Correlation of Archaeological and Written Evidence for the Study of Mesopotamian Institutions and Chronology Author(s): Maria deJong

Ellis Reviewed work(s): Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 87, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 497-507 Published by: Archaeological Institute of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/504108 . Accessed: 23/02/2012 07:18
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Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, 1981-1982

Four reportswere given in the Seminaron the Archaeologyof EasternEurope,the EasternMediterranean and the Near East at ColumbiaUniversity during the academicyear: Pyramid Building and the Chronologyof the Fourth Dynasty, by Dieter Arnold; Correlationof Archaeologicaland Written Evidence for the Study of Mesopotamian Institutions and Chronology,by Maria deJ. Ellis; Early Minoan and Middle Minoan Chronology,by Gerald Cadogan; Excavationsat Shortughaiin NortheastAfghanistan, by Henri-Paul Francfort. Dieter Arnold has publishedthe materialon chronology in "Uberlegungenzum Problem des Pyramidenbaues,"MittKairo 37 (1981) 15-28. The results of Arnold'sexcavationsat Dahshur appear in Dieter Arnold and Rainer Stadelmann, "Dahschur erster MittKairo31 (1975) 169-74; DieGrabungsbericht," ter Arnold and Rainer Stadelmann,"Dahschurzweiter Grabungsbericht," (1977) 15-20; Dieter Ar33 36 nold, "DahschurdritterGrabungsbericht," (1980) 15-21; the fourthpreliminaryreportis in press. Summariesof the other three communications follow below.
EDITHPORADA

DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

NEWYORK, NEWYORK o0027

Correlation of Archaeological and Written Evidence for the Study of Mesopotamian Institutions and

Chronology'
MARIA DEJONGELLIS
For ThorkildJacobsen Researchersfocusing on ancient Mesopotamiaare in a special situation, in that both archaeologicaland written evidencecan be broughtto bear on questions of interpretation.Unfortunately, each of these types of evidencehas a discretefield of scholarship,and they do not often overlap.Yet it is the possibilityof bringing the availableevidenceof all types to bear on whatever problem is under investigation-and the very much larger spectrumof inquiries that the availability of all these types of evidencemakes possible-that
I This article is a revisedversionof my talk of 21 January 1982, between Archaeologicaland Writoriginally given as "Interaction ten Evidencefor the Studyof the Early SecondMillennium B.C." I dedicate it to Thorkild Jacobsen, whose work is integral to this discussion. 2 Two divergentdefinitionsof archives are now in use; see E. Posner,Archivesin the Ancient World(Cambridge,Mass. 1972) 4. In one view, in use in the German tradition, archives consist of "non-current recordsthat, becauseof their long-rangevalue, have been transferred an ad hoc agency,called an archives." to Examples of this kind of archivesare various national archiveswhich are de-

gives the study of ancient Mesopotamia its unique character. In recent decades the amount of information on problems of Mesopotamian civilizationhas been increased enormously,by the publication of texts and other types of data. In addition,much work has been done on text types and problemsof language.All this now makesit easierto undertakeinterpretative studies of groups of texts which belong togetherbecausethey were producedby single record-creating agencies.Ocsuch text groupsor "archives"2are foundby casionally
underthis definipositories.In orderto be consideredas "archives" tion, recordsmay still be in the hands of their record-creators, as to long as they are considered be of lasting value. Americanarchival terminologyhas adoptedthis usage. We do not know with certainty of any archivesfrom the ancient Near East which come under this definition.The seconddefinitionof archivesincludesthe recordsof any agencyor institution,whether they are still in currentuse and of current value or not, and whether they are still in the recordcreator'shandsor not. In this view "records" and equals "archives," in this categoryour Mesopotamianarchivescertainly fall.

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modern excavatorsin the physical context in which in they were producedor stored3(or even discarded4); such instanceswe have an opportunityto studythe totality of the institutionin question:its materialcontext as reflectedby architectureand artifactual remains, including of course the cuneiform documentsthemselves, and its intellectual remains as representedby the contentof these documents-and by that of others which have a bearingon that content.Often, however, documentaryremains have come to us through excavations in which the findspotsof objects-especially tablets-were not noted or specified, or the tablets have come from illegal excavations, and therefore have no certain provenience. Unfortunately, documents which have derivedfrom the latter sourcecomprise the great majorityof those known to us and have providedus with the data on which much of the modern frameworkfor historicalreconstruction based.5 is It is thereforecrucialthat we subjectthose documents to the maximumfeasible degreeof analysis and interpretation,6 using all availabletypes of data. by This discussionconcentrates researchstrategies on to be employedin connectionwith existing sourcesof information,and does not go into the separate,but related, problemsposed by the possibility of enlarging our corpus of materials and knowledgethrough new
3 In the last fifty years a number of excavations have yielded groups of tablets or archivesin stratigraphiccontext. In many instancesthe editorof the documentshad strivento retain,at least to a degree, the original organizationof the tablets by presentingthem by room or by correspondents, prior to separatingthem for discussions and furthertopicalor genre studies. For example, for the Old Babylonian archives at Mari, see the extensive series of publications entitledArchivesroyalesde Mari (ARM, autographcopies of texts) and the parallel series Archives royales de Mari: Textes and (ARMT, transliterations translations),and see also the discussion below. The publicationof the texts recentlydiscoveredat Ebla (Tell Mardikh) also is to retain some degree of archaeologicalcoherence;see the plans for publicationannouncedin various scholarly journals such as "Note on the Ebla Texts," JCS 30 (1978) 125-26, announcingthe seriesArchivireali di Ebla, Testi/Studi. In fact, the Ebla texts are coming out in several series, among them Studi Eblaiti (Rome), Annali di Ebla (1980-), and Materiali epigrafici di Ebla (Naples); for publicationssee the relevantsectionof the "Keilschriftbibliographie" Orientalia N.S., section 382. in Pending final publicationof the royal archivesof third millennium Ebla, an extensivediscussionof the contentsand implicationsof the texts can be found in G. Pettinato, The Archivesof Ebla: An Empire Inscribedon Clay (New York 1981). That discussionis based on Pettinato'swork as the epigrapherfor the excavation.Mesopotamianarchivesand librariesconstitutedthe subjectof the 30e Rencontre assyriologiqueinternationale,Leiden 4-8 July 1983. Exhaustive coveragewas given to archivesof all periodsexcept those of Ur III. Both archaeological and textual aspectsof archiveswere discussed.When the papersare published,our knowledgeof cuneiform archiveswill be considerablyenlarged. 4 For discardedor reused ancient tablets, see T. Jacobsen's re-

scientificexcavations.Excavationswhich yield tablets do still take place, and methodological considerations for the most effective cooperationon the site of archaeologist and text interpreter(if these are not the same person) could be discussed. Here, however, I preferto focus on the possibilitiesopen to us in studying the material already available in existing collections, through the combined use of textual and archaeological/artifactualevidence, using the textual evidence as a point of departure. In particular, my concernin this essay is with documentswhich can be said to belong to discrete text groups or "archives," and with their relationshipto archaeological remains. are drawn primarilyfrom the late third My examples and early second millennia B.C. as discussedby others, and from my own researchon the latter period. The documents from ancient Mesopotamia that were generatedby the "greatorganizations,"as Oppenheimcalledthe templeand the palace,7were never intendedto be either widely disseminatedor long preserved.Yet, since tabletsare virtuallyindestructible in the ground,they formthe great majorityof extant ancient Mesopotamian texts.8 The texts come from a surprisingly limited number of "archives,"each of which consistsof interrelatedseriesof documents.It is
view of L. Legrain, Ur ExcavationsTexts 3: BusinessDocumentsof the Third Dynasty of Ur, in AJA 57 (1953) 125-28, especially 125-26, on the use of discardedUr III tabletsas fill in a buildingof the Kassiteperiod.Jacobsenalso mentionssimilarpracticesat Nippur (p. 126). 5 One reason for this situation is that so much of what we now consider well established knowledge concerning Mesopotamian history and social and economic institutions and their sequential development is a patchwork of interpretationsbased on studies using only part of the material that was available at the time of writing, certainlyonly a small part of what is availablenow. 6 It may also be pointed out that historicalinterpretation the of political and chronologicalkind tends to be updated periodically. We all have probably had to spend some time explaining to students why they cannotuse dates found in old (and some not-so-old) books. Questions of social and economicorganization,and of cultural interpretation, however,tend not to be subjectto quite as continuous a study; and we still base much of our view on studies which, howevervaluablethey were in their time, are now outdated becauseof the increasedamount of new materialand our growing to sophisticationin the methodology be used in the exploitationand of interpretation those materials. 7 See, for example, the sectionof that title in A. Leo Oppenheim, AncientMesopotamia: Portraitof a Dead Civilization,rev. ed. completed by E. Reiner (Chicago 1977) 95-109. 8 Oppenheim, (supra n. 7), discusses the written remains from Mesopotamia now extant in the section entitled "AssyriologyWhy and How" (first published in Current Anthropology1.5-6 [1960]), with special referenceto the texts recordingday-to-dayactivities of the ancient Mesopotamianson pp. 23-27; see also the section "Patternsin Non-LiteraryTexts," pp. 276-87.

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thereforenecessaryto study them in context in order to arrive at a correctunderstandingof the activities, situations, and institutions they represent-in other words, in orderto find out why they were written. Texts of the type that concernus here are very laconic in nature,and, taken individually,yield little information:the ancient scribeswere recordingthe operationof systemsfamiliarto them, which they felt no need to explain. Modern scholars,who are not familiar with the institutional backgroundsof the texts, must try to reconstruct them by analyzing large numbers of relatedtexts. Severalapproaches,taken singly or in concert,are useful in this effort. One is to try to establish the meanings of various technical terms by examining all the contexts in which they occur; the results are usually interpretationsof classes of texts and technical terminologyfor both limited and very extended periods. This fundamentalkind of work is necessaryto establishthe meaningof terms,especially in cases of rare use. The dangeris that the inevitable differenceswhich occur over time tend, at best, not to be emphasized, even though the researcherand his audience are aware of them, and, at worst, to be glossed over, producing a homogeneous,undifferentiated, and misleadingpicture. A second, more historicallyoriented,approachfocuses on individual groups of tablets, from limited areas and periods of time, which represent a single administrativesituation. The results of such studies can then be comparedwith those of other, similar organizations.Two assumptionsare implied in the latter approach:that the texts are available, identified, and can be understood; that the specifictext conand beforestudy-in othglomeratescan be reconstituted er words, that the ancient archives can be re-established, so that we can learn more about the institutions and individualsthat producedthe records.It is
9 On the importanceof this point, see T. Jones, "SumerianAdministrativeTexts: An Essay,"Sumerological Studies in Honor of ThorkildJacobsenon his SeventiethBirthday,June 7, 1974 (AssyriologicalStudies 20, Chicago 1976) 42. 1oSee supra n. 2 for two definitionsof archives. 11For a descriptionof ancient Mesopotamianarchivalfacilities, see most recentlyPosner(supran. 2) 12-70, who providesinformation from several sites which producedclay tablet archives.That informationmust now be supplementedby Pettinato'sdescription of the "archive science"of Ebla (supra n. 3) 48-51, which includes informationon tablet storage in the various tablet storerooms(on shelves, on brick benches, or in clay jars; tablets apparentlywere carried from one room to another on wooden planks), and on the implicationof the form of storagechosenfor the orderin which the scribes used and arrangedthe tablets. Pettinato also commentson

also necessary that a sufficient number of texts be availableso that the study has a valid basis.9 In this article the terms "archives" and "records" are used rather loosely to indicate a group of tablets that belong together for reasons which appear either fromthe texts themselvesor fromthe circumstances of their discovery.This loose use of terminologydoes not seek to avoiddefiningthe term "archive" a technical in sense1oas it applies to most ancient Mesopotamian documents;instead, it reflects the nature of the texts themselves. Ancient Mesopotamian records, as we know them, do not, except for a very few cases, come under the definition of archives as being records of lasting value. In a technicalsense, in fact, it may actually be better to speak of the recordsof a Mesopotamian institution,ratherthan of its archives. The distinctionbetweendocumentsthat are records of current interest only and those that have lasting value is difficultto make when there is not much evidence for the details of ancient archival practices (such as archival arrangementby indexing and storage), although we have quite a lot of informationon the existence of ancient archival facilities." Let us consider the case of the Mari palace archives, for which we have both archaeologicaland textual data for archival arrangement.Evidencefor the existence of internal archivalarrangementand archivalactivity on the part of the scribes is given by archival labels, such as those made by Hammurapi's scribes during their inventory and reorganization of some of the Mari palace records after his conquest of Mari.2 That evidenceis complemented the informationon by archivalarrangementpresentedby the distributionof tablets of variouskinds throughthe rooms,and by the information on their storage that may be deduced from their dispositionwhen they were found.13 Study of the tablets from the individualrooms of the palace
the type of archaeologicalrecordswhich are necessary for maximum use of the ancient documentation. 12 Posner (supra n. 2) 62, citing F. Thureau-Dangin, "Sur des etiquettes de paniers a tablettes provenant de Mari," in Symbolae ... Paulo Koschakerdedicatae,Studia et Documenta ad iura orientisantiqui pertinentia 2 (Leiden 1939) 119-20. On the same de topic, see also A. Parrot,Mission archdologique Mari (MAM) 2: Le palais, 1: Architecture (Paris 1958) 82, who points out that the made after Hammurapi'sfirst victoryover Mari in rearrangement the 33rd year was completelydestroyedduring the sack which accompaniedthe final destructionof Mari two years later, so that nothing remainedof any order. 13See, for example, Parrot'scomment,MAM 2/1, 71, concerning the presumed original placement of tablets, judged from the height of the walls and the jumble of the tablets.

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shouldthereforeyield informationon archivalstorage practice,and on the functionaluse of the variousparts of the building. This is indeed so for certain quarters of the Mari palace, although it must be emphasized that the looting which accompanied destructionof the the palace may have producedsome randomdislocation of archives.14 For the Mari palace archives,however, one can assume that, althougharchivalcohesion may be lost and the tabletsdispersedfromtheir places of storage, at least all the tablets found in the palace belongto palace-relatedarchivalgroups,so that if not the function of a palace architecturalunit, then at least that of a given palace official or bureau can be investigatedthrougharchivalreconstruction.15 We also have cases of excavated documents in which archivalcohesion remains but the archaeological context, although recorded,is not informativefor the study of the physical context of the original record-producer,as when tablets thought no longer to have currentor lasting value were discardedin antiquity. It is then possiblefor the obviousinterpretation of the (secondary)contextof the tabletsto be misleading. An illustrationof this situationat Ur was pointed out many years ago by Jacobsen.16Tablets dating to the time of the Third Dynasty were foundin Ur in the Edublalmahcomplex, among walls under room 8 of the Kassite period. The architecturalunit described by these walls was therefore called the "Registrar's Office"by the excavator.17 chronologyof the area The is somewhat confused,but the earliest certainly dat14 See, for example, the commentby J. Bott&ro, the introducin tion to his edition of the economic and administrativetexts from room 110 (ARMT 7 [1957] v); Botterohad hopedto use the texts to establish the use of the room, but-perhaps because of the sack of the palace-was unable to come to any firm conclusionsbased on the tablets he published in ARM 7. Conversely,the weight of the textual evidenceindicates that room 5 of the palace housed documents dealing with vegetables,and the editor, M. Birot, is of the opinion that tablets about other subjects(such as domesticanimals, textiles, metals, personnel)were broughtin duringor after the sack (ARMT 12 [1964] 1). 15 See now, for example, O. Rouault, Mukanni um, in ARMT 18(1977). 16 In his review of Legrain (supra n. 4). 17C.L. Woolley, AntJ 5 (1925) 392. 1s Jacobsen (supra n. 4) 126. 19 Jacobsen (supra n. 4) 126. 20 Jacobsen (supra n. 4). 21 Jacobsen (supra n. 4) 128. 22 See most convenientlyand recentlyJones (supra n. 9) 45-50, for a descriptionof the status of recordsfrom these sites. 23 E. de Sarzec and L. Heuzey, Decouvertesen Chald&e (Paris 1884-1912). For a reporton all the French excavationsat Lagash, see A. Parrot, Tello (Paris 1948), and the entries in R.S. Ellis, A Bibliography of Mesopotamian ArchaeologicalSites (Wiesbaden

able objects associated with the walls are bricks of rulers of the Isin-Larsaperiod,18 althoughthose may, of course, themselveshave been reused.Jacobsen, in fact, suggested that the tablets were brought from some nearby tablet dump to be used as fill under the new Kassite floor of the building; he cited parallels from the excavationsat Nippur with which he was familiar.19Since, however, the fill apparently came from a single source, whether trash heap or old archive, the tablets could be analyzedin terms of definable dimensionsand criteria,so it was possibleto use them as the basis for attributingfurtherrandomfinds of texts at Ur to the group. The resulting group of records could then be studied, as was done in some detail by Jacobsen,20 who came to the conclusionthat the documentsdescribedroyal interestsin the temple economy, and may originally have come from the "Storehouse the King."21 of Finally, disruptionof archivalcohesioncan be the result of modern interference. Often this happens with newly found sites which are exploited by local the entrepreneurs; Ur III sites of Djokhaand Drehem come to mind.22 In other instances disruption occurredbecauseof badly controlledexcavationsor the private activity of workmen connected with them; well known examples are Lagash, excavated by de Sarzec,23and the sites of Sippar and Tell ed-Der, when they were in the concession the BritishMuseof um.24 It is well known that the Old BabylonianSippar texts are the basis for much of our knowledge
1972) 80-81. The situation in relationto the archivesis described by Jones (supra n. 9) 42-45. 24 For an overviewof the British Museum work at Sippar and an account of all objects found there (excluding tablets, prisms, and cones),see C.B.F. Walker and D. Collon, "HormuzdRassam'sExcavationsfor the British Museum at Sippar in 1881-82," in L. De Meyer ed., Tell ed-Dir 3: Sounding at Abii Habbah (Sippar) (Leuven 1980) 93-114. For the work at Tell ed-Der, see E.A.W. Budge,By Nile and Tigris (London 1920) 1.319-22 and 2.257-68, who there describesthe trials besettingan object-oriented archaeologist in the late nineteenthcentury.For all work on both sites, see the entries in Ellis, Bibliography(supra n. 23) 76 (Sippar) and 21 (Tell ed-Der), the latter supplementedby the reportson the recent work of the Belgian expeditionin De Meyer, Tell ed-Dar (Leuven in 1970-), and the notices in the series "Excavations Iraq,"in Iraq 35 (1973) 197; 37 (1975) 63-64; 38 (1976) 74-75; 39 (1977) 312-13; 41 (1979) 155-56. The activitiesof workmen,antiquities dealers, local officials, and representativesof the British Museum are graphically describedby Rassam and Budge in their various publications;the assortedproblems faced at that time and by the moderninterpreterare abundantlyillustratedby Budge'snarrative in By Nile and Tigris 2.257-68. It shouldbe notedthat Walker and of Collon, discussingthe previousdescriptions work at Sippar (Tell ed-Dar 3.94), feel that "Budge'sreports[on Sippar, in this case]are thoroughlyconfusedand best ignored."

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about various text genres and contractualactivities,25 work by Rivkah Harris26 but until the comprehensive indeed also texts from other sites which they-and formed the basis for the synthesizing publicationsof the early twentieth century-were not usually taken as representinga single record-producer, even the or activities at a single site.27 The situation for Sippar and environsis now being ameliorated,both through Harris' work on the publishedtexts28and throughthe activities connectedwith and stimulated by the current Belgian excavationsat Tell ed-Der.29In the context of these new excavations,as well as in responseto the cataloguingof texts in the Sippar collectionof the British Museum, the British Museum records have been searched30 and that evidence has been made available for the study of the various archives and
25See, for example, the text compilationsand discussion in P. Kohler (later replacedby P. Koschaker)and A. Ungnad,Hammurabi's Gesetz (6 vols.; Leipzig 1904-1926), and M. Schorr, Urkundendes altbabylonischen Zivil- und Prozessrechts (Vorderasiatische Bibliothek5, Leipzig 1913). 26R. Harris, Ancient Sippar: A DemographicStudy of an OldBabylonian City, 1894-1595 B.C. (Uitgaven van het Nederlands Instituutte Istanbul36, Istanbul 1975). Historisch-Archaeologisch It should be noted that not all the texts discussedby Harris came from Sippar itself, but that many came from nearby Tell ed-Der, where a large number of tablets were found. Rassam and Budge both excavated tablets at the sites, and purchased tablets found there by others, either beforeor during their own excavations.See, for example, Budge (supra n. 24) 2.267, who describesthere how he induced his workmen to sell to him directly, rather than go through middlemen in Baghdad. For the quantities of texts involved,see Budge'sstatementthat workmenpaid by Baghdadantiquities dealers apparentlyacting on behalf of the Vali of Baghdad, excavated"manythousandsof case tabletsfromthree chambers" (p. 258); these tablets had been storedin jars or on stone slabs (p. 268). Budge bought "thecreamof the collection" plus many thousandsof other tablets, fromvariousdealers (who had told the Vali no tablets had been found) (pp. 261-63). For texts from the Iraqi excavation at Tell ed-Der in 1941, see D.O. Edzard,Altbabylonische Rechtsaus und Wirtschaftsurkunden Tell ed-Dor im Irak Museum,Baghdad (Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl. NF 72, Munich 1970). Edzard discusses identificationof Tell ed-Der texts in the British Museum on p. 13 n. 6 and pp. 16-17. 27Harris attempteda descriptionof the physicalcharacteristics of Old BabylonianSippar as these could be culled fromthe texts: (supra n. 26) 10-14, "Sippar as a City Agglomeration,"and pp. 15-37, "The Physical Features of Sippar."It should be noted that this attempt is not totally valid since it is more than likely that not all the texts she used came from the city of Sippar itself. Her descriptionshould be supplementedwith those based on modernobservations of the site and surrounding areas, especially L. De a Meyer and H. Gasche, "Contributions la topographie de Aba Habbah,"in De Meyer, Tell ed-Dor 3 (supran. 24) 23-36 with pl. 2 and plans 2-3 (showing Rassam's excavations),and Gasche and De Meyer, "Ebauchesd'une geographie historique de la region Abn Habbah/Tell ed-Dir," pp. 2-13. 28Although she also used a number of unpublished texts. The

sites.31The discoveryat Tell ed-Der in 1975 of the more than 2000 tabletsof the archiveof the chief lamentation priest of the goddess Anunitum provides much informationon all levels of researchtouchedon here: the activities of ancient officials;the nature of ancient archives;their storage;and their modernexcavationand utilization.32 The case of the Ur III period texts from Lagash is somewhatdifferent.Jones has presentedan overview of the archivesof the variousUr III period sites: how they came to light, how and why parts of them were published-and why some were not.33He also discusses the bases and limits of historicalresearchas it applies to Sumeriandocuments.34 De Sarzec'sdiscoveryof the Lagash archivewas reportedin 1894; 30,000 tablets were said to have been
material availableto and used by her has since been supplemented by further text publications(CT 45 [1964]; 47 [1967]; 48 [1968]; and 52 [1976]). See also the reviewsof Harris by M. Stol, BibO 33 (1976) 146-54, and M. deJ. Ellis, JCS (in press). 29 For reports,see De Meyer, Tell ed-Dir (supra n. 24) and the supplementarymaterialcited in n. 24, above. 30Such as packing inventories,accession records, and trustees' minutes and correspondence. 31 Especially helpful were the comparisonsof inventoriesmade when the tabletswere packedand those madeon their arrivalat the British Museum; see Walker and Collon, in De Meyer, Tell edDir 3 (supra n. 24) 95. See also J. Reade, in an introductory chapter to E. Leichty, Catalogueof the Neo-BabylonianSippar Tablets in the British Museum 1 (in press), in which all the British Museum acquisitionsfrom the late 19th centuryare discussed. 32For a descriptionof the archive'sdiscovery,situation,and contents, see the provisionalnotices in Iraq 38 (1976) 75, where the assumption is made that the building in Sounding E was the priest's private residence,based on the fact that the contentsof the texts are "essentiallyeconomicand administrative"; tablets had the been "groupedin basketsor wooden chests."The reportin Iraq 39 (1977) 313 describesthe post-excavationtreatmentof the tablets, and their cataloguingfor findspot,content,and date;that in Iraq 41 (1979) 155 describesfurther work investigatingthe building, "at the Temple of Anunitum,"in which the archivewas found. Materials from the archivehave been treatedin dissertationsnow being preparedfor publication.In a recent lecture H. Gasche described that archive as being primarily the personal archive of the chief lamentationpriest of the AnunitumTemple, Ur-Utu, though texts belongingto the archivesof the temple itself were also found (Universityof Pennsylvania,13 April 1983). The questionof privateas opposedto public activityon the part of an official is a vexing one, and not easily decided;see for example B. Landsberger,"Remarks on the Archiveof the SoldierUbarrum,"JCS 9 (1955) 128 and n. 162. The question comes up also in relation to the archive of the sangu of the Kititum Temple of Ishchali, discussed below, pp. 503-507. The question of combinationof public and private archives is touchedon severaltimes for archivesin the Roman world by Posner (supra n. 2) esp. 154-55. 33Jones (supra n. 9). 34Jones (supran. 9) 54-57, who there also gives a demonstration of what may be accomplishedeven with limitedinformation,using the archiveof an officialnamed Bazi.

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found in situ. Either beforeor after the officialfind,35 however, workmenillegally excavatedand sold a sizable part of the archive.Yet even such an unfortunate occurrencecan contributeinformationabout ancient archival arrangement,although not about the function of the archive-containing buildings.36 Jones demthat tabulationof all pubonstrated37 a chronological lished Ur III texts from Lagash shows that the clandestine diggers "madea gaping hole in the Tello arboth in the ground and in the chronological chives"38 sequenceof tablets. The last generalarea I wish to touchon is the treatment accordedfinds of cuneiformtablets by archaeologists. The generalresponseto a find of documentsis to use them for immediate dating purposes (royal name, date, etc.), or for the identificationof buildings or even sites. The result of the immediateavailability of dating evidence is that standard archaeological sources of informationsuch as pottery sequencesare usually not worked out as carefully or in as great a detail for the so-called historical periods as they are for earlier periods. But ironically tablets themselves, when found, are hardly ever treated as if they too were archaeological artifacts, made by hand, and availablefor typologicalstudy. Certainlythe relationship of their findspotto their content-which is of extreme importancein typological studies for both the historian and the archaeologist-is very often overlooked.And here the blame must usually rest on the who-even if he has the information-archaeologist, often sees no reasonto includeit in the officialreports. Instancesin point are, again, Mari and Ur.39
5 Sources vary as to the chronologicalsequence of events; for a summarysee Jones (supra n. 9) 41-43. 36 That function,in any case, cannotbe studiedon the basis of the results of the officialexcavation. 37Jones (supra n. 9) 43 and 45 fig. 1. 38Jones (supra n. 9) 34. 39I shouldemphasizethat these sites are not singledout here because they, alone, presentproblemsand challenges,but becausethe material is readilyaccessibleeven in non-specializedlibraries,and becausebetweenthem they demonstrate scopeof the problemas the well as many of the attemptswhich are being made to deal with it. 40 The excavationof the palacewas publishedin a three-partvolume:A. Parrot,MAM 2: Le Palais, 1:Architecture (Paris 1958);2: Peintures murales (1958); 3: Documents et monuments (1959). The Architecturevolume describes the palace by functional sections, and within that, by individualrooms,giving detaileddescriptions of the architecturalremains, and summary statementsof the contents of the rooms ("plusieurs centaines de tablettes"; "ceramique"). 41 Indeed,the preliminarypublicationsof the various campaigns often include more detail on the tablets than does the final publication.

The text publicationsfrom Mari do, occasionally, include the number of the room in which texts were found, either in the title of the volume or in the introductory comments,and, as indicated above, some of the scholarspublishing the texts have tried to discern the archivalfunctionof the roomsin which the tablets were found. In this aim they are hampered by the looting that precededthe final destructionof the palace. In the final publication of the archaeological finds,40 however, the discussion of the architectural remains often does not include detailed statements concerningwhat was found in the individual rooms, including tablets.41Moreover,the tablets are not included in the final publicationof the objectsfound in the palace,42so that nowhere in the official publications is there a total accountingof the documentary finds in the contextof-or with easy access to-a description of their provenienceand related material, such as is given briefly in the preliminary reports. Such an accounting,as well as a concordance rooms of and the tablets found in them,43 both by record-numbers and by text type, would be extremely useful to scholars pursuing lines of inquiry beyond the immediate discussionof text and text type. We must hope that this informationwill be published sometime, as part of ongoing researchon the site. The documentation tabletsfoundat Ur is rather for less completethan that for the Mari tablets. In general, neither the preliminaryreportsnor the final excavation volumes give any details concerning finds of tablets,44and apparentlyno very careful record was kept of the exact locationof tablet finds-not only of
42 The volume Documents et monuments is subdividedinto the following sections:1: Statuaireet reliefs;2: moulesen terrecuite;3: figurines;4: objets en pierre, en os et en metal; 5: amulettes, pa7: rures;6: mosaiqueset 616ments d'incrustation; coffreornement6; 8: c&ramique; glyptique; 10: legendes des empreintes; 11: la 9: faune du palais. 43It should be noted that a fast tabulation of rooms and tablet finds-and the size of the finds-comparing preliminaryarchaeological and philological reports, the final archaeologicalreports, and all the introductoryand descriptivematerial of the ARMT series (admittedly covering only a portion-although the major one-of the text publications) leads to some interesting observations and questionsconcerning distribution tabletsfound,and the of the proportionof the tablets now published and how these were selected. 44 Preliminaryreports:Syria 17 (1936) 23: 2500+ tablets, mostly in room 5; 18 (1937) 74: some 13,000 texts, in rooms 108 and 115a; 19 (1938) 15: 6 to 8000 tablets in 3 important lots; 20 (1939) 14-20: many hundreds in various rooms. Final reports: Parrot, MAM 2.1, pp. 26, 69, 72, 80, 81, 101, 163, 190, 217, 246, 276, 289, and 292 describerooms in which tablets were found.

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mundanerecords,but also of importantinscriptional material which might have provided specific dating The obvious example relating to archival evidence.45 use and interpretationinvolvesthe Ur III texts mentioned above.46 The publication of the texts by Legrain, UET 3, includes no informationon the provenience of the tablets.47Jacobsen, in his review of Legrain'spublication,publisheda list of numbersassigned to Ur III tablets, arrangedby seasons, which was given him by Legrain,48but stated that "a detailed correlationof the [Ur III period] texts and architecturalremainswill have to await the appearance of the final archaeologicalreport."49 However, the only generalreferenceto the provenienceof the tablet finds of the Ur III period is a statementnear the end of the volume dealing with the Isin-Larsaperiod,and that note refers the readerto the provisionallist published by Jacobsen.50This informationcan to some extent be supplemented from the published object catalogues,but unfortunatelyit is not clear to what extent this catalogue reflectsthe totality of the information available.51 The final example of archaeologicaland textual
45For examples of the information on findspots available for royal inscriptions,for instance, see the informationfrom the field cataloguesquoted by E. Sollbergerin the descriptivecatalogue of his volume Ur ExcavationTexts, 8: Royal Inscriptions part 2 (London 1965) 1-22, and his descriptionof the situationin his introduction to the volume, p. ix. 46 Supra p. 500 and ns. 15-20. 47Indeedthe volumeby Sollberger(supran. 45) is the only one in which texts excavatedat Ur were publishedthat containseven a referenceto the fact that the texts were excavated,let alone mentions their provenience the possibilityof ascertainingthat provenience. or 48 Jacobsen (supra n. 4) 125. 49Jacobsen (supra n. 4) 125. so UE 7.214. 51 The situationwith Ur is complicated by the fact that, although the text of the final reportswas preparedby Sir LeonardWoolley, many of the volumeswere publishedafter his death in 1960, having been preparedfor publicationby various editorsand a publication committee.These personsdid their best to incorporatedata on obwherjects (includingtablets) and their archaeologicalprovenience ever possible, since they felt that "a completerecordof the finds is essential for the constructionof the evidence and for the convenienceof the researcher" (UE 6.83). The chief result of this effort is that the cataloguesof volumes 6 (The Buildings of the Third Dynasty [19741),7 (The Old BabylonianPeriod [1975]), and 8 (The KassitePeriodand the Periodof the AssyrianKings [1965]) include all the objectsdescribedin the text of each volume,togetherwith the informationfrom the field notes that applies to them, rather than only selected objects,as Woolley had intended. In addition, T.C. Mitchell, the editorof the Old Babylonianvolume, UE 7, included in the preliminarymatterto that volume,p. xviii, a separatenote by Woolley, written in reaction to reviews of several of the text vol-

correlationI wish to cite is one that resulted in the formulationof my current work with the archive of the Old BabylonianKititum Temple at Ishchali. Cuneiform tablets and other objects attributedto the Mesopotamian site of Ishchali, located in the drainagearea of the Diyala River east of Baghdad,52 began to appearon the Baghdadantiquitiesmarketin the late 1920s, and drew the attentionof the Iraqi antiquities officialsto the importanceof the site. The site was subsequently excavated by Thorkild Jacobsen, who conductedtwo field seasons there, in 1934-35 and 1935-36, as part of the Oriental Institute of the The Universityof Chicago'sDiyala Project.53 excavation yielded the remains of several building complexes: a large temple dedicatedto the goddess Kititum (a form of Ishtar); a temple of the sun god Shamash, with surroundingresidential precinct, located east of the Kititum Temple next to the city wall and gate; and a complex of other rooms and buildings called on the excavationplan the "serai"(that is, administrative building).54 All these areas yielded, among other objects,tablets dating to the time of the kingdom of Eshnunna, in the early Old Babylonian
period.55
the umes, acknowledging need for publicationof the informationon the provenienceof excavatedtablets, and explaining the procedure all by which tablets were treated,thus making its shortcomings too obvious. 52The site is indicated on the map fig. 3 in R. McC. Adams, Land Behind Baghdad(Chicago 1965), as site no. 442; see also the descriptionof the site, Appendix p. 153. The ancient name of the site has generallybeen assumedto be Neribtum, after a suggestion by T. Jacobsen in "The Historical Data," in H. Frankfort,Seton Lloyd and T. Jacobsen, The Gimil-Sin Temple and the Palace of the Rulers at Tell Asmar(OrientalInstitutePublications43, 1940) 123 n. 26. That suggestion,which was at the time quite tentative, was followed, for example, by R. Harris, "The Archiveof the SinTemple at Khafajah" JCS 9 (1955) 33 and n. 15; for all references, see the recently published entry in B. Groneberg,Die Orts- und Gewiissernamender altbabylonischenZeit (Repertoire G6ographique 3, Wiesbaden 1980) 176-77 under Nerebtum, where the citationsfor Neribtumare listed, followedby the suggestedidentification with ?agali (i.e., Ishchali) and the map coordinatesfor the modern site. However, as S. Greengus, Old Babylonian Tablets from Ishchali and Vicinity (Leiden 1979; henceforth cited as Greengus,Ishchali) p. 1, n. 1, points out, the evidencefor the identificationis by no means conclusive,althoughhe himself assumesit to be in his discussion;see, for example, p. 21 n. 106. 53H. Frankfort,Field Director. 54For a composite (and idealized) site plan, see H. Frankfort, StratifiedCylinderSealsfrom the Diyala Region (OrientalInstitute Publications72, Chicago 1955) pl. 96. 55 Accordingto Greengus,Ishchali 2, 280 tablets were excavated at the site, of which 138 were allottedto Chicagoand 142 stayedin Iraq.

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Only the results of the first season at Ishchali have been discussedin brief preliminaryfashion'6;the second seasonwas not reportedon. Becauseof the format planned for the publicationof the Diyala Projectas a whole," only selectedcategoriesof finds made at the site have as yet been treatedin the relevantfinal publications;among them is the excavation'sshare of the cuneiform tablets.5"The buildings at the site are scheduledfor publicationin the volume Old Babylo-

prise the archivesfound at or attributedto the site, by far the greatest number known came from clandestine excavationsand thus have no known archaeological context, even though their probablecontext may be surmised.60 From the point of view of the assyriologist,the Ishchali texts, consisting as they do of a combinationof officially and clandestinelyexcavatedtablets, present a challengefor refiningthe methodology archivereof nian Public Buildings, not yet completed, and the construction. The tablets that belong to the archiveof original plan was that the site as an entity would be the Kititum Temple, known from the report on the discussed in the synthesizing volume Four Ancient first season and from the compositeplan publishedin Towns, which would concludethe publicationof the several of the Diyala Projectvolumes,61are particuDiyala Project. larly interestingin this respect.During the formalexThe fact that the textual materialcan be associated cavation of the temple, 119 tablets were found.62In with coherent architecturalremains, and the find- the publishedcorpusof texts the Kititum Temple arspots of the tablets documented,opens up another chive is representedby the 55 excavatedtexts now in phase of study for both the archaeologistand the as- Chicago, and by 21 purchasedtexts in Baghdadand syriologist.59However, of all the texts which com- Chicago.63 This material has recently been augchali tablets are in the Lowie Museum of Anthropologyin Berkeley; of these 110 were published by H.F. Lutz in Legal and Economic Documents from Ashjaly (University of California Publications in Semitic Philology 10, 1931); these texts were subsequently treated by Mirjam Seif, Uber die altbabylonischeRechts- und aus Wirtschaftsurkunden IRali (Berlin 1938). One text in the Mus&ed'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva, MAH 16163A+B, belongs archivally with the tablets now in Berkeley;it was published by E. Szlechter, in Tablettesjuridiques de la 1re Dynastie de Babylone (Publicationsde l'Institutde Droit Romain de l'Universit6de Paris 16, Paris 1958). A numberof texts from Ishchalionce in the possession of antiquitiesdealerswere given to, or confiscated the Iraq by, Museum; some of these were published by J.J.A. van Dijk in the series Texts from the Iraq Museum (Baghdad and Wiesbaden 1964-) 2.4, 5, 7, 8, 31, 43, 46, 47, 56, and 122; 3.126-27; and 5.21. The Iraq Museum also holds the Ishchali tablets which were the Iraqi government'sshare of the excavated objects;they have not been published, but the field recordsnow in Chicago contain descriptionsof them. 59 We must be gratefulto Jacobsen-who in one personcombines both excavatorand assyriologist-for seeing the importanceof this type of documentation,and to Greengus, one of Jacobsen's students, who publishedthe volume of excavatedtexts, for includinga list of tabletnumbersand findspots:Ishchali54-57, "Supplemental Data on ExcavatedTablets,"giving publicationtext number,field number, findspot, and date excavated. One would have liked an index by room, as well. It is unfortunatethat Greengus did not implementfully the approachindicatedby the type of information he providedin his criticalapparatusto his volume in his own presentationand publicationof the texts; for a detailed critiqueof his work, see M. deJ. Ellis. "The Archiveof the Old BabylonianKititum Temple and Other Tablets from Ishchali,"JAOS (forthcoming), which includesa review of Greengus'volume. 60 The exception is the archiveknown as that of Ilshu-nasir and his father Bur-Sin, of which no identifiable components were among the excavatedtablets;see Greengus,Ishchali 3. field recordsin Chicago. Greengus,Ishchali4-5, identifiesas purchasedtablets that can be attributedto the Kititum Temple archiveon the basis of internal
63

56 The resultsof the firstseasonof excavationswere described a in preliminaryform by H. Frankfort,"Progressof the Work of the Oriental Institute in Iraq, 1934-35: II: Excavationsat Ishchali," OrientalInstituteCommunications (1936) 74-100, with planson 20 pp. 76 and 77. No such reportfor the secondseason was ever published, but the architecturalremainsuncoveredin both seasonsare shown on the plan in Frankfort,StratifiedCylinderSeals (supran. 54) pl. 96, reproduced Greengus,Ishchali 10. The final publicaby tion of the architecturalremainsis being preparedby T. Jacobsen, who directedthe field operationsat Ishchali,as partof a publication dealing with the Old Babylonianpublic buildingsexcavatedin the Diyala Region. Certain classes of objectsfound at or attributedto Ishchalihave alreadybeen publishedin the relevantvolumesdealing with the resultsof the Diyala Projectas a whole. For the cylinder seals, see Frankfort,StratifiedCylinderSeals (supra n. 54) 60-61 and pls. 86-87, cataloguenumbers900-58 (900-37 were found in the KititumTemple); and the seal inscriptionson pp. 51-52; sculpture: H. Frankfort,More Sculpture from the Diyala Region (OIP 60, 1943) pls. 73-74 and 77-81, of which cataloguenumbers 333 and 335 were found in the Kititum Temple; pottery:P. Delougaz, from the Diyala Region (OIP 63, 1952) 173-74 and the dePottery scriptionof the Isin-Larsaand Old Babylonianperiodpotteryon pp. 114-24, passim. The evidencefrom Ishchali is also utilized in the chapterdiscussingthe historicaldata in OIP 43 (1940), especially pp. 116-17. Of the remainingunpublishedobjects,the stonevessels will be presentedby H.J. Kantor,and the small objects(weights, models,jewelry, plaques,etc.), manyof which were foundin the Kititum Temple, will be publishedby R.S. Ellis. 57See, for example, the front matter in OIP 43 (1940) vii, for a list of projectedpublications,and supra n. 56 for those alreadyappearedwhich include materialfrom Ishchali. 58 The excavation'sshareof these tablets,as well as tabletsattributed to Ishchali bought from antiquities dealers in Baghdad,have now been publishedin Greengus,Ishchali, as nos. 1-304 and 326. The clandestinelyexcavatedtablets that led to the Oriental Institute excavation are now in a number of different modern collections. The presentdistributionof the tablets,and their currentstatus in relationto publication(as well as the validity of the dealers' attributions of Diyala texts to specific sites) were discussed by Greengus,Ishchali2-3 and n. 9, and p. 6. Approximately180 Ish-

61 See supra n. 56. 62 Informationfrom

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mented by a large group of tablets belonging to the archivesof the Kititum Temple which I identifiedin the collectionof the Free Library of Philadelphia in the courseof cataloguingthat collection,64 thus bringthe size of the archive as it is currentlyavailable ing for study to about 340 texts. The discoveryof these additionaltexts has led me to undertakethe project, now in an intermediatestage, of studyingthe temple, using all available textual and archaeological sources.65It may ultimately prove possible to associate even the purchasedtabletswith specificpointsof origin within the temple, however tenuously; if so, that should in turn help to shed light on the use made of the building.66 The temple-complexdedicatedto the goddessKitievidence:nos. 2, 90-92, 114-17, 131 and 231. A thoroughprosopographic study of the texts may indicate furthercorrelations.There are no purchasedKititum Temple texts at Chicago which are unpublished,and there never were any Kititum Temple texts among the Ishchali tablets now in Berkeley. 64 That projectwas supportedby a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Library, which is acknowledged here with gratitude. I am in the process of preparing the manuscriptof the catalogue. To Mr. Howell J. Heaney, the recently retired Rare Book Librarian of the Free Library, I owe thanks for supportand the permissionto publish the tablets. 65 A preliminarystage of this projectwas reportedon in 1980, M. deJ. Ellis, "The Archiveof the Old BabylonianKititum Temple at Ishchali,"Annual Meeting of the AmericanOriental Society, San Francisco, 17 April 1980. Current status of the project:the Free Library texts have all been preparedfor publicationin autograph copy, and the studyof them and the othertexts in the archiveis well underway. ProfessorThorkildJacobsenhas kindlymade copiesof his notes on the excavation of the temple available to me, and I thank him for his generosityin doing so. Other help has come from ProfessorAnne D. Kilmer, Curatorof the Tablet Collectionof the Lowie Museum of Anthropologyin Berkeley,who allowed me to consult the tablets in the Museum; and ProfessorJ.A. Brinkman, Curatorof the Tablet Collectionof the Oriental Institute,who permittedme to work with the tablets,and, as Directorof the Institute at the time, allowed me access to the excavationmaterials now in Chicago.The AmericanPhilosophicalSocietyhas generouslymade it possiblefor me to consult the unpublishedtexts at Berkeley,and the texts and excavationmaterials at Chicago, and I acknowledge the Society'ssupportwith gratitude. 66Greengusbriefly discussedsome of the texts found togetherin various rooms of the temple during the excavation (Ishchali 4-6 and 12-13, especially 13 ns. 47-48). For commentson that discussion see my review of his volume (supra n. 59). 67 The original identification was basedon the discoveryof a cylinder seal dedicatedto the goddess Kititum;cf. OIC 20 (1936) 83, discussingthe seal of Mattatum. For the seal and its inscription,see now OIP 72, 52 no. 917, where Jacobsensays (n. 29) that the dedicatoryinscriptionrepresenteda seconduse of the seal, and that the legend originally also included a title, which was erased; it is of course possible that the eliminated line contained a "servantof DN/RN" clause. The inscriptionas now preservedreads:Ma-atna dKi-ti-tum/ i-qi-il. The seal is shown on OIP 72, pl. 87.
ta-tum / DUMU.SAL U-bar-rum /(erased)/ a-na ba-la-ti--a / a-

tum,67 who is otherwise known from texts found in

Tell Asmar as Inanna of Kittu,68is the largest building complex excavatedat Ishchali. The building with its platformmeasures roughly 75 x 110 m., is one of the largest Old Babylonian temples yet excavated,69 and is commonly describedas being a three-shrine temple,70 having one primary cella and two subsidiary ones.7"However, the two smaller "cellas"in the northern part of the temple were used in different ways during the various phases of occupationof the temple,72 and there is considerable question as to whether these two areas were ever used as shrines.73 In any case, texts excavatedin all areas of the temple belong to officials of the Kititum hierarchy.74The temple had four majorbuildingperiods,duringwhich
68 See the statement by Jacobsen quoted by Frankfort, OIC 20 (1936) 83-84, and also Jacobsen'snote in his discussionof the historical problemsof the Eshnunnadynasty, OIP 43 (1940) 116-17. 69 See Frankfort,OIC 20 (1936) 89, and, for a convenientcomparisonof temple sizes from both Old Babylonianand earlier periods, see H.J. Lenzen, "MesopotamischeTempelanlagen von der Frtihzeit bis zum zweiten Jahrtausend,"ZA 51 (1955) 1-36. Lenzen shows the Kititum Temple (redrawn from the plan published in OIC 20, 76) as fig. 38 on pl. 4 (between pp. 32 and 33), and discussesthe temple in the contextof the development Old Babyof lonian temple plans on p. 31. 70 See Frankfort, OIC 20 (1936) 78; it is so shown on the plan published there as fig. 60 on p. 77, reproducedby Greengus, Ishchali 11 as fig. 3. It should be notedthat the publishedplans are not identical (although the plans publishedas OIP 72, pl. 96 and OIP 63, pl. 203 are in fact the same: the discrepancyis due to a blot in the sectionabovethe main shrine in the latter publication).Nor are the published plans identifiedby level and period represented.A reconstructionof the Kititum Temple appears in H. Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (Baltimore 1954)

pl. 55. 71 Lenzen, ZA 51 (1955) 31. It is to be noted that seen in that light the westernmostof the two small "shrines" atypical:both the is main shrineand the easternmostsmall "shrine" plan accordwith in the so-called "Hofhaustempel"of the Old Babylonian period, which typicallyhas a short wide cella ("Breitraumcella"), while the third "shrine" the KititumTemple is laid out as a "Langraum," of a floor plan which reminded Lenzen of the "Osttigris"temples of Tepe Gawra IX-VIII (early third millennium B.C.; see Lenzen's discussionon p. 13 and fig. 15 on pl. 1), although in the Kititum Temple the cult niche could be seen throughthe door. 72 For example, the westernmostof the two smaller"shrines" was apparently at one time used as a kitchen complex or for similar domestic functions. See the plan in Greengus, Ishchali 10, which shows subdividingminor walls in the "courtyard" that "cella" to (locus 1R29). 73The matterwas discussedat somelength in a preliminarydraft of the manuscripton the temple'sexcavationwritten by H.D. Hill in 1937, which was made availableto me by ProfessorJacobsen.As far as I am aware, the possibleattributionof a deity to each of these "cellas" not been discussedin the literature. has 74Greengusdiscussedthe texts attributedto the main cella of the building (Ishchali 12-13), stating that the tablet finds bear out Frankfort'sconclusion(OIC 20 [1936] 83) that the largestcella was

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a few changes in layout were made. These changes can be observedprimarily in the areas north of the large courtand behindthe main cella, and in the relative heights of the platform on which the main cella block stood and of the rest of the temple. The date of the founding of the temple and the name of its first royal patron are unknown; the earliest dated tablet belongs to the reign of Ipiq-Adadof Eshnunna,while the last datedtablet falls in the reign of Ibalpiel II, an earlier contemporaryof Hammurapi of Babylon, as indeed does the bulk of the dated tablets. The temple was destroyedby fire, possibly during Hammurapi's wars with Eshnunna, which ended the rule of that kingdom some years after Ibalpiel II. No post-Eshnunna remainswere found anywhereon the site during the excavation. The excavatedtexts of the temple archivecome primarily from the final occupationphase of the temple; the dated tablets carry year names from the reigns of kings Dadusha and his son Ibalpiel II of Eshnunna. The purchasedtexts, which can be attributedto the temple archiveon internal evidence(such as mention of the goddess,the temple, or of particularofficials), extend this range back in time to include also Dadusha's predecessor Naram-Sin. The brief descriptionof
that of Kititum;but he did not referto the fact that Kititum-archive texts also come from elsewhere in the temple-complex.One of his problems is that he separatedthe archive of the sangz of Kititum (discussedon 4-5) from that of the rest of the temple (12-13), even though it is clear from the wording of the texts, and from the inscriptionsof seals used on them, that they all belong to one single archive, that of the Kititum Temple, of which the sangu was the responsibleofficial.See the discussionbelow. " All the published texts exemplify categoriesknown from the Free Librarytexts, but the latter show more variety. Notes on philological and detailed assyriologicalproblems have been omitted from the discussionwhich follows. 76 Greengus,Ishchali 4-6, discussesthe texts attributedto the archive of the sangz of Kititum, but he separatesthat archive from what he calls the administrativearchiveof the temple (8-13). It is clear from the texts, however,that they all belong to the same record-producingauthority. Whether we describe that authority as being the temple itself in its guise as an administrative entity, or as of being the officeof the 'angz as the chief administrator that entity, ultimatelymakes little differenceas long as we realize the internal cohesionof the differentkinds of documents.I preferto referto the archive as being that of the sangi since the title indicates immediatelythe responsibleofficial,and takes accountalso of the sealing practices and of the administrativehierarchy which are evident from the documentsthemselves. " For what is known to date of the Old Babyloniansangz and his zum Priestertumder altduties, see J. Renger, "Untersuchungen babylonischenZeit, II," ZA 59 (1969) 104-21: angzim. For the of sangzi as chief administrator a temple also in the Ur III period, see the recentdiscussionof the temple householdat Lagash by I.J. Gelb, "Householdand Family in Early Mesopotamia,"in E. Li-

the archive which follows is based primarily on the Free Librarytexts, as yet unpublished.75 The archive illustrates the activitiesand responsibilities of the sangu^ the goddessKititum, that is, of of the chief administratorof her temple.76Three persons, a father and his two sons, succeededeach other in office as sangzu.77The father, Igmil-Sin, is attested during the reign of king Naram-Sin. The first son, Inbusha, is mentionedin texts dated from Dadusha's first year throughthe fifth year of Ibalpiel II, including also all known years of Dannum-tahaz.78The secondson, Abizum, appearsas sangu^ from Ibalpiel's fifth year onward. Becausethe datedtabletsshow that these three persons succeededeach other in the order given, and becauseon their seals, which are impressed on a large number of tablets, they are describedas "servantof (king) RN,"79 the Kititum Temple texts will be of some help in untangling the chronological problemsof the period."0 The KititumTemple texts, which are distinctivein appearanceand to the touch, include a range of text types,"'includingthe usual receiptsfor tools, building materials,and so on; recordsof loans (includingloans madejointly by the god Sin of the-nearby ?-town of of Agaga and the sangu^ Kititum);lists of gifts (of prepinski ed., State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East 1

(Leuven 1979) 12-24, especiallyp. 16 under la. 78 This must indicate that we must place the reign of Dannumtahaz either immediatelybeforeor immediatelyafterthat of Dadusha, ratherthan near the end of the dynasty.For detaileddocumentation, see my article in JAOS (supra n. 59). 79 Greengus(Ishchali5 n. 17, citing a similar suggestionmadeby Renger, ZA 59 [1969] 119-20 on the basis of rather differentevidence for Sippar and Warka) suggestedthat this may indicatethat the sanguiwas a royal appointeeand that in fact he may have functioned as the civil ruler of Ishchali. Whether it will be possible to establish any relationship between the temple and the palace in Eshnunna must await study of the entire archive,especiallyof the large group of letters. 80oThere is, for example, the problemof the order of the rulers, specificallythe placementof king Dannum-tahaz.Within the reign of the otherrulers,there is also the questionof the exact orderof the year nameswhich are not attestedby the partialdate lists Harmal 1 and 2: Sumer 5 (1949) 83-84, and the problemof the as yet unsettled orderof the month names in use at Ishchali. The fact that the Kititum Temple archiveis a closedset of data comingfroma single institution-even if some of the documents,especially the letters, may have originatedoutside-and that it spans the time period it does, gives hope that someof these questionsmay be broughtcloser to solution. such as the quality of the clay, and gen81 Certaincharacteristics eral aspectsof form such as the shape of tablet corners,are common to most texts of the archive;others, such as overallsize, or the relative proportionof the dimensions,vary within the archiveaccording to text type.

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cious metals, stones, and textiles) made to the goddess,82and other administrativememoranda.There are also numerousletters,includingtwo fromthe goddess Kititumto king Ibalpiel,83 a numberof legal and recordsand schooltexts. The Kititum Temple archive, when studied tocontext,should add siggetherwith its archaeological nificantly to our understandingof the operation of the office of the sanguiand its subordinates,in relation to secular84 administrativeas well as more cultic

concerns.
The precedingpresentationhas, I hope, illustrated both the exciting possibilitiesand the irritatingfrus-

trations which confrontthe student of ancient Mesopotamian society and institutions. I cannot argue too stronglyfor the need to make availablein print all the various levels of informationwhich bear on the primary ancientdata, whetherthey be drawn from excavation recordsor museum archives.This information is neededto restoreor elucidateas much as is possible the ancient contextof the tablets;only after that is established can the ancient institutions representedby the documentsbe studiedto best effect.
THE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA 19104

Early Minoan and Middle Minoan Chronology

GERALD CADOGAN
The subjectof Early and Middle Minoan (EM and MM) chronologyis a difficult one. That there has been so much discussionabout it shows how little we know.' What we do know are the problems.What is sound evidence?That is, which are the sound correlations? If we do not have sound correlations, what measureof probabilitymay we find in alleged correlations,so as to makea circumstantial case?How may we connecta chronology based on correlations from excavations with one based on carbon-14dates? Here I shall be pragmaticand try to make a case that will allow for the plausibilitiesand the improbabilities of the evidence.I lack the certitudeof Warren
and the austerity of Astr6m.2 1 am skeptical of chrono82 M. deJ. Ellis, "The Delivery Texts of the Kititum Temple Archive," paper read at the 30e RencontreAssyriologique Internationale, Leiden, 5 July 1983. 83 M. deJ. Ellis, "The Old Babylonian Kititum Letters: The Goddess Kititum Speaks to King Ibalpiel," paper read at the 27e RencontreAssyriologiqueInternationale,Paris, 3 July 1980, to be publishedshortly. 84 It has been interesting,for example, to observe sealing practices and study which tablets are sealed, by whom, and with whose seal. For details, see provisionallymy article on the Kititum Temple archive(supra n. 59).

logies or, rather, chronologistswho venture beyond half-centuries to suggesting decades-although the occasionalquarter-century shouldnot be excluded.To suggest anything else for these early times implies a precision we do not have. I am also skeptical of authors who refer too much to their earlier work ("As I
said in 19 . . . "). It is doubtless comforting to think

that one continues to be right, but it is often not the case. Such attitudes can produce perverse reactions, among them the real worry that no archaeologistmay expect to have said the last word on any of the problems;it couldbe misleadingto use languagethat might suggest one has. This will not be the last word either. Warren's contributionin 19793 gives a full bibliography, which should be consulted.All that needs to
Andreou, Sinclair Hood, and Carol Zerner for much help and instructionover many years. The text is published very much as it was given. With the subject of chronologyhaving so many variables, it is more important than ever to say that the responsibilityfor shortcomingsis the author'salone. 2 P. Warren, "Problems Chronologyin Crete and the of Aegean in the Third and Earlier Second Millennium B.C.," published in AJA 84 (1980) 487-99 (hereafterWarren),with references(488 n. 15) to earlier articles;P. Xstr6m,articlescited in Warren488 n. 23, to which add "The Find Contextsof some Minoan Objectsin Cyprus,"in Actsof the InternationalArchaeological Symposium:"The Relations betweenCyprusand Crete,ca. 2000-500 B.C." (Nicosia 1979) (hereafterCyprusand Crete) 56-62. 3Warren.

' I should like to thank Edith Porada for the invitationto speak on this topic at the Columbia Seminar in February 1982, and for her effortsto insure that my commentsbe published;and Stylianos