Fruhe Schrift und Techniken der Wirtschaftsverwaltung im alten Vorderen Orient: Informationsspeicherung und -verar-beitung vor 5000 Jahren.

• Author: Schmandt-Besserat, Denise

This volume served as the catalogue for a 1990 exhibition at the Museum fur Vor- und Fruhgeschichte, Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. It is an important publication documenting the collection of archaic Sumerian tablets formerly owned by the Erlenmeyers of Switzerland and now divided mostly among the Berlin Senate, the British Museum, and the Louvre. Most significantly, the book provides a thorough presentation of the form and content of the Sumerian texts of the Jemdet Nasr period. The book is lavishly photographed in black and white and in color.

The volume is divided into sixteen sections. The first three are introductory, describing the geography and climate of lower Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium, the origin of writing in and around Sumer, and the socioeconomic beginnings of Mesopotamia: the birth of agriculture, the rise of cities, and the population movements of the late Uruk Period. The language encoded in the archaic tablets is identified as Sumerian.

Sections four and five present, respectively, the Erlenmeyer collections of tablets and seals. The origin of these purchased objects is obscure. The similarity of the artifacts to those recovered at Uruk by the German Archaeological Institute suggests that they come from illicit excavations at the same site. The uniformly excellent state of preservation of the tablets, the homogeneity of the texts (style III; Jemdet Nasr), and series of texts referring to the same individual leave little doubt that the documents belonged to a single archive.

Sections six and seven describe the invention of writing in Uruk IVa as an important step in the long tradition of accounting in Mesopotamia: tablets followed tokens, i.e., small clay counters in many shapes. In turn, these archaic tablets were followed by cuneiform texts preserving the same format for centuries.

With the help of excellent graphics, sections eight through fourteen take the reader step-by-step through the intricate bookkeeping techniques of the Uruk Period. Texts dealing with distribution of cereals and herds and with land and manpower management are treated in detail, including a full discussion of the complex metrology employed. Sections nine and eleven are case studies of accounts dealing with particular administrators.

Sections fifteen and sixteen discuss lexical texts and sketch the status and training of scribes. The final two sections present a summary of the evolution of writing and reckoning.

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