Everything Must Go

This paper presents a study of YOS 17, 360, a collection of 30–33 administrative records from the Eanna temple in Uruk that are dated to Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur (Nebuchadnezzar) II’s 14th year. The first few columns contain transactions concerning gold, while the rest are largely related to prebendary payments. In addition to providing an edition of YOS 17, 360 and related texts, this study seeks to understand why these particular transactions were collected and what insight it gives us into the historical circumstances. The evidence suggests that Eanna experienced a financial crisis at this time, during which it sold off its assets and had difficulties paying its priests. The cause of the crisis seems to have been royal demands put on the temple to provide money and manpower in support of the king’s building and/or military endeavors, possibly including Babylonian movements into the Levant and resulting clashes with Egypt.

A New Legal Compendium from the Eanna Archive

The legal compendium from the Eanna archive, published in this article for the first time, records thirteen separate cases all concerning sheep deficits (miṭītu) of herdsmen tending to the flocks of the temple. The following study of the text places it in the wider setting of the Eanna temple and discusses the rare format of the text, which should be placed in a legal, rather than an administrative, context.

THE GREAT ADVENTURES OF A SMALL GOD: NEW EVIDENCE FOR THE DIVINE MESSENGER STAFF HUṬĀRU

The messenger staff Huṭāru was a non-anthropomorphic deity in the Neo-Babylonian Eanna temple of Uruk that also had a practical function: it served as a symbol of authority of the goddess Ištar during the collection of taxes and dues. In this article I edit and discuss two hitherto unpublished texts that shed new light on this little known divine object. Furthermore, I suggest its identification with the “Doppellöwenkeule”, a ceremonial mace with animal protomes that is represented alone or carried by Ištar on seals and terracotta plaques from the Old and Neo-Babylonian periods.

Lamb, Mutton, and Goat in the Babylonian Temple Economy

In the mid-first millennium B.C.E., the Eanna temple of Uruk distributed the meat of sheep and goats to its associates and dependents. The meat of post-sacrificial lambs went to the Eanna’s prebend holding elite, while others received the meat of goats and older sheep without ceremony and on the hoof. Many assume this latter distribution worked to supply the Eanna’s lowest classes with substandard meat. I argue, instead, that there was nothing inherently substandard about this meat; moreover, there is little evidence that it was intended for the Eanna’s lowest classes. This paper then explores the distribution of meat to the Eanna’s sub-elite, especially in place of temple rations and payments of silver.

Trading on Knowledge: The Iddin-Papsukkal Kin Group in Southern Babylonia in the 7th and 6th Centuries B.C.

The witness list in BM 113927 dated at Ur in 658 includes the names of a father and son who, on the basis of evidence from three colophons, can be shown to have been members of the Iddin-Papsukkal kin group. These men appear to have had their origins at Borsippa, were active in temple affairs at Ur, and they or their descendants may have become part of the personnel at the Eanna temple at Uruk. The author makes arguments concerning the identity of these men and then proposes a link between them and a lineage from the Iddin-Papsukkal kin group at Uruk. The author concludes with observations about the movements of scholars between temples in Babylonia.