Люди города Ура - [154]

To this chapter is appended the excursus IIIa: Identification of houses where the documents were found. It contains a list of the houses on the AH site, with corresponding find and publication numbers of tablets and some other objects, and the names of the probable inhabitants. The compiling of this list was fraught with serious difficulties. The find numbers were often inscribed by archaeologists at a date later than the find itself, many objects (including tablets) had lost their provenance, a considerable number of tablets of no longer known but different provenance were listed under a single number (U. 17249), although in some cases their real origin can still be established by prosopographic means; some numbers were given twice to different tablets. The number of tablets mentioned in L. Woolley's text as found at a given place of the excavation site is often greater then that which can be inferred from the catalogue of the finds; also the place of the find as mentioned by the author is often suspect. Information in the earlier publications does not tally with that in the final one.

Objects different from tablets were not numbered together with the tablets but in separate series unconnected with the houses where they were found, and thus in many, perhaps in most cases can no longer be connected with definite loci, families and individual inhabitants of the city; the catalogue of terracottas includes mainly objects not from Ur but from neighbouring Diqdiqqah (presumably a village of professional ceramists) and includes, without any warning, objects both earlier and later than the OB period; the published catalogue of burials hardly includes so much as a half of the burials actually found; no measurements were made, so that baby burials, burials of adolescents and burials of grown-ups cannot be distinguished. Of the several types of published larnax burials apparently only type В belongs to the period under investigation. Many implements and other objects in L. Woolley's text do not appear in the catalogues. All bones, both animal and human, which could have given important information on the diet, anthropology, and life expectancy of the population, were simply thrown out. The list of archaeological errors and misdeeds could be continued ad infinitum. Were it not for the selfless labour of the editor, T. L. Mitchell, who was able to create some order out of the original chaos, no further scientific investigation of the city of Ur would be possible.

However, we hope that, thanks to Mitchell's efforts, our present list of tablet finds on the AH site given in this excursus will still be a help for students of the city of Ur in the OB period.

Inter alia, it is established that the so-called «Hendursang Chapel» or the adjoining house seems to have been the residence of the kakikku, a priest / official whose presence was apparently essential when agreements involving important property were made; such deeds were often kept at the chapel.

Chapter IV. A Merchant, Seafarer, and Copper Founder. It is devoted to the household of Ēianāsir, earlier studied by W. F. Leemans, and adds a few new aspects to the latter's results.

Chapter V. School and Scholarship, is partly based on the finds made in Ur itself (7, Quiet Street; 1, Broad Street) and partly on other known cuneiform school-texts of different types. In distinction from Charpin, the author does not believe that the OB school was a family affair connected with the priesthood, and develops the more traditional ideas of S. N. Kramer and B. Landsberger who regarded the OB schools as institutions more or less open to children of freemen and royal-and-temple functionaries; this of course does not mean that literacy and priestly offices were not apt to be hereditary in certain families. The author makes an attempt to draw a picture of the OB education curriculum as a system and a tradition.

The author agrees with Charpin that the house 1, Broad street was not a school, but he believes the house was built on the site of a former school.

Chapter VI. Extended Family Communes in the Countryside and in the City. Businessmen and Merchants, Priests and Priestesses.

In the beginning of this chapter it is shown, on the basis of documents of sale and rent of land, that extended family ownership of land was typical for the rural population not connected with the palace-and-temple sector of economy (but being ina lītim ša ālim).

But also in the city, closely knit extended family groups were important and active. One of such groups inhabited houses 4—12, Paternoster row, in Ur. To it belonged the brothers (or cousins) AnaSīnwuššur, Abūni, Imlikum, Šagišabūšu, Ilīiddinam, Attāia et al. (UET V, 76 et al.). They appear in sundry business documents sometimes alone and sometimes in groups of two or three but, apparently, always representing the same «family firm». Also other similar family groups can be attested.

Inside an extended family group, not all were connected with business or official activities; some of them appear only in documents concerning the division of inheritance, marriage contracts etc. Many houses excavated in OB Ur, some of them very big and apparently rich, did not contain any documents, which probably means that the families in question, whether belonging to the priesthood or connected with agricultural or animal-breeding activities, were not involved in business money transactions which need ed to be fixed in writing.