From the 21St Century B.C. to the 21St Century A.D

Offprint From:

From the 21st Century B.C. to the 21st Century A.D.

Proceedings of the International Conference on Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid 22–24 July 2010

edited by STEVEN GARFINKLE and MANUEL MOLINA

www.eisenbrauns.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

International Conference on Neo-Sumerian Studies (2010 : Madrid, Spain) From the 21st century B.C. to the 21st century A.D. : proceedings of the International Conference on Neo-Sumerian Studies held in Madrid 22–24 July 2010 / edited by Steven J. Garfinkle and Manuel Molina. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-1-57506-296-9 (hardback : alkaline paper) 1. Ur (Extinct city)—Civilization—Congresses. 2. Sumerian language— Texts—Congresses. 3. Babylonia—History—Congresses. 4. Iraq—History— To 634—Congresses. 5. Iraq—Antiquities—Congresses. I. Garfinkle, Steven J. II. Molina, Manuel. III. Title. DS70.5.U7I56 2010 935′.501—dc23 2013040752

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na- tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materi- als, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ♾ ™ Contents

Dedication ...... v Abbreviations ...... ix Foreword ...... xxiii Language and Sources Ur III as a Linguistic Watershed ...... 3 MIGUEL CIVIL Sumerian Adjectival Passives Using the *im- Prefix: The Old Babylonian Evidence and Some Possible Third Millennium Precursors ...... 19 J. CALE JOHNSON Hypotactic and Paratactic Complementation in Sumerian ditilla Texts ...... 49 FUMI KARAHASHI On the Location of Irisaĝrig ...... 59 MANUEL MOLINA The Archive of Iri-Saĝrig / Āl-Šarrākī ...... 89 DAVID I. OWEN Administration and Ideology Some Considerations on the Management of an Administrative Structure in Ur III Mesopotamia: The Case of mar-sa ...... 105 SERGIO ALIVERNINI The Tenure of Provincial Governors: Some Observations ...... 115 LANCE ALLRED Symbols and Bureaucratic Performances in the Ur III Administrative Sphere: An Interpretation Through Data Mining ...... 125 ALESSANDRO DI LUDOVICO The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power in Early Mesopotamia ...... 153 STEVEN GARFINKLE Networks of Authority and Power in Ur III Times ...... 169 PIOTR MICHALOWSKI Prince Etel-pū-Dagān, Son of Šulgi ...... 207 PALMIRO NOTIZIA The Ur III Administration: Workers, Messengers, and Sons ...... 221 FRANCO POMPONIO

vii viii Contents

Šulgi Meets Stalin: Comparative Propaganda as a Tool of Mining the Šulgi Hymns for Historical Data ...... 233 LUDĚK VACÍN Economy and Society

The Control of Copper and Bronze Objects in Umma During the Ur III Period ...... 251 FRANCO D’AGOSTINO AND FRANCESCA GORELLO Le Système Après-Récolte dans l’Hydro-Agriculture Mésopotamienne à la Fin du IIIe Millénaire avant notre Ère ...... 267 JEAN-PIERRE GRÉGOIRE The Barbers of Iri-Saĝrig ...... 301 ALEXANDRA KLEINERMAN Absence from Work in Ur III Umma: Reasons and Terminology ...... 313 NATALIA KOSLOVA The Manufacture of a Statue of Nanaja: Mesopotamian Jewellery-Making Techniques at the End of the Third Millennium B.C...... 333 PAOLA PAOLETTI Corvée Labor in Ur III Times ...... 347 PIOTR STEINKELLER Ikalla, Scribe of (Wool) Textiles and Linen ...... 425 LORENZO VERDERAME AND GABRIELLA SPADA The Regular Offerings of Lambs and Kids for Deities and the é-uz-ga During the Reign of Šulgi: A Study of the mu- TÚM and zi-ga/ba-zi Texts from the Animal Center ...... 445 WU YUHONG AND LI XUEYAN

INDICES Personal Names ...... 459 Divine Names ...... 463 Toponyms ...... 464 Sumerian Words and Phrases ...... 467 Texts Quoted ...... 470 ED IIIa-b Texts ...... 470 Old Akkadian Texts ...... 470 Lagaš II and Ur III Texts ...... 470 Old Babylonian Texts ...... 489 Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts ...... 490 Law Collections ...... 490 Literary Texts ...... 490 Incantations and Medical Texts ...... 491 Lexical Texts ...... 492 Grammatical Texts ...... 492

PROGRAM OF THE CONFERENCE ...... 493 Offprint from: From the 21st Century B.C. to the 21st Century A.D.: Proceedings of the International Conference on Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid 22-24 July 2010 Steven Garfinkle and Manuel Molina, eds. © Copyright 2013 Eisenbrauns. All rights reserved.

The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power in Early Mesopotamia

Steven Garfinkle WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

1. Introduction

The tens of thousands of clay tablets that survive from the vast administrative archives of the Third Dynasty of Ur have made the study of this era central to ex- aminations of the society and economy of early Mesopotamia. Increasingly, scholars have focused on the Ur III period not only because of its extensive documentary record, but also because that record bears witness to one of the earliest efforts at state formation in the ancient world. The kings of Ur ruled over a territorial state that extended from the Persian Gulf up through most of southern Mesopotamia. These kings also extended their influence over neighboring regions to the east. The scribes of the late third millennium BC recorded these endeavors in great detail, and we imagine that the new kingdom created a central administration to facili- tate this record keeping. The volume of the archives created by these administrators continues to astound modern observers. We customarily see these archives as a result of the state’s growing authority, and yet the texts often highlight the boundaries placed on the expansion of that authority. For the past few years I have been working on the relationship between merchants, state formation, and military activity in the Ur III period. In this article I offer some provisional statements about the limits of state power as seen primarily in the economic and administrative records. Much of this contribution can be summarized in the following statements: the state building activities of the Ur III kings are not best attested in our largest archives, which document the institutional economies of large provinces like Umma and Girsu-Lagaš; state building activities were centered in southern Mesopotamia and relied on the patronage of the royal household and the charisma of the kings themselves and therefore these activities are most visible in places like Puzriš-Dagān, Iri-Saĝrig and Garšana;1 ––––––––––––– 1. These sites show the efforts of the kings of Ur to appropriate space within southern Mesopota- mia for their own activities. Puzriš-Dagān was established near Nippur to aid in the central collection of livestock and other goods, and for the distribution of booty from military campaigns. Iri-Saĝrig was an older city that was likely appropriated by the crown as a staging ground for its military adventures in the east (on this site, see Owen 2013a, 2013b, and 2013c in this volume). Garšana was a large royal estate created within the province of Umma for a royal princess and her husband, a general (on this estate, see Owen 2011; Heimpel 2009). Steinkeller forthcoming discusses the visibility of state building activities in the records of labor assigned to large construction projects, and this highlights the exten- sion of the new statewide identity beyond the households on which I am focusing in this article.

153 154 STEVEN GARFINKLE ultimately, the one statewide institution successfully created by the kings of Ur was the army; and finally, as a result of that fact, the state building activities of the Ur III kings were inherently unstable. Moreover, the success of the state was achieved through cooperation with local elites whose longstanding authority within their communities was co-opted by the crown. The sheer volume of extant texts from this era has convinced us not only that this was a highly organized state, but also that the central power of the state was absolute.2 This view of the Third Dynasty of Ur greatly overestimates the nature of state control and its permanence. A first step towards understanding the limits of state power is to recognize the character of the surviving archives and their limita- tions. As is clearly seen in the data prepared by Manuel Molina (Fig. 1), what we have is a documentary record that spans approximately two generations. This period also coincided with the years during which the military power of the dynasty and its ability to extract tribute were at their height.

3500

3000

2500

2000

1500 )

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(344 ) 1000 )

(346 (1 (10) (9 (36) ) 593 (2 486 467 437 426 393 394 500 380 369 (8)

(7) (7) 300 202 170 59 37 33 25 27 17 15 14 13 9 8 9 10 4 5 3 4 4 5 3 6 6 5 0 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 SH01 SH02 SH03 SH04 SH05 SH06 SH07 SH08 SH09 SH10 SH11 SH12 SH16 SH17 SH18 SH19 SH21 SH22 SH23 SH24 SH25 SH26 SH27 SH28 SH29 SH30 SH31 SH32 SH33 SH34 SH35 SH36 SH37 SH38 SH39 SH40 UN02 UN04 UN05 UN06 UN09 UN10 UN12 UN14 UN15 UN16 UN17

3500 (8) (18)

(11)

(197) (17)

(5)

3000 2871 (5) 2827

(2) 2661 2567

2533 (14) (5) (265) (37) (30) (349) 2434

2500 2372

(16) (382) (206) (35) 2159 2052 2031 2029 (3) 1975 2000 1951 1949 (1) (1) 1783 1765 1764

(264) 1750 1706 5) (9)

(316) 1508 1393

1500 1384 1320

1280 (403) 1176

(17) 1052

1000 878 (3) 719 (1) (3) (19)

(2) 499 500 448 311 311 274 243 195 75 31 10 10 8 7 7 5 4 7 0 3 6 6 IS01 IS02 IS03 IS04 IS05 IS06 IS07 IS08 IS09 IS11 IS12 IS13 IS14 IS15 IS16 IS17 IS18 IS19 IS20 IS21 IS22 IS23 SS01 SS02 SS03 SS04 SS05 SS06 SS07 SS08 SS09 SH41 SH42 SH43 SH44 SH45 SH46 SH47 SH48 AS01 AS02 AS03 AS04 AS05 AS06 AS07 AS08 AS09

Fig. 1. An overview of the chronological distribution of extant Ur III texts.3

––––––––––––– 2. This image of the Ur III state continues to dominate more general treatments of Mesopotamia specifically and of world history more broadly, but it is increasingly being questioned by specialists, see Yoffee 2005, and 2013; Michalowski 2004, and 2013b in this volume. This view results not only from the appearance of power demonstrated by the tens of thousands of surviving administrative documents, but also, as Michalowski notes, from the representations, or better self-representations, of power in the surviving royal inscriptions and hymns. Yoffee (2005: 147) summed this up as follows, “The quantity and quality of these sources from the royal house of Ur motivate scholarship today in roughly inverse proportion to the stability and normative character of the Ur III state.” 3. The chart is adapted from Molina 2008: 47. The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power 155

The texts are certainly evidence for the authority of the royal household and its ability to appropriate resources for the crown and its clients, at least for a period of roughly fifty years. The officials charged with tracking these resources did so through the production of texts. As I have discussed elsewhere, the literate administrators could simultaneously exert control over material as well as people from various places and at various times on behalf of the crown (Garfinkle in press-b). Different parts of the kingdom were brought together on tablets for the benefit of the royal elite. And yet, our largest archives document the continued operation of local means of control within the provinces of the core of the kingdom. I will discuss this point below with reference to merchants and to the army, but let me pause to highlight a critical point regarding the provenance of the texts from the Third Dynasty of Ur. Scholars of the Ur III period regularly comment on the fact that the texts for which we have a geographic provenance come exclusively from only a few sites, and likely from only a few contexts within those sites. Figure 2 below shows just how limited our view of the kingdom really is. Nearly seven out of every ten tablets with a provenance comes from the archives of the provincial institutions in Umma or Girsu-Lagaš.

Provenance Number of Extant Texts4 Umma 28,557 Girsu-Lagaš 26,671 Puzriš-Dagān 14,630 Ur 4,272 Nippur 3,545 Garšana 1,496 Iri-Saĝrig5 1,200

Figure 2. The largest corpora of Ur III texts by provenance.6

These records, chiefly from two of the more prosperous provinces, attest to the ability of the state to extract wealth from the old urban centers and their hinter- lands, but they very rarely speak directly to the state establishments that super- vised this activity. The institutions of the newly forming territorial state can best be seen at the sites of state directed activity, such as Puzriš-Dagān and Iri-Saĝrig; and in the archives of the wealthy estates created by court functionaries, such as Garšana. The agents of state power were those individuals, like soldiers and merchants, who operated throughout southern Mesopotamia and whose activities were not confined to the borders of one of the provinces. The smaller archives from the royal cities and estates attest to the development of new groups within the state whose fortunes were tied directly to the royal household. This relatively small ––––––––––––– 4. With the exception of Iri-Saĝrig, these numbers are gleaned from the current records of the Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts (BDTNS): http://bdtns.filol.csic.es. 5. This figure is courtesy of Owen 2013c in this volume. 6. A similar table in Molina 2008: 52 includes some of the smaller archives not shown here. Mo- lina also shows the percentage of extant texts represented by each corpus. The figures above are up- dated according to the current database in the BDTNS; however, the percentages as calculated by Molina have remained relatively constant. The texts from Umma and Girsu-Lagaš continue to consti- tute almost 70% of the Ur III texts for which we can establish a provenance. 156 STEVEN GARFINKLE number of functionaries owed their positions of privilege to the crown. This meant that they shared in the wealth created by the state’s successes, but also that they had to constantly pay tribute to the kings. Many of these functionaries were already individuals of substance in their local communities, but their connections to the royal family gave their activities a wider orbit and scale.7 The texts at Puzriš- Dagān in particular arose as a consequence of the need to monitor this flow of tribute to the kings from the state’s new clients and the traditional urban elites within southern Mesopotamia, along with the state’s new clients from the foreign lands adjacent to Mesopotamia. This new statewide community was inherently fragile. 2. The Royal Household and Its Clients

The clients of the royal household were drawn from several sources. The kings relied first and foremost on the traditional local elites in the cities at the heartland of their kingdom. This is well documented in places like Nippur and Girsu-Lagaš where the crown leveraged the existing social networks and left prominent local families in charge of the temple and city hierarchies. Michalowski (2013b in this volume) notes that important kin groups in Girsu-Lagaš related to the last independent rulers of that city continued to be celebrated under the Ur III kings. In- deed, the prologue to the Laws of Ur-Namma claimed that that king made Nam- hani the governor (Roth 1997: 15; Frayne 1997: 47). This was the same Namhani who was likely related to the famous Gudea. Second, the kings of Ur forged alliances with elite families in peripheral areas to the north (for example, Mari) and to the east (for example, Simanum).8 These “foreign” elites were frequent visitors to southern Mesopotamia and regular contributors of resources to the court of the Ur III kings (see Sharlach 2005). Finally, the crown actively created new networks of elites whose activities crossed older political boundaries and who helped to bring into existence a statewide community tied directly to the royal household. We find these notables most prominently in the military and in economically significant professions, especially those related to trade or to animal husbandry and management.9 These were not “new men” in the classical sense. These individuals already had positions and wealth, but the scale of their activities greatly increased under the patronage of the royal family of Ur. In some cases, this patronage actually meant inclusion in the court nobility. Šu-Kabta, the general in charge of the Garšana estate came from a family of doctors, and his father also had an administrative title as secretary of the doorkeepers (see Kleinerman 2011); but it was his marriage into the royal family that likely brought with it tremendous new wealth and

––––––––––––– 7. Status within the communities of early Mesopotamia was hereditary. I am describing a situation in which professionals and members of the local elite, who owed their positions to their birth, were able to leverage their associations with the royal household into more prominent roles in the new kingdom. 8. Michalowski 2006: 60 highlighted the intimate nature of some of these alliances, “Some were literally married into the royal family of Ur, others were symbolically incorporated into the extended patrimonial clan that ruled the two most important states of the area, Mari and Ur.” 9. Ba’aga, the fattener whose career is discussed in Owen 2013a: 114-119 is a good example of this type of professional. The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power 157 high military position. A more striking example may be that of the chief minister (sukkal-mah), Arad-Nanna. He came from a very prominent family in Girsu- Lagaš and Michalowski (2013b in this volume) suggests that the kings of Ur adopted the position of chief minister from the previously independent rulers of that province. Again, he cemented his position through marriage into the royal family and this further secured his status and that of his family. The most instruc- tive aspect of these careers for our discussion is not so much the manner in which they leveraged their positions through royal marriage, but rather the way in which the royal family reached down into the local networks of notables and elevated these elites to positions of statewide leadership. We see the same thing among more mundane professions that were also keys to state success. Prominent merchants, such as Lu-Nanna of Umma and Turam-ili of Iri-Saĝrig, appear in texts from various parts of the kingdom, and they were often handling the king’s business (see Garfinkle 2008). The flourishing of so many families at all points on the spectrum of elite activity from the family of the chief minister Arad-Nanna to that of the Nippur notable Ur-Meme to those of merchants, craftsmen and other professionals shows the dependence of the crown on existing social networks. A critical point for our analysis is the extent to which kinship groups controlled key professions in southern Mesopotamia (see Garfinkle in press-c). The hierarchies among these professional groups were not only closed to outsiders, but they were governed by mechanisms with which the state could rarely interfere. For the most part, we do not have large archives that document the individual activities of these statewide elites. We find evidence for them when they encoun- tered the provincial institutions and when they connected with the tributary system that was likely headquartered at Puzriš-Dagān (see section 3 below). At the same time, we know that the institutional hierarchies attested in our larger archives were often mirrored in other areas of the economy and society of late third millennium BC Mesopotamia. Many of the titles and functions that we associate with institutional administration in the Ur III period were commonly used among professional groups as well as non-institutional households. The best example of this is probably the Sumerian term ugula, meaning overseer. In most cases, this term was not a fixed title but rather an indication of responsibility for a certain transaction (similar to the term ĝìr).10 The overseer was usually someone in a position of local authority, often as a result of the individual’s seniority in a professional association. Indeed, this was likely a privilege, and a responsibility, ac- corded to older members of the families that dominated crafts and professions.11 Another particularly good example of this phenomenon is the term šabra. This word was once routinely translated as “head of a temple household” or even ––––––––––––– 10. Indeed, the use of these terms (ugula and ĝìr) may be related directly to understandings of seniority within professional and administrative hierarchies. The term ugula usually denoted senior members who were directly responsible for a transaction, either for the collection and management of a transaction (often the case among merchants and craftsman) or as the receiving official in an institution. The term ĝìr was often used by their colleagues or subordinates when they were placed in charge of ensuring that the tasks were completed for which the ugula were responsible. 11. See Garfinkle in press-c. For the organization of professions and crafts, see Steinkeller 1987 and 1996; Dahl 2010. 158 STEVEN GARFINKLE

“priest”, but is now more commonly understood to mean “chief household administrator” or “majordomo”. Therefore, we not only encounter numerous šabra in our texts associated with divine households, but also šabra associated with non-institutional households. The household that Adad-illat administered provides evidence for both the extent and limits of new state power in Ur III Mesopotamia. He was the šabra of the royal estate of Šu-Kabta and Simat-Ištaran at Garšana.12 Adad-illat’s assistant in his management of the household was the scribe Puzur-Ninkarak. Together they were responsible for organizing and keeping track of the work done on the estate and the resources that it generated. Adad-illat was also identified in other texts as a messenger and as a royal messenger. He is attested in texts from Nip- pur, Garšana, and Iri-Saĝrig. Two things are immediately apparent from examin- ing the household of Šu-Kabta. First, the administration of his estate paralleled that of the great institutions in terms of both its hierarchy and record keeping. Second, high level functionaries, like the šabra, were also key figures in the new statewide community of elites. Adad-illat was not only a household administrator, but he was also a royal messenger traveling across the kingdom. We see many of these new, and larger, social networks brought together in texts like NATN 166.13 In this text, the merchants from several cities (Adab, Umma, and Uruk) pool their resources to deliver tribute in the form of agricultural labor. My reading of the text suggests that this labor was delivered to Šu-Kabta’s estate at Garšana under the direction of Adad-illat. First, we should note that the merchants were categorized in groups associated with particular cities. The collec- tives of merchants from three cities were fulfilling an obligation to the crown. We can see in this the ways in which regional socio-economic groups continued to pre- dominate even in the face of the rise of the territorial kingdom. Second, we can immediately see the operation of patronage at several levels. The merchants clearly owed labor to the crown, presumably in return for some aspect of their business with the state. The recipient of that labor was a royal estate. Thus we see an additional way in which the royal family extracted resources from local communities; and they did so by co-opting local professional groups who were left on their own to handle the actual delivery of the labor. Our sources also illustrate the tension that this patronage created between provincial and royal authorities. Molina (2010: 210) published a legal text from Umma in which the governor’s office tried to recover trees that it believed had been stolen from a provincial forest by a man acting under the authority of Šu- Kabta’s second in command (see also Heimpel 2009: 4-5). We can imagine that these trees (along with the thief) were being sheltered at Garšana for the use of the estate. We do not know how this case was resolved, but it appears that the gover- nor lacked the authority to remove the accused from the house of the general’s adjutant. And here we see the ways in which local networks of authority were being circumvented for the benefit of the state community.

––––––––––––– 12. For the estate at Garšana and the activities of Adad-illat (also read as Adad-tillati), see Owen and Mayr 2007; Kleinerman and Owen 2009; and Heimpel 2009. 13. See Garfinkle 2010a for a full treatment of this text. The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power 159

The strands that made up the fabric of this new and larger community were social networks that operated over greater distances than individual city-states. In many ways, this privileged groups that were not directly associated with, or subor- dinate to, the large institutions of the ancient urban centers of southern Mesopo- tamia. As I will detail below, the military, and the many opportunities associated with military service, was a prime example of this process. The operations of the army required that it include activities throughout the state and beyond its apparent borders. There were other groups in a position to seek out these privileged positions. Primarily these were groups whose professions already required them to travel between the urban centers or whose knowledge and skills made them particularly valuable.14 Merchants, like those collectively listed on NATN 166, are an important category of people for this discussion because of their role as intermediaries on behalf of the growing power of the state. For the purposes of this discussion we can go beyond the old question of whether the merchants were state functionaries or independent operators. Let us focus instead on the basics of what the merchants did. There is no doubt that the largest merchant transactions were made on behalf of the state. For example, the sale of grain on behalf of the governor dwarfs the other transactions undertaken by the merchants of Girsu-Lagaš. As I have noted elsewhere (Garfinkle 2010b), these same merchants were deeply engaged in transactions on behalf of the bala, which was the chief instrument for the collection of taxes from the provinces by the crown. Indeed, the individual most commonly attested receiving silver from the merchants in Girsu-Lagaš was Lu-Utu, a scribe for the governor who may also have been a merchant. Another frequently attested role for the merchants of Girsu-Lagaš was the purchase of oxen and cows for their institutional clients. Only rarely do we find the merchants purchasing other livestock, such as sheep and goats. The reason for this is simple, the state had ample access to enormous herds of sheep and goats, but not oxen and cows.15 The most critical point to observe here is that ultimately the institutional clients of the merchants had to negotiate for the cattle. The activity of the merchants is usually an indication of the limits of state authority and the need for the crown to accommodate regional socio-economic elites. The merchants operated throughout the state, though, and this made them, along with soldiers, some of the most prominently attested statewide actors.

––––––––––––– 14. Some new statewide institutions also required the participation of functionaries who could act outside of the limited boundaries of the old city-states. Judicial officials are a prime example of this. The information provided by the Iri-Saĝrig archives on the movements of m aškim supports this point (see Owen 2013c in this volume). 15. There were also significant differences in the ways in which these animals were used. Oxen were used most often, along with donkeys, as draft animals, while the sheep and goats were critical to the textile industry. Thus, fewer cattle were necessary. At the same time, as Sigrist 1992: 34 noted, the number of ovines passing through Drehem dwarfs the number of bovines. The ratio is on the order of 12.5 to 1. On domestic animals in Ur III Mesopotamia, see the relevant articles in the Bulletin on Su- merian Agriculture VII and VIII. 160 STEVEN GARFINKLE

3. Warfare, Tribute, and the Military

State activity in the Ur III period is most obvious in “foreign” policy and in the military sector. The royal inscriptions and year names attest to the importance that the dynasty assigned to its wars. It is remarkable then, as Bertrand Lafont (2009: 1) noted, how few of our texts directly document the activity of the army. In my view, the Ur III kingdom as we know it was a consequence of the social and economic effects of a state of near constant warfare.16 The militarism of the kings led to the creation of great wealth and great responsibilities, and to an increased role for the army both abroad and at court. Significantly, warfare offered the crown opportunities to create social pathways that bound individuals more closely to the state. The year names of the Ur III period clearly illustrate the prominence of military activity in this era. Between Šulgi 20 and the beginning of the reign of Ibbi- Suen, a majority of the year names referred to the destruction of foreign cities and lands.17 The pace of armed conflicts picked up in the aftermath of Šulgi’s destruction of Karhar, recorded as his 24th year name. As we can see in Figure 1 above, this was roughly the moment when text production appears to have increased sub- stantially.18 The really well documented years, from Šulgi 44 to Ibbi-Suen 2, show us that the famous abundance of records from the Ur III period was directly cor- related with the military adventurism of its kings. It is not an accident that these were the best-documented years of the dynasty. Ur III administrators devoted significant attention to the results of the military endeavors of the state. As I will detail below, the delivery of tribute and booty was not only of economic significance, but also served as a measure of the prestige and loyalty of royal functionaries. The constant warfare of the Ur III kings, particularly in the reigns of Šulgi and Amar-Suen, was directed at several goals. First, the success of these endeavors was the foundation of much of royal self-representation (see section 4 below). Se- cond, the destruction of forces to the east guaranteed control of key trade routes and pasturage while also preventing incursions into Mesopotamia by outsiders. Finally, the military provided both wealth and social opportunity for the new statewide elite. The Ur III state quickly became dominated by tribute and the prestige that accompanied it at all levels of elite activity. The military arena was the primary area for royal activity and advancement. The traditional elites in the southern Mesopotamian heartland, despite their political subordination, remained entrenched players in the local economies, but foreign campaigns offered opportunities for the new royal elite both at home and

––––––––––––– 16. For a discussion of constant warfare in the Ur III state, see Garfinkle in press-a; and see Michalowski 2011. 17. Between Šulgi 20 and Ibbi-Suen 8, 24 years were named directly for military activity. During this same era, a further 20 years were named for previous conquests (the m u-us 2 -sa “year after the year” formulae). For a list of the year names, see Sigrist and Gomi 1991: 319-29; an online version of this list can be found at the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative: www.cdli.ucla.edu. 18. Some of this pattern may of course result from the accident of discovery, but Adams (2009: 2) suggested that this picture is not likely to be radically altered by new discoveries. The chronological distribution of texts in newly discovered archives, like those of Iri-Saĝrig, also accords well with the pattern observed in Figure 1. The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power 161 abroad. The best evidence for the economic and social significance of warfare can be found in the texts from Puzriš-Dagān. Several categories of texts from this site relate to warfare and military activities: booty texts,19 the delivery of tribute from dependent areas,20 and the frequent offerings of often single animals by groups of men associated with the royal and military sector. The latter category is particularly well attested, with over 1000 examples in the available corpus. In these texts, a group of men, from a handful to several dozen, each delivered an animal, most often one lamb. The administrators at Puzriš-Dagān received the animals on behalf of the crown. During the most prominent war years, Šulgi 45-48 and Amar-Suen 4-7, we find the greatest concentration of this type of delivery. For example, among the texts of this type that I have identified, approximately 32% (or 450 texts) date to Šulgi 46- 48, and approximately 21% (or 305 texts) date to Amar-Suen 4-8. Though the men on the delivery lists came from very different parts of the kingdom, they were connected through their service directly to the crown. This is consistent with the evidence from the various settlements closely associated with royal authority. Places like Garšana, Iri-Saĝrig, and Puzriš-Dagān were filled with soldiers, captains, royal messengers, and other personnel whose careers afforded them opportunities outside of the traditional socio-economic hierarchies of the established cities in southern Mesopotamia. We often find these men associated with merchants. The social status of merchants rose during the Ur III period as the royal sector came to depend upon their services. We can see this in the Puzriš-Dagān texts in which merchants occasionally appear as the only other professionals alongside generals and priests delivering lambs to fulfill royal obligations. If we look at some examples of these texts, we can bring both their content and their purpose into focus. MVN 1 133 recorded the delivery of 27 small cattle in Amar-Suen 8. The first five donors were identified as merchants, and they were followed by larger donations from a priest and from the governor of Nippur. In contrast to many of the texts in this group, MVN 1 133 noted that fourteen of the animals came from the bala of the governor of Nippur and were received by Ur- saga.21 In most cases the origins of the animals are not listed and they are only identified with their donor and sometimes their destination, usually the royal household or a temple. In Ontario 1 135, fifteen small cattle were donated in Šu- Suen 2. The first five donors were again identified as merchants, and they were followed by the governor of Nippur, a šabra, a captain, and two men who were likely generals (one of whom was the king’s uncle Babati). One of the merchants in both of these examples was a certain Lu-Nanna. He was probably the same individual as the overseer of merchants from Umma who was quite active at Puzriš- Dagān (see Garfinkle 2008). Lu-Nanna was a frequent donor of small cattle, both in large groups including his fellow merchants, as well as in small groups in which he appeared in select company. In Amar-Suen 5 (TRU 123), he donated a lamb alongside a šabra, the governor of Umma, and two men not identified by their

––––––––––––– 19. See Lafont 2009; Garfinkle in press-a. 20. See Michalowski 1978; Steinkeller 1991; Maeda 1992. 21. It is tempting to identify this individual with Ur-saga, the merchant who often collected silver on behalf of the bala in Girsu-Lagaš (see Garfinkle 2010b). 162 STEVEN GARFINKLE profession. Earlier that same year, Lu-Nanna appeared on a list of donors that included not only a governor and several šabra, but also three men identified as Amorites, including Naplanum (BIN 3 538). These lists show the way in which the three core constituencies of the new state were brought together on tablets, and perhaps in person, to demonstrate their continued allegiance to the crown. In BIN 3 538 we find foreign dignitaries, the traditional urban elite, and the burgeoning economic and military elite joining together to participate in the rituals of the state. When foreigners, generals, and captains appear on these lists, we presume that the source of the animals was the booty they received during foreign campaigns. This may be the origin of all of the donated livestock or it may have come out of the estates of these individuals. In any case the frequency of the individual donations and the sum total of the group donations indicates an enormous extraction of tribute by the kings from the Mesopotamian elite. This was clearly a reciprocal arrangement, however, as these members of the royal elite expected to continue to profit from this arrangement. The delivery of the offerings was a sign of both their continued service to the crown and the privilege afforded to them by the king’s patronage. This was also a precarious system that depended not only on the continued participation of the elite, but also more significantly on the continued military success of the kings. This scheme relied upon the ability of the kings to prime this system with continuous booty from the periphery. The system was in decline by the later years of Šu-Suen and ceased to function early in the reign of Ibbi- Suen. 4. State Formation in Early Mesopotamia: The Question of Empire

The kingdom of Ur at the end of the third millennium BC is routinely described as an empire, and this usually implies a grand strategy to conquer and administer neighboring territory outside of the heartland of southern Mesopotamia. Just as scholars have begun to question the absolute power of the state under the Ur III kings, we now need to question as well their grip on the surrounding area.22 There is little direct evidence for the kings of Ur ruling over the territories that they claimed to subjugate, though Susa was an exception in this regard.23 In my view, the frequent campaigns of this period were raids undertaken with the goals of making safe the kingdom and making wealthy the royal family and its clients. Most of my discussion up to this point has focused on making the best use that we can of our administrative archives to determine the extent of state power in the Ur III period; however, given the fact that these texts tell us very little about royal administration and even less about the army, we need to look at a broader range of sources to determine the level of state control of the periphery. Of course, the administrative texts tell us about the extraction of resources from the periphery, ––––––––––––– 22. Michalowski’s recent epistolary history of the period is a leader in this sense as well; see, for example, 2011: 12. 23. Susa was exceptional, in my opinion, because conceptually it was not part of the Mesopota- mian periphery. The culture and environment of Susa were quite familiar to the southern Mesopotami- ans and presented a contrast with the highland areas that were the targets of so many of the Ur III campaigns. The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power 163 especially in terms of livestock, but the ability to obtain wealth and tribute from neighboring areas does not equate to active control of those regions. Indeed, we should start by asking ourselves if there is compelling evidence that the kings of Ur had such territorial ambitions outside of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. Such ambitions fit neatly into our assumptions about kingdoms in the ancient Near East. They also appear to match the surviving evidence from some of the royal inscriptions of the second half of the third millennium BC. After all, the claim to rule “totality” originated with the kingdom of Sargon in the 24th century; and the most common epithet for the kings of Ur was as “rulers of the four quar- ters of the universe”.24 Certainly, these claims imply that the kings of southern Mesopotamia in this era recognized no peers on a formal level. They viewed their kingship as having no equal, and this must have been reinforced in their eyes and those of their court when they achieved divine status and were worshipped alongside the traditional gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. This does not mean that they meant to actually rule over anyone other than the familiar black-headed people of Sumer and Akkad. Let me turn briefly to the year names to support this point. Above I highlighted that the year names are among our best evidence for the frequency of military activity in the Ur III period. This is especially the case for the last decade of Šulgi’s reign. We often assume that the campaigns referred to in the year names denote conquest and not just victory, and we need to question this assumption. Do the year names really reflect empire or do they simply reflect successful military activity? And how did they define such success? Šulgi’s 44th year was named: “Year: Simurrum and Lullubum were destroyed for the ninth time.”25 Indeed, if outright conquest and administration was the goal, then why would Šulgi acknowledge his repeated failure to subdue Simur- rum? If, instead, the goal was to highlight the king’s ability to, once again, defeat and plunder a neighboring kingdom, then he was laying claim to near constant success.26 As Michalowski (2011: 12-13) noted, The well-known case of the highland city of Simurrum serves as the best illustra- tion of the futility of some of the martial successes proclaimed in the year names: Šulgi claimed victory or, more literally, the destruction of Simurrum, nine times, and yet it still caused problems for his successors. But what if we go a step further and take Šulgi at his word. What does it mean to destroy Simurrum (and Lullubum) nine times? Is this a record of futility or over- whelming success? Our understanding of royal statements and propaganda in ancient Mesopotamia suggests that the kings of Ur would not have so loudly proclaimed their failures. Granted, most inhabitants of the Ur III state were not in a ––––––––––––– 24. On these titles, see Michalowski 2010, and 2013b in this volume. 25. This year name is good evidence that the frequency of warfare is not adequately reflected in our administrative sources, and this is part of the argument for viewing the Third Dynasty of Ur as a period of constant military activity. Šulgi destroyed Simurrum for the ninth time as noted in his 44th year name, but only three of the previous campaigns were recorded in his year names. And the name of his 45th year had him destroying Simurrum yet again, along with Urbilum, Lullubum, and Karhar. 26. Michalowski 2013a made the case that we ought to understand the use of the verb hul in the year names as meaning “to defeat” rather than “to destroy”. His analysis supports the broader semantic range that I would like to assign to the type of military action signified by hul. On hul, see also Mar- chesi 2013: 287. 164 STEVEN GARFINKLE position to read the year names themselves, but even if the audience was as nar- row as the literate members of the various administrative units of the kingdom, we are on safe ground believing that the year names were intended to convey stability and royal achievement. The kings of Ur acknowledged no limit to their talents, to their martial feroc- ity, and to their relationship with the gods, but none of this implies that they understood their authority to be limitless on the ground. Indeed the royal hymns bear this out. Certainly the kings were mighty warriors, and Šulgi claimed to have “placed a yoke on the neck of Elam” (Šulgi B), but for the most part the kings meted out destruction and came home with lapis lazuli, a particularly good meta- phor for loot. If Šulgi was indeed the shadow “that lies over the mountain lands” (Šulgi B), then that referred as much to the light he cast over the valley as to the rule he projected over foreign lands. The kings of Ur, and their armies of clients, went to war to protect their kingdom and to expand its coffers. The policies of the kings in maintaining dynastic alliances with powerful families in the periphery fit in nicely with the idea that they recognized the limits of their political reach. The ephemeral nature of Ur’s military presence in the periphery matched the temporary conditions of the tributary economy in the heartland. In spite of the claims made by our texts, both in their content and in their numbers, the kingdom of Ur was a short lived state. Once the ability and charisma of the kings began to fade, they could no longer raid the periphery with impunity and feed the system of patronage they had established at home. 5. Conclusion

In a recent treatment of early Mesopotamia, Robert McC. Adams (2009: 3) stated, “Ur III was aggressively successful as an empire for a half-century or so.” While I obviously would prefer a different label for this success than empire, I agree with his diagnosis that the failures of the state arose from this brief period of accomplishment. Both Adams and Norman Yoffee (1995: 295-6) noted that the Third Dynasty of Ur was successful in spite of the absence of real centralized institutions of government rather than because of them. The crown in this era was good at extracting resources, at home and abroad, and at diverting those resources to the growing royal family and its clients. In all of these endeavors, the kings relied on local and regional elites who could be co-opted by this system of patronage. A large scribal administration came into existence more to document these activities than to manage them. These administrators had to ensure that the resources were being registered and properly distributed. The vast extant archives are proof of the temporary success of the court and its clients, but the texts show us the limits of this power rather than exemplifying the creation of new instruments of government administration. Kings like Šulgi encouraged the development of statewide structures but they did not create a firm institutional foundation to provide stability for those structures. Establishing more statewide institutions ran into both ideological and prac- tical problems. It was one thing to assume greater control over the temple estates in the various cities, but it would have been impossible to dissociate them from the regional social networks in which they were embedded. There was also little room in the traditional hierarchies of the provinces to reward crown dependents. This The Third Dynasty of Ur and the Limits of State Power 165 encouraged the kings to look towards centralizing structures, but the prevailing incentives to retain hereditary privileges undermined the effectiveness of these efforts. The army was the only statewide institution to break entirely free of local control, but it was nonetheless characterized by the persistence of familial control of offices, and it was also dependent upon the continuation of past military successes. Adams (2009: 4) envisioned the situation as follows: Here we see not the densely occupied landscape under overall royal management such as has sometimes been proposed (Adams 2008: §§3.2-3.8), but the outward scattering of the royal progeny into model townships with royal largess (and hap- less provincial support as well) but little evidence of the intended transfer of ac- companying, more serious responsibilities. The suspicion thus lurks that Sumerian šagina may sometimes have signified a hereditary rank, like lord or marquess, and only secondarily (or not at all) as general. We need only include the clients of the state alongside these royal progeny and we now have a clear view of the kingdom of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and of the limits of its power and success. Bibliography

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