The Shemshāra Archives, 2: The Administrative Texts

Abstract

Tell Shemshara, located in the intermontane Rania plain in the western Zagros (northeastern Iraq), was sounded and partially excavated by Danish and Iraqi archaeological expeditions in 1957-59. Among the finds were some 250 clay tablets with cuneiform writing constituting remains of palace archives of letters and administrative records dating to the early 18th century B. C. This volume presents an editio princeps of all the administrative records, a total of 146 tablets or fragments of tablets. The introductory first part of the volume contains studies of the contents and historical context of the material. The administrative records found in the palace at Shemshara formed parts of two different archives. The first group belonged, together with the letters found, to an archive kept by the ruler of the ancient town, a certain Kuwari. The texts in this group deal almost exclusively with the administration of clothing, metal items, and weapons received or issued in the palace. The second group of records, found separately, concerns mainly agricultural products received or issued by the palace. In contrast to similar records from other sites the administrative texts from Shemshara are not dated, but prosopographic studies show that they must be contemporary with the political letters found at Shemshara and dated firmly to ca. 1785 B.C. Drawing on all the sources from Shemshara some basic outlines of political and socioeconomic structures in northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran at this time can be reconstructed. Shemshara and the countryside around it, originally a province in a confederate polity ruled by local kings, became the easternmost outpost for an expanding, but ephemeral, lowland empire and the period documented witnessed dramatic political and social changes. The convergence of these two different historical situations is to some extent reflected in the administrative records and is studied through prosopographic analysis. The onomastic material in the records is also an important source for ethno-linguistic patterns. Analysis of this evidence shows that the dominant local language in an extensive area of northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran in this period was Hurrian, while traces of other, poorly defined, linguistic strata, are found. The evidence, when compared with an assumed ethnic division between Turukkeans and Lulleans in the region, suggests that this distinction was primarily socio-political rather than linguistic. JESPER EIDEM TheCarsten Niebuhr Institute Njalsgade 78 DK-2300 Copenhagen S