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THE BABYLONIAN WORLD
‫ﱙﱚﱙ‬
As the layers of the foundations of modern science and mathematics and the builders
of a towering, monumental urban city, the Babylonians were by far the most insistent
people of the ancient world in addressing an audience beyond their time. This lavishly
illustrated volume refl ects the modernity of this advanced and prescient civilization
with thirty-eight brand new essays from leading international scholars who view this
world power of the Ancient Near East with a fresh and contemporary lens.
Drawing from the growing database of cuneiform tablets, epigraphic research, and
the most recent archaeological advances in the fi eld, Gwendolyn Leick•s collection
serves as the defi nitive reference resource as well as an introductory text for university
students.
By bringing into focus areas of concern typical for our own time – such as ecology,
urbanism, power relations, plurality and complexity – this essential volume offers a
variety of perspectives on certain key topics to refl ect the current academic approaches
and focus. These shifting viewpoints and diverse angles onto the •Babylonian World•
result in a truly kaleidoscopic view which reveals patterns and bright fragments of
this •lost world• in unexpected ways.
From discussions of agriculture and rural life to the astonishing walled city of
Babylon with its massive ramparts and towering ziggurats, from Babylonian fashion
and material culture to its spiritual world, indivisible from that of the everyday, The
Babylonian World is a sweeping and ambitious survey for students and specialists of
this great civilization.
Gwendolyn Leick is presently senior lecturer at Chelsea College of Art and Design.
A specialist in the Ancient Near East, she has published extensively on the topic,
including The Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Architecture and Who•s Who in the
Ancient Near East.
THE ROUTLEDGE WORLDS
THE GREEK WORLD
Edited by Anton Powell
THE ROMAN WORLD
Edited by John Wacher
THE BIBLICAL WORLD
Edited by John Barton
THE EARLY CHRISTIAN WORLD
Edited by Philip F. Esler
THE CELTIC WORLD
Edited by Miranda Green
THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
Edited by Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson
THE REFORMATION WORLD
Edited by Andrew Pettegree
THE ENLIGHTENMENT WORLD
Edited by Martin Fitzpatrick, Peter Jones,
Christa Knellwolf and Iain McCalman
THE HINDU WORLD
Edited by Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby
THE BABYLONIAN WORLD
Edited by Gwendolyn Leick
Forthcoming:
THE EGYPTIAN WORLD
Edited by Toby Wilkinson
THE VIKING WORLD
Edited by Stefan Brink and Neil Price
THE RENAISSANCE WORLD
Edited by John Jeffries Martin
THE ELIZABETHAN WORLD
Edited by Susan Doran and Norman Jones
THE OTTOMAN WORLD
Edited by Christine Woodhead
THE BYZANTINE WORLD
Edited by Paul Stephenson
THE BABYLONIAN
WORLD
‫ﱙﱚﱙ‬
Edited by
Gwendolyn Leick
First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2007 Gwendolyn Leick
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Babylonian world/edited by Gwendolyn Leick. – 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Babylonia. I. Leick, Gwendolyn, 1951–
DS69.5.B23 2007
935′.02 – dc22
2006102809
ISBN 0-203-94623-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–35346–7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–08945–6 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–35346–5 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–08945–3 (ebk)
Lebensalter*
Ihr Städte des Euphrats!
Ihr Gassen von Palmyra!
Ihr Säulenwälder in der Eb•ne der Wüste,
Was seid ihr?
Euch hat die Kronen,
Dieweil ihr über die Gränze
Der Othmenden seid gegangen,
Von Himmlischen der Rauchdampf und
Hinweg das Feuer genommen;
Jezt aber siz•ich unter Wolken, darin
Ein jedes eine Ruh•hat eigen, unter
Wohleingerichteten Eichen, auf
Der Heide des Rehs, und fremd
Erscheinen und gestorben mir
Der Seeligen Geister.
Friedrich Hölderlin
* Translation is on p. 591.
CONTENTS
‫ﱙﱚﱙ‬
x
xiv
List of illustrations
List of contributors
1 Introduction
Gwendolyn Leick
1
PART I: LAND AND LAND USE
2 The world of Babylonian countrysides
Seth Richardson
13
3 Land and land use: the middle Euphrates valley
Lucia Mori
39
4 Agricultural techniques
Blahoslav Hruska
54
5 Urban form in the fi rst millennium BC
Heather D. Baker
66
PART II: MATERIAL CULTURE
6 Architecture in the Old Babylonian period
Harriet Crawford
81
7 Babylonian seals
Dominique Collon
95
8 Babylonian sources of exotic raw materials
D. T. Potts
124
9 Cloth in the Babylonian world
Irene Good
141
10 The Babylonian visual image
Zainab Bahrani
155
vii
—
Contents —
11 Food and drink in Babylonia
Frances Reynolds
171
PART III: ECONOMIC LIFE
12 Economy of ancient Mesopotamia: a general outline
Johannes Renger
187
13 The Old Babylonian economy
Anne Goddeeris
198
14 Aspects of society and economy in the later Old Babylonian Period
Frans van Koppen
210
15 The Babylonian economy in the fi rst millennium
Michael Jursa
224
BC
16 The Egibi family
Cornelia Wunsch (translated from German by Gwendolyn Leick)
236
PART IV: SOCIETY AND POLITICS
17 Social confi gurations in Early Dynastic Babylonia (c.2500–2334
Petr Charvát
BC)
251
18 The palace and the temple in Babylonia
Walther Sallaberger
265
19 Power, economy and social organisation in Babylonia
Gebhard J. Selz
276
20 Arameans and Chaldeans: environment and society
Frederick Mario Fales
288
21 Women and gender in Babylonia
Laura D. Steele
299
PART V: RELIGION
22 The role and function of goddesses in Mesopotamia
Brigitte Groneberg
319
23 Inanna and Ishtar in the Babylonian world
Joan Goodnick Westenholz
332
24 The Babylonian god Marduk
Takayoshi Oshima
348
25 Divination culture and the handling of the future
Stefan M. Maul (translated from German by Gwendolyn Leick)
361
26 Witchcraft literature in Mesopotamia
Tzvi Abusch
373
viii
—
Contents —
PART VI: INTELLECTUAL LIFE:
CUNEIFORM WRITING AND LEARNING
27 Incantations within Akkadian medical texts
M. J. Geller
389
28 The writing, sending, and reading of letters in the Amorite world
Dominique Charpin (translated from French by Dafydd Roberts)
400
29 Mathematics, metrology, and professional numeracy
Eleanor Robson
418
30 Babylonian lists of words and signs
Jon Taylor
432
31 Gilgamesh and the literary traditions of ancient Mesopotamia
A. R. George
447
32 Mesopotamian astral science
David Brown
460
33 Late Babylonian intellectual life
Paul-Alain Beaulieu
473
PART VII: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:
BABYLONIA AND THE ANCIENT
NEAR EASTERN WORLD
34 Egypt and Mesopotamia
David A. Warburton
487
35 A view from Hattusa
Trevor Bryce
503
36 Relations between Babylonia and the Levant during the
Kassite period
P. S. Vermaak
515
37 Looking down the Tigris: the interrelations between Assyria
and Babylonia
Hannes D. Galter
527
38 The view from Jerusalem: biblical responses to the Babylonian presence
Baruch A. Levine
541
39 The Persian empire
Amélie Kuhrt
562
Index
577
ix
I L L U S T R AT I O N S
‫ﱙﱚﱙ‬
FIGURES
Sustaining areas of Babylonian settlements
The middle Euphrates valley today, from the ruins of
Doura Europos
3.2 A map of the middle Euphrates valley showing the different
cultivated zones
4.1 Archaic sign for •ard•, •farmer•and •to plough•
4.2 Soil preparation with hoes
4.3 Seal impression showing animal traction, working team and
seeding plough
5.1 Plan of Nippur, c.1500 BC
6.1 A hypothetical reconstruction of the temple at Tell Rimah
6.2 Plan of the temple at Tell Rimah
6.3 •Barley sugar•pillars at Tell Rimah
7.1 Warrior king, Lama and small naked woman
7.2 Lama, the warrior king and the goddess Ishtar
7.3 Representations of the Lama goddess
7.4 Presentation scene before seated king
7.5 Impressions of seals, probably of the seventeenth century BC,
showing the use of cutting wheel and drill
7.6 Envelope fragment from Sippar with impressions of a Babylonian
presentation scene, and a seal combining Babylonian and Syrian
motifs
7.7 Impression of purkullu seal
7.8 Nude hero fi ghting bull-man; nude hero fi ghting lion; naked
woman; Ishtar; fi lling motifs
7.9 Four winds; small storm god on lion-dragon; small priest;
fi lling motifs
7.10 Presentation scene before seated goddess
7.11 Lama; king with offering; the sun god Shamash; lightning
fork of the storm god Adad
2.1
3.1
x
21
40
43
55
57
61
75
85
86
88
96
96
97
98
98
99
100
101
102
102
103
—
Illustrations —
7.12 Warrior god; priest on dais with cup and bucket; warrior god;
warrior god brandishing sword, whirling mace and treading
on fallen enemy
7.13 The gods Amurru (with crooks) and Adad; robed king with
offering; robed god
7.14 Lama; warrior king; god with ladder-patterned robe; fi lling motifs
7.15 Lion-griffi ns attacking goat; lion attacking one of two nude
heroes fi ghting lion
7.16 Two fi gures; fi lling motifs
7.17 Seated god; fi lling motifs
7.18 Worshipper with fan before seated fi gure with cup; fi lling motifs
7.19 Scene based on Egyptian depictions of Levantines
7.20 Water god, with fl owing vases, between mountains and fl owers
7.21 Animal; tree; border of triangles
7.22 Robed fi gure holding staff
7.23 Votive seal carved in relief (NB). The storm god Adad on a dais
7.24 Bird-griffi n and winged gazelle
7.25 Hero fi ghting lion
7.26 Hero and ostrich
7.27 Hero fi ghting lion
7.28 A god and mythical beasts
7.29 Winged heroes with bird and sphinx; fi lling motif
7.30 Winged hero between ibex-horned, winged sphinxes;
fi lling motifs
7.31 Winged hero fi ghting inverted lions; fi lling motifs
7.32 Winged hero between bird-griffi ns
7.33 Tree fl anked by winged heroes with cone and bucket
7.34 Priest with cup and bucket before offering table and altars
with symbols
7.35 Pyramidal seal. Priest before altar with symbols
7.36 Enlarged ancient impressions, made by two Babylonian seals
8.1 The •Loftus Hoard•
9.1 Seal of a presentation scene of a fi gure being led by a goddess
to a seated male deity
9.2 Scene from a wall painting found at the palace of Mari, showing
multi-colored wrap garments
9.3 Relief sculpture from Khorsabad showing fringed skirt
9.4 Seal depicting a hero fi ghting wild animals
9.5 Assyrian palace relief sculpture of a threshold with fringe outer
border, from Khorsabad
9.6 Close-up of textile pseudomorph from Abu Salabikh
10.1 Stele of Ashurbanipal, 668–652 BC
10.2 Stele of Hammurabi, 1760 BC
10.3 Lu-Nanna votive portrait, 1792–1750 BC
10.4 Kudurru of Nebuchadnezzar I, 1125–1104 BC
10.5 Kudurru of Marduk Nadin Ahhe, 1099–1082 BC
10.6 Throne room wall of Nebuchadnezzar II, 604–562 BC
xi
104
105
106
106
107
108
109
109
110
111
112
112
113
114
114
115
115
116
117
117
118
118
119
119
120
125
142
144
148
149
149
152
156
159
161
164
165
166
—
10.7
11.1
14.1
14.2
16.1
16.2
17.1
17.2
17.3
18.1
18.2
19.1
20.1
20.2
21.1
21.2
23.1
23.2
23.3
24.1
25.1
27.1
28.1
28.2
28.3
28.4
28.5
28.6
29.1
29.2
30.1
30.2
30.3
31.1
32.1
33.1
34.1
Illustrations —
Portrait of a woman, third–second centuries BC
Assyrian palace relief showing a fi sherman
Map showing changes in the main inter-regional trade routes
of the early second millennium BC
Two impressions of the same seal on a tablet from Hursagkalama
dating to the eighteenth year of Ammisaduqa
Tablet from the Egibi archive showing a fi eld plan
Schematic interpretation of the fi eld plan
Seal impression of king Mesannepada of Ur, 2563–2524 BCE
A Sumerian temple of early third millennium BCE
Fragment of a storage jar from Tepe Gawra, layer VI,
twenty-fourth century BCE
Reconstructed map of Babylon in the fi rst millennium
Model of the Marduk sanctuaries in Babylon; the Processional Way
and the Ishtar Gate
Detail of the Code of Ur-Nammu, showing the measuring rope
Kudurru of Marduk-apla-iddina II
Assyrian palace relief showing Chaldean captives in a date
palm grove
Babylonian terracotta relief of couple making love, while
the woman is drinking beer through a long straw
Old Babylonian terracotta bust of a woman
Green calcite cylinder seal and impression depicting a cultic scene
Drawing of the top two registers of the cultic vase from Uruk
Impression of Old Babylonian cylinder seal
Drawing based on a cylinder seal of Marduk dedicated by the
Babylonian king, Marduk-zakir-shumi
Old Babylonian clay model of a sheep•s liver, c.1700 BC
Seal impression showing an incantation priest at work
on a patient
Example of a memorandum which shows signs of carelessness
Passage of a letter which shows a change of mind by the scribe
Envelope of a letter by Zimri-Lim Tis-ulme
Label of a tablet-basket in the shape of an olive
Example of a copy of a letter within a letter
A short letter of accreditation
The obverse of a mathematical tablet
The geometrical manipulations implicit in YBC 6967
A fragment of the fi rst tablet of Erimhush from Nineveh
An example of the fi rst tablet of Ea, from Assur
An example of the second tablet of Aa, from Sippar
Ashur-ra•im-napishti•s copy of Tablet VI of the Babylonian Epic
of Gilgamesh
Copy of part of a Babylonian treatise on astronomy and astrology
Kudurru of the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi
Letter from Burnaburiash, king of Babylon, to Amenophis IV,
king of Egypt
xii
167
181
213
214
242
243
252
255
258
266
267
278
294
295
304
306
334
334
337
350
370
391
402
404
405
406
410
412
420
423
439
441
441
454
466
482
489
—
35.1
37.1
37.2
37.3
37.4
39.1
39.2
Illustrations —
The restored ramparts of the Hittite capital Hattusa
Tablet containing the so-called •Synchronistic History•
Central panel of the throne base of Shalmaneser III from Nimrud
Assyro-Babylonian treaty, written in 821 BCE
Assyrian relief depicting the deportation of the Babylonians
Drawing of part of a panel from Persepolis, showing Babylonians
bringing gifts
Seal inscribed with the name Darius in Persian, Elamite
and Babylonian
504
529
531
532
534
564
572
TABLES
2.1
2.2
2.3
8.1
34.1
Number of villages (⭐ 2 ha.) in selected middle/lower Babylonian
areas
Distribution of settlements as percentage of total occupational
area
Old Babylonian Sumero-Akkadian varietal terms for
countryside places
Sources of Mesopotamian copper through the millennia
Middle Babylonian period, c.1600… 900
xiii
16
17
19
126
492
CONTRIBUTORS
‫ﱙﱚﱙ‬
Tzvi Abusch is Rose B. and Joseph Cohen Professor of Assyriology and Ancient
Near Eastern Religion at Brandeis University. He received his Ph.D. in Assyriology
from Harvard University. He has taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has held a number of awards
and fellowships. Most recently, he was a member of the Institutes for Advanced Study
in Princeton (2003–4) and in Jerusalem (2006). His primary fi elds of research and
publication are Mesopotamian religion, magic, literature and thought, as well as
biblical and Babylonian interconnections. A number of his studies on magic and
mythology are to be found in his Mesopotamian Witchcraft: Towards a History and
Understanding of Babylonian Witchcraft Beliefs and Literature (Leiden: Brill/Styx, 2002)
and The Epic of Gilgamesh: Male and Female Encounters and Other Issues (Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, in press).
Zainab Bahrani is the Edith Porada Associate Professor of Ancient Near Eastern
Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. She is the author of, among
other publications, Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia (London:
Routledge, 2001), and The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). Prior to her appointment at
Columbia University, Professor Bahrani taught at the University of Vienna in Austria,
and The State University of New York, at Stony Brook, and was a curator at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art•s Near Eastern Antiquities Department from 1989–1992.
Heather D. Baker, after graduating in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge,
participated in numerous excavations in Britain, Cyprus, Jordan, Turkey and especially
in Iraq. At the University of Oxford she gained an M.Phil. in Cuneiform Studies and
a D.Phil. in Assyriology. Since January 2003 she has been working as a Researcher
with the START Project on •The Economic History of Babylonia in the 1st millennium
BC• at the University of Vienna. Her publications include a monograph, The Archive
of the Nappahu Family (2004), and (as editor) The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian
Empire, Part 2/I (2000), Part 2/II (2001), Part 3/I (2002), and Approaching the Babylonian
Economy (2005, with M. Jursa). Her research interests are in the social and economic
xiv
—
Contributors —
history and material culture of Babylonia and Assyria in the fi rst millennium BC. She
is currently working on a monograph on The Urban Landscape in First Millennium
BC Babylonia.
Paul-Alain Beaulieu is Visiting Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and
Civilizations in the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. His main
research interest is the history, culture, religion and intellectual life of Ancient Mesopotamia in the fi rst millennium BC. His publications include The Reign of Nabonidus,
King of Babylon (556– 539 BC) (Yale University Press, 1989), and The Pantheon of Uruk
During the Neo-Babylonian Period (Brill-Styx, 2003). He is currently preparing two
monographs on Neo-Babylonian archives, one documenting a family of entrepreneurs
from Larsa in the sixth century, the other one detailing the contribution of the city of
Uruk to the construction of king Nebuchadnezzar•s North Palace in Babylon.
David Brown is currently researching the transmission of astral science in the preMuslim period at the Free University of Berlin, funded by the German Research
Council. He was previously an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, a Lecturer in ancient
Near Eastern history at University College London for two years, and has taught
Assyriology at Oxford, Cambridge, and SOAS. His fi rst degree was in physics.
Trevor Bryce is presently Honorary Research Consultant at the University of
Queensland, Australia. He has conducted research on the History and Civilization of
the Near East in the second and fi rst millennia BC, with particular emphasis on
Anatolia. Recent publications include Life and Society in the Hittite World (Oxford
University Press, 2002), Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East (Routledge,
2003), The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford University Press, new edition, 2005).
Forthcoming are The Trojans and their Neighbours (Routledge), Hittite Warrior (Osprey)
and Dictionary of the Cities and Kingdoms of the Ancient Near East (Routledge).
Dominique Charpin has taught at the Sorbonne since 1975, then also at the École
Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He specializes in the Old Babylonian period and works
on archives from Iraq and Syria, especially Mari. He has recently published Mari et
le Proche-Orient à l•époque amorrite: essai d•histoire politique, Florilegium marianum V (Paris,
2003) (with N. Ziegler). His more popular book, Hammurabi de Babylone (Paris, 2003)
has been translated into English and Italian. He has just edited a work called Lire et
écrire en Babylonie ancienne. Écriture, acheminement et lecture des lettres d•après les archives
royales de Mari and is about to publish Writing, Law and Kingship in Ancient Babylonia.
Petr Charvát was born in 1949. He studied Assyriology and Archaeology at Charles
University, Prague, and has spent all his active research career in two Institutes of
the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
(after 1993): Archaeological (1975–1990) and Oriental. His main interest is the study
of the emergence of statehood and literate societies in prehistoric and ancient Western
Asia, based on archaeological and textual sources. His publications include On People,
Signs and States: Spotlights on Sumerian Society, c.3500– 2500 B. C. (Prague: The Oriental
Institute, 1997) and Mesopotamia Before History (London and New York: Routledge,
2002).
xv
—
Contributors —
Dominique Collon has recently retired from the British Museum where she was a
curator in the Department of the Ancient Near East with particular responsibility
for Seals, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Her numerous publications include three volumes
of the catalogue of the Museum•s seals (she is working on a fourth), First Impressions
– Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East (London, 1987; new edition 2005), and Ancient
Near Eastern Art (London, 1995) based on the Museum•s collections. She has travelled
extensively throughout the Near East, led many tours and excavated in Iraq, Syria
and Turkey.
Harriet Crawford specializes in the later prehistory of Mesopotamia and is an honorary
Visiting Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She
is also a Research Fellow at the McDonald Institute Cambridge and the author of
Sumer and the Sumerians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), as well as
a number of books on the archaeology of the Arabo/Persian Gulf.
Frederick Mario Fales is Full Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at the
University of Udine (Italy). His main scholarly interests concern the Neo-Assyrian
period, and range from historical studies to the edition of Assyrian and Aramaic texts
of this age. He is on the editorial board of two international projects on Neo-Assyrian
texts, State Archives of Assyria (Helsinki), and Studien zu den Assur-Texten (Berlin), to
which he has also contributed three co-authored monographs. He has founded an
international journal on Neo-Assyrian studies, the State Archives of Assyria Bulletin
(Padua), which has now reached its thirteenth annual volume. His most recent book,
Saccheggio in Mesopotamia (Udine [Forum], 2004) is an analysis of the 2003 pillage of
the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, framed within a history of the museum and of its rich
archaeological heritage, from Gertrude Bell to Saddam Hussein.
Hannes D. Galter is Universitätsdozent for Assyriology at the University of Graz.
He teaches Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern History at the University of Graz
and is co-editor of the •Grazer Morgenländische Studien•. He published several books
on Ancient Near Eastern topics such as Der mesopotamische Gott Enki/Ea (1983), Die
Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulturen Mesopotamiens (1993) and Kopftuch und Schleier (2001).
His main interests and working areas are Mesopotamian history, historiography and
literature and especially Assyrian royal inscriptions.
M. J. Geller is Professor of Semitic Languages at UCL, in the Department of Hebrew
and Jewish Studies. He spent the 2005–2006 academic year in Paris as Visiting
Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, with a grant from the Wellcome
Trust. He has published •Renal and rectal disease•, Babylonisch-Assyrische Medizin,
Vol. 7 (2005).
A. R. George is Professor of Babylonian at the School of Oriental and African Studies,
the University of London. His chief research focus is on Babylonian civilization,
especially literature, religion, mythology and intellectual achievement and his most
recent book is The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform
Texts (OUP, 2003). His new translation of Gilgamesh for Penguin Classics won the
2000 Kuwait-British Fellowship Society prize for Middle Eastern Studies.
xvi
—
Contributors —
Anne Goddeeris is based at the University of Leuven and is a specialist in economic
texts from the Old Babylonian period. Her book Economy and Society in Northern
Babylonia in the Early Old Babylonian Period (ca. 2000–1600 BC) appeared in 2002.
Irene Good is an archaeologist of Central and Western Asia and the Indo-Iranian
borderlands. She received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999
and since 2001 has been an Associate of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.
Her specifi c research interests concern cloth in all its aspects, from labour, technology
and materials, to social uses, semiotics, iconography and the symbolic uses of cloth
as a major component of material culture. As a Guggenheim Fellow, Dr Good
embarked on a major study entitled A Social Archaeology of Textiles, and is now
completing a book entitled Cloth and Carpet in Early Inner Asia, to be published
through Brill•s Inner Asia series. She has curated important textile collections as
Hardy Visiting Curator at the Peabody Museum, and has developed a novel application
of biochemical techniques to the study of severely degraded archaeological fi bres.
Dr Good•s current research is focused on the later Bronze period of Western China,
Afghanistan and the Indo-Iranian borderlands. She is currently directing a new
archaeological survey in southern Tajikistan.
Brigitte Groneberg is Professor for Assyriology at the University of Göttingen,
Germany. Her research interests are Akkadian grammar, Mesopotamian literature
and the Cultural History of the Ancient Near East. Her most recent book Die Götter
des Zweistromlandes; Kulte, Mythen, Epen, (Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf/Zurich: 2004)
provides an overview of religious concepts and cosmology in the Ancient Near East.
Anthony Howell was born in 1945. By 1995 he was a dancer in the Royal Ballet.
Soon after, he left the ballet to concentrate on writing. In 1973, he was invited to
join the programme for International Writers at the University of Iowa. Since then
his output has included many collections of poetry, mainly published by Anvil, the
most recent being his Selected Poems and Dancers in Daylight. His versions of Statius
and those of W. G. Shepherd were published by Anvil in 2007.
Blahoslav Hruška studied Assyriology and Archaeology at the Philosophical Faculty
of Charles University, Prague, and Sumerian at Munich. Since 1982, he has been
studying the theme of traditional Mesopotamian agriculture throughout several
research projects (Berlin: Free University and Max Planck Institute for the History
of Science; Oxford, UK: Sumerian Agriculture Group). He works as a researcher at
the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak and the Czech Academy of Sciences, and
he also teaches History, Culture and Religion of the Ancient Near East at the Hussite
Theological Faculty of Charles University, Prague.
Michael Jursa is Associate Professor at the University of Vienna. His main research
interests are Babylonian social and economic history and material culture. Currently
he is director of a project funded by the Fonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen
Forschung (Vienna) which aims at writing a comprehensive economic history of
Babylonia in the fi rst millennium BC.
xvii
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Contributors —
Frans van Koppen is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leiden. His main
interest is the second millennium BC.
Amélie Kuhrt is Professor for Ancient Near Eastern History at University College
London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research areas are: Mesopotamia
in the fi rst millennium BC; the Achaemenid Empire; Seleucid rule in Mesopotamia
and Iran. She is the author of The Ancient Near East, c.3000– 330 BC (2 vols; London:
Routledge, 1995) and of the forthcoming volume The Achaemenid Persian Empire: a
corpus of sources (London: Routledge, 2007).
Gwendolyn Leick is Senior Lecturer at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London.
Her last books were The Babylonians. An Introduction (Routledge, 2003) and Historical
Dictionary of Mesopotamia (Scarecrow Press, 2003).
Baruch A. Levine is Skirball Professor Emeritus of Bible and Ancient Near East
Studies, New York University. He is the author of commentaries on Leviticus and
Numbers, and his main research interests are religion and institutions of biblical
Israel. He is a student of the West-Semitic languages with publications on epigraphy
and recently published Assyrian Ideology and Israelite Monotheism (2005).
Stefan M. Maul is Professor of Assyriology at the University of Heidelberg and is a
recipient of the Leibniz prize. He specializes in the study of Babylonian incantations
and divination literature. His translation of the Gilgamesh epic into German was
published in 2005.
Lucia Mori teaches History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Tuscia,
Viterbo, Italy. She is involved in a long-term historical project aiming to reconstruct
the rural landscape in the ancient Near East, which has been promoted and directed
by Mario Liverani since the 1970s. In this broad project, her main interest has been
the study of the Middle Euphrates valley, and in 2003 she published a volume,
Reconstructing the Emar Landscape, for the series •Quaderni di Geografi a storica•published
by the Università •La Sapienza•, Rome. Since 1987 she has been working in Fezzan,
Libyan desert, in an archaeological investigation carried out by the Università •La
Sapienza• aimed at the study of the Saharan caravan trade routes in proto-historical
times. A fi rst volume, Aghram Nadharif, the Barkat Oasis in Garamantian Times, was
published in 2006, edited by Mario Liverani. A second volume on the archaeological
investigation in the oasis of Fewet is in preparation. In addition, she is a member of
the archaeological mission of Yale University in Tell Leilan, Syria, directed by Harvey
Weiss, and she collaborates in the study of the Akkadian occupation of the site, which
has been investigated during the past decade.
Takayoshi Oshima was born in Japan in 1967 and studied at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. He now teaches Jewish Studies at the University of Bucharest. His
research interests include the study of Mesopotamian religion and his Ph.D. dissertation
was entitled Hymns and Prayers to Marduk and his Divine Elements in the Texts. A book,
Cuneiform in Canaan: Cuneiform Sources from the Land of Isarel in Ancient Times, with
Wayne Horowitz, is in press.
xviii
—
Contributors —
D. T. Potts was educated at Harvard and the Free University of Berlin and is Edwin
Cuthbert Hall Professor of Middle Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney.
He has conducted fi eldwork in Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,
and is editor-in-chief of the journal Arabian Archaeology & Epigraphy. He is the author
of numerous books and articles on the archaeology of Iran, Mesopotamia, the Persian
Gulf and the Arabian peninsula, including Mesopotamian Civilization: the material
foundations (1997), The Archaeology of Elam (1999), Ancient Magan (2000) and Excavations
at Tepe Yahya 1967– 1975: the third millennium (2001).
Johannes Renger is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Freie
Universität Berlin. He studied Theology (i.a. Old Testament Studies), Assyriology,
Egyptology and Semitic Languages at the Universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg
(gaining his Ph.D. in Assyriology from the University of Heidelberg 1965). He was
a research associate and taught at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. From
1976 to 2002 he was Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Freie Universität
Berlin. Special interests are economic and social history of the Ancient Near East
Mesopotamia, comparative economic history, history of Assyriology, and literary
criticism.
Frances Reynolds is a Shillito Fellow in Assyriology and Senior Research Fellow of
St Benet•s Hall at the University of Oxford. She is also a Sessional Lecturer at Birkbeck
College, University of London, and an Honorary Research Fellow of the University
of Birmingham. From September 2007, she will be contributing to a project on
cuneiform libraries at the University of Cambridge. Dr Reynolds• research interests
include Mesopotamian intellectual life and religion, and she is working on her
forthcoming book, Scholars and Invaders: Babylon under Threat in Astrology, Ritual, Myth
and Prophecy. Other forthcoming publications include •A divine body: new joins in
the Sippar Collection•, in Your Praise is Sweet: A Memorial Volume Presented to Jeremy
Allen Black by Colleagues, Students, and Friends (eds H.D. Baker, E. Robson and G.
Zólyomi, Oxford: Griffi th Institute, in press). Her fi rst book was published in 2003:
The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon and Letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-sarruiskun from Northern and Central Babylonia: State Archives of Assyria Volune XVIII (Helsinki
University Press).
Seth Richardson has been Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at
the University of Chicago•s Oriental Institute since 2003. He received his Ph.D. from
Columbia University in 2002, writing his dissertation on the collapse of the First
Dynasty of Babylon. He is now conducting research work on Old Babylonian economic
and administrative texts, Assyrian political history, an intellectual history of early
Babylonian liver divination, and problems in Ancient Near East labour history, state
collapse and chronology.
Dafydd Roberts studied social sciences and philosophy. As a freelance translator
from French and German, he has translated a number of scholarly works in these
fi elds. Interested, too, in art and cultural history, he has also worked for the Louvre,
the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, the Pergamon Museum and a number
of other such institutions.
xix
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Contributors —
Eleanor Robson’s work focuses on questions of numeracy and literacy in ancient
Iraq. Her publications include Mesopotamian Mathematics, 2100– 1600 BC (Oxford,
1999) and, with Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham and Gábor Zólyomi, The Literature
of Ancient Sumer (Oxford, 2004). She is a university lecturer in the Department of
History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of All
Souls College, Oxford.
Walther Sallaberger is Professor of Assyriology at the University of Munich. His
research interests include: Mesopotamian history, society, culture and religion, based
on Sumerian and Akkadian texts; Sumerian administrative texts; Sumerian lexicography; text linguistics. He is the author of Sumerer und Akkader – Geschichte – Gesellschaft
– Kultur (C.H. Beck Verlag, Munich 2005) and the forthcoming (2006) Glossary of
Neo-Sumerian Royal inscriptions.
Gebhard J. Selz is Chair of Ancient Oriental Languages and Oriental Archaeology
at the University of Vienna. He is the editor of several academic journals, such as
Archiv für Orientforschung, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, andWiener
Offene Orientalistik. His research centres on religions and economics of third millennium
BC Mesopotamia, early classifi cation systems and early empiricism.
Laura D. Steele is completing her doctoral dissertation on Mesopotamian slave
women in the Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology
at the University of California, Berkeley. Her other research interests include Anatolian
archaeology, digital-assisted analyses of ancient architecture, and connections between
Greece and the Near East; she also has worked with excavation teams at Çatal Höyük
(Turkey) and at Tel Dor (Israel). Among her most recent publications are papers on
Herodotus and Urartu in the American Journal of Ancient History 3/1 (2004) and on
Parmenides and Shamash in the Classical Quarterly 52/1 (2002).
Jon Taylor is curator of the cuneiform collections in the Department of the Ancient
Near East at the British Museum. London. His research interests include literacy and
education in the ancient world.
P. S. Vermaak is Associate Professor in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University
of South Africa. Trained initially as a theologian he specialized in the Semitic Languages
and currently teaches Ancient Near Eastern Culture, Classical Hebrew, Ugaritic,
Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian. He gained his Ph.D. in 1989 on the temple offi cials in the Ur III period. The focus of his current research is the cultural background
of the Ancient Near East with special reference to the cultural exchange in the Ancient
Near East during the second millennium BC.
David A. Warburton (D.Phil. University of Berne, Switzerland) teaches Near Eastern
Archaeology and Egyptology at universities in Denmark, Switzerland and France.
A former director of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies in Sana•a, he has
participated in archaeological fi eld work in France, Switzerland, Egypt, Syria, Iraq
and Yemen. His research interests centre on economics and politics in the ancient
world, but also include religion, architecture, colour terminology, chronology and
xx
—
Contributors —
stratigraphy. The most recent books are Macroeconomics from the Beginning and
Archaeological Stratigraphy: A Near Eastern Approach (both 2003); he is currently working
on another volume on ancient economics, as well as collaborative efforts on religion
and chronology.
Joan Goodnick Westenholz holds the posts of Chief Curator of the Bible Lands
Museum Jerusalem and Senior Visiting Associate on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary
Project of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. She has published
extensively on various topics in Babylonian religion and literature as well as on issues
of gender, women and goddesses. Her books include Legends of the Kings of Akkade,
Cuneiform Texts in the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem: The Emar Texts and Cuneiform
Texts in the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem: The Old Babylonian Texts. Her present research
is focused on the most archaic lexicographical series and the earliest anatomical lexicon.
Cornelia Wunsch is Research Associate at the Department of Languages and Cultures
of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London. She is a specialist in Neo- and Late Babylonian documents and the author
of various works on Neo-Babylonian economy, especially the archives of the Egibi
family.
xxi
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
‫ﱙﱚﱙ‬
Gwendolyn Leick
I
n the book of Genesis (XI, 9) the etymology of •Babel•is given as •confusion•, the
result of divine intervention in order to punish a people for their wish •to make a
name for themselves• by building •a city and a tower whose top may reach unto
heaven•. Language or indeed the proliferation of languages, urbanism (it is the fi rst
mention of a city in the Bible), monumental architecture and historical memory, are
thus all associated with the toponym •Babel•. In the later Biblical books a great deal
more will be said about Babylon and its kings who waged war against Judah. While
in these accounts, the Babylonians, just like other powerful and repressive nations of
the Ancient Near East, were to be doomed to destruction and annihilation, the Biblical
writings did keep their memory alive until the post-Enlightenment explorers brought
back tangible evidence of ancient writings, monuments and cities.
For the last century and a half, the Babylonians have once more become part of
our modernity. Cuneiform documents are relatively robust and they survived the
sacking of cities; having been buried in the sand for millennia they now constitute
an ever growing data bank comprising many thousands of tablets. The current state
of affairs in Iraq, however, has a serious impact on scholarship; witness the destruction
of sites by looters and military activities, the dispersal of material without established
context and the loss of unpublished artefacts from Iraqi museum collections.
Scientifi cally conducted archaeological excavations have almost ceased. Academic life
in Iraqi departments has suffered from the destruction of libraries and facilities. The
trauma of displacement will echo across the Assyriological world for some time but
it is also affected by developments in the academic world in general. Considerable
economic pressure on universities to follow the •market• jeopardizes •minority subjects• such as Assyriology and this has led to the closure of several departments and
has restricted research funding. On the other hand Assyriology has spread around
the world, with institutes in China, Japan, Latin America and South Africa, and the
current volume documents the continuing vitality of the subject and the commitment
of scholars from all continents to keep connected to the Babylonian world.
1
—
Gwendolyn Leick —
BABYLONIA: PART OF MESOPOTAMIA
Babylonia can be defi ned geographically as the southern half of Mesopotamia, beginning
where the rivers Tigris and Euphrates approach each other, forming a strip of land
like a pinched waist. At the very south lie the marshes and, beyond, the waters of
the Persian Gulf. The northern half of Mesopotamia was known as Assyria. Most of
the Assyrian cities were situated along the Tigris, those of Babylonia along the
Euphrates, a major trade route in itself, or on the intermediary canals. The Zagros
mountains form a natural border to the east, as does the great Arabian desert to the
west. The climate is hotter and drier in southern Mesopotamia; agriculture is only
possible through irrigation and the landscape is marked by a dense network of canals,
levees and dams. The date palm fl ourishes only south of Baghdad and their graceful
fronds marked the Babylonian skyline for millennia.
Babylonian history is embedded within the longue durée of Mesopotamian history
but closely associated with the eponymous city of Babylon. Lying on the Euphrates,
some ninety kilometres south of Baghdad, the city was founded sometime in the
third millennium: the Akkadian king Shar-kali-sharri provides the fi rst historical
mention, a reference to its temples. Babylon was thus perhaps always a holy city; the
etymology of a possibly non-Semitic original name was interpreted by cuneiform
scholars as bab-il, •gate of the god•. During the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur,
around 2000 BC, it was a provincial capital and some hundred years later, after the
disintegration of the Ur empire, it became the seat of a small kingdom founded by
the Amorite chief, Sumu-abum. His grandson Hammurabi managed to unite all of
southern Mesopotamia, as well as much of the middle Euphrates region. Although
this First Dynasty of Babylon could not hold all these lands together for long, its
rulers brought a degree of cultural and administrative uniformity to Babylonia which
is documented by abundant textual sources. The city of Babylon, as the seat of kingship, was lavishly endowed with temples and palaces. So splendid did the city become
that it attracted the cupidity of a far distant ruler, the Hittite king Mursili, who
swept down the Euphrates to attack the city and plunder its riches.
The Amorite chiefs who had founded the First Dynasty were part of a Semitic
people who had migrated into Mesopotamia from the west in search of pasture and
new strategies for survival. Those who adopted the settled and urban way of life
became acculturated to the •Babylonian• ways, which can be seen clearly in personal
names which refl ect an acceptance of the established religious practices. Their language
(•Old Babylonian•) replaced the previously spoken Sumerian, and only the most learned
of scholars were familiar with written Sumerian.
The assimilative powers of Babylonian culture became again apparent when another
group of immigrants, this time arriving from the east, and known as the Kassites,
took political control. Their fi rst kings still bore outlandish Kassite names, the later
ones adopted •good Babylonian• names and titles. They continued to exercise their
duties towards Babylonian gods and their temples and though they built a new capital,
Babylon remained the ceremonial and religious centre of the country which came to
be known as •Karduniash•. The Kassite kings established the fi rst properly unifi ed
state system in Babylonia and during their long reign (almost 500 years) Babylonian
civilization crystallized: it was a relatively stable period in which much wealth was
generated through trade in luxury goods and a strong rural agricultural base. In the
2
—
Introduction —
mid-second millennium, Babylonian became the international language of diplomacy,
utilized by the court scribes of all major powers: the Egyptians, Hittites, Mitanni,
as well in various Levantine states. Unlike most of the major players at the time,
Babylonia avoided getting drawn into military confl icts. However, the wave of disruption and violence that affected especially the western part of the Ancient Near East
in the thirteenth century eventually triggered massive displacements of populations
which destabilized Babylonia too. The end of the second millennium is poorly
documented, one short-lived dynasty followed another, as various tribal groupings
fought for control of the main cities.
Babylonia•s fate in the fi rst millennium was initially determined by the rise of
Assyria as the most powerful state in the region. While Assyrian monarchs acknowledged the religious and scholarly status of Babylonia, it did not stop them from
imposing direct rule which was to last for nearly two centuries and which was fi ercely
resisted. A coalition with the neighbours in the east, fi rst Elam and then the Medes,
strengthened Babylonian efforts to end Assyrian domination which succeeded in 612
with the fall of Nineveh. Under the rule of military leaders, such as Nebukadrezzar
II, Babylonia claimed a good portion of Assyria•s wealth, boosted by the conquest of
the old enemy•s dependencies. The money was ploughed into making Babylon the
most fabulous of cities, with its massive ramparts, dazzling ceremonial streets, the
towering ziggurat and vast temple complexes. Babylonian learning reached its zenith
at this period, especially in astronomy and mathematics. The end of Babylonian political independence, caused by the integration of the country into the Persian empire
brought little change to Babylonian society and business. Though no longer a centre
of political power, Babylon, as well as many other of the ancient Mesopotamian cities,
retained its religious and cultural importance. It was only when the balance of influence
decidedly shifted to the west in the long Hellenistic aftermath of Alexander•s conquests
that Mesopotamia became marginal, a march between the east, dominated by Persian
kings, and the west, under the rule of Rome.
THE PRESENT VOLUME
We can only experience the remote past in a tentative and fragmentary way and
through the lens of our contemporary patterns of thought. How we think about history
always refl ects our current preoccupations. The Babylonian world seen through the
eyes of the leading specialists in the fi eld at the beginning of the third millennium
AD brings into focus areas of concern typical for our time: ecology, productivity,
power relations, economics, epistemology, scientific paradigms, complexity. The
general division of the volume proceeds from the general •hard facts• – geography,
ecology, material culture, to the •software• provided primarily by cuneiform tablets,
our richest source of information and, at a time when archaeological research in Iraq
continues to be practically impossible, the only current opportunity for new insights.
The majority of the articles are based on primary epigraphic research.
Some subjects invite a longer perspective of time and more of an overview than
others where the focus is more narrowly defi ned. I did not wish to enforce a common
approach and manner of writing, in order to allow for variation of voices and accents
and attitudes. There are overlaps and occasionally the same subject is treated several
times but with different perspectives; this helps to give a fl avour of the contemporary
3