Abstract
The silver balanced accounts preserved in Sumerian language on clay tablets from the Southern Mesopotamian city of Umma from the Ur III period, conventionally dated 2112-2004 B.C.E., allow us to study how resources were distributed. These texts, which constitute the biennial records of a kind of government acquisitions agency, a General Services Administration, using persons called dam-gar3, 'merchant,' allow us to quantify the allocation of resources in the extant texts of one economic system'). And the quantification need not be in some measure of the goods themselves since this system rather modernly converts everything into silver money. Using these money notations as a standard of value, we should be able to say what proportion of the acquisitions went to certain groups. It is possible to divide the persons occurring in the merchants' accounts into at least two groups, those connected to the city governor and those connected to temple establishments2). And we also have a large mass of people, 54 persons, or 48 % of all persons mentioned in the texts except the subscribers, who are not clearly connected to either the city governor or the temple3).
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
