Neo-Sumerian Texts from the Royal Ontario Museum, vol. 1 The Administration at Drehem.

• Author: BIGA, MARIA GIOVANNA
• Position: Review

Neo-Sumerian Texts from the Royal Ontario Museum, vol. 1 The Administration at Drehem. By MARCEL SIGRIST. Bethesda, Md.: CDL PRESS, 1995. Pp. [v] + 125, 20 plates.

In this volume M. Sigrist publishes one hundred seventy-nine administrative texts of the Third Dynasty of Ur conserved at the Royal Ontario Museum of Toronto, Canada. All the texts derive from clandestine excavations at Drehem which, from the start of the twentieth century on, resulted in an enormous number of tablets arriving in the museums and private collections of the world. Thirty thousand of these have so far been published.

In his brief introduction (pp. 11-14), the author narrates the "discovery" of Drehem by Assyriologists and its almost certain identification with ancient Puzris-Dagan. This was the center where Sulgi, according to his thirty-ninth year name, founded a temple/palace which was soon transformed into a great complex for the collection of taxes in the form of livestock. In fact, from the twentieth year of his reign on, Sulgi had organized a great restructuring of his empire, which included a system by which frontier districts of the kingdom provided livestock as fulfillment of tax obligations. Most of the texts from Drehem relate to animals, many of which were destined as offerings to the gods and as provisions for the temple complexes at Nippur, Uruk, and Ur. The texts of this new volume contribute information for the study of the cultic calendar of the Ur III period.

Sigrist notes three basic accounting procedures (pp. 15-27) utilized by the scribes of Drehem: deliveries (mu-tum), especially for the king and his court and for cultic purposes; transfers (i-[dab.sub.5]); and disbursements (zi-ga). The author, who also composed the important volume Drehem (Bethesda, Md., 1992) is a great expert on this city, and has been able to describe its history as well as political, diplomatic, and administrative affairs on a year-by-year, month-by-month, almost day-by-day basis. Thus no one is better qualified than he to publish these texts.

The texts are given here in transcription and translation with the addition of some bibliographical and lexical notes. They are presented in chronological order...