Third Millennium Legal And Administrative Texts In The Iraq Museum Baghdad

Texts transliteration and translation into English from Sumerian and Akkadian.

At the beginning of Mesopotamia s Early Dynastic period, the political landscape was dominated by temple administrators, but by the end of the period, rulers whose titles we translate as king assumed control. This book argues that the ritual process of mourning, burying, and venerating dead elites contributed to this change. Part one introduces the rationale for seeing rituals as a means of giving material form to ideology and, hence, structuring overall power relations. Part two presents archaeological and textual evidence for the death rituals. Part three interprets symbolic objects found in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, showing they reflect ideological doctrines promoting the office of kingship. This book will be particularly useful for scholars of Mesopotamian archaeology and history.

Texts transliteration and translation into English from Sumerian and Akkadian.

Este volumen recoge las contribuciones de los doce académicos internacionales que participaron en los talleres realizados en la 49a Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (RAI) en Londres el 10 de julio de 2003 y la 51a RAI en Chicago el 19 de julio de 2005. Tales talleres se centraron en el reino de la Tercera Dinastía Ur (2112-2004 a. C.), uno de los primeros y mejor documentados períodos de formación en la Antigüedad. Los reyes Ur crearon un nuevo estado territorial en el sur de Mesopotamia, unido a un complejo aparato administrativo para gobernarlo. Un notable número de registros de este reino ha sobrevivido en forma de decenas de miles de tablillas de arcilla. Los capítulos de este volumen se centran en el funcionamiento real de esta nueva administración y la organización de dichos registros documentales; en las cuestiones específicas de la administración real, desde la presentación al rey de los aparatos de control administrativo a la organización de la fuerza de trabajo; y en la creación y el almacenamiento de textos tanto dentro como fuera de la administración real.

This book presents a reassessment of the governmental systems of the Late Babylonian period—specifically those of the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian empires—and provides evidence demonstrating that these are among the first to have developed an early form of administrative law. The present study revolves around a particular expression that, in its most common form, reads ḫīṭu ša šarri išaddad and can be translated as “he will be guilty (of an offense) against the king.” The authors analyze ninety-six documents, thirty-two of which have not been previously published, discussing each text in detail, including the syntax of this clause and its legal consequences, which involve the delegation of responsibility in an administrative context. Placing these documents in their historical and institutional contexts, and drawing from the theories of Max Weber and S. N. Eisenstadt, the authors aim to show that the administrative bureaucracy underlying these documents was a more complex, systematized, and rational system than has previously been recognized. Accompanied by extensive indexes, as well as transcriptions and translations of each text analyzed here, this book breaks new ground in the study of ancient legal systems.

This book explores the reasons for which weights and scales were used to measure goods in Early Mesopotamia (ca. 3,200-2,000 BCE). The vast corpus of cuneiform records from this period sheds light on the various mechanisms behind the development of this cultural innovation. Weighing became the means of articulating the value of both imported and locally-produced goods within a socioeconomic system that had reached an unprecedented level of complexity. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of this cultural and economic phenomenon, which simultaneously reflected and shaped the relationships between individuals and groups in Mesopotamia throughout the third millennium BCE.

While Human-Animal Studies is a rapidly growing field in modern history, studies on this topic that focus on the Ancient World are few. The present volume aims at closing this gap. It investigates the relation between humans, animals, gods, and things with a special focus on the structure of these categories. An improved understanding of the ancient categories themselves is a precondition for any investigation into the relation between them. The focus of the volume lies on the Ancient Near East, but it also provides studies on Ancient Greece, Asia Minor, Mesoamerica, the Far East, and Arabia.