Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History

Marc Van De Mieroop

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134646418
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History discusses how the abundant Mesopotamian cuneiform text sources can be used for the study of various aspects of history: political, social, economic and gender. Marc Van De Mieroop provides a student-friendly introduction to the subject and:
* criticises disciplinary methodologies which are often informed by a desire to write a history of events
* scrutinises the intellectual background of historical writings
* examines how Mesopotamia's position as the 'other' in Classical and Biblical writings has influenced scholarship
* illustrates approaches with examples taken from the entirety of Mesopotamian history.

Chapter 1
The First Half of History¹

A long time ago in a far-away land history was made when people—one or more, man or woman—invented writing. As far as we know this happened around the year 3000 BC in the city of Uruk in southern Iraq,² where a truly urban culture had developed independently from any outside influence or inspiration. Uruk was an enormous city, perhaps some 5.5 square kilometers in size, with majestic temples, monumental art, a society with unprecedented complexity and social hierarchy, which required a method of record keeping that was sufficiently flexible to represent the spoken language. The exact definition of “writing” is not so easily established, but it has to be distinguished from marks and signs that convey information without a connection to the phonetic form of the language spoken by the writer. “Writing is written language” (Gelb 1952:13). Thus in many non-literate or prehistoric cultures marks of ownership exist, but these do not represent the pronunciation of the owner’s name; they are only symbols recognized by more than one person as the identification of individuals. When, however, a name is phonetically rendered we can speak of writing. For the first 600 years at least the script remained limited in its ability to render language, and texts written are barely intelligible to us, because they were primarily mnemonic devices (Bottéro 1992:67–86). They differ, however, from the record-keeping devices that preceded them in that they show that the concept of representing the sounds of words was understood. This was a Mesopotamian invention, or more precisely one made in Sumer, the southernmost region of Mesopotamia. Thus “history begins at Sumer” as the title of a popular book proclaims (Kramer 1959), if we accept the dictum that writing is the characteristic that separates history from prehistory. And since the present book deals with cuneiform writing and history I will take the invention of writing in Sumer as its starting point.

The writing system invented or developed around 3000 BC was of a pictographic character; its signs were drawings. But quite soon it evolved into a script now called cuneiform, wedge-shaped writing, probably as a result of the materials used: upon a pillow-shaped tablet of moist clay signs were traced with a sharp reed stylus. It soon became clear that it was more convenient and faster to impress the stylus upon the clay surface thereby forming box-shaped characters rather than rounded ones. This evolution was completed by 2400 BC. The cuneiform signs were made up of straight lines, with a broader head where the, now blunt, stylus was pressed into the clay, which led to the wedge-shaped look. In later periods when inscriptions were carved on stone, these wedges were imitated by the stone-cutters, and they have become characteristic of the writing system. The evolution of the script is of little importance here.³ The spread of the use of this script, both for the type of subject matters that were recorded and for its geographical extent and the length of its use, will be further discussed, however, in order to establish a basis for an evaluation of its uses to the historian.

Cuneiform is a script, not a language. It can be used to render any language, even though it was developed, most likely, to write Sumerian. Already in the twenty-fifth century it also recorded Akkadian, a Semitic language very different in character from the Sumerian one. And, although it did have difficulties representing the phonetic differences between certain consonants in Akkadian, it functioned as well as any writing system in rendering that language. Cuneiform was used throughout the centuries to write a large variety of languages, some Semitic like Eblaic and Aramaic, some Indo- European, like Hittite, and some without any known linguistic affiliation, like Hurrian, Urartean, or Elamite.

The region of modern-day Iraq and north-eastern Syria, traditionally called Mesopotamia among scholars of its ancient history, has always been the heartland of the use of the cuneiform writing system. Here the script was invented; here it was adapted for the rendering of various languages; from here it spread over the rest of the Middle East due to political and cultural expansion; and here it remained in use the longest until it died out completely in the first century AD. The total number of published texts so far easily surpasses 50,000, and even larger quantities remain unpublished in museums, while the numbers still to be excavated cannot be fathomed. The materials used to write, clay and reed, were abundantly available and cheap, and the archaeological conditions of the region promoted the preservation of the tablets. When the building in which they were kept was burned down, the clay was baked and became almost indestructible. When no burning took place, a more common occurrence, the building collapse, also of clay, protected them. Moreover, often in antiquity itself disused tablets were employed to fill benches or underneath floors, where they remained sealed. The climatic conditions of the region with its great aridity have preserved these objects quite well. Only when the water table has risen above the levels where tablets are to be found, as in Babylon of the early second millennium BC, did the humidity dissolve them. It is clear that other writing materials were in use at times in the region, certainly parchment and wax tables, but these have almost all disappeared.

A recent detailed survey of the cuneiform textual material from Mesopotamia is not available, although it would be of great value to specialist and layman alike. I will not provide one here either, but hope to delineate in broad outlines what a historian has to work with, based on knowledge of published, and if available unpublished, texts. In Table 2 an estimate is given of the numbers of various types of texts available in the periods we traditionally distinguish in the histories of Babylonia and Assyria. I include there all texts, not just those that have historical relevance. These periods are in my opinion of little historical value as they are based on philological criteria rather than historical ones, in that dynasties with extensive textual remains (e.g. Ur III) are assigned separate periods, while those with little written evidence are lumped together into a long period (e.g. Middle Babylonian; Van De Mieroop 1997a). But since the abundance or scarcity of textual records are of concern here, this periodization of history will suffice. Admittedly the distinctions I rely on, abundant, common, and few, are extremely imprecise, but they are often the result of the lack of information provided by specialists working on particular periods of time. Obviously, the situation constantly changes in that new excavations can yield thousands of documents overnight but, in general, recent finds in the Mesopotamian heartland have not changed the distribution of well and poorly documented time-periods.

In Table 3 are listed the historical periods of Babylonia and Assyria, with the names of the cities where the most important text finds for that period were made. It can be easily seen that certain places, such as Nippur and Uruk, have yielded texts from most2 Approximate numbers of various text types in the periods of Babylonian and Assyrian history. A=abundant, more than 5,000; C=common, more than 100; F=few, less than 100. Table historical periods, while others, such as Kanesh, are known in one period only. This can be the result of historical circumstances, in that a place was only occupied for a short period of time, or of the excavation history. Certain sites, such as Uruk, have been extensively excavated for close to a century now, while others, like Dur-Kurigalzu, were only explored for a short while. The politics of the Middle East often influence the possibilities for excavation. For instance, since the 1970s Syria has been the focus of much archaeological work, partly due to the political circumstances in Iraq. Consequently, many new textual remains from that country have been uncovered, fundamentally changing the geographical coverage of documentation available to us. Future excavations may cause new shifts in the focus of the documentation at hand.

Table 2 Approximate numbers of various text types in the periods of Babylonian and Assyrian history. A=abundant, more than 5,000; C=common, more than 100; F=few, less than 100.

The types of text available to the historian are very varied in nature, each “genre” presenting its own challenges. In what follows I will discuss the categories used in Table 2 with special concern for their historical use. This discussion cannot be exhaustive, as the typology employed here is rather crude and as all sorts of ways exist in which to analyze these textual remains, but I hope it will become clear how rich the documentation at hand is.

ADMINISTRATIVE DOCUMENTS

Cuneiform was invented for the purpose of record-keeping by the public institutions and for its entire history this remained one of its primary purposes. Public administrative documents are common in almost all periods, produced by bureaucracies of palaces and temples. The complexity of their economies required records of transfers of goods: for instance, in the archive of a craft workshop attached to the palace, we find evidence of deliveries of materials, of internal transfers from one department to another, and of issues of finished products. The materials were tracked in order to ascertain that no unauthorized deductions were made, and in this spirit it was irrelevant whether the amounts involved were large or small, even nil. Thus an office that had to account for its receipts on a daily basis could provide the information that no activity took place. Some short examples of records from

the royal workshop at Isin of the twentieth century BC will illustrate this point.

Table 3 Chronology of Mesopotamian history with selected text finds

1. Delivery of material to workshop officials: 180 liters of bitumen from the storage house, Shu-Ninkarak received. Copy, sealed by Nanna-kiag. Date (month, year, day) (Van De Mieroop 1987a: no. 19).
2. Issue of material to craftsmen: 2 liters bitumen, first time; 2 liters bitumen, second time; to Lu-Ninshubur, the barber; 2 liters bitumen, first time; 2 liters bitumen, second time; to Ipqusha, the reedworker; via Nur-Eshtar; 20 liters bitumen to Ili-usrani, the scribe; via Kurrub-Erra, the accountant. Date (month, year). From Nanna-kiag (ibid.: no. 62).
3. Issues of finished products by workshop officials: [] flutes, the bitumen used for them was 2.5 liters, offerings for Enlil, via Ur- Shulpa’e; 4 waterskins for double-mouthed water-proofed drinking vessels for the king, via Lu-Ninshubur; [2 lines broken], via Liburbeli. Issued by Shu-Ninkarak. Date (month, year, day) (ibid.: no. 133).
4. Record of no activity: On day 10 there was no activity. Date (month, year) (ibid.: no. 199).

Administrative archives are to be found in almost all periods of Mesopotamian history, almost everywhere where cuneiform writing was used. They predominate in our textual record because the public institutions were commonly the most prominent economic units in a city or district, and because archaeological exploration, both scientific and illicit, has concentrated on the monumental buildings in which they were stored. The records continue to serve the same purposes, although there are many variations in their structures and subject matters. Since many of them are dated to the day, they allow us to reconstruct activities of certain palace or temple bureaux in a good chronological framework. Their value as historical sources lies in different areas: they enable the study of economic activity; they can illustrate the deeds of rulers or institutions known from other sources; and their dates can demonstrate the control of a dynasty over a particular town.

The study of economic activities is an obvious goal for those scholars working with administrative documents and will be discussed in Chapter 4. Since the archives derive from temples and palaces whose elites are known from other sources as well, we can sometimes find evidence about the activities of kings, princesses, and the like in them, or we can reconstruct part of the careers of higher administrators. Finally, because of the dating practices inMesopotamia, to be discussed presently, administrative records, as well as private legal texts, can provide information on the political control of a particular town. Since each dynasty had its own system of year names, eponyms, or regnal years, the find of a dated tablet at a site identifies who was politically in control there. For instance, in early second-millennium Babylonia various city-based dynasties fought for hegemony over the region, including Uruk, Larsa, Isin, and Babylon. If a tablet dated to a king of Larsa is found in the city of Nippur, we know that the latter was controlled by Larsa at that time. In the later second millennium the presence of Assyrian eponym dated tablets at northern Syrian sites shows how the Assyrian state had expanded in the west at that time. Such information is more accurate, temporally and geographically, and less biased by propagandistic tendencies than statements to that effect in royal annals, for instance. Hence, administrative documents provide valuable information in various areas of history.

PRIVATE LEGAL DOCUMENTS

In the private economic sphere certain individuals and families were engaged in sufficiently complex economic activities to necessitate detailed record keeping. Moreover, legal transactions resulting in the transfer of property where ownership could be contested in the future also required a document that testified to the owner’s rights. The majority of these records were kept in the houses of the individuals involved and hence are to be found in the residential areas of towns. These are, unfortunately, still sparsely investigated. We know from certain chance finds that the extent of these archives could be enormous: for instance, in the northern Babylonian city of Sippar-Amnanum (modern Tell ed-Der), the house of a lamentation priest of the goddess Annunitum, named Ur-Utu, was discovered containing 1,985 tablets and fragments. These include private loan contracts, sales, and rentals, letters, religious texts (prayers, omens), and school texts. The archive also contained administrative documents such as ration lists for military and religious personnel, and it was not an unusual occurrence that temple or palace officials kept some of their work-related documents at home. The archive covers a period of some 250 years, and was recovered so completely because the house in which it was stored was burned down in 1729 BC (Gasche 1989:42, 105–7).

There are also some unique documents that describe the contents of an individual’s archive, which show that they were a lot more extensive than anything we have recovered so far. For instance, a Middle Assyrian text from Assur, dating to the thirteenth century, provides an inventory of a store-room belonging to a prominent family. The text has three sections detailing (i) a chariot and spare parts; (ii) tablets in a variety of containers; and (iii) various items such as furniture, utensils, weapons, etc. The second part lists a large number of tablets recording the debts of individuals or groups:

1 chest of (obligations) on Shamash-erish; 1 chest of clearance(s) of people and fields, of (the town of) Sharika; 1 chest of (obligations) on Assur-la-tahatti; 1 ditto (=chest) of expropriated tablets of [ (obligations) on citizens of As]sur; 1 ditto of (obligations) on Assur-mushabshi [ ]; 1 ditto of (obligations) on Ishtar-erish; 1 chest [ ] of the (town of) Karana; 1 ditto of (obligations) on craftsmen; 1 [chest of] cattle and donkeys owed by the citizens of Assur; 1 ditto of (obligations) on Rish-Adad; 1 chest of herald’s proclamations for houses in the Inner City (=Assur); 1 chest of sheep owed by citizens of Assur; 1 ditto of corn owed by citizens of Assur; 1 ditto of mixed silver owed by citizens of Assur; 1 di[tto of] and donkeys owed by shepherds; 1 vat of tablets of Rish-Adad; 1 chest of tablets of the palace owed by the horse-trainer; 1 chest of envelopes of Rish-Adad; 1 half-vessel of…of the provinces(?); 1 vat of (obligations) on Uqa-den-ili(?); 1 pot(?) of Arzuhina workmanship (of) Mannu-gir-[ ] and his brothers and Sin-sheya; 1 vat of tablets of [PN], the butler; 1 chest [ ] of…of clear[ances(?)]; 1 chest of… of [ ] of Ishtar-ummi and Shamash-lu-dayyan; 1 vat (and) 1 vessel of letters(?). Total: 24 chests of tablets.

(Postgate 1988: no. 50)

Such an extensive archive, carefully boxed and labelled, has never been recovered by us. But it is only in numbers that our known archives are lacking, not in variety. Private citizens kept only specific sets of records, namely those that documented that something was owed to them, or that proved their ownership. Thus, of the legal documents of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh dating to the years 747 to 660 BC, 350 texts in total, 30 percent are loans and 63.7 percent are records of purchase (Kwasman and Parpola 1991:xxii).

The loan is probably the most common private business transaction we find in the textual record, because it was not solely an outright gift of goods to be returned at a later date, but also functioned as a mechanism of exchange in a society with a poorly developed market. Thus, when an artisan was hired to make a pair of sandals, a “loan” of silver was issued to be repaid with sandals at some appointed time. Of primary importance was the fact that the creditor, or customer, could demonstrate that he or she was owed something. Once the obligation of the debtor was fulfilled, the document was destroyed, so that we only have a minute fraction of the number that was written down. A typical neo-Assyrian loan document reads as follows:

Seal of Mannu-ki-ahi, deputy (governor) of Arrapha; seal of Nabu-ashared. 10 minas of silver, capital, by the mina of Carchemish, belonging to Remanni-Adad, chief chariot driver, at their disposal. They shall pay back the capital of the silver in the month Nisan (I). [If they do not pa]y, the silver shall increase by a fourth. Witness, date (month, day, year)

.

(Kwasman and Parpola 1991: no. 318)

Sale documents were kept longer. When they involved living creatures, slaves, or animals, they may have been preserved for their lifetimes. When real estate was acquired—fields, orchards, or houses—the new owner kept the sale document, together with earlier deeds that ascertained the legitimacy of ownership of the seller, and these records were passed on to the heirs (Charpin 1986). The purpose of these records was very circumscribed: they protected the owner against legal claims on property. Similarly, inheritance division records and dowry lists testified to the legality of ownership. The format of the documents reflects this concern. This is, for instance, a neo-Assyrian record of an acquisition of a house:

Fingernail of Sharru-lu-dari, fingernail of Atar-suru, fingernail of Amat-Su’la, wife of Bel-duri, shield-bearing “third man,” owners of the house being sold. A house with its beams, doors and a yard in Nineveh, adjoining the house of Mannu-ki-ahhe, the house of Ilu-issiya, and the street, Silli-Assur, Egyptian scribe, has contracted and bought for one mina of silver (by the mina) of the king from Sharru-lu-dari, Atar-suru and Amat-Su’la, the wife of Bel-duri. The money is paid completely. That house is purchased and acquired. Any revocation, lawsuit, or litigation is void. Whoever in the future, at any time, whether these men (or anyone else), seeks a lawsuit and litigation against Silli-Assur, shall pay 10 minas of silver. Witnesses, and date (month, day, year).

(Kwasman and Parpola 1991: no 142)

I do not want to downplay the enormous variety and richness of known to us, but it is wrong to assume that basically everything was written down in antiquity. The docum...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST HALF OF HISTORY1
• CHAPTER 2: HISTORY FROM ABOVE
• CHAPTER 3: HISTORY FROM BELOW
• CHAPTER 4: ECONOMIC HISTORY
• CHAPTER 5: GENDER AND MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY
• CONCLUSIONS
• NOTES
• ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
• BIBLIOGRAPHY