Ur III dairies: 10 (2024-08-14)

Created by: Englund, Robert K.

Ur III dairies accounts reflect the administrative structure of oikos households in the 21st century BC

The level of bookkeeping represented by TCL 2, 5499, MVN 15, 108, SET 130, UET 3, 1215, and other accounts reflects professional relationships among the various actors in the provinces of the Ur III empire ruled from Ur. The cattle recorded in these texts are essentially to be considered property of the state represented in Umma, for instance, by the “governor” (Sumerian ensi2); although tended by individual herders, the “large cattle manager” (šuš3) was responsible for overseeing the books of the herds registered in the debits section of the accounts, and for collecting and transferring the dairy products or their silver or other equivalents to the household of the governor. Should the cattle manager have remitted silver or dairy products to such higher officials as Lukalla or Ur-Šulpa’e in Umma province, these transactions are nonetheless to be understood as having gone through the office of the governor, since they are then dealt with in the books of these latter officials as property of his household, of course not of the cattle manager himself. Ultimately, the possession of all such goods was ceded to the king in Ur and formed the basis for taxes imposed on the individual provinces by the royal bookkeepers.

credit: Englund, Robert K.