B intrans.}) ou de permettre aux morphèmes {n}, {b}, {m}, etc. d’ouvrir la séquence préfixale”. Edzard 2003, 109: “It has challenged Sumerologists for more than a century. If a basic function once existed it may well have vanished over the long period during Sumerian was spoken and written”. Michalowski 2004, 44: imma- “represents a form of reduplication of mu-, in which the initial consonant is copied and the cluster is reinforced by an initial vowel”. And “when focus is not specified, the prefix is i-”, and in a form such as im-ROOT we should “view the m as a reflex of n (the animate third-person pronoun)”. Jagersma 2010, 548: “Identifying and describing the functions of the two vocalic prefixes {ˀi} and {ˀa} is not an easy task. Their usage not only changes across time but differs according to region as well. We have textual documentation from only a few of the main cities and far too little from those few. Our conclusions about what happened to these two prefixes must therefore remain tentative and sketchy. New data, which sooner or later are bound to be uncovered, will certainly lead to a much improved understanding of the issues.” Foxvog 2016, 65: “The So-called Conjugational Prefix i- (§305–321). When one of the above ergative pronominal prefixes stands as the only element in a verbal prefix chain, i.e. when it is initial in a chain with no other prefix preceding, then – in the view of this grammar – the language employs a prosthetic vowel, usually /i/, sometimes /e/ or /a/, to render certain forms pronounceable”. The situation up to 30 years ago was authoritatively summarized in Wilcke 1988. He rejected attempts by Heimpel, Foxvog and Krecher to dismiss the /i/ as a phonetic or graphic illusion, and rightly repudiates the long standing idea that /mu/ and /i/ belong in the same rank or slot. I will now take it as read that this /i/ is a preformative occupying a rank before /mu/, /ba/, bi2/ and also immediately before dimensional and the absolutive and ergative infixes (so e.g. /i.b.ta.☐/, /i.n.☐/ and i.b.☐/), and before the verbal root (i.☐). 32 It follows that not only the function of /i/, but also those of /mu/, /ba/ and /bi2/ need to be radically reviewed. That is an important and substantial task which falls outside the scope of this article. However, even those who do accept /i/ as a functional morpheme in a slot before mu-, ba- and bi2- have not been able to reach a clear idea of its 32

Note that /i/, realized either as i3- directly before the verbal root, or as ib2- or in- before the absolutive or ergative pronominal infixes can occur in chains lacking any prefix in the same rank as ba-, bi2- and mu-.

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meaning, either individually or collectively. This I now hope to remedy, but before we can address its function it is necessary to dispose of a red herring.

7 On i and i3 That the NI sign as a preformative should be read i3- is generally accepted (see Edzard 2003, 109), and is of course supported by the appearance of the /i/ in combination with various consonantal morphemes, written ib2-, im-, and in-. In Pre-Sargonic texts at Lagaš the /i/ prefix is already realized on its own as i3, but also as e- before a syllable containing /a/ (as comprehensively demonstrated in Poebel 1931; now Jagersma 2010, 530). Recently Delnero drew attention to some Old Babylonian literary texts with verbal chains introduced by i(1)- and suggested that this represents a different /i/ morpheme, describing it as “i-, an element that is frequently conflated with i3-, but which seems to have been a separate prefix that was used with verbal forms to indicate a sequence of events” (2010, 540; cf. 554–555). It is not immediately obvious what this i- prefix might be since it has not previously been isolated, but he also suggests that it is present in im-ma- and im-mi-, which he accepts should be broken down into /i+ba/ and /i+bi/. He contends that forms with imma- and immi- do not share the same semantic role as those introduced by i3(2010, 557). This may well be the case, but since there is no obvious reason why the /i/ in each form should differ, any semantic differences can rather be attributed to the presence or absence of the /ba/ and /bi2/ elements. When he remarks that his Old Babylonian i- forms “indicate a sequence of events” he is in a sense correct; not because there are two distinct /i/ morphemes in the way he suggests, but because these i- writings are well recognised in the literature as an allomorph of the prospective preformative /u/ usually written u3-. The grammars agree that, when preceding a syllable containing /i/, /u/ is realised as /i/, no doubt in consequence of some form of vowel harmony.33 This is already attested in the Pre-Sargonic Lagaš texts in the passage in the Urukagina reform text RIME 1.9.9.3 col. ii–iii where the form i3-ni-de2 is sandwiched between u3tag4 and u3-ak in identical syntactical roles. Within the Gudea corpus, the unusual form i3-bi2-us2 (A vi 15) is understood in this way (for Ur III texts see Jagersma 2010, 518). That this is also happening in Delnero’s Old Babylonian passages is fairly certain, and makes good sense because the role of the /u/ preformative is precisely to indicate the priority of one verb over another. In the five examples mentioned by Delnero the i- is invariably followed by a -ni-, and in both the three cases cited verbatim, and the two passages from Inanna and Ebiḫ (ll. 6–7) and Gilgameš and Ḫuwawa A (ll. 9, 17–18), a prospective verb 33

Attinger 1993, 296; Rubio 1999, 38; Edzard 2003, 121; Jagersma, 2010, 518; Foxvog 2016, 109.

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gives excellent sense. The same applies to Vanstiphout’s example no. 19 (1985, 9) where a repeated passage is introduced by the form i-ni-in-šub-bu-uš (Enmerkar and Ensuḫkešdana/Ensuḫgirana 228, also 232, 236, 240, 244). The more difficult issue is why the Old Babylonian scribes opted for the I sign. Is it that the regular /i/ preformative is phonetically (and phonemically) distinct from the /i/ resulting from an assimilated /u/, or are the two signs used by the Old Babylonian scribes to identify different morphemes on a purely graphic level? This second possibility is certainly entertained by some (though see Wilcke 2010, 17 for doubts about the concept of “morpho-phonemic graphemes”), but if there was no phonem/tic difference one wonders how the listener was supposed to know which morpheme was intended. Before the Ur III dynasty the sign I is fairly regularly in use as the first sign of 3rd person verbal forms in Semitic personal names. Thus, the only instance at Pre-Sargonic Lagaš listed by Sollberger (1961, 21 no. 103) is in the name i-bi2um,34 but it is also found at Early Dynastic Kish (Gelb / Steinkeller / Whiting 1991, 65 No. 16), at Pre-Sargonic Mari (Charpin 1987, 98), and at Tell Beydar, where it is taken to stand for /ji/ (Sallaberger 1996, 41 No. 142; Talon 1996, 72). Similarly in the Sargonic period, Hasselbach (2005, 87) states: “the syllable /yi/ is […] mostly written with the sign I. This usage is found for third person prefixes and in words *# yi-”. In Ur III Akkadian i and i3 alternate freely with each other (Hilgert 2002, 120), but in Gudea texts i is only attested in the phrase numun-i-a (=numun-e3-a, cf. Sjöberg 1969, 104). In addition, I appears as a logogram for the number 5, which is plainly not a simple short /i/ and is sometimes rendered as /ia/ in the lexical texts. It might therefore be representing some sound other than pure /i/, but the difference between i and i3 is not likely to be a short versus a long vowel as i3 itself is surely short.35 The /u/ preformative is probably also a short vowel (see Jagersma 2010, 24), which partly accounts for its vowel assimilation, and means that it is unlikely to have been replaced by a long /ī/. Furthermore, since there are no grounds for thinking the preformative /u/ (usually written u3) was in fact */yu/, it does not seem likely that the Old Babylonian scribes’ use of i- is intended to render a /yi/ sound.

34

This occurrence is also listed by Gelb 19612, 25 and 70.103 among Akkadian texts, and the name is also attested at Tell Beydar: Ismail et al. 1996 No. 104 iii 1ʹ. 35 Direct proof of this is hard to come by, but if i3 is a short vowel it would explain why in Akkadian the “door keeper”, usually written i3-du8 and perhaps a nominalized finite verbal form has a very ambiguous vowel surfacing as a in Babylonian atûm and as utû in Diri and Assyrian (the assimilation to u here implying a short vowel; a long /ī/ would be unlikely to be altered in this way). The NI sign has a short vowel when standing for /nĭ/ or /nĕ/ (Jagersma 2010, 24).

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8 Dynamic and static Some of the complexities of defining the function of i3- were described by Vanstiphout (1985, 1–4). He found the various positions adopted from Poebel onwards unsatisfactory and made a brave attempt to restore some order. The principal virtue of Vanstiphout’s approach is that he advocates “examining portions of texts longer than a line” to see “whether they show up eventual relationships and interplay between the use of the prefixes” (1985, 4). However, his efforts were flawed because he did not recognize that i3 belongs in a different rank from mu- (and ba-/bi2-), as becomes clear on p. 13 where he writes that each verb “starts with an obligatory class I prefix” consisting of “one member of the subgroup /mu-/-b-/, or of /i/”. Consequently he needed to assign to /i/ a function which contrasts with the prefixes mu-, ba-, and bi2-, whereas, once correctly assigned to an earlier rank, forms with /i/ are instead in opposition to forms with /a/ or with no preformative (/ø/). I characterize /i/ and /a/ as “modes” which provide an additional layer of meaning to the verb. While the prefixes convey a sense defined by and confined to the immediate clause, /i/ places the clause in relation to other clauses either before or after, as Vanstiphout saw.36 What then could this additional layer of meaning conveyed by /i/ have been? The difficulty has always been that other components of the verbal chain provide us, and more importantly provided the Akkadian speaker, with all the information we normally expect to find in a verbal form and more: transitivity, person, number, as well as absolutive, ergative, and a raft of dimensional relationships. Tense in a strict sense does not exist (unless we count /u/) but overlaps with the ḫamṭu-marû system which functions independently of the /i/ mode; /i/ must provide an extra category of meaning. What’s more, our failure hitherto to pin this down derives from the fact that it is not to be found in either the language of the Old Babylonian scribes on whom we depend for many of our insights into Sumerian grammar, or the predominantly Indo-European or Semitic languages with which most Sumerologists are most at home. We need to look elsewhere. So, it seems reasonable to describe the /i/ mode as a marked form, with an implication that it conveys some kind of emphasis, but observing the contexts in which it is found, it is clear that this is not the whole story, and to anticipate our

36

Like Jacobsen among others Jagersma (2010, 517 §24.1) assigns /i/ to the same rank as /a/ and /u/, and this was also my opinion. However, I now believe that only /i/ and /a/ (and /ø/) share this slot, while /u/ belongs in a previous slot (and has more a temporal than a modal force). This is in view of the two forms i3-bi2-us2 (A vi 15) and u3-mi-sar (A vi 23), which I analyse as /u.bi2.us/ (with vowel assimilation as described above) and /u.(im)mi.sar/, there being no other way to explain the difference (im-mi-sar occurs in A vii 23).

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conclusion, the /i/ form is a mode which stresses the performance of the action of the verb,37 as opposed to other forms which lay the emphasis on the completeness of the action or its result, reporting what has happened, rather than what is happening. This mode was at least partly summarized and illustrated earlier: “It seems to me that the most promising explanation lies along the lines that /i/ places stress on the event or occurrence indicated by the verb, whereas zero prefix stresses the result of the action, or the simple fact that it has occurred. Thus ušum lú-šè šu íb-gar-ra-àm” [Gudea Cyl. A xxvi 29] “is not ‘a dragon with his paw laid on a man’ but ‘a dragon in the act of laying his paw on a man’” (Postgate 1974, 26 fn. 24). For another introductory example take these two lines from Cylinder A:38 e2-ĝa2 ni2-gal-bi kur-kur-ra mu-ri mu-bi-e an-za3-ta kur-kur-re gu2 im-ma-si-si “The great fear of my House hovers over all the lands, all lands are gathering on its account from the horizon.” The two different English present tenses encapsulate the contrast: the awe of the Eninnu is immanent over the lands, with neither start nor finish, but it has induced them to take action. If this contrast is valid, then the two modes (with or without /i/) could be described by calling /i/ forms dynamic, and those without the prefix static, or perhaps neutral (see fn. 40). When opting for these terms I thought that at least they had the advantage of not having featured before in analyses of the Sumerian verb, thus avoiding confusion. However, after hesitantly settling on dynamic, I saw that my notes from a master class in Sumerian, delivered by Th. Krispijn in Cambridge under the Erasmus programme some two decades ago, refer to the i- verbs (which he bracketed with a- and u-verbs), as being dynamic. This term is regularly used in North-West Caucasian languages, such as Abkhaz and Kabardian: in Abkhaz “The principal verb categories are dynamic versus static, transitivity, person, number, class, tense, mood, negation, causative, version, and potentiality. ‘Dynamic versus static’ is a verb form expressing action versus state of being”.39 Of course there is no suggestion of a direct 5,000 year genetic connection with Sumerian, but these languages are ergative and agglutinative, and their 37

In writing action I do not mean to exclude cases where in other languages the verb might be classed as stative or intransitive, since we meet for instance i3-sa6 “became favourable” (A xii 17). Such forms can still be dynamic, placing emphasis on the realization of the verb itself rather than its result. 38 For the wider context see the longer passage A ix 14–19 cited below (§8.3). 39 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Caucasian-languages/North-Caucasian-languages (accessed on February 2020).

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dynamic vs. static categories show that a similar contrast is not inconceivable in Sumerian. It is particularly encouraging that the dynamic concept was selected for Sumerian without awareness of the North-West Caucasian parallels, since otherwise there could have been a temptation to tweak our understanding of the Sumerian usage to conform with a prior set of concepts. Nevertheless, the comparison should not be pressed too far, because the Sumerian static or neutral forms are flagged solely by the absence of the dynamic morpheme, not by the presence of a dedicated static morpheme, whereas in Abkhaz both dynamic and static are marked by different suffixes. However G. Hewitt points out to me that in Circassian (specifically the literary Termirgoi dialect of West Circassian, or Adyghe) dynamic verbs in the finite present tense are marked by a pre-radical morpheme, whereas the statives have neither a prefix nor a suffix, more closely resembling the Sumerian system.40 As it turns out, not only do the Caucasian languages use the term dynamic, but the semantic category it describes is strikingly similar to my proposal for Sumerian. G. Hewitt is my informant on Abkhaz, and I have borrowed from him an example of the difference between dynamic and static: If you spot a puppy about to park itself on your window box, you could ask “What is it that is (in the act of) sitting down in our flowers?” and this would require a dynamic form. Whereas once it has completed its occupation you would use a stative verb and ask “What is it that is sat in our flowers?” Or if I were to enquire after the health of your elderly relative, I might ask “Is your grandmother dying?”, and you might reply “Yes, but for the time being she is alive”. The question would be dynamic, but the answer stative. There are significant differences in the way the two modes function in the Caucasus, but the mere fact that a grammatical polarity of the kind I am proposing does exist in any language helps to show that it is not inherently impossible, and it is at least not coincidental that neither 40

As described in Hewitt, forthcoming §3.6. Many thanks to G. Hewitt for advising me on Caucasian matters and steering me to relevant literature. In the Caucasus some authors opt for stative rather than static, or use them interchangeably. Cf. in Kabardian Matasović 2010, 52: “both transitive and intransitive verbs can be either dynamic or static. Dynamic intransitive verbs express action, activity”, while “Stative verbs express a state, or the result of an action”. This last citation is significant: in these languages the dynamic and the stative/static appear to be a binary system, whereas Sumerian has three modes, the /i/ and /a/, but also forms without either preformative (hence /ø/). Since forms beginning /a/ are listed on an equal footing with /i/ forms in the Old Babylonian Grammatical Texts and are generally perceived as having a stative force (magisterially studied in Jagersma 2010, 517–549, §24), it makes sense to reserve the term stative for them (equating to Kabardian’s “stative” verbs when expressing a state). By contrast, verbs in Sumerian with neither morpheme in this slot, which could equate to Kabardian’s stative verbs expressing the “result of an action”, could satisfactorily be described as static, but this runs the obvious risk of confusion with stative. Hence it may be preferable to adopt neutral for forms with neither of these two preformatives.

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language is Indo-European or Semitic. This parallel of course proves nothing, though it should be added to the dossier of similarities between Sumer and the Caucasus which have been pointed out before,41 but it may at least help to dispel any scepticism about the plausibility of the concepts. However, for neither mode does the proposed meaning emerge incontrovertibly from the sources, and as Vanstiphout (1985, 4) has already observed, it is not sufficient to gather individual verbal forms, because we have to take into account the wider syntactic contexts. To illustrate them, it is necessary to observe the contexts in which /i/ verbs are used and note especially their relationship to the other verbs in their sentence or episode.42 Verbal forms beginning with /i/ are not tied to a specific role in relation to the sentence or to other verbal forms, but like other modes may feature in a variety of syntactical contexts. Passages where a sequence of verbs culminates with an /i/ form may offer the best opportunity to illustrate its function (§8.1), but /i/ forms can also be found in parallel with other /i/ forms (§8.2), standing alone in their sentence (§8.3), or followed by supplementary verbs which do not have an /i/ (§8.4), while they are often found at the end of subordinate clauses (with the /a/ suffix, §8.5). Some of these categories are not mutually exclusive, and individual verbal forms may well belong in more than one. The Gudea passages quoted below may serve to illustrate the dynamic force of the /i/ forms. Here and elsewhere the word “illustrate” is employed with some care: the passages chosen can show how the /i/ prefix might have worked, but when dealing with Sumerian verbal forms it is too much to hope that one person’s interpretation would ever be considered proven. Mathematical proof might well not emerge even with a comprehensive study of the syntactic role of all /i/ forms, and even confined to the Gudea inscriptions this would be fearsomely lengthy. Some recent attempts to explain the function of i3- are completely incompatible with the position adopted here, and I am acutely aware that Sumerologists are able to reach diametrically opposed conclusions from the same snippet of text. One can only hope that, with the multiplication of examples and the passage of time, issues will be resolved to general satisfaction. 8.1 /i/-☐ as the terminal action In Gudea /i/ verbal forms (beginning i3-, im-, ib2-, or in-) frequently stand after a verb, or a sequence of verbs, without /i/. This could suggest that the /i/ preformative is identifying for the listener the action or event which has most 41

I owe to W.S. Allen the awareness that Abkhaz has a compound verb system closely comparable to Sumerian (personal conversations, around 1972). For more recent comparisons see Schulze / Sallaberger 2007. 42 In what follows, a clause contains one verb, and a sequence of clauses constitutes a sentence while a combination of sentences is termed an episode.

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recently occurred (or is still occurring), or put another way, that it marks the chronological or logical culmination of a series of statements. However, while this is usually the case, it only describes the context in which the verb is found, not the meaning or force of the /i/ preformative, and because /i/ forms are also encountered in different contexts, it is more accurate to say that they appear in this terminal situation because the preformative conveys a meaning which is relevant to the context. Its meaning needs to be appropriate not only to this position at the end of a sequence but also to the other types of context discussed in §§8.2–8.5. So, while a verb standing by itself in a clause may use the /i/ preformative (see §8.2), with two or more verbs making up a single sentence, /i/ is often found on the final verb alone. The preceding verbs are often but by no means always /mu/ forms. Some shorter Gudea building inscriptions (and even Statue I), along with many Pre-Sargonic building texts from Lagaš use only verbs beginning in mu-, no /i/ verbal forms. That is entirely compatible with the current proposal, because the building activity referred to has already taken place by the time the reader sees the text (or the audience hears the report). It is presented as an accomplished fact, static, not as a dynamic action in progress. Compare Statue D iii 3 where Gudea describes his construction and manning of a boat. Four verbs are used, in turn mu-na-dim2, mu-na-us2, KA mu-na-keš2, and finally saĝ-še3 im-mi-rig7. The culmination of this bundle of preparatory activities is the presentation (saĝ-še3 … rig7) of the boat and this takes the /i/ mode. A more complex sequence in Cylinder A (vii 12–23) describes Gudea’s preparation of a chariot. The /i/ verbs are printed in bold in the text and translation: 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

saĝ sig ba-ši-ĝar e2 niĝ2-gur11-ra-na kišib bi2-kur2 ĝiš im-ma-ta-ĝar gu3-de2-a ĝiš-a mu-DU.DU ĝiš-e mi2 im-e ĝiš mes-e saĝ bi2-sa6 ĝiš ḫa-lu-ub2-ba tun3 bi2-bar ĝiš gigir-za-gin3-še3 mu-na-a-DI ŠUL.UR3-bi piriĝ kas4-e pa3-da im-ma-ši-la2-la2 šu-nir ki-aĝ2-ni mu-na-dim2 mu-ni im-mi-sar

he obeyed (Nanše), broke his storehouse seal, put out the wood. He …ed the wood, he treated the wood with care. He smoothed the mes wood, split the ḫalub wood, fitted them together (to make) the blue chariot, stallions, the lions-summoned-for-running he harnessed to it. he fashioned for him his beloved standard, (and) wrote his name on it.

Here a marked verb is the end-point of a section of narrative, while the unmarked forms preceding are more or less necessary preliminaries, enumerating events or actions which are water under the bridge, not live events. The marked forms here all look compatible with a dynamic mode, but it has to be admitted that this is not indisputable: they may emphasise execution of the

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action and usually flag the conclusion of a sentence but other solutions could be suggested. It is quite possible that ll. 17–19 are explanatory like other cases where the /i/ verb leads into other verbal forms which elucidate its meaning (for which see §8.4). So the passage could be paraphrased, using participles, as: “Having obeyed Nanše and broken the storehouse seal he put out the wood. Having …ed the wood, he treated it with care, smoothing the mes-wood, splitting the ḫalub-wood, and fitting them for the chariot, (then) he harnessed to it stallions, lions. Having fashioned his standard, he inscribed it”. In the next example (A viii 2–5) the beginning and end of the episode are clear from the textual content, making it a self-contained passage: 2

min-kam-ma e2-še3 ud-u3-de3 bi2-dib

3 4

ĝi6-ĝi6 ba-an-dib du6-du6 mu-si-ig i5-ĝar mu-gi4

5

aḫ-du11-ga ĝir2-ta im-ta-ĝar

Thereafter, he went through the House day by day. He passed by it night by night, he levelled what was high, refused (to listen to) chance utterances. He had “spittle” (of sorcery) removed from the roads.

The verbs here are all part of a package of Gudea’s actions. Whereas with the chariot in the previous example the preceding verbs tend to describe both a logical and a chronological preliminary to the /i/ verb, here the actions would seem to be logically independent, although it is of course possible the different procedures are being listed in a chronological sequence. The removal of spittle is simply the last to be mentioned, and for that reason is foremost in the speaker’s mind, but the last verb takes the /i/ prefix because the listener is being asked to imagine Gudea in the act of clearing the roads, the final act before moving on to the next episode (a sheep sacrifice). We could rephrase this to make the point: “Having gone through the house day by day, having passed by it night by night, having levelled what was high, having refused to listen to chance utterances, he was engaged in removing spittle from the roads”. In some cases the /i/ prefix appears to mark out the final verb in a sequence of verbs which relate to the same event and are not obviously previous in time or subordinate in significance to the final one. In this situation the speaker’s use of the dynamic mode can easily be accounted for precisely because it is the final statement; the dynamic mode is appropriate for the final verb of a sequence, either because it is the most recent, or because it is the last-mentioned (i.e. the “live” action). This fits in with Vanstiphout’s question “is the /i/ prefix a marker of consecutivity?” (1985, 10). The answer is in a sense, yes, but the critical point is that /i/ has a function which makes it well suited to act as the final statement in an episode: it is happening right now. That is not however the only role it can play, because of course, there are plenty of cases where there are no other verbs, both in Gudea and in Ur III legal documents (see §8.2).

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Vanstiphout’s discussion of the i- prefix uses texts from the Old Babylonian corpus, and it may therefore be helpful to comment on a couple of his examples, both to illustrate later parallels and to show that convincing alternatives can be given to some (and perhaps all) of his interpretations. Quite straightforward is his example (no. 14): am-gin7 ki-en-gi-ra si mul ba-ni-ib-il2 kur-kur-re sag im-ma-da-sig3-ge “Like a wild bull (the temple) raises its horn(s) in Sumer, while all the lands (or: so that?) bow down” Whatever is understood exactly by a temple raising its horns, it obviously precedes and causes the submission of the foreign lands, which is what the poet wished to emphasise, so here /i/ is both logically and chronologically subsequent. This is not however a straightforward sequence of tenses such as a pluperfect followed by a perfect in Latin. In other passages the /i/ prefix is logically, but not necessarily chronologically, consequent on preceding verbs. The other example (his no. 18) consists of these three lines: ĝiš

ma2 ḫe2-em-da-la2-e e2-za-gin3-arattaki-še3 en-ra ḫul2-la-gin7 im-ma-na-ni-ib-ĝar 5 ma-na ku3-sig17 mu-na-ab-sum-mu “‘Let them tie up the boat at the Ezagin of Aratta!’ Now this made the lord very happy So he gives him five minas of gold” This selection obscures the fact that the five minas of gold are in the first line of a passage of six lines with mu- prefixes, and I think it is safe to say that the imma- form concludes the preceding passage rather than introducing the muverbs. This one form (im-ma-na-ni-ib(2)-ĝar) is something of a cliché, as it is repeated in the Gudea inscriptions more than once with ḫul2-la-gin7 (e.g. A xiv 6), each time concluding an episode, and is still in use under Samsu-iluna (e.g. RIME 4.3.7.3 ll. 23–24). Several times in the cylinders Gudea is said to have offered bread and poured cold water: ninda ĝiš bi2-tag a-šed12 i3-de2 (A ii 25). One might simply take this as a case of the /i/ verb marking the end of a (short) sequence, but if we appreciate that bread will lie staticly on the offering table whereas pouring water is an essentially dynamic activity, it may give us a better sense of the author’s intentions (“he served up bread, and was pouring cold water”).43 43

On the other hand, we might compare B i 16–17 e2-ninda-gu7-bi ninda ba-an-daḫ kiĝ2-SAR-udu-dab5-bi udu im-ma-a-daḫ “For the bread-consuming House he added more bread, for the supper in need of mutton he added more sheep”. Perhaps this line is closely parallel to the static bread offering and dynamic water libation, or possibly the first verb lacks an /i/ solely because it is not the last mentioned activity.

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8.2 /i/ verb as the sole action in a clause or sentence To avoid drawing the false conclusion that the only role of /i/ is to terminate a sequence of verbal forms, we may take note of the occasional examples of an /i/ form as the only verb in a clause or sentence. In his dream (A iv 19) Gudea describes his vision of Anzu, using the copula -am3, and then mentions two lions: zi-da gub3-na piriĝ i3-nu2-nu2, “there was a lion lying down on both his left and right side”. This is a case where the /i/ form stands alone, neither preceded by nor leading into other verbal forms, and the same arrangement applies later on when this element of the dream is interpreted for him (A v 16). After his dream Gudea “awoke, it had been sleep, he took fright, it had been a dream” (i3-zi u3-sa-ga-am3 i3-ḫa-luḫ ma-mu-dam A xii 12–13). There are no other verbs in this sentence, and while his waking up and becoming afraid may both be seen as two events in (chrono)logical sequence, they may also be seen as dynamic processes, with one the consequence of the other. A similar pair of /i/ forms can be recognized in the line maš2-a šu i3-gid2 maš2-a-ni i3-sa6 “he inspected a kid, the kid was favourable” (A xii 17), where the second verb is logically the consequence of the first, but both can be taken as dynamic, if we understand i3-sa6 as “turned out to be favourable”, not merely “was favourable”. In other contexts a single /i/ verb may introduce one or more static forms without /i/, examples of which are given below in §8.4. In the Neo-Sumerian ditillas the operative verb is regularly a single /i/ form, as in in-ši-sa10 “he is buying ”, in-ni-ĝar “he is claiming”, in-na-an-šum2 “he hired out”, or in-naan-du11 “he said to him” (Falkenstein 1956–1957, passim).44 Often it is hard to be certain that a verb is detached from those preceding it and introduces a new point, but the statement “the sun god rejoiced about it” (dutu im-da-ḫul2, A xix 9) must fall into this category, starting a new episode, because it entails a change of subject, while Gudea was the subject of the preceding episode. This uncertainty is avoided with the single /i/ forms which are particularly common in subordinate clauses: when Gudea is “the man who built the Eninnu” the verb is usually in-du3-a (St. A caption 1; St. B viii 5; etc.) with no other verb in the clause (see §8.5 for this construction), and the train of thought cannot stretch back beyond the head word of the subordinate clause (in this case lu2). 44

Legal documents may understandably have used the /i/ mode to place emphasis on the performance of an action. This underlines the fact that this article is concerned largely with a single genre of texts – royal hymns and inscriptions, and to a lesser extent with “literary” texts. Sometimes it has been necessary to pluck examples of a particular form from utilitarian texts, indicating that certain verbal forms may be missing from our corpus because of the nature of the texts themselves. Very pertinent here are Wilcke’s comments on “the impact style has on grammatical analyses. The dry and objective style of everyday documents differs totally from the wording of proclamatory royal inscriptions” (2010, 49).

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8.3 Parallel actions So /i/ verbs are not always the culmination of a sequence of other forms and the fundamental force of the /i/ is to characterize the form as dynamic, describing an action in progress. One can have more than one /i/ verb in parallel, perhaps in a chronological sequence, but all equally and independently emphasising the performance of the verb.45 2 3

min3-kam ur-saĝ-ĝa2-am3 a2 mu-gur li-um-za-gin3 šu im-mi-du8

4

e2-a ĝiš-ḫur-bi im-ĝa-ĝa2

5 6

igi-ĝu10-še3 dusu-ku3 i3-gub ĝiš u3-šub-ku3 si ib2-sa2

7

sig4-nam-tar-ra ĝišu3-šub-ba ma-an-ĝal2

Furthermore there was a warrior who bent his arm to take hold of a lapis lazuli board on which he was setting the ground plan of a house. He set before me a brand-new basket. a brand-new brick-mould was adjusted, and he let the auspicious brick be in the mould for me.

Here in his dream A v 2–7 Gudea sees a man and describes his actions. Because he is relating what is actually happening in his vision, and not some accomplished fact, it is entirely understandable that he uses the dynamic mode. The exceptions are in l. 3 where the movement of his arm is in static mode, because it is preparatory to his taking hold of the writing board; and in l. 7 where he describes the brick’s completed state. We may note here again that tense is irrelevant: it does not matter whether we translate “he was setting down the plan of the house” or “he is setting down the plan of the house” – the dynamic force of the /i/ verbs remains the same. Further on in Cylinder A (ix 14–19) we have this passage from Ningirsu’s speech with a number of /i/ verbs: 14 15 16 17

anzumušen-gin7 sig4-gi4-a-bi-še3 an im-ši-dub2-dub2 me-lim5 ḫuš-bi an-ne2 im-us2 e2-ĝa2 ni2-gal-bi kur-kur-ra mu-ri

18

mu-bi-e an-za3-ta kur-kur-re gu2 im-ma-si-si ma2-gan me-luḫ-ḫa kur-bi-ta im-ma-ta-e11-de3

19

Before the roaring of the Thunderbird, The heavens are trembling the fierce halo is reaching up to heaven. The great fear of my House hovers over all the lands, all lands are gathering on its account from the horizon, Magan and Meluhha are descending from their mountains.

While Edzard’s translation here uses a future tense for the last two verbs, I have preferred to use an English present continuous, which is probably our closest equivalent to the dynamic mode: the /i/ verbs in Ningirsu’s speech are 45

Compare the identical usage observed by Vanstiphout in the Old Babylonian corpus (1985, 5 “strings of parallel lines”).

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conveying action which is under way at this moment, and so are telling Gudea in a lively way what is currently happening. Note how in l. 17 the mu- verb is describing the static background situation created by the temple’s awesomeness, leading in l. 18 to a dynamic /i/ verb describing the actions of the lands. As we have already seen, passages describing Gudea’s dream in Cylinder A are instructive. Initially, when Gudea gives an account of what he saw, he is reporting on events he was currently witnessing, and the verbs are mostly in the /i/ mode (A iv 24 – v 1): mu-a5 šu im-mi-du8 dub … im-mi-ĝal2 ad im-dab6-gi4-gi4

she did she was taking hold of (a stylus) a tablet was placed onto (her knees) she was consulting (it)

then, when Nanše interprets what she has been told, she enumerates (A v 21– 24): 21

ki-sikil saĝ-ĝa2 e2 ki-karadin mu-a5

22 23

gi-dub-ba ku3-NE šu bi2-du8-a dub-mul du10-ga bi2-ĝal2-la

24

ad im-da-gi4-a

The young woman coming forward, who did … sheaves, who was holding a stylus of shining metal, and had placed on her knees a tablet (with) stars, which she was (in the act of) consulting.

Here the young woman’s actions have already been described, so holding the stylus (šu bi2-du8) and having the tablet on (bi2-ĝal2) her knees are unmarked forms since they could be termed static, and they “set the scene” for the marked or dynamic verb (ad im-da-gi4) which describes what she is actively engaged in doing, viz reading. One more passage deserves citing, as much for Edzard’s translation as for the Sumerian itself (B i 13–15): 13

nam-dingir-re ka ki im-mi-su3-su3

14

siskur ra-zu-a niĝ2-DUN-a ki im-mi-us2-us2 ensi2-ke4 diĝir-iri-na-ke4 arax-zu im-ma-be2

15

(The ruler) kisses the ground over and over before the divinities with rites and prayer, in submission he touches the ground; the ruler, the god of his city, says a prayer.

In his translation Edzard has sensed the intention of the author to describe the ensi’s actions as happening before our eyes, and hence has used the English present tense, which conveys well the dynamic force of the /i/ forms. 8.4 Action and consequence A single /i/ form can also introduce a sentence or episode: u4 im-zal “day broke” may supply the introduction to a series of actions or events (A xviii 3; B

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v 19), very much like dutu im-da-ḫul2,“the sun god rejoiced about it” (for which see §8.2 above). Elsewhere an /i/ form which concludes a sequence of verbal forms as in §8.1, may be followed by a continuation of the narrative using mu- or similar forms. In this case the /i/ form describes a decisive moment, and the author then proceeds to describe actions which flow from it, of which the result and not the performance is his concern (St. B iv 60–63). 60 61 62 63

NA4 na-lu-a ma2-gal-gal-a im-mi-si-si ur2-e2-50-ka mu-na-ni-gur

innumerable stone slabs onto big boats he loaded, (and) he placed them around the foundations of the E-ninnu.

Or: Gudea erects the Šaruru standard, and (A xxii 21–23): 21

šu-galam ki-ḫuš-ba im-mi-ni-ĝar

22

su-zi bi2-du8-du8 bara2-ĝir2-nun-na ki-di-ku5-ba u2-a lagaški gu4-gal-gin7 a2 ba-il2-il2

23

he had it placed at Šugalam, the dreadful site. He let terror emanate from it; from the dais of Girnun, where judgement is issued, the provider of Lagaš lifted horns like a mighty bull.

The action reported is the installation of the standard at a gate in the Eninnu; the consequences appear to relate to the administration of justice from there. Or: the ensi makes a generous donation to the Eninnu (B xiv 10–18): 10 11 12 13 14–18

gu3-de2-a ensi2 lagaški-ke4 saĝ im-mi-ib2-rig7-ge [uru]da an-na lagab-za-gin3-na ku3-NE gug gi-rin me-luḫ-ḫa-da … bi2-[gub?]

Gudea, ensi of Lagaš is presenting: copper, tin, slabs of lapis lazuli, shining metal, spotless Meluhha carnelian (and further treasures) he [deposited?].

After reporting his action in making the presentation, the gifts are enumerated in detail and the second, lost, verb in l. 18 is prefixed by /bi2/. In his study of the syntax of Sumerian administrative texts, Sallaberger (2005, 262–265) notes verbal forms complete with their ergative subjects, which occasionally appear before the repetitive ba-zi or mu-kux: they are often /i/ forms e.g. PN1.e šu im-mi-us2 / mu-kux / ĝiri3 PN2. / PN3 šu ba-ti “PN1 made the despatch. It has been delivered. Via PN2. PN3 has received it.” PN1.e in-ba / ĝiri3 PN2 / ki PN3-ta ba-zi “PN1 made a presentation. Via PN2. It has been issued from PN3.” Here the scribe uses the /i/ mode to record the action or occurrence which led to the situation on which he is now reporting by means of static mu- or ba- forms.

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Similarly in Old Babylonian texts within a single episode an /i/ verb may precede one without /i/ if the focus of the narrative is concentrated on it. Hence the opening line of Dumuzi’s Dream (Vanstiphout 1985, 7 no. 12:1) is not discordant: ša3-ga-ni ir2 im-si edin-še3 ba-ra-e3

His heart being filled with tears, he went out to the plain.

Dumuzi’s reason for going out will be his sorrow, so that it is logically as well as chronologically previous, but the essential point the poet is making is not that he is going into the countryside, but that his heart is full of grief, and the following lines express the consequence of this. So in English instead of saying “with his heart full of grief he went out to the plain”, we might say “his heart filled with grief so he went out to the plain”, the dynamic force of the /i/ form carrying the speaker’s focus. Finally, in the episode of Enmerkar and Ensuhkešdanna cited as no. 19 in Vanstiphout 1985, 9, the verb in-kar “(it) carried off” is followed by ḫur-saĝše3 ba-[an-ku4] in l. 231, and by ba-an-ur3 in l. 235 and similar forms in 239 and 243 (see ETCSL 1.8.2.4). So here the eagle (or the wolf or the lion) carries off the fish and goes elsewhere. Since the speaker’s focus is on the fact that the fish has been taken, its further destination is immaterial to the story and does not merit the /i/ prefix (which would have appeared as im-ma-an-ku4). 8.5 /i/ in subordinate clauses Vanstiphout’s example 13 (1985, 7) from the Lamentation over Ur has the form i3-me-a-ke4-eš, a well-known way of supplying a subordinate clause (“although” or “because”) already present in Gudea (A xxvi 15 i3-me-ša-ke4eš2), and its use of /i/ falls in line with the form in-du3-a which repeatedly identifies Gudea as “(the man) who built”. It is understandable that when a clause is used to describe someone, or a fact is used to qualify a following main verb, as in “although the house used to be a joyful place for the Blackheads” (e2 ki-ur5-sa6-ge saĝ-gig-ga i3-me-a-ke4-eš, after Vanstiphout), it is the verb that embodies the pivotal relationship of the subordinate clause with the main sentence and so is the object of the speaker’s focus. Or phrased differently, the action of the verb is stressed because it is the raison d’être of the subordinate clause. When in the Gudea inscriptions we read lu2 … in-du3-a (“the man who built …”, e.g. St. A caption 1–6) the remaining verbs of the text are predominantly mu- forms (without /i/). This is readily understandable because, as noted in §8.1, the main clauses are reporting on an action (building the temple) which has taken place, so that it is not the action itself which is the focus of attention, but the result. On the other hand in the subordinate clauses it is indeed Gudea’s activity – what he did – that is the focus of interest.

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The strong correlation between subordinate clauses and /i/ forms is very apparent in St. B viii 7–18: 6 7 8 9 10

lu2 e2-50-ta im-ta-ab-e3-e3-a mu-sar-ra-bi šu ib2-ta-ab-uru12-a lu2 ib2-zi-re-a

(Any) man who takes (the statue) out of the E-ninnu, (or) erases its inscription (or) destroys it …

These actions within the subordinate clause are rightly dynamic because focus is wanted on the action itself, which would make the offender liable to the divine penalties described further on in the text in the main clauses. Subsequently in the statue’s text, there are three further /i/ verbs in subordinate clauses in St. B viii 18, 42, and 43, as well as other examples such as: ba-gara2 … im-ti-a-ta, “when he had come close to Bagara” (A ii 7), ad im-da-gi4-a, “which she was consulting” (A v 24), šu im-ta-ĝar-ra-ta, “after he had left work” (A xxv 20), and u4 dnin-ĝir2-su-ke4 iri-ni-še3 igi-zi im-ši-bar-ra, “when Ningirsu was directing his meaningful gaze on his city” (St. B iii 7). Subordinate clauses with /i/ verbs are not confined to Gudea; two examples from the Ur III ditillas use the suffix –a, “that”, to indicate indirect speech: 10 gin2 ku3-babbar-ta ib2-ta-ane3-a, “that (he) had (given) out 10 shekels of silver” (Falkenstein 1956–1957, No. 20) or PN1 ir3 ki PN2-ka-am3 i3-tu-da, “that PN1 the slave was born chez PN2” (Falkenstein 1956–1957, No. 32). From contemporary administrative texts Yoshikawa cites forms of the verb “to go”, ĝen, beginning with im- or with i3im- (1978, 480): all eight forms are in subordinate clauses with -a. The same preference for /i/ forms is visible elsewhere in Ur III administrative texts (Sallaberger 2005, 267): u4 lugal-ĝu10 e2 da-da gala-ka kaš i3-naĝ-ĝa2-a “when My Lord drank beer in the house of Dada” u4 lugal-ĝu10 ša3 e2-gal-ka kaš i3-na-ni-de2-a “when My Lord poured out beer for him inside the palace”

9 Summary The prime objective of this article has been to identify the /i/ preformative as the marker of a dynamic mode emphasising the enactment of the verb, as against the stative /a/ and other forms with no morpheme in this slot, which may be characterised as static or neutral. Otherwise expressed, the contrast may be encapsulated by saying that /i/ verbs are describing an activity rather than recording an achievement. These modes are quite different from time-related “tenses” or the ḫamṭu-marû system. So as to accurately identify the /i/ prefix and define its relationship to the other elements in the verbal chain, it was first necessary to demonstrate the

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widespread elision of the second of two weak syllables in Sumerian. This allows us to see /mu/ and /m/ as one and the same morpheme, reducing the complexity of the prefix repertoire. Like most authors I put /mu/, /ba/, and /bi2/ in the same morphemic slot making them mutually exclusive. Verbs formed with /ba/, /bi2/ or /mu/ may either be introduced by /i/ (or /a/), or lack any preformative in this slot. Thus the addition of /i/ converts a static form into the dynamic mode described in §8. It follows that any previous efforts to define the respective functions of mu-, ba-, and bi2- (among others) which assume an opposition between /mu/ and /i/ are in need of revision. The function of these three common prefixes needs to be established independently of the /i/ preformative which adds an extra layer of meaning. There are inevitably, in an article this short, some loose ends and consequences. One issue is the identification of inherently weak and strong morphemes: thus among the dimensional suffixes on nouns /ra/ and /(e)š(e)/ must be weak, whereas /ta/ is strong. In the verbal chain /ta/ is also strong, as are the /bi2/ prefix and the dative /na/ infix, and these are therefore not susceptible to elision. Also in need of further investigation are the forms beginning i3-ib2-, i3im- etc., which have been much discussed (see especially Wilcke 1988). Whatever the solution, it must take account of the strong correlation between such forms, which all appear to lack the regular locative infix /ni/, and a locative nominal phrase in the preceding sentence.

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Krecher, J., Verschlußlaute und Betonung im Sumerischen, in: Röllig, W. (ed.), Lišān mitḫurti. Festschrift Wolfram Freiherr von Soden (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 1), Neukirchen-Vluyn 1969, 157–197. — Die /m/-Präfixe des sumerischen Verbums, in: Orientalia Nova Series 54 (1985), 133–181. Matasović, R., A Short Grammar of East Circassian (Kabardian), Zagreb 2010. Meyer-Laurin, V., Die „Zeichenpaare“ im sargonischen Akkadisch aus sumerologischer Sicht, 1. Teil, in: Die Welt des Orients 41 (2011) 27–68. Michalowski, P., Sumerian, in: Woodard, R.D. (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages, Cambridge, UK 2004, 19–59. Poebel, A., Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik (Rostocker Orientalistische Studien 1), Rostock 1923. — The Sumerian Prefix Forms e- and i- in the Time of the Earlier Princes of Lagaš (Assyriological Studies 2), Chicago 1931. Postgate, J.N., Two Points of Grammar in Gudea, in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 26 (1974) 16–54. Rubio, G., Orthography and Grammar of the Ur III Sumerian Literary Texts, in: Black, J.A. (ed.), Workshop on Diachronic and Synchronic Variations in the Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax of Sumerian. Sumerian Grammar Discussion Group, 6th Meeting, Oxford 1999, 1–56. — On the Orthography of the Sumerian Literary Texts from the Ur III Period, in: Acta Sumerologica (Japonica) 22 (2000 [2005]) 203–225. Rubio, G. / Woods, C., Two Views on the Relative Temporal Clause, in: Owen, D.I. (ed.), Cuneiform Texts Primarily from Iri-saĝrig/Āl-Šarrākī and the History of the Ur III Period (Nisaba 15), Bethesda, MD 2013, 195–200. Sallaberger, W., Sign List: Palaeography and Syllabary, in: Ismail et al. 1996, 33–67. — Textformular und Syntax in sumerischen Verwaltungstexten, in: Acta Sumerologica (Japonica) 22 (2000 [2005]) 249–277. Schulze, W. / Sallaberger, W., Grammatische Relationen im Sumerischen, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 97 (2007) 163–214. Sjöberg, Å.W., The Collection of the Sumerian Temple Hymns, Locust Valley, NY 1969. Smith, E.J.M., [-ATR] Harmony and the Vowel Inventory of Sumerian, in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 59 (2007) 19–38. Sollberger, E., Le syllabaire présargonique de Lagaš, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 54 (1961) 1–50. Talon, Ph., The Language, in Ismail et al. 1996, 69–73. Thomsen, M.-L., The Sumerian Language. An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure (Mesopotamia: Copenhagen Studies in Assyriology 10), Copenhagen 1984.

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Indexes Texts Nota bene: N. Rudik provides complete tables of concordances of the texts discussed in her article at pages 149–153. AMD 1, 224: 117, 152 Archaic Lu2: 20, 52, 75 ARET 2, 4: 165 ARET 3, 235: 180 ARET 11, 1: 162 ARET 12, 807: 180 ARET 13, 1: 163 ARET 13, 5 (Treaty with Abarsal): 165, 172 ARET 14, 1: 163 ARET 14, 62: 163 ARET 14, 84: 163 ARET 15, 9: 180 ARET 15, 38: 180 ARET 15, 51: 180 ARET 23, 3 (Ḫamazi Letter): 180 ARM 1, 112: 35 ASJ 15, 7 No. 4: 113, 114, 153 A Song of Inanna and Dumuzi: 31 ATFU 58: 64 ATFU 63: 67 Autobiographic Inscriptions of Iny: 182 BFE 9: 124 Bilingual Nig2-ga: 194, 195 CBS 8383: 183, 140, 152 CT 20, pl. 33: 32 CT 50, 39: 118, 152 CUSAS 1, 20: 51, 53 CUSAS 17, 103: 74 CUSAS 17, 104: 74 CUSAS 23, 199: 101, 104, 152 CUSAS 31, 27: 30 CUSAS 31, 89: 38 CUSAS 31, 109: 36, 38 CUSAS 31, 185: 51, 53

CUSAS 32, 1: 100–104, 108, 111– 114, 116–124, 126, 127, 129– 132, 134, 136, 145, 149 CUSAS 32, 2: 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 149 CUSAS 32, 3: 100, 101, 103, 105, 137, 138, 149 CUSAS 32, 22c: 128 CUSAS 32, 28c: 128 CUSAS 32, 49: 136 CUSAS 32, 62: 128 CUSAS 32, 89: 128 CUSAS 33, 146: 35 CUSAS 33, 154: 78 CUSAS 33, 180: 78 CUSAS 33, 184: 78 CUT 4: 107, 137, 141, 152 CUT 7: 107, 114, 116, 152 CUT 9: 107, 152 CUT 22: 107, 152 CUT 24: 107, 152 CUT 92: 114, 152 Diri 5: 35 DP 149: 118, 152 DP 578: 78 DP 582: 76 DP 585: 77 DP 586: 77 DP 587: 77 DP 589: 77 DP 591: 77 DP 592: 77 Dumuzi’s Dream: 241 Dumuzi-Inanna C: 221 Dumuzi-Inanna W: 31 Early Dynastic Personal Names A: 191–196, 198, 199

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Early Dynastic Practical Vocabulary A: 192, 194 Ebla Sign List: 112, 114, 122, 152 Ebla Vocabulary: 179, 195 ED Food: 195 ED Lu A: 195, 196, 198 ED Lu B: 196 ED Lu E: 122 ELTS 2: 74 ELTS 6: 74 ELTS 13: 74 Enki and Ninhursaga: 223 Enlil and Sud: 221 Enmerkar and Ensuḫkešdana/Ensuḫgirana: 229, 241 Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta: 116, 220, 221 Enmetena Cone: 223 ETCSL 1.5.1: 179 ETCSL 1.8.2.4: 241 Ferrini Prism: 192, 197, 198 Figure aux Plumes: 28, 54, 74 Gilgameš and Aga: 216 Gilgameš and Huwawa A: 127, 216, 228 Gilgameš, Enkidu and the Netherworld: 221, 223 Grain and Sheep: 139, 221 Gudea’s Cylinder A: 211–246 passim Gudea’s Cylinder B: 211–246 passim Gudea’s Statue A: 237, 241, Gudea’s Statue B: 179, 215, 217, 218, 223, 237, 240, 242 Gudea’s Statue D: 216, 234 Gudea’s Statue E: 216 Gudea’s Statue F: 224 Gudea’s Statue I: 234 Gudea’s Statue T: 215 HAR-ra A: 71 HAR-ra XIV: 135, 195 Heidelberg 9: 11–13 HS 1867 + HS 1868: 121 HS 2940: 139 HSS 3, 6: 77 HSS 3, 38: 88 HSS 3, 40: 71, 88

Indexes

Hymn to Nanše: 223 Hymn to Nisaba of Ereš: 176 Hymn to Šamaš of Sippar: 181 IAS 319: 101, 104, 105, 151 IAS 508: 74 IAS 511: 66 IAS 528: 66 IAS 529: 66 IAS 549: 101, 103, 105, 150 IAS 552: 66 IAS 553: 66 IAS 554: 66 IM 70209: 115, 152 Inanna and Ebiḫ: 228 Inanna’s Descent: 220 Lipit-Eštar E: 220 Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave: 21, 218 MDP 14, 1: 192, 197, 198 MEE 3, 7: 112 Middle Assyrian Ea VII: 32 MLVS 2, 9: 124, 152 MRAH O.1929: 104, 105 MS 4550: 137, 140, 149 MSL 1, 53: 23 MSL 8/2, 40: 135 MSL 8/2, 172: 31 MSL 11, 83: 34 MSL 11, 171–172: 26 MSL 12, 168: 113 MSL 12, 194: 113 MSL 15, 174–175: 35 MSVO 1, 44: 15, 36, 37 MSVO 1, 159: 51 MSVO 1, 235: 51 MSVO 3, 21: 51, 53 MSVO 3, 82: 33 MSVO 4, 1–4, 10, 22, 24–26, 28, 34– 35: 51 MSVO 4, 65: 15, 25, 36–38 MSVO 4, 73: 51 Nanna-Suen’s Journey to Nippur: 179, 181 Nik 1, 32: 77 Nik 1, 39: 77 Nik 1, 44: 76 Nippur Cylinder: 118, 140, 152 Nippur Lament: 220, 221 OBGT 10: 220, 221

Indexes

OIP 99, 24: 38 OIP 99, 328: 192, 194, 197, 198 OIP 99, 459: 12 RA 66, 141: 135, 152 RIME 1.9.3.1 (Vulture Stele): 118, 152 RIME 1.9.4.2: 118, 152, 224 RIME 1.9.4.12: 107, 152 RIME 1.9.5.23: 107, 152 RIME 1.9.9.3: 228 RIME 1.14.14: 53 RIME 2.1.1.11: 176 RIME 2.1.4.26: 177 RIME 4.3.7.3: 236 RTC 75: 77 SF 46: 108 SF 71: 108 Šulgi P: 220 Šulpa’e A: 216 The Cursing of Agade C: 220 The heron and the turtle: 140 TIM 9, 63: 124, 153 TMH NF 1–2, 313: 181 TSŠ 1003+984: 192, 194, 197, 198 TSŠ 170: 101, 103, 105, 150, 151 Udug ḫulu: 103, 115, 118, 123–125, 128–131 UET 2, 20: 65 UET 2, 27: 71, 75 UET 2, 31: 85 UET 2, 65: 85 UET 2, 73: 69 UET 2, 79: 75 UET 2, 81: 75 UET 2, 82: 64, 75 UET 2, 87: 64, 71 UET 2, 98: 65, 66, 85 UET 2, 102: 64, 65, 70 UET 2, 104: 65, 70, 75–77 UET 2, 108: 71, 75, 76, 84 UET 2, 109: 71, 76 UET 2, 113 D: 68 UET 2, 122: 64, 82 UET 2, 127: 65, 69–74 UET 2, 128: 71 UET 2, 135bis: 76, 78 UET 2, 140: 66, 71, 74 UET 2, 143: 68, 69 UET 2, 147bis: 64, 68, 69

249

UET 2, 153: 84 UET 2, 160: 68, 69 UET 2, 162: 83 UET 2, 163: 67, 69–71 UET 2, 164: 69–71 UET 2, 167: 65, 67 UET 2, 168: 64, 65, 76, 84, 85, 88– 90 UET 2, 171a: 71 UET 2, 177: 67 UET 2, 181: 70, 71 UET 2, 184: 68–71 UET 2, 188: 83 UET 2, 196 C: 67 UET 2, 201: 65, 67 UET 2, 202: 71 UET 2, 206: 66 UET 2, 208: 66 UET 2, 211: 66, 85 UET 2, 222: 83 UET 2, 226: 65, 71, 75, 76 UET 2, 227: 68, 69 UET 2, 252: 84 UET 2, 254: 65 UET 2, 351: 64 UET 2, 356: 76 UET 2, 356–371: 64 UET 2, 357: 78, 85 UET 2, 358: 66, 69, 75 UET 2, 359: 76 UET 2, 362: 65, 68, 69 UET 2, 365: 68, 70 UET 2, 366: 66, 71, 75, 85 UET 2, 367: 71 UET 2, 368: 70, 78 UET 2, 371: 65, 71, 78, 86, 91, 92 UH 4: 123–125 UH 5: 123, 124 UH 6: 123 UH 7: 129 UH 16: 129 UHF 2:129 UHF 7–8: 119 UHF 16: 118 UHF 226–229: 120 UHF 247: 115, 128 UHF 269: 129 UHF 335–339: 123 UHF 341–344: 125

250

UHF 370: 131 UHF 378: 115 UHF 402: 115 UHF 410: 131 UHF 414: 129 UHF 442–443: 125 UHF 449: 123 UHF 470: 127, 131 UHF 549: 130 UHF 574: 129 UHF 584: 120 UHF 592: 129 UHF 607: 131 UHF 614: 120 UHF 620: 129 UHF 647 = 657: 130 UHF 696: 129 UHF 700: 129 UHF 705: 129 UHF 744: 120 UHF 769: 115 UHF 772: 119 UHF 855: 120 Ura 2: 22, 23

Indexes

Ura 24: 23, 35 Urukagina, Plaque Ovale: 224 Ušumgal Stele: 74 VAT 12524: 101, 103, 105, 108, 150, 151 VAT 12597: 101, 103, 104, 150, 151 VAT 12639: 101, 103, 105 VAT 12684: 101, 103, 105, 108, 149 VAT 12749: 101, 103, 105 VS 10, 123: 139, 153 VS 14, 72: 71 VS 14, 170: 77 VS 17, 4: 117, 153 VS 25, 7: 77 VS 25, 70: 88 VS 25, 77: 77 VS 25, 79: 76 VS 25, 87: 88 VWDOG 143, 13: 71 Word List C / Tribute: 9–44 passim, 196 Word List Z: 191–201 passim YBC 4190: 141, 153 YOS 1, 11: 192, 197, 198

Divine names ʾAdabal: 163 Adad: 178 Ama-ušumgal: 105 An: 105, 115, 127, 128 Anunna: 130 Asalluḫi: 127, 142 Asar: 105, 131, 132, 134–137, 142 Ašdabil: 163 Baḫar-Enunzaku: 105 Dagan: 162, 165, 176, 177 Dil2-im-babbar-ra: 179 Dumuzi: 47, 53, 54, 139, 241 Enki: 105, 114, 119, 120, 126, 132, 142 Enlil: 100–106, 109, 119, 120, 122– 126, 132, 137–142, 165, 167, 223 Ḫendursaĝa: 120, 142 IG.DU: 105, 129, 142 Inanna: 35, 46–48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 204 Ištar: 162, 178

Ištaran: 194 Kumarpi: 165 Kura: 162, 163 Lama: 219 Lamaštu: 124, 128 Nanibgal: 221 Nanna: 61–64, 67–70, 72, 74, 77, 78, 82–86, 105, 179, 181 Nanše: 223, 234, 235, 239 NE.DAG: 104, 105, 127, 142 Nergal: 105, 177 Ninazu: 134, 142 Nin-e2-SUM: 105 Ningirim: 101, 102, 104, 105, 109, 124, 126, 127, 132, 141, 142 Ningirsu: 54, 179, 215, 218, 219, 223, 238, 242 Ninki: 119, 120, 126, 142 Ninmaš: 105 Ninpiriĝ: 105 Nun-ur4-ra: 69 Storm-god: 162

Indexes

Šara: 105

251

Utu: 35, 105, 120, 126, 132, 134, 135, 137, 141, 142, 165, 218, 219, 237, 240

Personal names A-KA-ra: 76 AK-lu: 76 Ama-IGI+BUR-sa6-si: 76 Ama-e2-si: 75–77 Ama-en2-si: 71 Ama-enx(ŠU2)-e2-si: 76 Ama-iri-si: 84, 89, 90 Amar-e2: 69, 88, 90 Amar-u4-sakar: 76, 91, 92 Arrukum: 161 Assurbanipal: 167 Aya2-ḫe2: 72 Bilx-igi-bur: 70, 71 Dumu-ša3-dar: 76, 88, 90 E2-ki: 207 E2-kur: 207 E2-lu2: 207 Enannatum: 224 Enkidu: 175 Enna-Dagan: 162, 165 Gala-tur: 77 Gilgameš: 175, 178, 216 Gudea: 179–181, 211–246 passim Ḫi-dar: 167 Huwawa: 171, 175, 176 Ibbi-Zikir: 161–163, 167 Iblul-il: 163, 165 Ib-mud: 76 Ibrium: 160–163 Igi-dulum2: 208 Inanna-AK: 85, 89, 90 Inim-zi-da: 207 Iny: 182 Irʿak-damu: 161 Irkab-damu: 162, 165 Išʿar-damu: 160, 162, 165, 167 Išgi-Mari: 166, 167 KA-iš: 69

Khufu: 183 Lu2-igi-ma: 207 Lugal-a-bar-ra: 207 Lugal-dulum2: 208 Lugal-kigine-dudu: 53 Lugal-pa-e3: 77 Lugalzagesi: 204–207 Lugal-zi: 207 Lu-lu: 71, 75, 91, 92 Maništusu: 2 Merenre: 182 Mes-an: 71 Mes-an-ne2: 71, 76 Munus-ad2-gal: 76 Naram-Sin: 176–178 Paba: 167 Pa-bilx-ga: 76 Pepi I: 182, 183 Pepi II: 182 Puzur4-Mama: 77 Sahure: 182 Sargon: 176–178 Šul-IG: 76, 88, 90 Šul-šul: 76 Teumman: 167 Tubuḫu-Ḫadda: 162 Unas: 182 Ur-dam: 76, 77 Ur-Lamma: 76, 88, 90 Ur-Nin-dulum2: 208 Ur-du6: 76 Ur-e2-zi-da: 207 Ušum-gal: 75 Uti: 162 Weni: 182 Zaʿaše: 162 Zur-zur: 66, 71

252

Indexes

Geographical names Abarsal: 163, 165, 172, 181, 183 Abu Ṣalabiḫ: 10, 12, 38, 65, 68, 71, 74, 77, 103–105, 107, 159, 160, 181, 191, 192, 194, 197– 199 Adab: 3, 107, 203 Aegean: 174 Aleppo: 162, 174, 179 Amanus: 173, 175, 177–180 Amanus Gates (Bahçe Pass): 174 Amarna: 172, 185 Anatolia: 171, 174 Antitaurus: 173 Aratta: 221, 236 Armi: 173, 174, 177, 178, 180, 181, 183 Aša5 E DUR2: 67 Aša5 Nannax: 68–70, 72, 74 Aša5ša3 en gibil: 68 Babylonia: 3, 51, 52, 160, 162, 165 BU.MA: 65–67, 70, 76, 83, 89, 90 Buranuna:123, 142 Byblos (Gublu): 174, 181–183 Cedar Mountain: 176, 177, 179 Cilicia: 173, 174 Cilician Gates (Gülek Pass): 174 Da-ra-umki: 161 Dugin: 83, 91, 92 Dugurasu: 164, 174, 181, 182 Dulum2: 208 Dur-Maništusu: 2 E2-igi+bur: 68 Eanna: 47, 56, 57, 175 Ebla (Tell Mardikh): 3, 4, 10, 22, 28, 29, 31, 52, 53, 68, 102, 107, 111–114, 117, 119, 121, 122, 159–170 passim, 171–190 passim Egypt: 171, 174, 178, 181, 182 Ekallatum: 173 Emar: 26, 181 Enegi: 134, 142 Eridu: 81, 127, 130, 134, 142 Euphrates: 3, 62, 81, 163, 172–174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 184

Fara (Šuruppak): 3, 10, 65, 68, 71– 74, 77, 85, 103–105, 107, 108, 191, 192, 194, 197–199, 212 Forest of Cedar: 178, 179 Forest of Ebla: 179 Garšana: 21, 24 Gebel el Arak: 48 Ĝirsu: 4, 36, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73, 74, 76–78, 83, 85, 87, 88 Ĝirsu-Lagaš: 3 Ḫabur: 164, 173 Ḫalabidu: 162 Hamat: 174 Ḫamazi (Tell Haikal): 172, 173, 180 Ḫamran: 175–177 Ibʿal: 163 Ibal (Uraš-mah): 174 Idigna:123, 142 Isin: 3 Jebel Ansariyah: 175 Jemdet Nasr: 29, 31, 36, 85 Kakmeyum: 174, 180, 184 Kaneš: 178 Karkamiš: 173 Kar-niginki: 224 Khabur triangle: 164 Kiš: 159, 160, 164, 165, 172, 196, 229 Lagaš: 52, 179, 204, 206, 220, 228, 229, 234, 240 Lal3-la-adki: 66 Lebanon: 174, 175, 177, 182 Levant: 181, 182 Lu2-ĝeštin: 68 Ma2-NEki: 181 Magan: 238 Mari: 3, 35, 159–167, 172, 176, 181, 184, 229 Meluhha: 238, 240 Memphis: 183 Mes-pa3-da: 68 Mountain of Cedar: 178, 179 Nabada (Tell Beydar): 3, 79, 80, 164, 229 Nagar (Tell Brak): 3, 49, 50, 160, 163, 164, 173 NEnaš: 162

Indexes

NI.RU: 51 Nineveh: 31, 167 Nippur: 10, 118, 142, 181, 192 Orontes: 184 Sakheri Sughir: 62, 79 Samsat: 173, 174 Sulaymaniyya: 164, 175, 176 Susa: 27, 30, 192 Syria: 3, 159–162, 165, 171, 174, 182 Syrian Gates (Belen Pass): 174 Ša3-si: 68 ŠE3-KU: 206 Šugalam: 240 Šuruppak (Fara): 3, 10, 65, 68, 71– 74, 77, 85, 103–105, 107, 108, 191, 192, 194, 197–199, 212 Tell al-Sakheri: 62, 84 Tell Banat: 172–174 Tell Bazi: 172–174 Tell Beydar (Nabada): 3, 79, 80, 164, 229 Tell Brak (Nagar): 3, 49, 50, 160, 163, 164, 173 Tell Haikal: 173

253

Tell Jokha: 2, 3 Tell Leilan: 3 Tell Mardikh (Ebla): 3, 4, 10, 22, 28, 29, 31, 52, 53, 68, 102, 107, 111–114, 117, 119, 121, 122, 159–170 passim, 171– 190 passim Tell Mozan: 3 Terqa: 167 Tukriš: 164 Tunep: 174, 184 Tuttul: 162, 167, 176, 181 Umm el-Hafriyat: 3 Umma: 2, 3, 20, 30, 35, 52, 53, 66, 78, 85, 107, 108, 203–206, 208, 209 Ur: 3, 52, 53, 61–98 passim, 181 Uršu: 177, 179, 181 Uruk: 9–43 passim, 45–59 passim, 175 Urumx: 51 Yarmuti/Armuti: 176, 177 Zabala: 204, 208

Sumerian words The following pages do not represent an extensive index of all the Sumerian and Semitic words which can be found in the articles but rather a list of the words which have been discussed by the authors. Nota bene: N. Rudik provides a complete glossary of the texts discussed in her article at pages 142–149. a-gid2: 67 a-za-lag: 214 abba2-abba2: 162 absin3-du3: 71 ad-da diĝir-diĝir: 163 ad—gi4: 239, 242 aga3-us2: 78, 86 AL: 23, 32, 67,160 AL:TAR / AL.TAR.EŠ2: 23 ama diĝir-diĝir-diĝir: 162 amar: 133, 135–137, 142 amar-ga: 15 amar KAK: 133, 135–137, 142 ambar: 21, 27, 225 an-ru12-ru12: 161 ANŠE.BAR.AN: 164

anše DUN.GI: 72 anše uru4-du3: 71 apin: 65, 68–72, 74–77, 86, 87 apin-du3: 67, 71 apin-la2: 67, 70, 71, 74, 76, 77, 86, 87 aša5 bar: 67–69 aša5 en: 68–71, 74, 86 aša5 keše2-(ra2): 78 aša5 ki-duru5: 66 aša5 KI GA: 66 aša5 ki-ĝal2: 66 aša5 PEŠ/ḪA du3: 67 aša5 šuku: 69, 70, 74 aša5 uru4: 65, 71, 74 ba-zalag: 132, 135, 136

254

baḫar2: 69 BAḪAR2.E2: 69 bala: 109, 122, 130, 142, 143 BAR.AN: 164 dam-gara3: 207 DAM URU×IŠ: 25 dilmun: 75, 198 du2(d): 139, 143 dub-sar: 207 dug-uruda: 71–73 dumu: 114, 115, 127–131, 143 dur11-ra: 122, 143, 146 dusu / dubsig(IL2): 74, 77 e3: 143, 208, 218, 219 eg2 dur2: 67 eme: 116, 117, 143, 146 en: 45–59 passim (esp. 50–53), 143, 160, 165 EN GAN2 AD: 19, 25 en-na: 122–124, 132, 143 EN.NUN: 139, 143 engar: 69–71, 74–77, 83, 87 engar ki-gub: 77 ensi: 62, 83, 84 ensix: 76 gu gaguruda: 71 gal5-la2: 127, 144 gala: 208 GAN2 en: 67 ge (si22): 119, 135, 144, 147 ge (as “reed”, ge4) 136, 144 GI: 19–24, 32, 36 GI ZIa: 21 gi-zi-eš-ta: 21 gi4: 19, 122, 144, 145 gid2-a: 67 ĝiri2: 133, 135, 144 ĝiri2 kun si12: 135 ĝiri3-saga11—du11/AK: 132, 145 ĝiri3—ta3: 132, 134, 145 ĝiri2-tab: 135, 144 ĝiri3—TAG: 132 ĝiri3—ul4: 132, 145 ĜIŠ-u3-suḫ: 160 guuruda: 71 gu2 ni-daNUNUZ: 35 gu4: 133, 144 gu7-e: 118, 144 gub: 125, 144, 223

Indexes

ḫenbur: 136, 137, 145 ḪI-ra: 65 ib2-ge17: 131, 145 idim: 114–116, 145 išib: 35, 207 išib-AN: 75 KA+UD: 101, 145 KAK: 133, 135–137 KAK uruda: 72 keše2: 132, 144, 145 keše2-ra: 65, 70, 71, 77, 78, 87 ki (as “netherworld”): 118, 145 ki-idim: 115, 145 ki-in-dar: 115, 145 ki-maḫ: 145 ki NIĜEN2.NIĜEN2: 121, 129 KIa SAG: 19 ki šuš2: 117, 121, 129 ki—ta3: 139–141, 145 KI.UD: 214 kiĝgal: 75, 76 kindagal: 69, 75 KIŠIKa U2a/b: 20 kitim / gi17-ti-ma / gi-dim / ki-da-ma: 112–117, 125, 130, 131, 144– 146, 149 la2 (as a verb): 106, 109, 146 la2 (as “minus”): 207 LAGAB×A: 21, 26, 27, 31, 140, 142 lid2: 71 lu2 diĝir-diĝir-diĝir: 162 lu2-eš2-gid2: 207 lu2 kitim: 113, 114, 122, 146 lu2 šuku dab5-ba: 88 LU2.TUG2.ZALAG: 214 lugal: 161, 164, 165, 207 maḫ (as a type of cereal): 208 maš: 67, 68 maš-da-ri-a: 77 me TAR: 116, 146, 148 ME.TE.MA / ME TE MA / KI.ME+TE-ma / (KI) ME TE MA / 108–117 GI17 TI MA etc.: passim, 145, 146 mu-DU: 163 mu-GIR2.GIR2: 103 muhaldim: 51 muš eme min: 117

Indexes

muš-ša3-AD: 131, 146 nagar: 75, 208 nam-gu2—ak: 17 nam-ri: 214 nam2: 51 nam2 giššita: 51, 52 NAMEŠDA: 45, 51–53 nar-kur-ku5: 127, 146 NIĜ2.AN.AN.AN.AN: 164 niĝ2-ba: 72, 109, 146 niĝ2-diri: 72 niĝ2-en-na: 67, 76 niĝen2: 129, 146 nimgir-gal aša5: 75 nu-banda3: 78, 92 nu-šu: 65, 74 NUNa PAPa SAL URa: 33 piriĝ: 26, 118, 127–130, 134, 147 RU-lugal: 78, 86 sa ge-izi(-la2): 121, 147 sa kilib: 121, 147 sa2 du11-ga: 107 SA2.DU11.GA-ne: 107 sa2—du11: 107, 147 saĝ-ge17: 131, 147 saĝ-sug5: 75 saĝĝa: 62, 84 saĝĝa še: 83 sal: 9–43 passim, 147 SAL:LA: 13 si (as “to fill”): 106, 147 si(g) (as “to plunge”): 106, 147 sikil: 114, 147 silim—du11/e: 107, 147 simug: 75 sir3-ra: 78 surx(ERIN2): 78 ša3 gu2-bi nam-gi4: 17 ŠA2:NAM:GU2:BI:ŠUM2 / ša3 namgun2 sum / šag4 nam-gu2-bi sig10: 17 ŠA3 UB: 16 še: 19, 147, 208

255

še+gan2: 65 še SAL: 25, 35, 36 še SAR: 35 ŠENNURa: 20 šeš-II-ib: 163 šid še: 83 šu-tab: 65, 66, 74 šu2-šu2: 123, 147 šuku: 63, 64, 66–71, 74–78, 85, 86, 88 šuku engar: 71, 74 šuku ki-duru5: 76 šum2 sikil: 77 šuš2: 129, 147, 148 šuš3: 207 TAB-BA: 66 TAK4.ALAM: 47 tu6: 124, 125, 143, 148 ĝeš tukul: 133, 148 U4 KIa SAG ADa: 19 UB ŠA3a1: 16 ug(4): 129, 148 uĝ3 keše2-ra: 78 um (as “to bite”): 129 UMBISAĜ: 101 ur: 13, 14, 31–38 passim URa: 31–38 passim URI ŠA3a1: 16 URI:GAR:IŠ!(KISAL): 17 URI:IŠ: 17 uru4: 65, 69–71, 74, 76 uruda: 65, 72–74 uš (as “poison”): 129, 148 ušumgal: 129, 131, 148 zaḫ-ge-bar: 131, 148 zi (as “right”): 66 ZI+ZI(KWU127): 21 ZI+ZI+A: 31 ZI+ZI.EŠ2: 21 ZI+ZI:EŠ2:DUR: 24 ZI+ZI.LAGAB: 21 ziz2: 35, 66 zu2(KA) keše2: 78

Semitic words ʾa3-ma-tum: 29 ʿabdum / ʿebdum: 178 a-bu2 diĝir-diĝir-diĝir: 162

abaḫšinnu: 34 ana: 176 appāru: 21, 225

256

apu: 21 ašāgu: 20 baʿālum: 161, 165 bēlum: 51, 165 di’’um: 24 dillatum: 25, 35, 38 dul(u)bum (gištu-lu-bu-um): 179 erēnu: 160 gisallu: 24 ilkum: 78 kīsu: 21 kiṣru: 78 lamû: 123, 149 la-qa-la-qa: 31 lemû: 123, 149 lu’āštu: 25

Indexes

maliktum: 165 malkum: 165 *manḫalum(?): 161 naḫālum: 161 nu-ga-ti-mu-um: 112–114, 149 pa4-šeš: 75, 162 pa4-šeš-munus: 162 pūtu: 26 raq-raq-qu: 31 si-nu-me: 113 ṣuṣû (ṣiṣû): 21 šarrum: 164, 165 *tuštaḫḫilum: 161 ṭurru: 24 zaqāpu: 133, 149 zuqiqīpu: 133, 149