Babylonian Slaves: 12 (2024-05-28)

Created by: Englund, Robert K.

Slave accounts of the Late Uruk period (ca. 3350-3000 BC)

We may understand the structure of this Uruk text in the following way. The column to the left describes a group of (1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 =) 8 counted individuals qualified by the sign conventionally read ŠAM2. A pictographic representation of grain and a grain scoop, the sign in later periods described exchanges of goods set in equivalent values, something like prices, early on using barley as a medium of agreed value, later copper and then the precious metal silver so well documented in trader accounts. We suspect a similar function is signaled by the sign in Late Uruk documents, and thus that here the eight individuals were bartered for on informal Babylonian markets. But the really striking feature of this and a good number of related texts is what follows in the column to the right. Viewed syntactically, the column records 1-2 individuals (though not obvious with small quantities, the count was performed in the sexagesimal system) with the qualifications AL, ENa TUR, 1N57×U4 TUR, BULUG3, U2a A and ŠU. Several of these designations are terms well known to Sumerologists. TUR (a presumed pictogram of human breasts) representing young children (Sumerian dumu), 1N57×U4 representing “one year,” and AL (a picture of a type of hoe) representing “adult” (with later Sumerian reading maḫ2, this sign usually qualifies sexually mature domestic animals, but is also possibly an element of two personal names in the ED IIIa period, and is even a qualifier of the capacity unit gur [WF 76 rev. x 3]). Finally, ŠU will be associated by some with later šu(-gi4), “old one,” found in many herding accounts and laborer inventories. Now each ‘line’ reads from left to right, and associates, with the lead cases, sets of sub-cases that always correspond in number to the numerical notation in the initiating case. If we innocently assign English interpretations to the non-numerical signs based solely on their pictographic referents, then the first ‘line’ reads ‟1 ‘hoe’ / long-young-bird”, while the third ‘line’ reads ‟2 one-year old children / big-swaddling / butteroil-6-bird-x.” Infants were designated with a complex sign consisting of the general time marker U4 (‘sun’ or ‘day[light]’) preceded by a number of strokes, representing a count of 360-day years (see. R. K. Englund, JESHO 31 [1988] 121-185). ‘Hoe’ was likely an archaic homonym—a rebus writing—for ‘adult male,’ while the following ‟words” can only have represented the given names of the numbered individuals. CDLI entry: P003500

credit: Englund, Robert K.