Abstract
Building on Chap. 3’s text discussion, this chapter describes bureaus and bureau archives from the kingdom of Larsa that appear in this volume. This chapter asks ‘what do the texts studied here tell us about the environments in which they were produced’? Its purpose is to outline tacit knowledge about administrative structures that may have affected each scribe’s mathematical reasoning. Thus, the difference between bureaus, bureau archives and then personal and merchant archives are explored. Examples are given of each, including a description of actors such as Gimillum , Sîn-muštāl and Ili-iddinam, all of whom were active within the bureaus or as notables in their own rights. Four bureaus and bureau archives are introduced: a grain storage bureau , a bureau of irrigation and excavation , a grain harvest archive and a grain production archive . This chapter is supplemented by Appendix 2, a study of numeracy among the scribes who populated these bureaus and bureau archives , as well as all scribes who authored texts presented in this volume.
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Notes
- 1.
This is well described for the city of Ur by Van de Mieroop (1992: esp. part 2 and 241–250). For more on this system, see also Charpin (1980: 128ff.), Stol (1982), Breckwoldt (1994: 157–74), Rede (2005) and Földi (2014).
- 2.
Jean 1926, nos. 001-010; AbB 1 90; AbB 9 49 and AbB 9 94.
- 3.
For these various storage facilities, see (ibid.: 75).
- 4.
Breckwoldt bases her assumption that grain was stored in standard sacks of perhaps 1 bariga on a single letter about the theft of 2 bariga grain in a grain storage facility (AbB 6, 219). In her view, the theft could only have been assessed if grain were stored in bags or the person reporting the amount stolen was in collusion with the thief. However, one could also hypothesize that the servant girl had simply eyeballed the stolen amounts, an official assessment had taken place, or that the thief had been caught and confessed. On the other hand, grain did have to be stored, and standardized sacks do provide a plausible means to store grain.
- 5.
The last text, MAH 15886 + 16295 , is tentatively associated with the bureau of irrigation and excavation . As Clevenstine (2015) points out, workers in MAH 15886 + 16295 were engaged in two construction projects, a fortified place named after Rīm-Sîn’s father, Kudur-mabuk , while the other project is unfortunately effaced. This unnamed project could be a canal excavation. The appearance of the name Rīm-Sîn -rappašunu suggests connection with this archive, as does the layout. Word choice differs, suggesting either a different author or that these individuals were active in more than one type of construction project as foremen. This would offer further evidence of a highly integrated Old Babylonian economy, in which individuals crossed bureau or administrative boundaries in order to carry out construction projects. Tablet shape and layout for each text would suggest that tabular formatting was commonly used in planning construction projects of various types. This all must remain hypothetical. For now, the appearance of Rīm-Sîn -rappašunu in each text shows that he is charged both with excavations and with labor in construction, of which excavations were a part.
- 6.
Riftin 1937: no. 117 and BM 016391 are omitted from this list because it is difficult to ascribe a task to the labor teams in these texts—they do not state the purpose for labor, nor the purpose for redeployment of labor, nor the nature of work being carried out. BM 085211 and BM 085238 (see Sect. 8.3.4 for these texts) are also omitted from this list because they are probably student exercises and not to be mistaken for the work of a bureaucrat active in this bureau.
- 7.
Based on the association of BM 085211 and BM 085238 with this archive. Even if these apprenticeship texts do not properly reflect practice, they do show the continuation of this archive into Samsu-iluna’s reign.
- 8.
See Clevenstine (2015) for a discussion of the dates on this text.
- 9.
This identification is made by Goddeeris (2016: 264 note 4), contradicting Robertson (1992: 185) who transliterates this individual as dri-im-dEN.ZU-(?)šar-šu-nu.
- 10.
See Fiette (2018) where this archive is discussed. At the time the manuscript for this work was submitted, Fiette’s brilliant synopsis had not appeared so that his results could not be integrated into this study. While I stand by the results of the my discussion and especially my numeric studies of Ashm 1922-277 and Ashm 1923-340 , Fiette’s work presents a full image of the bureau for which these texts belong, a picture of the activities of this bureau’s main actors and new interpretations of these texts. Moreover, his reconstruction offers the potential for a greater study of numeracy within this bureau.
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Middeke-Conlin, R. (2020). Archives, Bureaus and Management Systems in the Kingdom of Larsa. In: The Making of a Scribe. Why the Sciences of the Ancient World Matter, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35951-5_4
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