Three administrative texts from the time of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur, in anonymous collection in Poland

The article is a full edition (photography, autography, transliteration, translation and commentary) of three previously unpublished Neo-Sumerian administrative documents, which are in one of the anonymous collections in Poland. The tablets come from the two provincial archives of the kingdom of Third Dynasty of Ur - Puzriš-Dagan and Girsu-Lagaš, and their content is typical of this group of cuneiform texts.

Royal Bodies and the Legacy of Akkadian Statues

Although modern scholarship has been slow to recognize it because of the fragmentary condition of Akkadian royal statues, post-Akkadian rulers responded to the votive statues of the Akkadian kings in a variety of ways. The statues of Gudea of Lagash, the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and rulers of Mari and Eshnunna from the late third and early second millennia BCE replicate specific Akkadian sculptural features in order to emulate, critique, or affiliate with the dynasty. Other statues, such as a statue from Ashur possibly connected to a Kassite king and statues associated with Puzur-Inshushinak of Susa, resemble the Akkadian models so closely that it cannot be determined if they are appropriated Akkadian statues or newly produced imitations. This chapter explores the circumstances that would have led the rulers to usurp or closely imitate an Akkadian royal statue.

The Ancient Near East

The donkey was domesticated from the African wild ass in Northeast Africa some 7–6,000 years ago. This chapter looks at what happened when donkeys turned right and exited Africa into Asia. Though tracking their movement as far as India and China, its principal focus lies in the Ancient Near East, the region stretching from Israel north to Turkey and eastward into Iraq and Iran that is often termed the ‘Fertile Crescent’. Within this vast area, donkeys were used in daily life, including the agricultural cycle, just as they were in Egypt. But like there they also acquired other, more specialized uses and associations. Thus, after tracing the donkey’s spread I look at its role in three key aspects of the Near East’s earliest civilizations: the organization of trade; the legitimization of kingship; and religion. By 3500 BC the earliest cities had already emerged in Mesopotamia, the ‘land between the rivers’ Euphrates and Tigris. Over the course of the next 1,500 years, urbanization gathered pace across Palestine and Syria in the west, northward in Turkey, and east through Iran. Within Mesopotamia the independent Sumerian city-states of the south developed increasingly monarchical forms of government, seeing brief unity under the kings of Akkad and the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late third millennium BC. Then and later a city-state pattern of political organization also held in northern Mesopotamia (for example, at Aššur and its neighbour Mari) and in the Levant. In the mid-second millennium bc, however, much larger kingdoms emerged: the Hittites in central Turkey, Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, and Babylonia in its south. The Hittites, in particular, competed with Egypt for control of Syrian and Palestinian cities like Ugarit. When these Bronze Age powers collapsed around 1200 BC, their disappearance opened a window for smaller states like Israel to flourish briefly in their wake. Subsequently, however, first Assyria (911–612 BC) and then Babylon (612–539 BC) established much more centralized and extensive empires across the Near East before being subsumed within the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and his successors.

The Cuneiform Documents from the Iraqi Excavation at Drehem

Drehem, ancient Puzriš-Dagān, is well known as the place of origin of more than 15,000 cuneiform tablets from the Ur III period that were sold on the antiquities markets from 1909 onwards. The State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq undertook the first controlled excavations at the site in 2007 under the direction of Ali Ubeid Shalkham. The cuneiform texts and fragments found there not only add to the well-known royal archives dealing with cattle, treasure or shoes, but they include many records on crafts and agriculture. With this evidence, the subsistence economy behind this important administrative center and royal palace of the Third Dynasty of Ur becomes more evident. We thank the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, the Iraq Museum Baghdad and Mr Ali Ubeid Shalkham for the permission to publish the tablets from the excavation season of 2007. The stays of Nawala Al-Mutawalli at LMU Munich in 2015 and 2016 in order to prepare this article were generously funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. We are grateful to Margarete van Ess for the invitation to a first meeting in 2013 at the DAI Orientabteilung, Berlin. Thanks are owed to Manuel Molina for his careful reading of this article and his helpful remarks and Frans van Koppen for his editorial care. Walther Sallaberger’s work also contributes to his “Sumerisches Glossar” project. – All photos and plans of the excavation were made by Ali Ubeid Shalkham, the tablets in the Iraq Museum were photographed by Nawala Al-Mutawalli Mahmood. The abbreviations follow the Reallexikon für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie. The online digital resources CDLI (cdli.ucla.edu) and especially BDTNS (bdtns.filol.csic.es) have proven once more to be indispensable for our studies of lexicography and prosopography.

Runaways and Fugitive-Catchers during the Third Dynasty of Ur

The study of flight provides insight into life at the bottom of society during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100-2000bce). Examples of individual rebellion and its consequences display the perspectives of members of non-elite and elite, advancing Adams’s conclusion (2010, §6.1) that the boundaries between slaves and other lower-stratum individuals were fluid and poorly defined. This study also references the earliest known attestation of the concept of reform through detainment.