Magnus Widell

Historical Evidence for Climate Instability and Environmental Catastrophes in Northern Syria and the Jazira: the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian

Significant cataclysms occurred frequently throughout the history of northern Syria and the Jazira, and had severe shortand long-term implications on the regions economy and the social structure. This paper uses the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, a Patriarch of Antioch in the late twelfth century a.D., as a representation of environmental and climatic catastrophes taking place in northern Syria and the Jazira in the third and early second Millennium b.c. The proportions, general frequency and the clustering tendency of the different disasters in the Chronicle are treated in detail, as well as their general economic, environmental and social significance. The article argues that diversified subsistence and a high degree of flexibility were essential for ancient Mesopotamian societies to absorb the many risks that life in this marginal semiarid environment involved.

Who’s Who in “A balbale to Bau for Šu-Suen” (Šu-Suen A)*

* An early version of this article was presented as a paper with the same title at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the British Association for Near Eastern Archaeology held at the University of Liverpool, UK. I wish to thank Bendt Alster, Daniel Foxvog, Alan Millard, and Foy Scalf for reading various drafts of this article and making many valuable comments and suggestions. Any mistakes that remain are, of course, my own. All references to cuneiform texts in this article follow the abbreviations used by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (www. cdli.ucla.edu). In addition, the following abbreviations have been used: OECT 1 = S. Langdon, The H. Weld-Blundell Collection in the Ashmolean Museum. Vol. 1: Sumerian and Semitic Religious and Historical Texts, Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts 1 (London, 1923); SpTU 5 = E. Von Weiher, Uruk: Spatbabylonische Texte aus dem Planquadrat U 18, Teil V, Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka, Endberichte 13 (Mainz am Rhein, 1998); Urk IV = K. Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie. Erster Band: Historisch-bibliographische Urkunden, IV. Abteilung (Leipzig, 1906). 1 M. Widell, “The Sumerian Expression igi-kar2 Revisited,” Iraq 70 (2008): 131–45. For the igi-kar2 and its indisputable connection to the queens and the royal household of the Ur III state, see large amounts of foodstuff and beer,2 were brought to the birthplaces of infants and were almost certainly intended for the festive consumption of large groups

Reflections on Some Households and their Receiving officials in the City of Ur in the Ur III Period

The administration of the capital of the Ur III state is still not completely clear. One major problem is that a central archive of the king and the palace (if such an archive ever existed) has not yet been found. As in other cities in the Ur III state, the personnel of the documented households in the texts from Ur were maintained by rations,1 for the lowstatus workers (for example, different erin2-, geme2-, or gflurus workers), or allowances,2 for people of somewhat higher status (for example, sabra administrators, plowmen [engar], etc.). The most important product for these rations or allowances seems to have been barley, which in Ur mainly came from the city’s central granary (gur7), sometimes through the official Ur-ku3-nun-na. 3 In addition to the central granary, there were several minor granaries supplying the households. Specialized scribes tied to their respective household received the products. Among the close to 3,300 published Ur III documents from Ur, a few tablets dated to Ibbi-Suen’s sixth year as king record such receipts of barley rations between the city’s granaries and the different households. Thus the scribe Nanna-sa4 received rations for the personnel of the textile-producing E2Sara2, Mu-ni(ni)-mah5 for the workers of Su-na-mu-gi4, and Lugal-igi-hus for the erin2 workers of the (temple of ) Nanna-gu2-gal. 7

The Sumerian Expression igi-kar2 Revisited

In 1968, the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary translated the Old Babylonian term asirtu , which in the OB period corresponded to the Sumerian expression igi-kar 2 , as “an offering of a pious gift to the gods”. In texts from the preceding Ur III period, however, the expression igi-kar 2 has usually been associated with the expression gurum 2 (written IGI.GAR) and translated “inspection”. In 1982, Piotr Steinkeller demonstrated, in a short article published in ASJ , that igi-kar 2 and gurum 2 refer to two separate words. He showed that the compound verb igi…kar 2 denoted “to examine” in both the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods. For the compound noun igi-kar 2 in the Ur III period, Steinkeller referred to the Umma text TJAMC IES 126, where the expression appears together with the institution an-za 3 -gar 3 , which — in accordance with its Akkadian equivalence dimtum — has been understood as “some type of fortified building”. This connection led Steinkeller to propose the meaning “provisions, supplies” for igi-kar 2 in the Ur III period, seemingly more appropriate for a delivery to the military structure of an-za (3) -gar 3 .