Administration and society in Kassite Babylonia.

• Author: Brinkman, J.A.

Leonhard Sassmannshausen's book, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, discusses political, social, and economic institutions of Babylonia under the Kassite dynasty. It also publishes for the first time several hundred economic texts from the period. This ambitious combination of new documentation and detailed evaluation of data provides a reference work that will be consulted with profit by scholars.

Part I of the volume (pp. 1-181), entitled "Social Groups and Institutions in Babylonia during the Kassite Period," has three principal divisions: (a) offices and occupations, (b) ethnic groups, and (c) institutions and buildings. It assembles a useful compendium of textual data on these topics, including occasional references to unpublished material.

The section dealing with offices and occupations (pp. 7-129) is the longest in the book. It discusses governmental officials, including the monarchy (the king, royal family, courtiers), provincial administrators, the judiciary, and town and village supervisors. It covers a variety of occupations including temple personnel, the military, agricultural and pastoral workers, craftsmen, merchants, the learned professions (e.g., scribes, physicians), and slaves. Sassmannshausen describes at length the contexts in which each of these types of officials, professionals, and workers is found, their attested activities, and their relative status in the ration networks documented by the Nippur archives. He adds historical perspective with observations on continuity and discontinuity with comparable Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian occupations.

Not surprisingly, when one collects and discusses a diverse assortment of textual references arranged separately by office or function, the view tends to be fragmented and static. Though each specialty may be illumined in turn, there is little sense of how the complex political and economic system worked as a dynamic whole. Also, because the discussion sections are philologically oriented and focused for the most part on explicit attestation of the titles involved (sarru, sandabakku, etc.), significant connections may be missed: for example, the king (sarru), in the context of water ordeals, is given the title sakkanakku; but such occurrences are discussed only under "sakkanakku" in the section on provincial administration, with no cross-reference provided under the main entry for king. One may also question the advisability of providing categorical translations for official titles such as "Kanzler" (for sandabakku), "Kurator" (bel pihati), "Kommandant" (sakin temi), especially in those instances where little is known about the functions of the office and the choice of translation seems to depend chiefly on etymology. In addition, this mode of presentation downplays the significance of a substantial population of unfree servile workers which cut across many of the occupational boundaries and played a multifaceted role in the economy. Though the author mentions in general terms that slavery was apparently widespread in the Kassite period (1) and occasionally refers to persons of servile status attested in individual occupations, he seems to underestimate the pervasive reliance especially of the large institutions at Nippur on large numbers of coerced laborers.

The second section (pp. 130-51) surveys what is known of ethnic groups. Sassmannshausen points out that the population of lower Mesopotamia in this period was composed of a Babylonian core (Grundstock) and several separate ethnic minorities (Minderheiten). In his view, ethnic groups were united not merely by blood relationship, but also by a common language and place of origin. He discusses eleven such groups: Ahlamu, Amorites, Sutians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hittites, Hurrians, (2) Kassites, Lullubians, and Ullipians. He identifies members of these units in the texts by various criteria: (a) groups or individuals labelled with a gentilic adjective (e.g., Ahlamu, Lullubian); (b) individuals with a personal name in a language distinctive of an ethnic group (e.g., Humban-napir an Elamite, Akap-Tilla a Hurrian, Meli-Sah a Kassite); (c) individuals with a personal name honoring a god specific to a particular people (e.g., Assur or Serua for Assyrians, Simut for Elamites); (d) individuals belonging to a known Kassite tribe or clan (e.g., Bit-Bazi, Bit-Habban). Finally, Sassmannshausen considers personal names formed from gentilic adjectives (e.g., Assurayu, "the Assyrian") to be unreliable indicators of ethnic identity, with the sole exception of a usage of Elamu, "the Elamite," which he accepts as trustworthy. (3)

It is important to remember that these ethnic ascriptions are those of the Babylonian scribes, not necessarily those employed by the persons being classified; and this Sassmannshausen duly notes (p. 130). But there are other, less obvious pitfalls. First, Babylonian use of a gentilic adjective to characterize a person or group may not always coincide with modern interpretations of ethnicity. Second, the use of a personal name to establish the ethnicity of an individual can cause problems. For instance, FLP 1313, a ration text from the reign of Sagarakti-Surias, preserves the names of seventeen persons in a group labelled "Assyrian." Only one of this team has a name that seems indisputably Assyrian (Assur-ahaiddina), several have names that are linguistically Hurrian (e.g., Agissi, Ehliya, Kadiri, Sennuna), (4) some have names that could be either Assyrian or Babylonian (such as Ibassi-ilu, Abu-tabu, Adad-saduni), and one has a name that would be expected to be Babylonian (Nippuru). In at least this text, the ancient scribe seems to be using the gentilic adjective "Assyrian" primarily to indicate place of origin (5) rather than blood relationship or linguistic affiliation. (6) Without the gentilic adjective here, we would tend to classify some of these persons in other ethnic categories; and this text is not an isolated example. This raises the question whether "ethnic" is really an appropriate term in such contexts.

As for the population of Babylonia, presently available evidence does not favor the image of a cosmopolitan society, where the core group and minorities intermingled more or less freely. According to the Nippur archives, which furnish the vast majority of the pertinent texts from the period, almost all members of minorities--with the exception of the Kassites, who included the ruling dynasty, and a few Assyrians who appear as messengers, merchants, or the like--appear as marginalized servile laborers under the dominance of powerful economic institutions and not as free and active participants in the cultural life of the towns and cities. It is noteworthy that the term for Babylonians (akkadu), (7) supposedly the majority of the population, occurs only very rarely outside royal inscriptions: once clearly in an account text which mentions ten akkadu as workers, (8) and twice in doubtful instances in letters, where the term may in fact be used as a personal name. (9) The question inevitably arises: if Babylonians constitute the bulk of the population, why is the designation akkadu so sparingly used and what does such exceptional usage signify? (10)

We are not very well informed about contemporary naming practices in Mesopotamia and surrounding areas. Since many foreign workers bear Babylonian names, could new names be assigned when servile laborers or slaves were brought into the country; or were such names more often a mark of a later generation in captivity? How can one estimate the level of assimilation when a person with a Babylonian name is nonetheless tagged with an ethnic label, and it is impossible to determine whether the proper name was given by the family or by the local administration? (11) Or when a person with a name in one language is assigned by label to another ethnic group? (12) And what about cases where siblings bear names that are ethnically diverse, e.g., Kassite and Babylonian? Or where Kassite-named children have Babylonian-named fathers? (13) Or where a person is said to have two names? (14) The issues are complex; and no simple rules can be devised to cover all instances, especially when individuals are known principally from their mention in a roster. Postulation of a "rein babylonische Beamtenclan," (15) deduced simply from classification of personal names by source language, may rely on a fragile foundation, since Babylonian names can conceal a variety of origins among a population where assimilation was commonplace. (16)

Social structure and the putative existence of extended families, clans, and tribes among ethnic groups have long attracted the attention of historians. With continuing theoretical work on such questions, which has intensified especially over the last two decades, we are now in a better position to assess our data critically. Such terms as family, clan, and tribe can be redefined or at least have their usage described with a greater degree of precision. How well such terms fit is likely to remain a subject of controversy. (17) The data consist largely of relatively unarticulated notation of units such as Bit PN (where bitu can refer to anything from a house or part of a house, to an estate, a synchronic or diachronic social unit or descent group, or a political division up to the level of province); with little context to draw on in most instances, guesses as to where an individual Bit PN may lie along this wide spectrum are often subjective, no matter how dogmatically asserted. (18) Similarly for statements of ancestry, starting from the simplest unit PN DUMU P[N.sub.2], in which P[N.sub.2] can stand for a biological or adoptive father, a more remote ancestor, or an eponymous head of a descent line (the latter perhaps shading into the realm of legend). Today we are perhaps better advised to be more cautious in jumping from ambiguous "house" and "descent" data (without indications of the...