Ur III dairies: 8 (2024-08-12)

Created by: Englund, Robert K.

Accounting for of the cattle manager Ur-e’e in the southern Mesopotamian city Umma (ca. 2040 BC).

As in the case of dairy cows, the nanny goats in Ur III accounts formed the basis for calculations of deliveries of butter oil and kašk cheese that were processed from their milk. Where adult cows in the books were equivalent to 5 and 7.5 liters of the two products per year, respectively, nannies should result in the delivery by herders to their owners of 0.5 and 0.75 liters per year, preserving the relationship of 2:3 between oil and cheese. The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum account RC 930 records herds of goats that contained from 6 to 73 nannies and thus herds of upwards of 100-150 animals that accompanied the much larger sheep herds as they were driven from winter (lowland) to summer (highland) pasture. See R. Englund Orientalia 64 (1995) 377-429, for a description of general dairies accounting terminology in the Ur III period (to this text, pp. 398-403):    i3-nun = butter oil,    ga-UDgunû = dry cheese,    si-i3-tum = remaining [deficit of the previous accounting year],    unu3 = large cattle herder,    ga-gazi = sumac? cheese,    ga še(x)-a = "yellowed milk,"    ugu2 = “debits”,    la2-ia3 = deficit. CDLI entry: P129539.

credit: Englund, Robert K.