A Corvée Gang from the Time of Cyrus

Abstract

The text published here is an inventory of the personnel registered for corvée labour with the Ebabbara temple in Sippar. Fifty-nine individuals are listed. Up to 20 % of the official manpower was missing and of the remainder only 70 % were able bodied men – the rest were old, demented and children aged three, four and five. The text may be co-ordinated with a number of other documents from the Ebabbara from which it becomes clear that absenteeism or desertion was a serious problem. Its extreme is marked by a mass break out in which at least fifteen individuals fled and four died.