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SHEPHERDS at UMMA in the THIRD DYNASTY of UR: INTERLOCUTORS with a WORLD BEYOND the SCRIBAL FIELD of ORDERED VISION by ROBERT Mc

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SHEPHERDS at UMMA in the THIRD DYNASTY of UR: INTERLOCUTORS with a WORLD BEYOND the SCRIBAL FIELD of ORDERED VISION by ROBERT Mc SHEPHERDS AT UMMA IN THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR: INTERLOCUTORS WITH A WORLD BEYOND THE SCRIBAL FIELD OF ORDERED VISION BY ROBERT McC. ADAMS* Abstract The Third Dynasty of Ur was a highly bureaucratized, late 3rd millennium B.C.E. empire centering in southern Mesopotamia. Its state superstructure, known almost exclusively from many tens of thousands of looted cuneiform tablets, has long been studied. However, these sources deal only indirectly or not at all with the impacts of imperial rule on the great mass of the subject population. Drawing upon an earlier prosopographic study of animal husbandry for the single province and city of Umma, this article focuses on shepherds, the lowest level of the administration, as a means of penetrating that wall of silence. As interlocutors, need ing to face and be credible in both directions, they become the basis for a more inclusive view of the nature of the Ur III state. Largely indifferent to the condition of its subjects and to the complex realities of the economic tasks imposed on them by heavy taxes and arduous corv?e labor, the administrative elite emerges as not only repressive, but more narrowly extractive rather than broadly managerial in its intent and operations. The overriding focus in pursuit of which it was highly successful (although for less than a century), appears to have been the flow of resources that would enhance its own hegemony and well-being. La Troisi?me Dynastie d'Ur ?tait un empire hautement bureaucratis? de la seconde moiti? du 3Ae mill?naire avant l'?re chr?tien, centr? sur la M?sopotamie du sud. Sa superstructure ?ta tique,connue presque exclusivement gr?ce ? des dizaines de milliers de tablettes cun?iformes pill?s, a ?t? longuement ?tudi?e. Toutefois, ces sources ne portent pratiquement sur l'impact qu'avait l'autorit? imp?riale sur la population assujettie. Puisant dans une ?tude prosopographique ant?rieure sur l'?levage dans la seule province et ville d'Umma, cet article concerne les berg ers, personnages situ?s au niveau le plus bas de l'administration, dont l'?tude doit permettre de percer ce mur de silence. En tant qu'interlocuteurs cr?dibles tourn?s ? la fois vers le bas comme vers le haut, ils peuvent fournir les bases d'une image plus globale de l'?tat d'Ur III. Il ressort l'image d'une ?lite administrative plus ou moins indiff?rente aux conditions des sujets et aux r?alit?s complexes des taches ?conomiques qui leur sont impos?s par des imp?ts importants et des corv?es p?nibles ; elle ?tait non seulement r?pressive mais anim?e par des intentions et des op?rations plus extractives que managerielles. L'essentiel du fonctionnement ?tatique, poursuivi avec beaucoup de succ?s (bien que pendant moins d'un si?cle), semble avoir ?t? d'assurer un flux de ressources ? m?me d'augmenter sa propre h?g?monie et bien-?tre. Keywords: Bureaucracy, corv?e labor, administrative elite-subject relations, early empires, interlocutors, prosopography, sheep husbandry * University of California San Diego, Department of Anthropology La Jolla, CA 92093-0532, [email protected] ? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 JESHO 49,2 - Also available online www.brill.nl This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 18:04:17 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 134 ROBERT McC. ADAMS INTRODUCTION The Third Dynasty of Ur (conventionally 2112-2004 B.C.) was, by general consensus, a complex and vigorous if relatively short-lived early Mesopotamian empire. Exceptional numbers of cuneiform records, as well as many excavated public buildings, establish that itwas a highly stratified society, with a cohesive, literate elite asserting its administrative authority over a massive, subservient population. Those records disclose a "manifest love for order, regularity and standardization" (Sharlach 2004: 1), yet reflect very little insight into the char acter and effectiveness of themanagement thatwas actually exercised. This dynasty's abundance of surviving documentation may at firstglance seem to displace any need for further inquiry. A more critical examination assumes greater impor tance, however, as the Ur III bureaucracy has gone on to become a virtually iconic exemplar in comparative studies of early states and empires generally (e.g., Trigger 2003, Yoffee 2005). A compendium of records of the personnel involved in the management of animal husbandry in the ancient city of Umma is the admittedly narrow base from which I first set out to address two larger objectives: (1) clarifying the nature and limitations of the Ur III administration's management functions; and (2) to the limited degree presently possible, opening to scrutiny some features of the condition and status of the non-elite population as a whole. Ten years after its publication (Stepien 1996), the one systematic prosopographic study I am aware of remains to be seriously exploited. I hope to show that it is a poten tially serviceable vantage point, deserving replication in other efforts like it, to penetrate below the "management's" prevailing field of view. However, several preliminary, contextualizing steps are needed first. One of these is an overview of the state's exactions from its subjects, even if only in terms of rough aggregates. Providing this is greatly facilitated by a comprehen sive, recently published analysis of the tax system that was implemented under the Third Dynasty (Sharlach 2004). In keeping with the special objectives of this paper, the synopsis given later, drawn largely from this source, is limited insofar as possible to assessing the nature and scale of the system's impacts on the ordinary, lower-status population. For the administrative complexities (and many remaining uncertainties) of the system itself, as well as for the lengthy sequence of scholarly contributions that has led to the present level of under standing, the Sharlach monograph should be consulted directly. Next, a brief outline of the Ur III dynastic sequence is as follows: Ur-Nammu 2112-2095 B.C. (no relevant records) Shulgi 2094-2047 B.C. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 18:04:17 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SHEPHERDS AT UMMA IN THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR 135 Amar-Sin 2046-2038 B.C. Shu-Sin 2037-2029 B.C. Ibbi-Sin 2028-2004 B.C. (later reign unrepresented) My principal concern centers on Umma, a city-state earlier in the thirdmil lennium B.C. (and probably in the late fourth millennium as well). In the first instance, this is because Umma was the urban entity from which the prosopog raphy was drawn. But no less importantly, it is also because of the exceptional richness of cuneiform records dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur recovered from the city's ruins that pertain not only to the city itself but to its hinterlands. Under that dynasty's imperial control the city perhaps partly retained elements of its earlier organizational form as a free-standing city-state. Now, however, both the city and its temples, as well as many outlying dependencies, fell under the unitary control of an ensi or 'governor,' who was himself under the absolute but lightly exercised authority of a dynastic succession of kings whose political capital lay in Ur, 80 km. south. Never legitimately excavated, the ruins of Umma lie along the outermost, northeastern perimeter of the most extensive archaeological survey of the adjoining region (Adams and Nissen 1972: site 197 in the appended Catalog). Heavily blanketed with dunes at the time of that work, what was readily visi ble was an elevated area covering well in excess of 2 square kilometers. Its population during the Third Dynasty of Ur almost certainly was not less 20,000 inhabitants (Steinkeller n.d., p. 9). In this forthcoming article on "City and Countryside .," primarily focused on Umma and its province, Steinkeller documents in rewarding detail the remarkably extensive geographic information that he has found in Umma's cuneiform documents. A credible urban hierarchy within a total provincial area of approximately 2,000 square kilometers is outlined, extending downward from Umma as the largest city through a ranked series of smaller cities and towns to sites as small as hamlets. The latter, numbering between 86 and 120, are often identified only by references to their threshing floors and/or silos (but sometimes also small chapels). All are reasonably assumed to be small rural settlements or still smaller estates, the "administrative focus" of the ensi-governor's provincial domain, and as such apparently served as collecting and shipping-points for har vests to be transported by barge to the capital. The full account of this tanta lizing depth of information cannot be recapitulated here, but the small handful of larger sites that Steinkeller has been able provisionally to locate are given in the accompanying map (Fig. 1). Unfortunately, Umma and its surrounding region lay on the outermost, north eastern perimeter of the Warka Survey (Adams and Nissen 1972) that was This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 18:04:17 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 136 ROBERT McC. ADAMS This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 18:04:17 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SHEPHERDS AT UMMA IN THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR 137 based at distant Uruk, and at the time could receive only brief and inadequate attention. There has never been a later opportunity to return for fuller coverage. The region presents a further challenge to archaeological surface reconnais sance, in the form of a dense blanketing of much of it by overlying dunes already mentioned, while not far to the northeast of Umma itself lies a zone of modern irrigation agriculture that impedes both visibility and access.
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