255 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! 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Studies on the Textile Industry and the Pantheon of Sippar according to the texts from the Ebabbar Archive (OBO 218), Fribourg/Göttingen. Nathan Wasserman The Institute of Archaeology—Assyriology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905 Israel Nathan.Wasserman@mail.huji.ac.il