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TREATING GARMENTS IN THE OLD BABYLONIAN PERIOD:
“AT THE CLEANERS” IN A COMPARATIVE VIEW1
By NATHAN WASSERMAN
To Jean-Marie Durand—teacher, colleague and friend
This article examines UET 6/2, 414, the Old Babylonian dialogue between a fuller and a client, commonly
referred to as “At the Cleaners”, from the point of view of ancient technology. Drawing upon a wide range
of Talmudic and Classical sources mentioning laundry, and based on a careful philological reading of the
Akkadian text, this study offers a new understanding of the different stages of washing and treatment of luxury
garments in the Old Babylonian period. It is argued that the possible humorous aspect of the text is irrelevant
to the fact that UET 6/2, 414 is a unique composition in antiquity, offering a long and accurate sequence of
laundry instructions. Washing procedures and ways of treating luxury garments in Mesopotamia are outlined
step by step; new Akkadian terms pertaining to garments and clothing are presented; wages of laundry workers
in ancient Mesopotamia are briefly discussed. The study concludes with a new edition and translation of UET
6/2, 414.
I. Introduction
UET 6/2, 414, commonly referred to as “At the Cleaners”, presents a dialogue between a fuller
and his picky customer concerning the treatment of clothes. The text has been repeatedly edited,2
translated3 and studied.4 Recently it was also collated.5 The dynamic flow of the conversation and
the vivid situation depicted in the text—which some scholars consider humorous6—make it one of
the better-known Old Babylonian literary compositions. However, “At the Cleaners” remains a
difficult text, with many unsolved philological problems calling for detailed research.
This study makes two assumptions. First, that ancient texts tend to describe everyday activities
in a logical manner, often consecutively, or at least in coherent stages. While the logic of such texts
might elude the modern reader, it is highly unlikely that the ancient scribe would present a common
activity erratically. I cannot, therefore, follow Foster (2005, 151) who takes some of the instructions
given to the fuller as “ridiculous”, and Lackenbacher (1982, 144, n. 37) who sees an “absurd side”
in the client’s words. For, even if UET 6/2, 414 is a humorous text, it is not nonsensical. The customer
is annoying but not insane, and his instructions are tiresome but not absurd: they were perfectly
understood by the fuller, who does not say that the instructions are nonsensical, only that they are
tedious and long (ll. 28–32).
To clarify this point, let us compare a recipe for cleaning spots from early nineteenth-century
England:
To scour clothes, coats, pelisses, etc. If a black, blue or brown coat, dry 2 ounces of fullers earth, and pour
on it sufficient boiling water to dissolve it and plaster with it the spots of grease; take a penny-worth of
bullock’s gall, mix with it half a pint of stale wine;7 and a little boiling water; with a hard brush dipped in
this liquor brush spotted places. Then dip the coat in a bucket of cold spring water. When nearly dry, lay
the nap right and pass a drop of oil of olives over the brush to finish it. If grey, drab, fawn or maroon, cut
1 This study was carried out within the framework of
SEAL (Sources of Early Akkadian Literature), directed by
M. P. Streck and the author of the present paper, and
supported by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific
Research and Development (GIF). Prof. Shlomo Naeh of
the Dept. of Talmud and Jewish Thought at the Hebrew
University kindly read an early version of this paper and
offered important improvements regarding the Rabbinic
sources. All remaining mistakes are my own. The drawings,
unless stated otherwise, are by Alexander Pechuro.
2 Gadd 1963; Livingstone 1988.
Iraq LXXV (2013)
3 Foster 1993; Foster 2005; Livingstone 1997; Deheselle
2002 (last ref. courtesy M. P. Streck). A new translation of
the text is found in the appendix to this paper.
4 George 1993; Reiner 1995.
5 Ludwig 2009.
6 See esp. Foster 1995, 2461 and Deheselle 2002, 205 and
224–226. In the collection of Akkadian texts The Context
of Scripture (Livingstone 1997), the sole composition found
under the heading Humorous Texts is “At the Cleaners”.
7 “Wine” perhaps a mistake for urine, so Robertson 1986,
167.
256
yellow soap into thin slices and pour water upon it to moisten it. Rub the greasy and dirty spots of the coat.
Let it dry a little and then brush it with warm water, repeating if necessary as at first, and use water a little
hotter, rinse several times in warm water, and finish as before.8
Written only a few generations ago, this text reads today as tedious and odd, yet it is far from being
funny or ridiculous.
The second supposition in this study is that daily life practices and occupational activities in
ancient cultures evolved slowly. People did not change the way they washed their clothes according
to a change in political power. Technological innovations in such mundane activities as cleaning
are rare, and their effect is gradual.9 Thus the work of cleaners and fullers in pre-modern Iraq can
be studied through later sources. Here Rabbinic sources turn out to be especially valuable.10 By
harnessing the Mishnaic11 and Talmudic sources12 to the Old Babylonian documents, most
importantly the recently published volume of ARM 30 (and to a lesser degree also the nomenclature
related to textiles used in Ebla13 and in Ugarit14), the technical vocabulary used in UET 6/2, 414 can
be explicated successfully.
UET 6/2, 414 offers a detailed, indeed unique, look at the complex work of the Old Babylonian
ašlÁkum. As already noticed by Lackenbacher (1982, 137), Livingstone (1988, 175; 1997) and
Deheselle (2002, 210) the cleaner in “At the Cleaners” does not deal only with the simple job of
cleaning clothes; this craftsman is better described as a fuller, a person who takes care of a wide
range of tasks: cleaning, repairing, pressing and preserving all kinds of articles of clothing.15 This
observation is important, since, as this study shows, most of the instructions given to the fuller
concern activities that follow the initial activity of washing.16 Much research has been conducted on
textiles and the textile industry in antiquity, from the earliest periods, through the Greco-Roman
world and the Middle Ages, until the industrial era.17 Still, the great majority of these studies deal
with the techniques of spinning and weaving, with pre-modern looms, and other processes used for
the manufacture of textiles and clothes.18 The routine of treating finished garments—washing,
brushing, repairing—is less studied.19 In this regard the Talmud is invaluable. The Jewish sages’
establishment of a comprehensive Halachic system in Babylonia and in Palestine led them to observe
8 Colin Mackenzie, Five Thousand Receipts, 5th ed.
(London: G. B. Whittaker, 1825), 125 (cited in Robertson
1986, 167–68).
9 For a discussion of the social and political impediments
to the advancement of technological innovations in the
Greek, Hellenistic and Roman worlds, see Humphrey 2006,
117–33. This discussion, however, concerns high technology.
Daily crafts were even less prone to change.
10 Reiner (1995) was the first to notice the importance of
the body of Rabbinic literature for the study of “At the
Cleaners”.
11 Cited Mishnaic passages (marked with the signature m.
= mishnah) follow the translation of Danby (1933).
12 Cited Talmudic passages (marked with the signature b.
= bavli [Babylonian Talmud]) follow the classic translation
of the Soncino edition edited by Epstein (1961).
13 For fullers (t ú g - d u 8 ) in Ebla, see Sollberger 1986, 67.
14 For fullers in Ugarit (kbs/ěm), see Ribichini/Xella 1985,
21.
15 The same applies for the fuller’s responsibilities in
Roman times, for which see Shamir 2005, 42 (basing herself
on Bradley 2002, 21): “. . . “fulling” [in Roman times, NW]
implies two distinct processes: one is the ancient equivalent
of commercial dry-cleaning of dirty clothes; the second is the
industrial finishing of textile products”.
16 The activities of the Old Babylonian ašlÁkum, as presented in the text that stands at the core of this study,
resemble the activities of the ašlÁkum attested in the documentation of the Ur III-period (Waetzoldt 1972, 153–74).
New material on fullers in Ur III-period Garšana is now
available: see Kleinerman/Owen 2009, 726–28. In NeoBabylonian archives the craftsmen called ašlÁku(TÚG.BAB-
BAR) are attested, but as Zawadzki (2006, 57) says, “their
role [. . .] is not entirely clear. If we translate ašlÁku as ‘washerman’, we should include him in the group of the cleaners;
but if we translate the term as ‘bleacher’, then his task is
closely connected with the job of the weavers”. UET 6/2, 414
shows that the tasks of the ašlÁkum in the Old Babylonian
period were different from the duties of the ašlÁku in NeoBabylonian Sippar. It seems safe to conclude that the scope
of duties of the ašlÁkum in Old Babylonian times was closer
to those of the craftsman called in later periods pī½Áyu,
“bleacher” or “cleaner” (Zawadzki 2006, 66). A dossier studied by Joannès (1984, 149–84) shows that fullers (lú-túg)
in Mari were also responsible for the dyeing of textiles
and other clothing articles. Such co-dependence of different
workers—textile producers, fullers, and dyers—is not surprising and is found in later periods: see Miller 2007, 242;
Safrai 1994, 122.
17 Of the extensive literature on the subject I have found
the following recent works useful: Humphrey 2006; Miller
2007; Breniquet 2008; Gleba 2008 and Wild 2008.
18 The most important source for these processes in the
Old Babylonian period is the text (from Larsa?) published by
Lackenbacher (1982).
19 For the Roman period see Bradley 2002 and Shamir
2005, which approach the problem from the archaeological
angle. The technological-chemical aspects involved in
ancient fulling require further study. In this respect, the
Renaissance instruction books which list different recipes for
removing spots and cleaning clothes are especially important,
see: Edelstein 1964; Leed 2006; Rawcliffe 2009. Smulders’
(2002, 1–7) historical review is also helpful.
257
and categorize a wide spectrum of everyday activities, including cleaning and treating clothes, in a
way that is hard to find in any other body of texts.20
Turning to the Talmud when dealing with an Old Babylonian text entails methodological
difficulties that must be stated clearly, however.21 The Talmud is not a homogeneous text, a product
of one author depicting reality in a specific area in one lifetime. This multi-layered synoptic
compendium emulates oral discussions and legal deliberations over time (several centuries) and
space (Babylonia and Palestine), contains numerous contradictions, repetitions, alternating views,
and different interpretations. Chronologically, the Talmud was compiled almost two millennia after
“At the Cleaners”: the Palestinian Talmud was redacted sometime in the fourth century C.E., under
Byzantine rule, and the expanded Babylonian Talmud, originating from the great Rabbinic centres
of Mesopotamia, was redacted even later, around the end of the fifth century C.E., under Sassanian
rule. Finally, unlike Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, the Talmud was not triggered by scientific, historical,
or ethnographical interests, but rather was composed from a legal-religious point of view. Only what
seemed relevant to the application of Rabbinic law was included in the text of the Talmudic
discussion.22 Time, space, and the nature of composition separate the Old Babylonian text dealt with
in this article from the Talmud. Still, regardless of these difficulties, the Talmud is a treasure trove
of the practices of daily life in Mesopotamia in the centuries before and after the beginning of the
current era. It is therefore a source of knowledge for practices preceding its actual dates of compilation
and can help considerably in elucidating some passages in UET 6/2, 414.23
II. The Purpose of “At the Cleaners”
Let us begin with examining the lexicon of UET 6/2, 414. The text contains a high number of
hapax legomena, rare words, and words that are attested only in lexical lists: bittum (l. 12); maætûtum
(l. 34); meskertum (l. 13); napalsaætum (l. 19); qapsëdum (ll. 4, 9); taršëtum (l. 41); and lëlum (in the
sense of “evening”, l. 22). In addition, UET 6/2, 414 employs common verbs with a special, technical
meaning: edÓkum/edÓæum (l. 10); laqÁtum (l. 6); nadÁdum (l. 17); pašÁæum (ll. 21, 25), takÁpum (l. 5),
tarÁkum (l. 18) and perhaps also emÓdum (l. 17). It is therefore safe to say that “At the Cleaners”
makes use of a professional language, no doubt the fullers’ jargon (so also Deheselle 2002, 206). The
difficulties of penetrating such jargon can be demonstrated by turning to modern glossaries of
textiles, where many unusual and unfamiliar words may be found. Moreover, words or verbs in the
textile and weaving industries often have a different denotation from their common meaning, one
that is typical of or restricted to professional circles, such as “Atlas”, which, in textile production
means not a book of maps, or a mythological giant, but “a warp knit fabric in which a set of yarns
shifts diagonally one wale per course for several courses, then returns to the original position”, or
the verb “pulling”, which in the textile industry means specifically “the removal of wool from
skins”.24
Without denying that the situation described in UET 6/2, 414—a layman giving detailed
instructions to a craftsman—is unusual, perhaps even humorous, the fact that so many rare words
are found in this text suggests that the main purpose of “At the Cleaners” was didactic:25 to teach
or to test knowledge of different technical terms pertaining to the fuller’s work.26 If anything, “At
20 Arabic sources dealing with laundry and treatment
of garments were not examined here. They might, no doubt,
contribute greatly to our understanding of the matter.
21 Cf. the methodological introduction of Safrai (1994,
2–4) regarding the reliability of the Talmudic texts as
historical sources.
22 A convenient introduction to the Talmud and its special
literary character can be found in Fonrobert/Jaffee 2008
(esp. the contributions of Jaffee, Shanks Alexander, S.
Schwartz, and Sh. J. D. Cohen).
23 In this regard two studies are indispensable: Krauss’s
1910 Talmudische Archäologie, which, even a century after
its publication, remains central for the study of daily life in
the period of the Talmud, and Herszberg’s 1924 Jewish
Culture in the Times of the Mishnah and Talmud (in Hebrew),
whose first and only volume is dedicated to textiles and
the textile industry. This study is especially valuable, as its
author was himself a textile worker in Poland and in Palestine
(ref. courtesy Shlomo Naeh).
24 For the last terms see the online glossary at the
portal Fibre2Fashion http://www.fibre2fashion.com/glossary/
glossary.htm (24.10.2013).
25 See also Deheselle 2002, 206.
26 It is worth citing Humphrey’s (2006, 13) penetrating
remark on the difficulties of using ancient sources when dealing with certain crafts, like textile production and treating
clothes: “The authors of ancient texts are, with insignificant
exceptions, men—and upper-class men at that—whose principal concerns are agriculture (as absentee landlords rather
than farmers, of course), the military, and politics. Their
interest in and knowledge of the lives and efforts of women,
commoners, and slaves is very limited. Thus there are many
258
the Cleaners” is an inner-circle parody of the genre of wisdom dialogues: the irritating customer is
the self-important scribe who cannot resist the temptation of telling the artisan how to do his work.
Notwithstanding the possible entertaining aspect of the text, I believe that its didactic purpose
ensures that the detailed instructions found in the text make good sense, in that they reflect real
practices of treating clothes and garments in ancient Iraq.
III. The Logic of the Customer’s Instructions
Next I will compare the process listed in UET 6/2, 414 to Rabbinic and Classical sources which
describe fullers’ work. Methodological comments will follow.
Different Rabbinic passages allow a surprisingly detailed reconstruction of the fuller’s work:27 (1)
marking the cloth with laundry marks to ensure that it was not confused with other people’s clothes;
(2) sewing the borders of the cloth in a rudimentary stitch, so that the hem does not come undone
during washing, and to form a drain-like tube which prolongs the time that the water and the
cleaning agents are in contact with the cloth; (3) soaking the clothes in water with special cleaning
agents; (4) treading the clothes, or beating them with a stick or with another implement; (5) washing
the clothes for the second time in water with cleaning agents, usually in another container or a
pool;28 (6) rinsing and wringing the clothes. These stages, (3)–(6), concern the washing per se, and
terminate with stage (7) in which the clean clothes, still damp, are arranged on a special stool. From
here the post-washing work begins:29 (8) brushing the cloth in order to remove hair and loose wool
emitted during the washing, and raising the nap evenly. Another reason for brushing was to return
the cloth to its original size if it had shrunk in the washing;30 (9) drying the cloth by stretching it on
a frame, or drawing it out with special spikes; (10) cutting the short hairs which protruded from the
cloth; (11) wiping any remaining dirt from the cloth; (12) flattening the cloth with a special implement,
or with a heavy flat stone; (13) repairing and stitching the cloth, if needed; and finally (14) pressing
it and (15) placing it in a box to send to its owner. When linen garments were treated another stage
took place before the final pressing: bleaching by fumigation in sulphur.31
Based on written and visual sources the main stages of the routine of treating garments in Classical
times can be delineated as follows:32 (a) soaking the cloth in water with various detergents, including
urine; (b) trampling the cloth; (c) rinsing the cloth; (d) beating it with a wooden mallet to make the
texture denser; (e) brushing the cloth with special tools to raise the nap; (f) bleaching the cloth by
fumigating it in sulphur; (g) rubbing the cloth with white earth (fuller’s earth); (h) raising the fibres
and cropping them with teasels in order to achieve a smooth and even finish; (i) drying the cloth by
stretching it on special frames; (j) pressing the cloth and delivering it to the owner.
These descriptions are found in various studies and the logic of each of their stages is studied and
relatively well understood, and yet, as Bradley (2002, 24–25) has pointed out:
. . .there is no single account in Roman literature of the process of fulling. What we have is a handful of
isolated texts and images collected and fused together, as if each bit of evidence were a piece of a jigsaw,
just one fraction of a long and rigorous washing-machine programme.
In fact, as Bradley pertinently put it, this idealized description of the fuller’s work, which can
found repeatedly in many dictionaries and monographs on ancient technology and daily life in
ancient Rome, is a “fantasy reconstruction” based on a “composite account[s] of sources”. The
situation regarding fulling in Talmudic sources is no different and Bradley’s observation applies to
26 Continued
aspects of our study for which we have little written
evidence: ceramic production and textiles are two good
examples. And even when our authors do tackle technical
subjects that interest them, they sometimes show a surprising
ignorance of their own machines and processes. Still, they
are often our only source of comprehensive information
about certain technologies”. In this sense UET 6/2, 414,
is truly exceptional. For an examination of laundry from
gender point of view, see Rawcliffe 2009.
27 Herszberg 1924, 298–302.
28 This secondary, sometimes tertiary, cycle of washing
was necessary since the detergents used in antiquity left
heavy depositions on fabrics, causing further bad odor
(Smulders 2002, 3).
29 Herszberg 1924, 302–10.
30 The brushing at this stage should not to be confused
with the earlier carding of the textile following the weaving.
31 Herszberg 1924, 309 ff.
32 Forbes 1956 85 and 92; Robertson 1986, 45–52; Granger-Taylor 1987, 120; and more recently Bradley 2002, 24.
259
it equally well: here too, scattered textual evidence has allowed scholars to create a composite and
idealized description of the fuller’s work. This description has gained a quasi-canonic status and is
carried from one study to another, although no single text that depicts this process in its entirety
exists. Against this background the importance of UET 6/2, 414 is clear: the Old Babylonian text
gives a unique sequential account of some essential parts of the fuller’s work, an account which is
missing from Latin and Rabbinic literature alike.33 The Classical and Rabbinic sources about fulling
are useful, even necessary, for a better understanding of certain details in the Old Babylonian text,
but they must be treated with caution as far as the order of different stages of the fuller’s work is
concerned.
Let us turn to our Old Babylonian fuller. The speech of the customer in UET 6/2, 414 starts with
the order “treat (lit. clean) my garment!” (l. 1) and ends with the instruction “place (the garment) in
a box, in a chest. It had better be smooth! Bring (it) to me!” (ll. 24–25). These two orders define the
scope of the fuller’s work, marking the beginning and the end of the washing-and-treating process,
as shown in the descriptions of the fuller’s work in the Talmudic and Classical sources. Keeping in
mind the methodological precautions listed above, it stands to reason that the other instructions
given by the customer in UET 6/2, 414 can be related to the stages in the Classical and Rabbinic
processes of fulling described above.34
The work of the fuller in “At the Cleaners”, as I understand it, consists of the following stages
(each of which is discussed in Section IV below): (i) washing the garment (l. 1) which includes (ii)
laying out the garment’s long borders, the selvage (l. 4); (iii) stitching the shorter sides of the cloth
and holding them together with a thread before soaking it (l. 5–6); (iv) preparing the liquid to be
sprinkled for wiping the garment’s surface (ll. 7–8). Here the garment goes probably through a phase
of soaking in water and cleaning detergents which is not explicitly mentioned in the customer’s
orders. The process continues with (v) preparing the garment for wiping by loosening the hems
which were stitched earlier and moistening them as well (ll. 9–10); (vi) wiping the entire garment (l.
11) and (vii) brushing the garment in a special way (l. 12). The following phase is the application of
a special paste similar to fuller’s earth; (viii) preparing a paste for protecting the garment (ll. 13–14);
(ix) using a flat stone, probably as part of the application of the paste on the cloth (ll. 15–16). The
next phase deals with a garment that has been cleaned and treated: (x) taking off the laundry marks
and combing the cloth once again (l. 17); (xi) patting the garment with a stick, probably to remove
excess paste and to raise the nap (l. 18). In the final stages the garment is prepared to be sent to its
owner: (xii) placing the garment on a stool (l.19); (xiii) repairing the garment’s border (ll. 20–21);
(xiv) drying carefully to avoid damage (ll. 22–23); (xv) making sure that the garment is not wrinkled
(i.e. pressing it) (l. 25); (xvi) placing the garment in a box and delivering it (ll. 24–25).
The three synoptically arranged procedures vary in some details but are clearly parallel. In
comparison to the reconstruction of the Classical and Talmudic outlines the fuller’s work described
in UET 6/2, 414 is more explicit in some stages, but skips others. The absence of bleaching by
fumigation in the Old Babylonian text is explained by the fact that most garments in the Old
Babylonian period were made of wool, not linen, and the technique of bleaching by fumigation in
sulphur is not applicable to wool. Another difference to be noticed is the special use of the stick in
UET 6/2, 414. Since this stick is mentioned in a late stage of the work, when the garment was no
doubt already clean (l. 18), and since a paste—some kind of fuller’s earth—has already been
mentioned (l. 14), the stick was probably not used for stirring the dirty laundry. Rather, I suggest,
it was used to felt the textile, to remove the remaining paste from the garment, a practice for which
I cannot offer a parallel from other sources (more on this below). Other differences between the
three parallel procedures are less significant.
Since traditional manual labours such as washing and treating clothes presumably changed
slowly in pre-industrial societies, we may take into account even much later ethnographical
descriptions of fulling and washing clothes from the Levant. The detailed descriptions recorded by
33 The same applies to ancient Egyptian literary sources:
“of actual fulling processes there is no description in the
literature—for the Egyptians, as for others, laundering at
least was so much a matter of course that occasion for
detailed account scarcely arose” (Robertson 1986, 17).
34 So also Deheselle 2002, 210: “Les lignes 4 à 24 décrivent
ensuite étape par étape les divers traitements réclamés”.
260
Gustaf Dalman, who travelled in Syria and Palestine in the early twentieth century, are especially
interesting, notably his description of the last part of the process: the washed clothes were covered
with a special paste for smoothing and final cleaning; the paste was rinsed with water; the cloth was
beaten against a flat stone, sometimes with a stick; the cloth was then wrung, using a rotating peg;
and the hems were wrapped around a rod, and dried.35
IV. Discussion of Specific Terms Pertaining to the Fuller’s Work
In this section I would like to discuss the terms used in UET 6/2, 414, according to the stages listed
above.
(i) ½ubÁtam zukkûm—treating a garment (not simply washing it). The customer’s brief instruction
in the first line of the text, ½ubÁtë zukki, “treat (lit. clean) my garment!”36 summarizes the entire
process, and goes beyond the first stage of the work, i.e. washing the dirty garment.37 As a rule, the
verb zukkûm is not used to designate the cleaning of clothes in Old Babylonian.38 More common is
ubbubum, and in later periods masûm39 or pu½½ûm for describing the washing of dirty clothes. Zukkûm
is found also in VS 8, 110 where alkali (uæīlum=NAGA) is mentioned together with some kind of
salt for treating leather—a context which clearly differs from simple washing. A Mari administrative
text supplies another indication of this. M.8439 mentions different kinds of shawls, one of which is
gibil, “new”, given to a person ana zukk[îm]. This reference hints that zukkûm does not simply
mean “to wash”, but carries a meaning of treating a clothing article in a wider sense, for it is unlikely
that a new shawl would be sent to the laundry.40
But what did the customer’s garment look like? Though the term used, ½ubÁtum, is general and
unspecific, the long list of instructions given to the fuller and their complexity make it clear that the
garment was a luxurious one. It was elaborately woven and the fuller was instructed to treat the
warp and the weft in a different way (l. 12), its long and short borders were not equal in form, and
each side of the cloth had a different name (ll. 4–6), the garment had fringes (l. 19), and it had to be
transported in a special case (l. 24). All this suggests that the garment of the customer was of the type
that Foster (2010, 126 and passim) calls “closed, wrap-around, tasseled garment”, or the “open,
wrap-around garment”, made of a “fringed, rectangular piece of cloth” (Foster 2010, 127). The
former garment was characteristic of the Old Akkadian period, while the latter more common in the
early Old Babylonian period (as in the statue of Ištup-Ilum of Mari, see Fig. 5a below).
(ii) sissiktam qapsëdam nadûm—laying out the selvage of the garment. Lines 4–6 deal with the
garment’s hems. The customer’s first instruction concerns the sissiktum, the garment’s hem, and the
qapsëdum. Unlike sissiktum, which is well attested, qapsëdum is a hapax appearing so far only in this
text (ll. 4 and 9).41 Based on this context, the dictionaries hesitantly suggest that qapsëdum is a
designation for the edge of a garment. But it is unlikely that sissiktum and qapsëdum are simple
synonyms,42 since in l. 9 we find the two substantives forming a genitive construction, sissikÁt
qapsëdim.43 Livingstone (1997) noticed this difficulty and changed his earlier (1988) translation,
rendering l. 4 as “You should set the hem and the lining in place”, proposing that qapsëdum refers to
35 Dalman 1937, 145.
36 Foster (1993, 89; 2005, 151) takes ½ubÁtë as pl., “my
clothes”, but grammatically this translation would require
½ubÁtëya. The continuation of the text shows clearly that that
the customer’s instructions refer to one specific garment
only.
37 Most translations of this line (Livingstone 1997: “wash
my garment!”; Deheselle 2002, 208: “netttoie mon vêtement!”; Waerzeggers’s 2006, 93: “clean my suit!”) are too
narrow.
38 In Neo-Babylonian texts the situation is different, see
Dandamayev/Wunsch 2011, 65–66.
39 See the passage concerning the fuller in the Middle
Assyrian Laws M §3.
40 Durand (2009, 230) reached the same conclusion: “Le
procédé zukkûm qui s’applique à du lin et à des étoffes devait
être de même un moyen de traiter des habits. S’il signifiait
simplement «nettoyer», on devrait l’avoir plus souvent
documenté”.
41 As the etymology of qapsëdum remains obscure (cf.
AHw 809 s.v.), it might be worth raising, with caution, the
possibility that qapsëdum is a compositum of qÁ (st. const. of
qû, as in l. 6), “thread”, linked to an unknown word *(a)p/
bs/½ëdum, meaning lit. “the thread of. . .”, similar to, e.g.
mīrnisqu(m).
42 Foster 1995, 2461 translates here “You should lay flat
the fringe and the border”.
43 See Livingstone 1988, 180: “. . . the genitive in l. 9
implies that the hem belongs to it [qapsëdum]”. However, this
genitive construction can be attributive, not possessive,
namely not “the hem belonging to the qapsëdum”, but “the
hem qualified by the qapsëdum, the qapsëdum-hem”.
261
Fig. 1 (left) The selvage (qapsëdum) and the selvage cord (based
on Granger-Taylor 1987, 115); (right) the selvage enlarged
a layer of different fabric covering the inside of the garment.44 I find no evidence in our text for the
existence of a lining. The garment of the customer had two sides only, the outer called pÁnum, the
inner called libbum (see below ad l. 5). I suggest therefore that, as opposed to sissiktum which was
the general term for any border of the cloth, the qapsëdum designated a specific hem, more precisely
a part of the hem: the selvage (or selvedge), also called the raw edge of the cloth (see Figs. 1a and
1b). As Warp and Weft. A Textile Terminology explains, the selvage is:
The longitudinal edge of a textile closed by weft loops, often distinguished from the rest of the fabric by
warp ends differing from those in the body of the textile and sometimes by a change in the binding.45
(iii) pÁnam ana libbim takÁpum and qÁ šiddim laqÁtum—stitching the outer and the inner sides of the
garment and gathering the short sides of the cloth with a thread. Lines 5–6 describe the provisional
stitching of the short sides of the garment. The purpose of this stage was double: to protect the
borders of the garment from the mechanical friction of the laundering, and to form a drain-like sack
that would prolong the contact of the fabric with the water and the cleaning agents.46 A similar
practice of stitching the garments’ borders before washing is hinted at in the Mishnah, where it is
called šelal ha-kobsën, “the fullers’ stich”, mentioned in m. Uktzin 2: 6.47
44 Deheselle (2002, 211) considers the qapsëdum as “lié
directement à la partie frangée du vêtement, [. . .] peut-être
un élément de garniture”.
45 Burnham 1980, 116. Another definition is found in
CyberFiber online glossary “the thin compressed edge of
a woven fabric which runs parallel to the warp yarns and
prevents raveling. It is usually woven, utilizing tougher
yarns and a tighter construction than the rest of the fabric”
(www.cyberfiberonline.com/glossaryS.shtml (24.10.2013)). For
Classical sources see also Granger-Taylor 1987, 114.
46 Livingstone (1997) translates this line “you should
stitch the front to the inside”, in accordance to his
understanding that the garment had a lining. But the this
fails to explain l. 9 where, according to Livingstone, the fuller is instructed to “. . . loosen the hem of the lining”. Why
should the lining be first stitched and then loosened?
47 See also b. Shabbat 48b and m. Parah 12: 9. Cf.
Herszberg 1924, 298.
262
The term pÁnum (l. 5) is known from Mari administrative texts, where one finds cloths with two
pÁnī, “faces”. These were probably more delicate fabrics which served as bed sheets or were used for
lining.48 In UET 6/2, 414 the description is unambiguous: the cloth has only one “face”, which is the
outer side, while the inner side is referred to as libbum, “inside”.49 In a long Old Babylonian text
published by Lackenbacher, which describes the early stages of the preparation of textiles, these two
sides are referred to as pÁnum and lÁ pÁnum.50 In other words, what UET 6/2, 414 calls libbum the
text published by Lackenbacher calls lÁ pÁnum, probably because that at this stage the cloth is still
generic, i.e. not yet sewn to a particular garment.
The basic meaning of the verb takÁpum is “to be dotted, to be covered with spots” (a synonym of
barÁmum). A secondary meaning is to make something dotted with holes, “to pierce, to puncture”.
The meaning “to stitch, to attach” is therefore specific, typical of the vocabulary of textiles, and it
is found only in this text and in a Neo-Babylonian letter also dealing with clothing.51
The noun šiddum which qualifies qÁ is not easy to construe. The CAD does not list this line under
šiddu A (“(long) side of a piece of a piece of cloth”), or under šiddu B (“cloth, curtain”).52 In order
to get closer to the meaning of this lemma it is important to notice that ll. 3–5 list different terms
referring to the border of the garment: sissiktum, qapsëdum, and, most likely, šiddum. This situation
lends itself to the notion of a semantic differentiation: sissiktum, the commonest of the three terms,
meaning “the border of the cloth” in general, qapsëdum, as suggested above, designating “the long
side of the cloth, the one with the selvage”, and šiddum, logically, carried the meaning of the “the
shorter sides of the cloth, which went parallel to the weft”. This understanding is supported by the
fact that šiddum can mean also “curtain”, for the short side of the cloth hangs from the loom just
like a curtain, a cloth which is drawn (šadÁdum) back and forth. If šiddum is the short side of the
cloth, then qÁ šiddim (l. 5) is the thread with which the shorter sides of the cloth were gathered up,
similarly to the description in the Mishnah.
Summing up this part, the fuller is ordered first to lay out (nadûm) the selvage (qapsëdum), to
stitch (takÁpum) the short sides of the garment (šiddum) one onto the other—the outer side of the
cloth to the inner side, and finally to gather up (laqÁtum) the two stitched short sides (see Fig. 2).53
The reason for the stitching and gathering of the short sides of the cloth is that these are the weak
sides of any woven cloth, the sides that are prone to lose their form—either stretching or shrinking—
during the laundry. Keeping the two short sides together is meant, therefore, to avoid the risk of the
cloth’s deformation and to assure that the cloth’s upper and lower sides would remain of equal width
after the washing.
(iv) miææam qatnam tarassan—beer as cleaning agent. Lines 7–8 mention beer and read miææam
qatnam tarassan. The dictionaries take miææam qatnam together as noun and adjective, “thin m.beer”, and translate: “(to clean a garment) you brew thin miææu beer (for soaking the garment)”,54
or “you prepare thin miææu beer, you strain it through a sieve”.55 Yet, it is unlikely that the customer
would give the fuller instructions for a preparation of beer.56 Rather, the beer must have been ready
to be used as an ingredient in the process of treating the garment. Moreover, if one follows the CAD
and translates tarassan as “you brew” or “you prepare” beer, then one is left with no verb describing
the purpose of the beer, and consequently one is obliged, as the CAD does, to add another verb in
parentheses. Livingstone (1997) chose another translation: “you should soak the thin part in beer;
you should carry out a filtering operation with a sieve”.57 This suggestion is preferable and is followed
here with minor modification. The collocation miææum and qatnum is unusual and found only in
48 Durand 2009, 77–78.
49 Comparable, semantically, to the post-Biblical Hebrew
word for “lining”, bi߆na, lit. “(the part of the cloth) facing the
belly”.
50 Lackenbacher 1982, 132: 24–25, 144.
51 BIN 1, 6:9, cited in CAD Š/I, 8 a.
52 Even the reading ši-it-tim is found (CAD Q, 286, 2a),
but this suggestion was rescinded in the later volumes of the
dictionary. Note further that CDA, 286a lists qašittum,
“net”, without further explanation. This lemma, not found
in the other dictionaries, seems to be connected to šÓtum,
“net”.
53 Cf. Livingstone (1988, 177) and Foster (1993, 89; 2005,
151), differently.
54 CAD M/II, 50a and CAD Q, 175b.
55 CAD R, 181b, 2. See also AHw 651a, 1, s.v. mi/eææu(m).
56 So also Deheselle 2002, 213.
57 Already Foster 1995, 2461: “You should soak the
fringed part in a brew”. (I am not aware of any evidence
suggesting that qatnum is “the fringed part” of a garment).
Fig. 2
263
Stitching the short sides of the garment, the selvage, in order to protect the garment
UET 6/2, 414, whereas the adjective qatnum is commonly used to describe clothes and textiles. The
sentence is built therefore as a double-accusative construction: the first accusative, miææam, refers
to the substance applied in the action, and the second accusative, qatnam, refers to the object which
is treated, the delicate part of the garment, probably around the hems. The sieve mentioned in l. 8
was necessary to achieve a well-strained beer, free of coarser parts which could damage the delicate
cloth.
Is beer known to be used in such processes, and if so, how was it used? I am not aware of Classical
sources where beer is mentioned as a material for cleaning or treating clothes. The Mishnah, however,
lists cleansing agents for removing blood stains on fabrics, one of which was water from boiled
grits—an ingredient which probably had a similar effect as the beer in our text: “seven substances. . .
tasteless spittle, water from boiled grits, urine, nitre, soap, Cimolian earth, and lion’s leaf. . .”
(m. Niddah 61b–62a).58 Waetzoldt (1972, 173 n. 127) notes that fermented grains, including beer,
may have served as biological cleansing agents, perhaps even adding a bleaching effect.
Liquids of fermented grains or cooked pulses were used long after antiquity.59 It is interesting to
note that late Medieval and Renaissance recipes for washing luxury garments from central Europe
also mention water from cooked grains or peas as a detergent.60 The Nuremberg Kunstbuch (fourteenth
58 For these cleaning agents and their identification and
function, see Herszberg 1924, 294–97. Urine was commonly
used by fullers as a source for ammonium, according to
Classical, Medieval and Renaissance texts (see Reiner 1995,
409–10; Wild 2008, 475 and Leed 2006, 106). The fact that
urine is absent from UET 6/2, 414 supplies yet another
indication that the text describes the stages after the basic
laundering.
59 Smulders 2002 does not mention beer, and as far as my
knowledge goes, beer is not used as a detergent in modern
times.
60 See the different laundry ingredients, one of which is
“beenes”, mentioned in the didactic song of the Benedictine
monk John Lydgate, died c.1451, (cited in Rawcliffe 2009,
150).
264
century but based on earlier sources) reads: “. . .to get a spot out of fabric, which is colored, take
peas and boil them until the coating disappears, and with the same water wash it, and it will go
out.”61 Similar recipes are found in the Allerley Matkel, the popular booklets on washing and dying
fabrics written in vernacular German and printed in early sixteenth-century Germany. The purpose
of this liquid of peas was to form a starch-based solution that functioned as an emulsifier, a solvent
into which the stains would dilute.62 The beer in the Old Babylonian text probably had a similar
effect.63
(v) edÓkum—moistening the cloth. Lines 9–10 describe the opening of the stitches mentioned in ll.
5–6. To this end, the folded cloth is moistened. The moistening of the cloth is meant to loosen
(pa߆Árum) the stiff fabric which was folded, especially, perhaps, around the sleeves or the collar.64
Line 10 reads (with George 1993, 73): ina mê namrītim qter -di-i[k?]. The verb edÓæum/edÓkum,
“to cover with patches”, requires some attention. Akkadian uses other verbs, not edÓk/æum, to
denote the action of sprinkling with water: salÁæm and elÓæum. This is another example of the fullers’
jargon used by the scribe.65 Returning to the instruction itself, one may wonder what “clear water”
means here. Is it simply a caution not to use soiled water, or in fact a directive to use specific water?
The latter possibility cannot be dismissed, since, as Smulders (2002, 1) remarks, “it has long been
known [. . .] that the washing power of water can be increased in various ways. Rainwater, for
example, was found to be more suitable for washing than well water”. Smulders (2002, 8) continues:
“a high calcium content in the water also impedes the removal of particulate soil. The presence of
trace amounts of iron, copper, or manganese ions in water may also be detrimental to washing”. The
fuller’s remark to the customer “come upstream of the city, in the environs of the city—let me show
you a washing-place!” (ll. 33–34) may be understood in this light, namely that the washing required
clear water before it was soiled by going through the city. The designation “clear water” may
therefore not be as banal as one might think at first.
The text does not mention how this moistening was done—one can imagine that the water was
simply sprinkled by hand, but comparative sources suggest otherwise. Talmudic sources mention a
special implement, in Aramaic ’ukla de-ka½ari, which was used for a similar purpose, that of
moistening clothes: “the fullers’ vessel” (b. Shabbat 123b). In a discussion of vows and absolutions
it is said that a certain fuller struck another person’s head with a fullers’ vessel (b. Nedarim 23a).
Clearly, in Talmudic times, such a vessel would have been made of some hard material, with a shape
which could cause harm to another person if used aggressively. Early medieval commentaries say
that the fullers’ vessel, with which fullers would sprinkle water on garments, was an implement made
of a pumpkin with a long neck. Other medieval commentators describe this fullers’ vessel as a
perforated iron flagon.66 Turning to Classical attestations, Seneca describes how a luxury garment
was damped prior to being pressed: the fuller would fill his mouth with water and spray it on the
clothing which was divided by small stretches.67 The Old Babylonian text does not reveal how the
fuller used to sprinkle the garment: with some sort of an implement, by hand, or with his mouth.
(vi) këma kimdim kapÁrum—wiping the garment like a k.-cloth. CAD K, 372 defines kimdum as a
“cloth woven and prepared in a special way”, connecting it to the verb kamÁdum. Lackenbacher
(1982, 141 ff.), following AHw 430a (“Stoff schlagen?”), suggests that kamÁdum is not a weaving
technique but a finishing procedure (“foulage à la main”), namely some kind of felting: beating the
textile in order to thicken the cloth and to strengthen the weave of the fibres.68 This suggestion fits
well with the designation ša kimdim found in some Mari administrative texts. The Mari scribes
61 Leed 2006, 103.
62 Edelstein 1964, 300, 315 nn. 20, 21.
63 Incidentally, a certain Ana-Sîn-taklÁku, a fuller from
Mari (Joannès 1984, 149ff.), is recorded in the Chagar Bazar
archive as receiving beer together with an ecstatic prophet, a
muææû (Lacambre/Albà 2008, no. 176: 2). This beer, however,
was probably intended for his personal consumption, not
meant to be used as a cleansing agent.
64 Cf. CAD P, 299 10 c 3’. Livingstone 1997: “you should
loosen the hem of the lining”.
65 Note also the present tense of edÓæum. In state verbs one
expects stative. The causative requires the D-stem.
66 For references and a short discussion of this term, see
Sokoloff 2002, 88, s.v. ̮okla #2, “a fullers’ vessel” (and cf.
b. Sanhedrin 92a).
67 Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones, 1: 3, 2 (Oltramare 1929,
20, and also Granger-Taylor 1987, 120).
68 Generally on felting in antiquity, see Forbes 1956, 89–
94 and Miller 2007, 75. See especially Postgate 2000.
265
employed the designation ša kimdim to define two kinds of cloths, u½ûm and æayyû, both used for
furniture. The technique called kamÁdum was used to produce heavy, tightly woven textiles, typical
of rags or tapestries (Durand 2009, 128), and therefore the idea of felting is most appropriate here.69
The verb that the customer uses for the expected treatment of this garment is kapÁrum. Its basic
meaning is “to rub”, which results in a somewhat perplexing semantic situation: kapÁrum can mean
both “to smear on” and “to wipe off” (CAD K, 178–180).70 In fullers’ jargon this verb meant “to
clean”, as proved by this text and a Mari memorandum mentioning two items of Yamæad-style
clothing given ana kapÁrim (Durand 2009, 234). What exactly the customer had in mind in his
demand to clean his garment like a kimdum is made clear, I believe, in the following lines (see vii).
(vii) šutûm and bittum—warp and weft yarns. Line 12 clarifies, I believe, what the customer meant
in the previous line by këma kimdim kapÁrum. A key to the understanding of this line is a Mari letter
(Iraq 39, 150–53 = LAPO 16, 136), re-edited by Durand (2009, 30–31). In this letter Zimrë-lëm orders
the weaving of a sumptuous garment in a specific fashion: qTÚGr šu-ú ki-ma TÚG tu-ut-tu-bé-e-im
šu-ta-am ù bi-it-ta-am dam-qí-iš lu-ú na-sí-ik / ù lu-<ú> ka-½í-ir, “That cloth (must be) like a Tuttubstyle cloth. (Its) warp and weft must be beautifully woven and knitted”.71 This letter proves beyond
doubt that a-na BI-it-tim in l. 12 of our text should be read bittim, not pittim.72
The Mari letter just quoted lists šutûm and bittum side by side, as a pair (šu-ta-am / ù bi-it-ta-am):
the former designates “warp”, the latter “weft” (see Fig. 3).
In UET 6/2, 414:12, by contrast, bittum is syntactically separated from šutûm and comes first:
a-na bi-it-tim ta-z[a-] x ki-[m]a šu-tu-qumr [x x] x bi?. The separation of the two closely related
terms indicates that the weft was probably meant to be treated differently than the warp. This is, I
suspect, what the customer means by këma kimdim kapÁrum. The verbs in l. 12 are damaged, but the
Talmudic discussion may supply a clue as to what the text said originally. In the tractate b. Baba
Qamma 119a–b different cases of misappropriation of materials and goods are considered. Two of
the cases concern artisans dealing with clothes: the cleaner and the carder.73 The sages were worried
that craftsmen might improperly obtain threads of wool while doing their job, and they deliberated
how to reduce this risk by offering a special way of combing the garment: namely, brushing a
garment horizontally, towards the weft, and not vertically, up and down, along the warp. I propose
that the Rabbinic discussion describes in extenso a practice which is elliptically depicted in UET 6/2,
414: 11–12 by këma kimdim kapÁrum. What is the practical reason behind this instruction? Clothes
could shrink considerably during washing, so brushing them could be necessary not only in order to
clean them but also to stretch them back to their original size.74 The Talmudic insistence on brushing
a garment against the warp, along the weft, can be explained thus: brushing a garment lengthwise,
69 Note that in UET 6/2, 414 the garment is not said to be
made of a kimdum-cloth, nor even ša kimdim. The customer
demands only that his cloth be treated like a kimdum-cloth
(këma kimdim). This means that the garment was heavily
woven, but not too heavy.
70 Livingstone 1997 translates: “you should purify it as if
it were a fine cloth”.
71 In 1997, in his earlier treatment of the letter (LAPO 16,
p. 274), Durand accurately translated the pair šutûm—
bittum as “de chaîne” (šutûm) et “de trame” (bittum), that is
“warp and weft” (cf. also CAD Š/III, 408a). However, in his
recent treatment (Durand 2009, 30–31), based on etymological considerations, he reversed his previous translation:
now šutûm is “le fil de trame” and bittum is “le fil de chaîne”.
The meaning of the Sumerian correspondence of bittum,
síg ná-àm, translated by Durand as “fil dormant”, is
questionable and cannot be taken as an argument for the
meaning of the Semitic word bittum, and it certainly cannot
be a reason to translate bittum as “chaîne”. The Semitic etymology is unequivocal, as Hebrew proves: šetë (lit. “the base
(thread)”) is the warp, whereas ̯Óreb, etymologically, probably, “the entering, or intertwining (thread)”) is the weft,
or, using another English synonym, the woof. The cognate
šetë ascertains that Akkadian šutûm = “warp” (chaîne), and
consequently that bittum = “weft” (trame). As for the etymology of bittum, there is no reason to maintain the proposal of CAD B, which connects bittum to biÁtum, “to pass
the night”. With Durand (2009, 30–31), bittum is to be
derived from *√btt, a root which is not productive in Akkadian, but is found in Ugaritic and in Arabic (see Ribichini/
Xella 1985, 34–35).
72 CAD P 443b, 1 and Livingstone 1988, 178 read ana
pittim “to the area”. Livingstone 1997 translates: “To the
part . . . like . . .”. By contrast, Foster (1993, 89 and 2005,
151) took the word rightly as bittum, but rendering it “in the
overnight(?). . .”, leaning on CAD B 282b, “(wool) let (outdoors) overnight”. So also Deheselle 2002, 208 “tissue aéré
par la nuit”. This etymology, however, as noted by Durand
(2009, 31), cannot be sustained.
73 Note that sčrÓq in the relevant Talmudic passage is a
“brusher”, a person who treats finished clothes, not a carder
or a teaseler, a worker whose task it is to treat woolen fabrics
in the early stages of production. This latter profession is
called in Akkadian mÁširum (CAD M/I, 367b, s.v.). For the
verb mašÁrum, “to card, to teasel cloth”, as well as for other
related verbs, ne½ûm, and æarÁrum, which also describe early
stages of preparing cloth, see Lackenbacher (1982, 142).
74 See Waetzoldt 1972, 153, n. 2.
266
Fig. 3
Warp (dark vertical threads) and weft (dark and chalky horizontal threads). Photo courtesy
Emilyn Eto
with the warp, takes out more dirt and dust but it may cause damage to a delicate fabric by pulling
out free threads. A side-to-side brushing is therefore preferable in some cases, especially if the
garment has a fringe (itqum), like the garment of the customer here (see xii below).75
(viii) uæīlum (NAGA) and ga½½um (IM.BABBAR)—a paste (similar to fuller’s earth) to protect the
garment. George (1993, 73) introduced the reading NAGA and suggested that l. 14 describes the
preparation of a cleansing agent involving gypsum. Other studies follow.76 But what is the purpose
of the mixture of alkali and gypsum? Smulders (2002, 63) remarks that even “at the beginning of the
20th century, the principal ingredients (apart from soap [i.e. fatty substances, NW]) of all detergents
were soda ash and silicate”—the latter would stand for our ga½½um, the former for uæīlum.
Considering, however, the stages of work described in the text up to this point, it is unlikely, in my
opinion, that l. 14 refers to laundering per se, namely to the rubbing and treading of the garment in
a wet mixture of gypsum and alkali. I believe that the materials mentioned in this line refer to some
kind of paste, similar to what is known as fuller’s earth (German: Walkererde), a fine-grained clay,
or clay-like earth, used by Egyptian and Mesopotamian fullers from the third millennium BC.E.
through the Classical period77 and up to modern times,78 to absorb impurities and fats from fabrics
in different stages of the textile industry and in the process of cleaning and treating finished clothes.79
75 See Herszberg 1924, 303–04, following the understanding
of Rashi (eleventh-twelfth centuries, France), in his commentary on b. Baba Qamma 119b.
76 Foster (1993, 89) first took this line to refer to bleaching,
but later (Foster 2005, 151) he translated straightforwardly
soap and gypsum. Livingstone (1997) translates alkali and
gypsum.
77 Robertson 1986, 33–36.
78 Robertson 1986, passim. Dalman (1937, 145) describes
how fuller’s earth was still used in the Levant in the early
twentieth century.
79 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/221929/
fullers-earth. See Herszberg 1924, 296; Singer 1956, 355;
Forbes 1956, 84; Robertson 1986. Recently a different view
was put forward by Firth, who claims that “im-babbar2 is
very probably gypsum, which was supplied as natural rock”
(Firth 2011, 6 §7.1). Firth suggests that “it would be better if
we do not use the term Fuller’s Earth here, and instead use
the less specific expression ‘an earth used by fullers,’ since
that avoids the presumption that im-babbar2 is a hydrous
aluminium silicate” (Firth 2011, 2 §2.3). Without challenging
Firth’s arguments, many of which are compelling, I cannot
see how gypsum could be used in this stage of the fuller’s
work. It is not impossible that one ancient lexical term,
IM.BABBAR, was used to refer to what in modern terminology make two totally different chemical substances.
267
It is important to bear in mind that fuller’s earth was used in more than one stage of the cleaning
and treating process, that is, not only in the first stages when the articles of clothing were processed
in water and detergents. Waetzoldt (1972, 173) stresses that in Ur III texts this material was known
and used mainly in the later stages of the fuller’s work, on already clean garments. The fact that
fuller’s earth is hard to find in lower Mesopotamia,80 makes it more likely that this material was not
used in the wet stages of the laundry, but in the later phases, when it was applied in order to protect
the clean garment, to stiffen and to polish it—not unlike today’s starching, bleaching81 or
impregnating.82
Two Mari documents strengthen this suggestion. FM 6, 59: 2’–12’ mentions uæīlum in connection
with different materials (wool, perfumed oil, and tanned hides), not in a context of laundry. Similarly,
in FM 6, 62: 2’–24’ uæīlum is listed with other luxury items (garments of the first quality, fabrics,
arches, and different kinds of shoes, and perfumed oil). Here too the context does not suggest any
act of washing, but rather that uæīlum was used for the treatment and maintenance of clothing
articles.
If indeed the process described in l. 14 is correctly understood as referring to the preparation of
some kind of fuller’s earth, then meskertum in l. 13 can be a barrier or dam where the clay was
collected, as the dictionaries suggest.83 Another possibility is that this rare word, formed in the
meprest nominal pattern which is typical of instruments (GAG §56c), designates some kind of a
utensil—a basin or sink used for the preparation of the paste.
(ix) abnum (NA4)—using a flat stone. Since in l. 12 the garment is already being brushed, and
since—as I have argued above—the gypsum and alkali in l. 14 were meant to prepare some kind of
powder or paste to be applied on the clean garment, then the stone in l. 15 was used not for beating
wet laundry,84 but for another purpose. A plausible option is that the stone was used as a flat and
resistant surface on which the application of the fuller’s earth to the garment took place. Another
option that should also be considered is that the stone was used to press the garment. This possibility
is not free of difficulties: the pressing comes too early in the process, before the final drying of the
garment is mentioned (ll. 21–23). However, Granger-Taylor (1987, 120) points out that in Classical
sources “clothes were probably also treated in presses at times between washings. . .”. If this is so,
and the stone was used for pressing, it is worth noting that the Mishnah, in a discussion of purities
and impurities, mentions a stone together with some article of clothing: “. . .if one held the cloak
down with a stone. . . (lit.: if one pressed a stone upon the cloak. . .)” (m. Ohalot 8: 5). Krauss (1910,
524, n. 48a), suggested that this phrase refers to the act of pressing garments, as part of the fuller’s
work. Though not entirely convincing85—both Rabbinic and Classical sources know of special
wooden implements for pressing clothes86—Krauss’ interpretation could help restoring the broken
verb at the end l. 15 as follows: [i-na N]A4 ta-ma?-[az-za-š]u?, “[with, or under] a stone you press(?)
it”. In favour of this conjectural restoration stands the fact that the verb mazû/mazÁ̮ um is used
regarding dirty clothes, meaning “to wring” (see CAD A/II, 309b s.v. aršu). By contrast, maæÁ½um,
the verb which is unanimously restored here, means, in the context of textiles, “to weave” (CAD
M/I, 78a), never, as far as I can see, “to beat dirty laundry”.
(x) simtum/šimtum—removing the laundry marks. Following George (1993, 73) we read in l. 17: píqá sí-im-tam te-me-sú t[a-. . .] / ù tu-na-qdar -[ad]. Foster (1993, 89 and 2005, 151) and Livingstone
80 Robertson 1986, 11. Firth 2011, 5 §6.5.1.
81 Bleaching was deemed necessary since the detergents
used in antiquity had the tendency to turn fabrics yellow
(Smulders 2002, 1, 3).
82 Note Theophrastus’ caustic description of stingy men in
his Characters as “charg[ing] the fuller to give their coat
plenty of earth so that it may stay the longer clean” (Edmons
1929 [rep. 1967], 68–69).
83 See CAD M/II, 29, AHw 647a, and CDA 208b.
84 George 1993, 73; Livingstone 1997; Foster 2005, 151.
85 Blackman (1955, 237) follows the traditional commentaries: “the stone held down one part of the cloak, and the
wind raising the loose part formed a tent-like space under
it”.
86 See Dalman 1937, 156, and Granger-Taylor 1987, 120
ff.
268
(1988, 178) translate only the opening particle, pëqÁ, not the rest of the phrase.87 I suggest that
simtum in this line is connected to šimtum, “paint, mark”, a by-form attested in Mari (CAD Š/III,
10b).88 As the dictionaries show, šimtum is a sign, made in dye or with a branding iron, which was
used to mark moveable property: sheep, cattle, slaves and persons dedicated to temples.89 I believe
that in UET 6/2, 414 š/simtum marks another kind of property: clothes given to the fuller for washing
and treatment. The fuller marked the garments to indicate their owner, as is still done in modern
laundries today, and more significantly, as is hinted indirectly in the Middle Assyrian Laws M §3,90
and also mentioned in the Mishnah. In m. Kilayim 9: 10 the Rabbis debated when such marks
(probably done by stitching a special thread on the seam of the garment) are allowed, and when they
are prohibited because they go against the Rabbinic ban on mixing flax and wool in one cloth.91
Making a šimtum mark is usually rendered in Akkadian by the verb šakÁnum, or with the
etymologically connected verb šamÁtum. For removing or erasing a šimtum mark Akkadian uses the
verbs nukkurum and æalÁqum. None of these verbs seem to fit the traces in l. 17. It makes sense,
however, for the client to ask the fuller to remove the laundry marks before sending the clean and
flattened garment to his home.
The end of l. 17 has tu-na-qdar -[ad], “you will/must comb”.92 According to CAD N/I, 41 the
meaning of nadÁdum-G is uncertain, while nadÁdum-D means “to curry (a horse)” and “to comb”.93
To be sure, nadÁdum does not designate the combing of human hair (for which the more general verb
mašÁdum, with its derivative muš߆um, “a comb”, is used). Rather, nadÁdum was specifically used for
rough hairy surfaces: combing finished textiles, or grooming a horse. This meaning is made clear by
a passage from a ritual where the clothes of a Lamaštu figurine are combed (nadÁdum) with the help
of a date palm thorn.94 The verb nadÁdum therefore renders the final brushing of the garment (to be
differentiated from the carding and tasselling in earlier stages of the preparation of the textile, for
which mašÁrum is used, see Lackenbacher 1982, 142).95
We should turn our attention to the meaning of the modal particle pëqÁ opening l. 17. The different
functions of pëqat (or its less common form pëqÁ) were analysed elsewhere.96 Suffice it to mention
that this particle can be found in semi-conditional constructions, where it serves similarly to šumma.
This, I propose, is the meaning of pëqÁ in l. 17 which I translate: “In case you have applied a (laundry)
mark, (then) you must . . . and you will have to comb (the fabric)”.
87 Livingstone (1997) avoids the difficulty of sí-im-tam,
translating the verb emÓdum alone: “ Yes indeed, you should
stretch it over a . . ., you . . . it and you should comb it out”.
Deheselle 2002, 209 takes a totally different path: reading
peqqû/peqû, “colocynth”, ½imtu, “a type of beer”, and
emÓ½um, “to be sour”. The resulting translation is “Tu [traiteras?] la bière au moyen de la coloquinte? Et tu [récureras?]
(le tissue)”, suggesting, based on ethnographic parallels, that
colocynth and beer were used as anti-moth treatment. Various arguments go against this suggestion: first, the syntax of
the phrase does not allow this interpretation. Next, peqqû
is rarely attested word (only in Neo-Babylonian, perhaps
borrowed from Aramaic) and a practice of mushing colocynth into a beer is unknown to me. More importantly, one
does not expect anti-moth treatment at this stage, when the
garment is not dry yet.
88 To complicate matters further, Akkadian has also šim/
n߆um, “plucked wool” (CAD Š/III, 20). Wool, however,
makes little sense in this line.
89 Following Joannès (1984, 134–39), šimtum in Mari
administrative texts had the specific meaning of a vegetal or
animal cohesive material, some kind of glue, or a varnish,
which served to dye textiles and hides, or to paint wood.
The same meaning of šimtum is found in a Middle-Assyrian
document dealing with bows, see Frahm 2002, 75: 2’ (and
passim), and note on p. 79.
90 “[If a man. . .] gives (his) garments to a fuller for washing, while he is away on a journey, [. . . and] (when he is back)
the fuller claims: ‘it is lost!’, [he shall pay him for the lost
garments, as (their) original value]. . .”. This case shows that
fullers risked losing clothes which they received for cleaning.
Marking clothes before washing seems therefore a reliable
means to identify the owner of such clothes, even after a long
period of time.
91 See Herszberg 1924, 298.
92 Deheselle 2002, 209 restores tu-na-[aq-qa-ar?].
93 The other dictionaries are less certain: AHw 700f.: G
“weichen?”, D “zusammenraffen?”, and CDA 229: G “to
cede, give way?” and D “search for” (OA), and “drive
together, round up? (horses)” (MA). I find the CAD
rendering convincing.
94 See CAD N/I, 41.
95 Note that in Old Assyrian sources nadÁdum means
“to search”. There is no reason to follow the CAD and to
separate nadÁdum-D (CAD N/I, 41), “to comb”, from Old
Assyrian nuddudum, “to search” (CAD N/II, 309). Both
verbs ought to be listed in the same article. The semantic
expansion from “combing” (i.e., delousing) to “searching
carefully” is unsurprising and takes place in modern languages as well (e.g., English, or Modern Hebrew, to name
only a few). In the vernacular of Old Assyrian merchants,
with their natural concern about smuggling, this meaning of
“to comb” is common.
96 Wasserman 2012 (Chap. 1: The Modal Particle pëqat in
Old Babylonian).
269
Fig 4: Laundry stick (in the middle). Palestine, early twentieth century. The Ethnography Center of Acre
& the Galilee. Photo by the author)
(xi) ina ha߆߆i e̮ri turrukum—Patting the garment with a laundry stick. After the laundry marks are
removed and the garment is combed the fuller is instructed to use a wooden stick made of e̮ru-wood
(l. 18). This stick may be the same known in Rabbinic sources as mazīra or zÓra, “felting-stick,
Walkenstock”.97 This stick, made of hard wood,98 was used for beating the clothes while washing
them, and for squeezing the wet and clean clothes.99 Such sticks were used until recent times in the
Levant (note that this kind of stick is different from the wider kind of stick, that with a handle, which
looks similar to today’s cricket bat, an implement used in Europe for centuries to beat the washing;
see Fig. 4). Since at this stage of the text the customer’s garment is already washed and brushed, it
is unlikely that the stick mentioned was used for beating the wet dirty laundry. Rather, the stick was
used, I believe, for tapping the garment to remove the leftovers of the paste that was applied on the
garment earlier and to raise the nap.100 It is not impossible that tapping the garment was meant to
achieve a felting effect, namely not only to air the garment and to remove leftover substances that
had been applied in previous stages, and to raise the nap, but also to thicken and smooth the fabric.
The long text on the finishing of textiles edited by Lackenbacher (1982), supports this idea: turrukum
there does not designate cleaning, but a way of finishing the textile by beating it.
97 See Herszberg 1924, 300 n. and 301, as well as Dalman
1937, 154.
98 Foster 1995, 2461 identifies e̮ ru-wood as “cornel
branch”. Note that Hegesippus (quoting Eusebius) tells that
the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus, was carried
out with a fuller’s stick (see Dalman 1937, 154).
99 Cf. Rawcliffe 2009, 152–53.
100 Previous studies (e.g. Foster 1995, 2461 and Livingstone
1997) understand this line similarly. The Medieval commentator Rashi, in his commentary on b. Baba Qamma
119b, also specifies that clean clothes were being beaten with
sticks, in order to smooth their surface.
270
Fig. 5
(left) Statue of Ištup-ilum of Mari (Ur III/Isin-Larsa), after Strommenger (1980–1983), 34, Abb. 8;
(right) statuette from Susa (Ur III/Isin-Larsa), after Strommenger (1980–1983), 36, Abb. 16a)
(xii) itqum—the fringe of the garment and napalsaætum—the fuller’s stool. In l. 19 we find itqum,
which—following Mari administrative texts (Durand 2009, 142–43) referring to finished garments—
we take to mean specifically “fringe” (in addition to “fleece”, or “tuft of wool”101). Apparently, the
customer had a deluxe garment with a loose fringe, similar to the luxurious garments known in the
Old Babylonian period (see Fig. 5). The loose fringe may also explain why the customer stresses that
the garment should not be brushed lengthwise, to avoid damaging its fringe (see vii above).
The fringe of the garment had to be placed carefully on a napalsaætum-stool.102 This particular
kind of stool is so far attested, besides UET 6/2, 414, only in a lexical list mentioning different kinds
of chairs. According to ރæ IV: 91 ff. the napalsaætum is a “low chair”, (kussû) šapiltum, and CAD
N/I, 271 s.v. translates it as “footstool, stool”.103 The characteristics of a laundry stool, the
napalsaætum in our text, become clear with the help of the Mishnah. In a discussion dealing with
different household utensils which might attract uncleanness (m. Kelim 23:4), we find that “. . .the
stool of a washer whereon he lays out the clothes, are declared by R. Jose not to be in the category
of things sat upon.” Simply, the stool of the washer was not considered to be susceptible to
uncleanness because it was not meant to be used for sitting. It was an item on which clean—wet or
dry—clothes were placed.104 The noun napalsaætum is derived from the verb napalsuæum, whose
basic meaning is “to fall to the ground”.105 This etymology is surprising, and perhaps even strange
as a designation for an item of furniture, but it strengthens the comment of the Mishnah, which
stresses explicitly that the stool of the washer was not used for sitting. Adding to the discussion later
visual descriptions of laundry scenes from the Middle East, where such a low stool is found, may, I
believe, clarify the exact nature of this stool. As seen in such pictorial descriptions,106 the washer’s
101 CAD I/J, 299f. and George 1993, 73.
102 I cannot offer a plausible restoration for the lost verb
(D- or Š-stem present form, syntactically requiring two
accusatives) at the end of l. 19, but I assume the line meant
“Y[ou will arrange(?)] the fringe on the washer’s stool”.
103 See Salonen 1963, 32ff.
104 See Herszberg 1924, 301–02.
105 Indeed, Deheselle 2002, 217 takes napalsaætam as an
adj. of itqam (“une toison étendue”), but no other such usage
is known.
106 See “The laundryman and the crane”, seventeenthcentury ms. of Anvar-i Suhayli of the Kalila va Dimna
fables, India, 1610–1611 (the British Library, Add. 18579,
fol. 350v). Later representation of the same stool is found
in the water-color book illustration of Martin Swayne,
In Mesopotamia, “Hospital Washing”, 1917 (http://www.
gutenberg.org/files/24893/24893-h/24893-h.htm—Page_45)
(24.10.2013).
271
Fig. 6 Laundry stool (reconstruction based on later sources)
stool was not horizontal but had a slope (see Fig. 6). The function of this slanted stool was to let
the water drip from the wet laundry that was arranged on it. Although depicted many centuries
after the Old Babylonian text, I assume that the shape of the washer stool’s did not change much in
form and function from earlier periods.
(xiii) šutâm ina ½illim. . .—repairing the fabric with a needle. In this line the customer instructs the
fuller to repair with a needle the damaged ends of his garment’s warp. It follows that among the
duties of the ašlÁkum in Old Babylonian times was also to mend clothes, a task which in later periods
was undertaken by the mukabbû.107 Ur III documents support this suggestion: in a number of texts
listing the materials required for the work of the ašlÁkum, a thread, Sumerian gu, is mentioned. The
purpose of this thread is not explained, but its appearance towards the end of the list of materials
necessary for the fuller’s job may indicate that it was used in one of the last stages of the work.
Waetzoldt (1972, 168 ff.) suggested that the thread was used for joining different clothing items, or
for securing and repairing the edges of textiles or garments. Another possibility raised by him is that
the thread mentioned in the Ur III documents could be used to add a fringe to the garment. Since
UET 6/2, 414 mentions only one garment, which already has a fringe (itqum), it is safe to assume
that šu-ta-am ši-ip-ra-am i-na ½illîm (gišIGI.GAG=dalá) x [x] qxr (l. 20) concerns the repairing of the
garment’s edges, and hence can be tentatively translated: “you will [sew/repair] the work, the
(damaged) warp, with a needle”. The missing verb may, perhaps, be found with the help of the Old
Babylonian text describing the different stages for the preparation of textiles, where the verb palÁkum
is attested.108 CAD P, 50b s.v. palÁkum lists only the infinitive of this verb, but the Sumerian
equivalent of its participle, pÁlikum // lú igi-gag-ra, or lú túg-igi-gag-ra (CAD P, 66a), shows that
this textile worker used some kind of a needle. The broken signs at the end of l. 20 may therefore
stand for a 2 sg. pres. form of palÁkum, presumably tapallak.
Interestingly, also in the Mishnah (m. Baba Qama 10109) one finds reference to fullers’ work
followed by a reference to tailors. The exact details of the Rabbinic discussion need not concern us.
107 See CAD M/II 181a and further Lackenbacher 1982,
141. For Neo-Babylonian documents cf. Zawadzki 2006, 66
and esp. Waerzeggers 2006, 85 ff. (text. no. 3), who shows
that a tailor could be involved in the laundry business.
108 Lackenbacher 1982, 143 and passim.
109 Discussed also in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Baba
Qamma 119a–b, a passage treated above).
272
It suffices to note that both the Jewish sages and the Old Babylonian text, though separated by two
millennia, describe the same sequence of actions of treating clean garments: first brushing the
garment and then sewing and repairing its hem.110
(xiv–xv) šutâm (lÁ) šukkusum and pašÁæum—gently drying and flattening the garment. The third
attestation of šutûm in our text is found in l. 23 (cf. ll. 12 and 20 above). In this line šutûm is
connected with the verb šakÁsum, “to dry out(?)”.111 The verb šakÁsum is not common: the dictionaries
record two, possibly three attestations of it, all in Old Babylonian sources. More than “to dry out”,
šakÁsum means “to crinkle, to crease”, a situation that should be avoided when treating luxury
garments. This leads us to the verb pašÁæum attested twice in the text (ll. 21, 25). In ll. 21 and 25 the
verb pašÁæum carries a technical meaning, which CAD P, 231 2f does not elucidate: (“uncert.
mng”).112 The more common meanings of pašÁæum—“to be at rest, to be tranquil, to relent, etc”,
referring to moods, emotions, illnesses and body parts, do not fit in this context. Instead, the specific
meaning of pašÁæum must be considered: to settle a blend or a mixture (CAD 230, 1f; 231 2e), to
allow a field to lie fallow, i.e. to flatten its furrows (CAD P 231, 3), and to calm stormy water (CAD
P 232 f). Viewed against the background of these specific meanings, pašÁæum in UET 6/2, 414 can
best be understood as “to flatten out a fabric, to smooth the cloth’s folds, to remove its creases”—in
today’s terms simply to press or to iron—only that in ancient Mesopotamia this action did not
involve a hot iron but other means.113
(xvi) ina šaddim ina pitnim šakÁnum—placing the garment in a box. The final stage of treating the
customer’s luxury garment—after cleaning, brushing, protecting it with a special paste, and flattening
it—is placing it in a box. This is described in l. 24: i-na ša-ad-di-im i-na pi-it-ni-im ta-ša-ak-ka-a[n].
Again, the Babylonian Talmud offers a perfect parallel to this practice. A Talmudic non-legalistic
exegetical passage, Aggadah, (b. Shabbat 152b)114 tells about a
. . . king who distributed royal apparel to his servants. The wise among them folded it up and laid it away
in a chest, whereas the fools among them went and did their work in them. After a time the king demanded his garments: the wise among them returned them to him immaculate, [but] the fools among them
returned them soiled. The king was pleased with the wise but angry with the fools. Of the wise he said, “Let
my robes be placed in my treasury and they can go home in peace”; while of the fools he said, “Let my
robes be given to the fuller, and let them be confined in prison”.
The wording of l. 24 presents a difficulty in that the customer mentions specifically two different
containers, šaddum and pitnum.115 What the pedantic customer means, I believe, is that the garment
110 In the Edict of Diocletian on maximal prices,
embroiders are mentioned before wool weavers and fullers
(see Frank 1959, 377–82).
111 CAD Š/I, 158, 2 takes šu-tu-um to stand for šītum,
“south wind”, and translates: “you dry (the garment) in the
cool of the evening, when the south wind has not dried it,
you put it on a frame in the east wind”. Foster (2005, 151)
follows: “you should dry it in the cool of the evening. If the
south wind has not dried it, you should put it on a rack in the
east wind, make sure it’s cool!”. In my view it is unlikely that
the text, which up to this point employed specific terminology pertaining to textiles, would deal with cardinal points,
the south wind and the east wind (presumably šaddum in l.
24). Even if double entendres cannot be excluded, I maintain
that šu-tu-um in l. 23 is šutûm, meaning—pars pro toto—
“woven fabric” (so CAD Š/III, 408 and Durand 2009, 119
ff.). Foster’s earlier translation (1993, 89), “you should dry it
in the cool of the evening, lest the weaving get too stiffened
by the sun”), and Livingstone’s 1997 translation, “in the
early evening, when the web has not yet become dry. . .”,
should be preferred. Deheselle 2002, 209 translates šu-tu-um,
“la trame (du tissue)”.
The cleaning recipes used by the sisters of the convent
111 Continued
of St. Catherine’s in Nuremburg, known as the Kunstbuch
(second half of the fifteenth century, Germany) specify a
number of times that after the luxury garments were cleaned,
they should be hung to dry away from the sun, clearly in
order to avoid wrinkling and cracking of the precious fabric
(e.g. “. . .if you want to know how you shall restore the color
of silk or velvet or cloth of gold, which is wet and stained,
take fresh brook-water and wash the spot therewith and
hang it in the air, marking that the sun does not shine
thereon, and let it dry, and it will be good”), see Leed 2006,
103 and passim.
112 Cf. CAD Š/II, 194b) s.v. šatÁqum on this line: “you
trim(?) and spread out(?) the hem”.
113 Deheselle 2002, 209 goes in the same direction:
“Tu égaliseras. . .”. On ironing implements in Roman period
see Granger-Taylor 1987, 121.
114 See Krauss 1910 vol. I, 133, and further 523 ff. nn.
48a–b.
115 The exact word order is important, for it tells about the
relation between the two terms: ina šaddim in pitnim. . ., so
the garment is first put in the šaddum and then in the patnum,
meaning that the šaddum is smaller in size than the pitnum. A
look in the dictionaries support this: šaddum is a box used
mainly for jewellery and precious objects (CAD Š/I, 42) and
for delicate textiles (CAD Š/I, 43b), while pitnum is a larger
chest which is mentioned along other pieces of furniture
in various inventories, as kind of a portable cabinet (CAD P,
438f.). No doubt, the šaddum could be placed within the
pitnum. (The CAD does not mention our text in the article
šaddum, thus failing to give an Old Babylonian attestation to
this lemma which is mentioned there as “MB, NA, NB”
only).
273
should be placed in a small box, which in turn will be placed in a larger one: a box within a box. The
Talmud refers to such a practice when precious items are concerned: holy scrolls or phylacteries were
expected to be kept “receptacle within a receptacle”.116
V. The Fuller’s Wage
At the end of his excessively detailed instructions, the customer promises the fuller that once the
garment is delivered to his house he will be given one seah of barley as payment (l. 26). This is a
turning point in the text: the fuller, who up to now has been silent, bursts out in anger, saying: “Drop
it! Not me! What you are saying—only my creditor and my tax collector have the nerve (to talk) like
you! Nobody’s hands could manage this work! What you have instructed me I cannot repeat, utter
or reiterate!” (ll. 28–32). The wage that the fuller is offered is apparently so offensive that he cannot
contain his anger. But what would be decent remuneration for a fuller? Prices in antiquity are a
tricky matter,117 but in this case some data is available.118 Section §14 of the Laws of Ešnunna
stipulates that the wage of a fuller hired to treat a garment worth five shekels is one shekel, whereas
the wage for hiring a fuller to treat a garment worth ten shekels would be two shekels,119 showing
that deluxe garments that required special treatment cost more to clean.120 Following Powell’s (2005,
610) rule of thumb that for long periods in ancient Mesopotamia one shekel of silver had the
purchasing power equivalent to one gur of barley, the customer in this text is offering the fuller 1/30,
or about 3.3 per cent of the tariff mentioned in the Laws of Ešnunna, which makes the fuller’s
reaction seem mild. In the Neo-Babylonian laundry contracts treated by Waerzeggers (2006), the
normal wage of washermen during the reigns of Nabonidus and Xerxes was stable: one shekel of
silver per year per contract. Waerzeggers (2006, 94 ff.) stresses that at this wage the Neo-Babylonian
washermen had to acquire twelve to eighteen such contracts in order to make a decent living. May
we compare the semi-fixed Neo-Babylonian wages to the ideological tariff in the Laws of Ešnunna?
On the one hand, the tariff in the Old Babylonian Laws is identical to the wages mentioned in the
Neo-Babylonian contracts, viz. one shekel. On the other hand the section in the Laws of Ešnunna
goes according to item, but does not mention the period for which the fuller is hired, while the
Neo-Babylonian contracts mention the duration of the contract but say nothing about the amount
of laundry that the fuller is supposed to wash. Either way, at one seah of barley, roughly 1/30 of a
shekel,121 the fuller in UET 6/2, 414 would be vastly underpaid.122,123
VI. Appendix: transliteration and translation of UET 6/2, 414
Obv.
1 al-kam ašlÁkum(LÚ.TÚG) lu-wa-̮i-ir-ka-a-ma ½u!-ba-ti zu-uk-ki
2 ša ú-wa-̮a-ru-ka la ta-na-ad-di-i-ma
3 ša-at ra-ma-ni-ka la te-ep-pe-eš
4 sí-is-sí-ik-tam qá-ap-si-da-am ta-na-ad-di
5 pa-nam a-na li-ib-bi-im tu-ta-ak-ka-ap
6 qá ši-id-dim ta-la-aq-qá-at
7 me-eæ-æa-am qá-at-nam ta-ra-as-sà-an
116 b. Brachot 25b–26a.
117 Consider, e.g., the detailed prices for building workers
which are listed in some Old Babylonian royal inscriptions
(as Nīr-Adad of Larsa and Sîn-iddinam of Larsa [Frayne
1990, 149 (E4.2.8.7: ii64–70) and Frayne 1990, 160 (E4.2.9.2):
54–59; 166: 49–55, respectively]: can one take these
propagandistic prices at face value?
118 For variable prices that washerwomen could expect to
get during the Middle Ages, see Rawcliffe 2009, 159–63.
119 Yaron’s (1988, 50 ff.) hesitations concerning the reading of this passage can now be eased (see CAD A/II 446 s.v.
ašlÁkum and Roth 1997, 61).
120 The expected connection between the quality of the
garment or the textile given to the fuller and the time, i.e. the
amount of labor necessary for its treatment, is also evident
in Ur III administrative documents, which are formulated
in terms of labor days, not wages (Waetzoldt 1972, 156). The
same relation between the quality of the garment and the
fuller’s wage is seen in the Edict of Diocletian (XXII: 1–26)
which specifies the maximal tariffs for treating different
items of clothing (see Frank 1959, 380–82 and Blümner’s
1893, 160–61 helpful commentary).
121 1 gur = 30 sītum = 1 shekel (Powell 1989–90, 494 esp.
504).
122 The details about rations paid to workers in Garšana
(Heimpel 2009, 90–91) are similar.
123 Deheselle 2002, 218 ff. reaches the same conclusion.
274
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
i-na ma-aš-æa-li-im ta-ša-aæ-æa-al
sí-sí-kà-at qá-ap-si-di-im tu-pa-a߆-߆á-ar
i-na me-e na-am-ru-tim qter -di-i[k?]
ki-ma ki-im-di-im-ma qta-ka?-par -ar ù te- qx-ni/irr
a-na bi-it-tim ta-z[a-] x ki-[m]a šu-tu-qumr [x x] x bi?
[a/i-n]a me-es-ke-er-tim ta-ta-x-[x x]
[x] ku te pa uæīlam(NAGA?) ga½½am(IM.BABBAR) t[u-ba-la-a]l
[i-na N]A4 ta-ma?-[aæ-æa-s]ú? or: ta-ma?-[az-za-š]u?
i-na te-er-æi-im ta-ma-ar-r[a-as ù ta/te-. . .]
pí-qá sí-im-tam te-me-sú t[a-. . .] /ù tu-na-qdar -[ad]
i-na æa߆߆i(gišGIDRI) e̮rim(MA.NU) tu-ta-a[r-ra-ak]
i[t-q]á-am na-pa-al-sà-aæ-tam tu-[x x x ]
šu-ta-am ši-ip-ra-am i-na ½illîm(gišIGI.GAG=dalá) x [x] qxr
Rev.
21 sí-sí-ik-tam ta-ša-at-ta-aq ù tu-pa-aš-ša-aæ
22 i-na ½i-it li-li-im tu-ub-ba-al
23 ki-ma šu-tu-um la uš-ta-ak-ka-sú
24 i-na ša-ad-di-im i-na pi-it-ni-im ta-ša-ak-ka-a[n]
25 lu pu-uš-šu-uæ-kum bi-lam ú-æa-ad-da-ka ma-di-iš æu-um-߆a-am
26 a-na bi-tim tu-ba-lam-ma sītam(BÁN) ŠE a-na sú-ni-ka i-ša-ap-pa-[ak]
27 ašlÁkum(LÚ.TÚG) i-pa!(Text: ip)-al-šu aš-šum é-a be-el né-em-qì-im ša ú-ba-la-߆ù-[ni]
28 e-zi-ib la ia-ti ša ta-qá-ab-bu-ú um-mé-ni ù mu-ša-[di-ni]
29 ša ki-ma ka-a-ti li-ib-ba-am i-ra-aš-šu-ú-ma
30 ši-ip-ra-am ri-ta-šu i-ka-aš-ša-da ú-la i-ba-aš-ši
31 ša tu-wa-̮i-<ra>-an-ni šu-un-na-am da-ba-ba-am
32 qá-ba-am ù tu-úr-ra-am ú-la e-li-i
33 al-kam e-le-nu-um a-li-im i-na li-it a-li-im
34 ma-aæ-tu-tam lu-ka-al-li-im-ka-ma-me
35 ma-na-æa-tim ra-bi-tim ša i-na qá-ti-ka i-ba-aš-ši-a i-na ra-ma-ni-ka šu-ku-un-ma
36 na-ap-ta-nu-um la i-ba-a et-ru-ba-am-ma
37 qùr qé-e ašlÁkim(LÚ.TÚG) ma-du-tim pu-šu-ur
38 šum-ma la at-ta li-ib-bi ra-ma-ni-ka tu-na-ap-pa-aš
39 ašlÁkum(LÚ.TÚG) ša i-na-aæ-æi-da-kum ú-la i-ba-aš-ši
40 i-me-eš-šu-ni-ik-kum-ma li-ib-ba-ka-mi
41 iæ-æa-am-ma-a߆ ù te-er-ši-tam
42 pa-ga-ar-ka te-mi-id
MU.BI ŠID.BI 41
Obv.
1 Come fuller, let me instruct you, treat my garment!
2 What I instruct you, do not lay aside,
3 Your own (ideas), you should not do!
4 As for the hem of the garment, you will lay down the selvage,
5 You will stitch the outer side to the inside,
6 You will pick up the thread of the (shorter) border.
7 You will soak the delicate part (of the cloth) in beer,
8 You will strain it through a sieve.
9 You will loosen the hem with the selvage.
10 You will spray it with clear water,
11 You will wipe it like a kimdum cloth, and you will. . .:
12 To the weft yarns you will [brush?] so that the warp yarns. . .
13 You will. . . . in a barrier(?)/basin(?),
14 . . . you will mix alkali with gypsum (to prepare fuller’s earth?).
15 You will [beat? or: press?] it on/with/under a stone.
275
16 . . .in a vessel.
17 In case you have applied a (laundry) mark, (then) you must . . . and you will have to comb (the
fabric).
18 You will tap (the garment) repeatedly with an e̮ru-wood stick (to felt or smooth the fabric).
19 Y[ou will arrange] the fringe on the washer’s stool.
20 You will [sew/repair] the work, the (damaged) warp, with a needle.
Rev.
21
You will spread and flatten the hem.
22
You will dry (the garment) in the break of evening,
23
so that the fabric will not dry (and wrinkle).
24
(Afterwards) you will place it in a box (and) in a chest.
25
It had better be smooth! Bring (it) to me; I will make you very happy—promptly!
26
You will bring (the garment) to the house, (one) will pour a seah of barley into your lap.
27
The fuller answers: By the name of Ea, the lord of wisdom who keeps me alive!
28
Drop it! Not me! What you are saying—only my creditor and my tax collector
29
have the nerve (to talk) like you!
30
Nobody’s hands could manage this work!
31–32 What you have instructed me I cannot repeat, utter or reiterate!
33
Come upstream of the city, in the environs of the city –
34
let me show you a washing-place! And then (you could)
35
set yourself (to do) the great work you have in your hands!
36
The meal time should not pass—come in and stay and
37
unravel the cleaner’s many threads!
38
If you don’t calm yourself down
39
there will be no fuller who will bother for you.
40–41 You will be mocked. Your heart will burn,
41–42 and you will cause a rash(?) to appear on your body.
Its lines, their number (is) 41(sic).
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Nathan Wasserman
The Institute of Archaeology—Assyriology,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mt. Scopus,
Jerusalem 91905
Israel
Nathan.Wasserman@mail.huji.ac.il