Eanna of Uruk

The book focuses on the Neo-Babylonian administrative letters dated to Nabopolassar and the first half of Nebuchadnezzar’s reigns (ca. 626–580 BCE); this is the formative phase of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The 215 letters in the corpus come from the two major Neo-Babylonian temple archives known today: Eanna, temple of Ištar, in Uruk (190 letters), and Ebabbar, temple of the son god Šamaš, in Sippar (25 letters). Two letters from Babylon are additionally included as appendices A and B (one of which is of the still crown prince Nebuchadnezzar from the battlefield at Harran).
In many ways, these letters are the closest we get to the erratic drama which was day-to-day life in Babylonia at the mid first millennium BCE. The letters were a vital administrative tool, necessary for the ongoing functioning of these institutions. As such, they provide first-hand testimony for the tasks and obstacles that the Neo-Babylonian bureaucrats faced. As of yet, no systematic attempt has been made to date and contextualise the Neo-Babylonian administrative letters and they have never been studied as a group, and they are still one of the most underrepresented and underexploited source material in Neo-Babylonian studies. This is due to the lack of up-to-date editions, the “elusive nature” of epistolography (namely the difficulty in accurately dating and contextualising the letters), as well as the unique philological difficulties of the texts. Thus three interdependent goals stand at the base of this study:
1. Establishing new, up-to-date editions of the early Neo-Babylonian letters from Eanna and Ebabbar
2. Studying these letters as a distinct text group
3. Contextualising the letters
The first part of this work, chapters 2–6, analyses the letters as a distinct text group with its own characteristics. The letters are examined both as a source for their authors’ sense of identity and mentality, as well as for the structure and administrative setting in which these authors were active. Following the introduction (chapter 1), which lays out the historical and scholarly basis for this study, chapter two examines the formal aspect of epistolography (e.g., structure and stock phrases). It then discuss two main methodological issues: the rhetorical analysis of the letters, and the problem of dating. In chapter three I discuss the “non-content” aspects of epistolography: viz. the language, the tablets themselves, and the logistics involved in epistolographic activity. At the core of the discussion chapters (2–6) stands chapter four, in which I examine aspects of officialdom in the temples. Following a discussion on the concepts of (good) service (maṣṣartu) and “administrative sin” (ḫīṭu), I go on to focus on the different interactions as revealed in the letters. Here, the slightly different administrative structure of the two temples, as well as substantial difference in their size, requires the distinction between Eanna and Ebabbar (the former naturally takes most of the focus). Starting with the inner interaction of temple officials with their colleagues within the same institution, the discussion then zooms out to examine the interaction of temple officials with other temples and state’s institutions. Chapter five surveys the main subject matters discussed in the letters, highlighting the contribution of the epistolographic perspective to the study of the temples’ day-to-day operation. In the sixth and concluding chapter of the discussion, a diachronic perspective is introduced, and the early Neo-Babylonian letter corpus is compared to the earlier Neo-Assyrian letters from the State Archive of Assyria (SAA), and to the later epistolographic material from the second half of the long sixth century (late Nabonidus and Achaemenid letters).
The second part of the book, chapter seven, presents up-to-date editions of the 215 letters in the corpus. These include translation, transliteration, and contextual and philological commentary. Close attention is given to the contextualization of the letters; vis-à-vis dates, prosopography, and administrative and historical settings.

The paper examines concepts of service and duty within Babylonian temples as reflected in the administrative letters from the archive of the Eanna temple in Uruk. It discusses the use of the Babylonian term maṣṣartu (“guard/watch”) in the letters and examines aspects of professional identity and bureaucratic mentality of Neo-Babylonian temple officials. The final section examines persuasion strategies employed by the Neo-Babylonian temple officials, and the implication of such analysis on the professional identity of temple personnel.

Abstract: This note suggests an addition to the early administrative letter corpus of the Eanna temple, by identifying the sender of YOS 3, 26 as the temple administrator of the temple of Amurru, implying a date around the begining of Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign. The argument rests on an analysis of patters of interaction between different officials, the chronological distribution of a particular rhetorical element as well as on the contents of the letter. It includes a re-edition of the letter.

1. Preface ………………………………………………………………………… 1
2. Dating Problems ………………………………………………………………. 3
3. The administration at the time of level IVa …………….……. 5
4. The development of information technologies …………... 8
5. The invention of the writing system ……………………………... 9
6. School before writing ……………………………………………………….10
7. In the beginning was the administration………………………..10

It is with pleasure that I publish and analyze the following account settlement of cattle-the reverse of NBC 4847 (NBK II 32/04/09)-in honor of Prof. Stefan Zawadzki. I originally published a copy and quick transcription of the text in my book, 2 later realizing the uniqueness and importance of the reverse. This uniqueness and importance, I add, comes to the fore only in view of Zawadzki's pioneering work on another Neo-Babylonian accounting text. 3 The text audits the growth of a herd of 100 head of cattle, belonging to the Eanna temple of Uruk but under the control of a man named Nanā-ēreš, over four years. I am not aware of another text like it from first millennium Babylonia.

In this article we deal with Nebuchadnezzar’s removal from office of the High Priest of Uruk’s main temple, the Eanna, during a formative period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The incident is tied historically and politically to the process of state building and imperial consolidation associated with this monarch, especially in the second quarter of the 6th century b.c.e., at the Neo-Babylonian empire’s “Augustan Threshhold.”
Keywords: Neo-Babylonian State Building, Uruk, Eanna Archives, Priestly Families, Nūr-Sîn Family

1. Vorwort ………………………………………….........................…………………………………. 1
2. Datierungsprobleme ………………………………................………………………………. 3
3. Die Verabreichung zum Zeitpunkt der Stufe IVa …………………………………..5
4. Die Entwicklung der Informationstechnologien ………………………………... ...8
5. Die Erfindung des Schriftsystems ………………………........……………………….... 9
6. Schule vor der Schrift……………………………………………................…………………10
7. Am Anfang war die Verwaltung ………………………………….........…………………10

Talk held at the fully virtual conference by the Historical Sociolinguistic Network, HiSoN 2021, organised by the FAU Erlangen, "Intra-Writer Variation in Historical Sociolinguistics", 17-19 March 2021. Pre-recorded talk streamed live on March 17, 2021.

Abstract:
My talk focuses on intra-writer variation in Late Babylonian temple letters from Mesopotamia. The letters stem from the main temple of the city of Uruk in Southern Mesopotamia. They date to around 530 BCE. Specifically, I draw up a case study on two letters by a writer who belonged to the highest echelons of this temple to other high-ranking colleagues in a time of need, YOS 3, 171 and TCL 9, 129.2 The letters
concern the involvement of the temple in a royal building project. The sender of the letter, while being a full
member of the temple administration, had a royal background. He sent his letters to two temple officials
with local backgrounds.3 They stemmed from prominent Urukean families.4 The tension between royal and
local influence is one way of reading these letters, but a focus on intra-writer variation provides us with
deeper insights. One letter addresses an official of roughly equal status, similar to a “bishop”,5
the other
addresses a lower-ranking temple scribe. These two letters are near-duplicates, but they differ at crucial
points. Focusing on these discrepancies makes it possible to trace stylistic variation with regard to the
intended addressees, the communicational situations where this was pertinent, and the rhetorical means
chosen in these situations.
Abbreviations
YOS 3 Clay, A., 1919, Neo-Babylonian Letters from Erech. Yale Oriental Series. Babylonian Texts 3.
TCL 9 Contenau, G., 1926, Contrats et lettres d’Assyrie et de Babylonie. Textes cunéiformes du Louvre 9.
References
Ebeling, Erich 1930–1934. Neubabylonische Briefe aus Uruk. Berlin.
Jursa, Michael 2007. The Transition of Babylonia from the Neo-Babylonian Empire to Achaemenid Rule. In
Harriet Crawford (ed.), Regime Change in the Ancient Near East and Egypt: From Sargon of Agade to
Saddam Hussein. Proceedings of the British Academy 136. 73–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jursa, Michael 2015. Families, Officialdom, and Families of Royal Officials in Chaldean and Achaemenid
Babylonia. In Alfonso Archi (ed.), Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of
the 57th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Rome, 4–8 July 2011. 597–606. Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns.
Kleber, Kristin 2008. Tempel und Palast. Die Beziehungen zwischen dem König und dem Eanna-Tempel im
spätbabylonischen Uruk. Veröffentlichungen zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte Babyloniens im 1. Jahrtausend v.
Chr. Band 3. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 358. Münster: Ugarit.
1 For editions, see Schmidl forthcoming, Tolini (2011: 274–277), Ebeling (1930–1930: 14–16).
2 For editions of these texts, see Schmidl forthcoming, Tolini (2011: 221–223), Ebeling (1930–1934: 280–283).
3 Kleber (2008) treats the relationship between temple and crown during the period in question.
4 On prominent local families and members of the city administration or the royal administration, see, e.g., Jursa
2015.
5 While this term is admittedly anachronistic, it conveys the notion of the duties of the office of “šatammu”, as this
office combined administrative and cultic responsibilities. For the usage of this term, see, e.g., Jursa (2007: 76+5).

The five unpublished cuneiform texts presented in this study are currently housed in the collection of the  Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. This article provides the publication of three Neo-Sumerian
tablets from Umma; an inscription from the king Sîn-kašid and one tablet dating from the reign of Nabû-
kudurrī-uṣur (Nebuchadnezzar) II.