A late-Achaemenid lease from the rich collection.

• Author: Stolper, Matthew W.

The preserved text on the fragment K. 8133 includes the concluding terms of a lease of oxen with cultivating equipment (probably part of a lease that originally included farmland and workers, as well) and the beginning of the list of witnesses to the contract. The terms are noteworthy for associating six oxen with a single plow and its hardware, a departure from the usual four-ox and less frequent two-x plowing teams familiar from Neo-Babylonian texts (see G. van Driel, "Neo-Babylonian Agriculture, M. Cultivation," Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 5 [1990]: 224-32). The list of witnesses is noteworthy for the number of names and patronyms that are of Iranian origin (as is the lessor's name; see M. A. Dandamayev, Iranians in Achaemenid Babylonia, Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies, no. 6 [Costa Mesa, Cal.: Mazda Publishers, 1992], 31, 35, 45, 53, 66, 86, 114, where the text is cited as "Kelsey Museum 8133." See also the preceding "Review Article").

Despite the prefix of its museum number, K. 8133 is plainly not from Kuyunjik (as Bezold Cat. II 898 observes). Its accession number, R. 112, marks it as part of the collection of Claudius James Rich, bought from Rich's widow, Mary, in 1895.(1) Among thirty-two or more cuneiform tablets and fragments in the collection were at least three other late Achaemenid Babylonian legal documents that also came to be catalogued with the Kuyunjik collection: K. 5424c = R. 108 = Stevenson, Assyrian and Babylonian, Contracts, 198 no. 41; K. 8485 = R. 109 (unpublished); K. 8506 = R. 110 = KB 4 312 (see J. Oelsner, "Zwischen Xerxes und Alexander," WO 8 [1976]: 314f., nn. 10 and 16). K. 5424c and K. 8485 can be attached to the Kasr archive from Babylon on grounds of names and contents; K. 8506 probably belongs to the same archive, judging from its appearance. K. 8133, however, shows none of the fire damage characteristic of the Kasr texts, apart from faint black smudges on the lower edge; it has no prosopographic link to known Kasr texts, and it is without close formal parallel among the known Kasr texts.

K. 8133

(R. 112)

(obverse)

(1) [6.]I TA(?) MU.AN.NA [MES...]

(2) [...]-a-mu-ut-tum id-din ina MU.AN NA X [...]

(3) [...]-x a-di-i qi(!)-it MU.AN.NA.MES [a.sub.4] 6.TA

(4) [...] [.sup.m.MU.sup.-d] AG a-na [.sup.In-du-kaIn-du-ka i-nam-din

(5) [pu-ut] re- -i-tum su-ud-du-du u ma-sar-tum

(6) [sa G]UD.MES [a.sub.4] [sup.m][MU.sup.-d]AG na-si 1-et AN.BAR sik-ka-tum

(7) [sa] 5 MA.NA 1-et ap-pa du sa 1 MA.NA 1-et...