Ancient Administrative System and Cuniform Archives

The article analyses the most ancient in the history of the humanity legal tradition which was elaborated by the Ancient Sumerian civilization. The author studies the peculiarities of cuneiform law which was codified relatively early and reflected in numerous cuneiform king’s decrees, law codes and statute books. Special attention is given to the period of ruling of king Ur-Nammu — the founder of the III Ur Dynasty and the creator of the first large statute book. The author of the article who has for the first time translated into Russian the text of the “Code of Ur-Nammu” (app. 2104–2095 BC), the fullest one at present, characterizes in details this primary source, examines thoroughly the legal nature and general principles of the ancient monument of law, its form and internal composition. KEYWORDS: cunieform, codification of law, king’s reforms, Sumerian civilization, Code of Ur-Nammu.

Thousands of Ur III cuneiform tablets flooded the antiquities markets in the 1910s and 1920s and filled small and large museums and collections around the world. Thanks to the painstaking research of many scholars, both past and present, we are today in a position to ‘locate’ tablets and documents originating from the tell of Drehem  and to differentiate them from those originating from the other sites of the South, such as Umma, Girsu, Ur, Nippur, and most recently Iri-Sagrig and Garšana. We should be able nowadays to put these disparate tablets into hypothetical archives based on patterns and content (Sallaberger 1999; ibid 2004; Paoletti 2012; Tsouparopoulou 2013a). But how correct can our hypotheses be? How certain can we be that our visualization of how this organization of the vast documentation worked is accurate and renders the chaîne opératoire of past bureaucrats at Tell Drehem?
With this article, I intend to put into scientific inquiry - and thus prove or disprove - a theory based on the study of the sealing and archiving practices from material looted from the ancient site of Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem) and dispersed in collections around the world. This is done knowing that in due course the publication of the preliminary official Iraqi excavations led by Dr. Shalkham at Drehem and consequently the publication of the tablets unearthed during this excavation by Shalkham and Dr. al-Mutawalli, will see the light of day. Indeed, while writing these lines, the first publication of five such texts excavated in 2007 at Drehem were published in the Sumer volume of 2012, printed in 2013 (al-Mutawalli & Shalkham 2012). It seems to be only a matter of time before our hypotheses can finally be tested.

Lors des dix-huitieme et dix-neuvieme campagnes, Cl. Schaeffer mettait au jour un lot de tablettes provenant, selon lui, d'un " four a tablettes ". L'existence de ce four a ete contestee par J. Margueron. Cet article propose une tentative de caracterisation et de datation des textes de ce lot. Il s'agit d'une etude preliminaire epigraphique degageant des voies de recherche qu'il conviendra d'approfondir et de confronter avec les donnees archeologiques.

The modern agendas that led from what arrived in our museums to our current corpuses of astral and mathematical cuneiform texts are discussed first. Thereafter, the ancient practices that first shaped what might have been bequeathed to the modern era are outlined. An awareness of both ancient and modern agendas helps better contextualise the materials we have, and avoid reading too much or too little into them. Directions for future research are suggested.

As a primary need for the survival of every living creature, food and its procurement have been the principal fulcrum of the social life of the human being since the beginning of his history. Only when the various technological advances, combined with favourable ecological and social factors, allowed the communities not to be committed in their entirety in the obtaining of nourishment the conditions for the genesis of a differentiated society were created, an urbanized society where different groups of citizens were devoted to varied activities, aimed not only at the fulfilment of the primary needs, but also to the gratification of secondary necessities.
With the increase of the social complexity, one of the problems these communities had to confront with was, indeed, the management of food: production, conservation, distribution and consume of the aliments were no more immediate activities, but difficult tasks, with which only a minority of specialized workers, occasionally entrusted with this role by the central authority, should deal.
The hypotheses about the administrative management of food meet the theories about ancient economy, and the answer given to similar problems by the cultures were different according to the period, the place and the political situation. This paper focuses on the explanation of the various methods of administration and management of food in the major Sumerian cities at the end of the third millennium, showing the different textual typologies involved (receipts, delivery texts, messenger texts and letter-orders) and comparing them by quantity and by quality, in order to recognise the reasons and the methods behind the use of each one of them. Among the kinds of documents, the role of the letter-orders will be particularly underlined.

Thousands of Ur III cuneiform tablets flooded the antiquities markets in the 1910s and 1920s and filled small and large museums and collections around the world. Thanks to the painstaking research of many scholars, both past and present, we are today in a position to ‘locate’ tablets and documents originating from the tell of Drehem and to differentiate them from those originating from the other sites of the South, such as Umma, Girsu, Ur, Nippur, and most recently Iri-Sagrig and Garšana. We should be able nowadays to put these disparate tablets into hypothetical archives based on patterns and content (Sallaberger 1999; ibid 2004; Paoletti 2012; Tsouparopoulou 2013a). But how correct can our hypotheses be? How certain can we be that our visualization of how this organization of the vast documentation worked is accurate and renders the chaîne opératoire of past bureaucrats at Tell Drehem? With this article, I intend to put into scientific inquiry - and thus prove or disprove - a theory based on the study of the sealing and archiving practices from material looted from the ancient site of Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem) and dispersed in collections around the world. This is done knowing that in due course the publication of the preliminary official Iraqi excavations led by Dr. Shalkham at Drehem and consequently the publication of the tablets unearthed during this excavation by Shalkham and Dr. al-Mutawalli, will see the light of day. Indeed, while writing these lines, the first publication of five such texts excavated in 2007 at Drehem were published in the Sumer volume of 2012, printed in 2013 (al-Mutawalli & Shalkham 2012). It seems to be only a matter of time before our hypotheses can finally be tested.

Relazione tenuta al Rotary Club di Pescara. Le informazioni economico-finanziarie contenute nelle tavolette di argilla cuneiformi evidenziano che è nella Mesopotamia antica che troviamo le origini di molti di quegli strumenti economico-finanziari che oggi sono divenuti una componente essenziale di cui non si può fare a meno nel nostro vivere quotidiano (contratti di compravendita, prestiti,profitto,  moneta, commerci, ecc.).