Sippar-Amnanum: The Ur-Utu Archive, vol. 1.

AuthorYoffee, Norman

In 1656 B.C. Inanna-mansum, the kalamahhum-priest ("chief lamentation priest") of Annunitum in Sippar-Amnanum, bought a 225 [m.sup.2] house. The seller, one naditu of Shamash named Lamassani. had bought the house eleven years earlier from a certain Mannam, whose family had acquired the property in various transactions about a century previously (Janssen, Gasche, and Tanret 1994). Inanna-mansum constructed a new structure, destroying earlier buildings which had in part been washed away. His son, Ur-Utu, succeeded his father (for the family genealogy of Ur-Utu, see Dekiere 1994a) as the new kalamahhum in 1643 B.C. (Ammisaduqa year 4) and renovated the house in 1630, shortly before it was burnt and abandoned.

In A.D. 1974 the Belgian team led by L. de Meyer began to excavate Tell ed-Der (Gasche 1989), discovered this house, and recovered some school texts in the courtyard, which were apparently about to be recycled. In 1975 the house was fully exposed. In four rooms to the northwest tablets were found, many belonging to distinct "archives," which were sealed by the fire that destroyed the building. H. Gasche and colleagues have published the archaeological details of the finds (including artifacts and sub-floor burials, as well as the architecture and stratigraphy) in 1989. Altogether about two thousand documents were found in the "house of Ur-Utu," mainly dating to the last phase of occupation (IIIb), Ur-Utu's house renovation. Some tablets were, however, archived in distinct groups for several hundred years. 1283 texts have been dated, and the entire amount is in process of study. Most of these tablets in this large house were found in room 22 (which could have served as a [sealed] storeroom), to the northwest of the central court, while the rooms 17 and 18 (forming one large residential room in phase IIId, but apparently not communicating with each other in IIIb) contained "archived" material (see Schroeder 1996 for characteristics of OB houses). K. van Lerberghe studied the lot(s) from room 17 for his dissertation and in this book publishes 106 texts.

The discovery of the house and its archives is one of the notable events of Mesopotamian historic archaeology in recent years and van Lerberghe's admirable publication inaugurates the formal and systematic study of the significance of the archives. (Shorter articles on aspects of the texts have been published and are found in the bibliography to van Lerberghe's volume. All footnoted and other...

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