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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2014
I try to show here that we do not at present have any substantial evidence for fixing the absolute value of any Assyrian capacity unit. This situation is likely to remain so until epigraphist-philologists and archaeologists recognize the need for common effort to solve this problem. Departure point of the present study was the discovery that, in a group of twenty-one documents from Nimrud dated in the period 699–652 B.C. which derive ultimately from the temple of Nabû, eighteen have common patterns from which one can deduce a few basic facts about metrological practice and terminology in the Neo-Assyrian period. To what extent they can be generalized must be decided by specialists in Neo-Assyrian on the basis of more evidence than I have at my disposal.
In his very useful treatment of Neo-Assyrian measures, J. N. Postgate called attention to ND 5457, which contains the phrase ina KAL-ti, i.e. ina sūte dannate, “in the heavy sūt”. He further observed that a calculation in the text indicates that this “heavy” sūt is twice the size of another (unspecified) sūt in the same text and went on to draw parallels between the well-attested light and heavy Assyrian weight norms, which stand to one another in the relationship of 1: 2, and with the Nimrud wine vessels, which were thought to show a similar pattern. He then identified this heavy capacity norm with an emār of 184 litres, deduced by the excavators of Nimrud on the basis of marked jars found there. There are, however, several points that still need clarifying.
1 Parker, B., Iraq 19 (1957), 125–38 + Pls. XXVII – XXXIIICrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Fifty Neo-Assyrian Legal Documents (1976), § 6 and p. 68Google Scholar.
3 Fifty Documents (1976), p. 67Google ScholarPubMed, § 6.3.0.
4 Iraq 19 (1957), 128Google ScholarPubMed.
5 Iraq 21 (1959), 103 + n. 10Google ScholarPubMed.
6 Die Hausgeräte der alten Mesopolamier, Teil II: Gefässe ( = AASF B/144, 1966), 270 f. Salonen's account has now become authority for a philologist trying to make sense of the Nimrud metrological data: Wilson, J. V. Kinnier, The Nimrud Wine Lists (CTN I, 1972), 114 fGoogle Scholar. Postgate also cites Salonen in Fifty Documents (1976), 67 §6.3.0, but he had recognized Salonen's inconsistencies by the time he came to study the Tell al Rimah jar ; see Iraq 40 (1978), 73 n. 5Google Scholar.
7 Nimrud and Its Remains (1966), II, 408Google Scholar.
8 Iraq 40 (1978), 71–5 + pl. XIICrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
9 Iraq 19 (1957), 125 fCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
10 Parker, B., “The Nimrud Tablets, 1952—Business Documents”, Iraq 16 (1954), 29–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 ND 2334: 14 (Iraq 16, 44 + 57): [ina g]išBÁN 8 SILÀ aš-šur-a-a; ND 2335: 11 (Iraq 16, 44 + 58): ina gišBÁN ša 8 ina I SILÀ aš-šur-a-a (concerns grain to be delivered according to this standard in the town of Hibtunu at the exchange rate prevailing on the lands of the nāgir ekalli for 56 shekels of silver received in Nimrud). Cf. also the occurrences of the sūt of 8 qa noted by Parker in her catalogue, Iraq 16, 32 ff.: ND 2076, 2083, 2088; by Wiseman, D. J., Iraq 15 (1953), 138 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ND 3456, 3458. As all of these texts seem to come from the period after 648 B.C., this could indicate a shift from the 9-qa sūt to the 8-qa sūt, but it could also mean that they come from another part of the bureaucratic complex that used an 8-qa sūt.
12 This is the earliest dated text from the archive. It comes from 699 B.C.; cf. Parker, , Iraq 19 (1957), 125, 132 + pl. XXVIICrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Fifty Documents (1976), 68Google ScholarPubMed.
14 Fifty Documents, 68 f.
15 In the Nimrud documents I have also noted sat of 10 qa [ND 2063 = Parker, , Iraq 16, 32Google Scholar, descr. only] and 6 qa [descr. in Iraq 15, 143: ND 3442, Iraq 16, 40: ND 2317, but cf. the same(?) principal in an 8 qa-transaction in ND 2076, 33]. These overlap the data collected by Saporetti, C., RSO 44 (1970), 273–83Google Scholar, which was not accessible to me at the time I wrote this paper. However, independent observation of metrological relationships is not only not redundant, but indispensable.
16 AoF 1 (1974), 74ad I 54′ffGoogle Scholar.
17 VS 19, 1.
