Institute for Research in Humanities

This article studies the practices in sowing and harvesting in rows in Sumerian irrigation agriculture, as attested by the Ur III documents of Girsu and Umma. In Ur III Babylonia, the domain plots are grouped into nine classes according to the different numbers of seed furrows set up per nindan of width, with a standard of 10 furrows. Despite this differentiation, however, one "grain" was always dropped onto the furrow at the two-finger interval. We, therefore, are allowed to reconstruct the 1-bur model unit (60 nindan × 30 nindan) where just 1 sila of seeds is sown per 60-nindan furrow running along the long side of the unit. The total amount of seeds is fixed to 1 gur (= 300 sila) per bur in case that 10 furrows are set up per nindan. The Ur III standard amount of cereal yield is 30 gur (= 9,000 sila) per bur, which con-notes that 30 sila of yield comes from each 60-nindan furrow within the 1 bur-model unit of 10 furrows per nindan. In a score of Girsu documents of harvest plan, the number of the stacks of reaped crops (garadin) is recorded together with the information on the amount of grains that should be obtained from each stack (30, 25, 20 or 15 sila). Each 30-sila stack would be piled up at each 60-nindan furrow running along the long side of the 1 bur-model unit, while each 25, 20, or 15-sila stack being set at the interval of 50, 40 or 30 nindan respectively. A standard of 30 gur of yield per bur connotes that, within the 1-bur plot, a total of 300 stacks of the 30-sila class would be piled up along the furrows of 18,000 nindan in total length. The scribes of the Ur III "round tablets" seem to have calculated the expected amount of yield per iku, by observing how the actual figures differed from the above-mentioned norm of stack piling.