All Queries
Illustrations List
In this query is the list of illustrations intended for Chapter 3 that was originally provided by the author. Can you help us identify them, source them, figure out what their rights situations are (and if they are copyrighted, help us find similar open-source or public domain or creative commons alternatives), suggest a place to insert them in the chapter body if possible, and solve any of the queries about them inside the list below?
Any image suggested for inclusion in
The Creation of Order must be licensed under
Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
Illustrations List for Chapter 33.1 Gudea statues F and B from the Louvre, holding the rule and the temple plan. (Reproduced in A.E. Berriman, Historical Metrology [New York: 1953].)
3.2 Van Buren: “The Rod and the Ring,”[1] from Sumerian cylinder seals.
3.3 Ur-Nammu stela: The moon-god Nanna giving Ur-Nammu the measuring rod and line with which he is to determine the dimensions of the ziggurat. (reproduced in Van Buren 1945, 1949, and/or 1956).
3.4 Bevelled-rim bowl, and Sumerian sign meaning “to eat.”
- From Nissen 1988a[2]: Figure 33, p. 84.
- Nissen 1988b[3]: Figure 30, p. 123, Bevelled Rim Bowl and the sign-forms for KU2 “to eat.”
3.5 Mesopotamian weights from third-millennium BC Lagash: The earliest known weight (of Dudu, c. 2400 BC), and duck measure, etc. (reproduced in Berriman,[4] pp. 56, 8).
- A 29 kilogram octopus weight from Knossos, the capital of Crete, approximated the Bronze ingot weights from Hagia Triada (Palmer[5] 1963: p. 110).
3.6 Guitel[6] 1975: sign for silver, like barley.
3.7 Hammurapi’s legal stela, upper register depicting him receiving his laws from Shamash. (Louvre.) Ditto from Mari palace. From André Parrot,[7] “Les Peintures du palais de Mari” in Syria, Vol. 18 (1937): p. 336 (plate 39, figures 8–10).
3.8 Painting from Old Kingdom Egypt, of “overseers weighing out quantities of material to the craftsmen and scribes noting down the amounts issued.” From V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, p. 166.
Spelling of Term
Quoted text:
Can you help us check the spelling? (It didn’t come up in our research.)
Citation Needed
Quoted text:
The Linguistic Root ‘Reg’ (‘Regularity,’ ‘Regime,’ ‘Royal,’ Etc.)
Modern languages associate rulership with the ideas of regime, regulation, and regularity, above all in the sense of administering distributive justice. To be sure, royal titles such as “czar” and “kaiser” derive from the family name of Julius Caesar. The word “king” means “head,” alluding to a sequential order—the head of a procession, or perhaps of a table.
Nearly all communities associate the act of ruling—in the sense of proclaiming laws and judging—with that of measuring. This double-sense is inherent in Indo-European words for rulership. Measures are rules, and rules are laws. Rulers rule by taking measures. These notions underlie a broad complex of words associated with the root “reg.” The list includes Hindu “rajah,” English “regent,” and French “roi,” as well as the German word for government, “Regierung,” and hence the land ruled: “Das Reich,” the realm. The English cognate is “region,” and the name “Richard” derives from the same root.
The evolution of this “
reg” terminology reflects an abstraction from quantitative rules to more general laws. A figurative usage is thus at work. The idea of ruling—in the sense of saying who should get how much, and how often—was an important step toward establishing regularity in archaic palaces and temples, and in time for society at large. Setting ration levels and prices for the major commodities and public services is what empowered Near Eastern rulers literally to rule. Administering such regularity is what the word “rule” literally meant, along with its related words “regal,” “royal,” and “regime.”
Citations needed for this section.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
The book of Job (Chapter 38) expresses this idea eloquently when the Lord speaks out of the whirlwind to ask Job:
- “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? …
- Who marked off its dimensions? …
- Who stretched a measuring line across it?
- On what were its footings set,
- or who laid its cornerstone,
- While the morning stars sang together
- and all the angels shouted for joy?”
Can you help us add a citation, with a link ideally?
Missing Illustrations
Quoted text:
Enlil’s forbear
Enmesharra endowed the gods Anu and Enlil with rod and ring, that is, the ruling stick and coiled measuring rope (Van Buren 1949: p. 434 and
Illustrations 3.1 and 3.2).
Can you help us find these two illustrations, or similar ones if those are copyrighted and not able to be reproduced? According to
the author’s Illustrations list, they are supposed to be in, respectively:
3.1: A.E. Berriman, Historical Metrology (New York: 1953).
3.2: E. Douglas van Buren, “The Rod and the Ring,” Archiv Orientalni, Vol. 17 (1949), pp. 434–450, from Sumerian cylinder seals.
Any image suggested for inclusion in
The Creation of Order must be licensed under
Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
Missing Illustration
Quoted text:
Depictions of Mesopotamian investiture rituals show the order-deity presenting the coiled-up measuring rope to the ruler. It looks like a ring as on Ur-Nammu’s stela c. 2100 BC, whose usual interpretation is that the moon-god
Nanna is handing Ur-Nammu the rod and ring to enable him to build a temple (
Illustration 3.3).
Can you help us find this illustration or something like it? According to
the author’s Illustrations list, the description of the image is:
“Ur-Nammu stele: The moon-god Nanna giving Ur-Nammu the measuring rod and line with which he is to determine the dimensions of the ziggurat” and it is “reproduced in Van Buren 1945, 1949, and/or 1956 [we’re not sure which text of hers].”
These may be helpful if the former is not public domain/creative commons: Wikipedia on the rod-and-ring symbol and Wikipedia on Ur-Nammu.
Any image suggested for inclusion in
The Creation of Order must be licensed under
Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
Missing Illustration
Quoted text:
Ur-Nammu’s contemporary ruler
Gudea of
Lagash holds a related rule in his lap in his seated statues F and B (now in the Louvre; see
Illustration 3.1).
Can you help us find this illustration or something like it? Assuming it is the same as
3.1 mentioned earlier, it may be in:
E. Douglas van Buren, “The Rod and the Ring,” Archiv Orientalni, Vol. 17 (1949), pp. 434–450, “from Sumerian cylinder seals.”
See also: the author’s Illustrations list.
Any image suggested for inclusion in
The Creation of Order must be licensed under
Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
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Quoted text:
The
Rhind Mathematical Papyrus describes Egyptian paintings showing “the king or a goddess or a priest spanning a rope and thus determining the direction of the temple-walls. From inscriptions we see that the direction was determined by the stars. In an inscription describing the foundation of the
temple at Abydos by
Sethos I (1300 BC) the goddess is made to speak to the king thus: ‘You were with me in your function as Rope-Stretcher.’ Still earlier,
Thutmose III (1500 BC) is said to have spanned the rope towards the sun-god
Amon at the horizon” (Peet 1923: p. 32 cited in van der Waerden 1980: p. 34).
Can you help us to verify this quotation and citation including page numbers? We could not find it in the prescribed pages; maybe
the version we found is a different edition with different page numbers.
Fact Check
Quoted text:
the investiture ceremony depicted at the
Mari palace c. 1800 BC
Can you help us check this fact? We found that Mari palace was founded in the “25th century BC, last major renovation c. 1800 BC” per Wikipedia.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Anthony Seidenberg
[8] (1962a: p. 520) concluded that earth-measurement started with the creation of ritual sites as cosmological models. “The whole must be planned accurately in advance. The outlines of the temple were in fact laid out with strings before the walls were begun. The ground plan of a temple, marked out on the
bitumen floor by the thin red lines left by a colored string, has actually been found on the summit of the artificial mountain,” the ziggurat at
Uruk.
Can someone with access to this text (A. Seidenberg, “The Ritual Origin of Geometry,”
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 1 [1962a]) verify the page number (520) and that the text in the quotation is accurate to the original source?
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
—
Cylinder A, verses xv–iixx, tr.
Jacobsen[9] 1987: pp. 409–413.
Can you help us to check the range of verses? The verses were not labeled in
the source we checked against, so we took a guess at the range.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
“The later millennia witnessed a chaos of systems of weights and measures,” wrote Mainkar
[10] (1984: p. 141) of the Indus Valley; “they varied from place to place, market to market and even from commodity to commodity.”
Can someone with access to this text (V.B. Mainkar, “Metrology in the Indus Civilization,” in B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta (eds.),
Frontiers of the Indus Civilization [New Delhi: 1984], pp. 141–151.) verify the page number (141) and that the text in the quotation is accurate to the original source? In particular, please verify that there is no serial comma after the second “market.”
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Quoted text:
Prior to about 2600 BC, Mesopotamian rulers were temple
en administrators (Nissen 1988: pp. 140ff. …)
Can someone with access to the two Nissen texts in
this chapter’s Bibliography help us figure out if the citation here should be 1988a (Hans J. Nissen,
The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000–2000 BC [Chicago: 1988a]) or 1988b (Hans J. Nissen,
Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years [Rome: 1988b])?
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Prior to about 2600 BC, Mesopotamian rulers were temple
en administrators (Nissen 1988: pp. 140ff.,
Diakonoff 1991…)
There was no text by Diakonoff dated to 1991 cited in
this chapter’s Bibliography. Can someone help us figure out what text was meant here (perhaps the year is incorrect) so we can add a full citation footnote and bibliographical note?
Fact Check
Quoted text:
Urukagina at his coronation in the 24th millennium BC
This was originally dated to 2350 BC, but
Wikipedia says Urukagina died before 2350 BC, c. 2372 BC. Can you help us confirm when his coronation was?
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
La 9.1 in SARI: pp. 72f.
What is this citation in full (so we can add it as a bibliographic footnote and to the
Bibliography)? We could not figure it out based on the current
Chapter 3 Bibliography. A hint may be
here for researchers with access.
Missing Illustration
Quoted text:
Archaeologists have called these coarse clay utensils the ugliest artifacts of their day (Illustration 3.4).
Can you help us find what Illustration 3.4 should be (or is it multiple illustrations, per the author’s Illustrations list), or something like it/them?
According to
the author’s Illustrations list, this should be:
“Bevelled-rim bowl, and Sumerian sign meaning ‘to eat.’”
Hans J. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000–2000 BC (Chicago: 1988a), Figure 33, p. 84.
and/or:
Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b), Figure 30, p. 123: Bevelled Rim Bowl and the sign-forms for KU2 “to eat.”
Any image suggested for inclusion in
The Creation of Order must be licensed under
Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
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Quoted text:
“are characterized by the very poor quality of the material used and in the sloppiness of production” (
Nissen[11] 1988b: p. 123). “The majority have roughly the same capacity, and the over-tempered clay does not hold any liquids longer than a few minutes.”
Can you help us verify the year in this citation? It might be 1987 rather than a second 1988 date in
Chapter 3’s Bibliography per a web search, but we’re not sure.
See also
this Chapter 3 and Bibliography query from
Chapter 3’s Bibliography, a
Chapter 3 footnote, the book
Bibliography chapter for Chapter 3, and the book
Bibliography chapter for Chapter 4; and see
the same query for Chapter 4 from
Chapter 4’s Bibliography.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
“are characterized by the very poor quality of the material used and in the sloppiness of production” (Nissen
[12] 1988b: p. 123). “The majority have roughly the same capacity, and the over-tempered clay does not hold any liquids longer than a few minutes.”
Can someone with access to this text verify the page number and that the text in the quotation is accurate to the original source?
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Quoted text:
“roughly the same capacity as the beveled rim bowl.”
Can someone with access to this text verify the page number and that the text in the quotation is accurate to the original source, and figure out which source that was? (It was not in Nissen 1988a [Hans J. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000–2000 BC (Chicago: 1988a)].) We will then:
1. Add attribution in a footnote.
2. See if “beveled rim” should be hyphenated or not.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
“now made on the wheel, apparently to measure out the daily ration.”
Can you help us check this quotation? (It was
not in Nissen 1988a [Hans J. Nissen,
The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000–2000 BC (Chicago: 1988a)].) Once the quotation contents and citation are verified, we can add attribution in a footnote.
Translation Check
Quoted text:
The French cuneiformist Maurice Lambert[13] (1963: p. 83) explained the system’s rationale:
- “When the scribe calculates the monthly barley payments—whether to feed animals or pay workers—he began by calculating a daily total. This was actually his only real calculation, for inasmuch as there are 300 sila in a gur, and 30 days in a month, the figure for the monthly expense follows automatically, at least for anyone who knows how to divide by 10. For example, a daily outlay of 250 sila occasions a monthly expense of 25 gur; a daily outlay of 185 sila works out to a monthly expense of 18 1/2 gur, that is, 18 gur 150.”
Can someone with access to the text (ideally a French-speaker) check this quotation?
Translation Check
Quoted text:
“In the space of only twenty years,” described Lambert (1960
[14]: p. 17, 1961
[15]), “the bureaucracy is astonishingly amplified.” Lagash entered “an age of memoranda”
Can someone who speaks French check these Maurice Lambert quotations?
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Quoted text:
From Enentarzi to Urukagina,” wrote Lambert, “the administrative bureaus are born. Archives have been created, and perhaps even statistics. The rule of Urukagina will be the crowning achievement of this enormous work, the triumph of a bureaucracy that will never lack for paperwork (if we can use that expression for writing in clay).”
Can you help us figure out which text by Lambert this should be attributed to in a footnote, and check the contents of the quotation?
It may or may not be one of the options from the Chapter 3 Bibliography:
- Maurice Lambert, “Textes commerciaux de Lagash,” Revue d’Assyriologie, Vol. 47 (1953), pp. 37–69 and pp. 105–120.
- Maurice Lambert, “La naissance de la bureaucratie,” Revue Historique, Vol. 224 (1960), pp. 1–26.
- Maurice Lambert, “La premier triomphe de la bureaucratie,” Revue Historique, Vol. 225 (1961a), pp. 21–46.
- Maurice Lambert, “Recherches sur la vie ouvriers,” Archiv Orientalni, Vol. 29 (1961b), pp. 427–438.
- Maurice Lambert, “L’Usage de l’argent-métal a Lagash au temps de la IIIe Dynastie d’Ur,” Revue d’Assyriologie, Vol. 57 (1963), pp. 79–92.
- Maurice Lambert, “La Guerre entre Urukagina et Lugalzagesi,” Rivista degli studi Orientali, Vol. 41 (1966).
- Maurice Lambert, “L’Expansion de Lagash au temps d’Entemena,” Rivista degli studi Orientali, Vol. 47 (1972), pp. 9–13.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Alexander Tyumanev
[16] (1969: p. 112) calculated that for Lagash’s
Bau temple during these years, “more than half the women slaves were engaged in preparing and spinning wool (about 55 percent). The rest… were used partly for grinding grain, kitchen work, in the brewery, and lastly, for tending pigs and goats.”
Can someone with access to this text verify the page number and that the text in the quotation is accurate to the original source?
Translation Check
Quoted text:
“Treasurers, bureaucrats, foremen in a general fashion all employ public workers and know only barley” in computing rations and other outlays and revenues, noted (Lambert
[17] 1963: p. 84).
Please help us to confirm the quotation contents. (Ideally someone with French language knowledge.)
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Daniel Snell
[18] (1982: p. 182) rejected the term “equivalency” in favor of “the modern category of bulk price.”
Can someone with access to this text please confirm quotation contents and page number?
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Quoted text:
Snell
[19] found that “the Sumerian word for [market] price,
ganba =
mahiru, occurs nowhere in the silver accounts. The normal expression in them is
kubi - ‘its silver value,’ referring to the total price of a stated amount of a commodity.”
Can someone with access to this text please confirm quotation contents?
Spelling of Term
Quoted text:
kor
Should
kor be spelled
gur for consistency with the rest of Chapter 2 and the rest of
The Creation of Order? See:
Wikipedia: “gur (also spelled kor in some literature).”
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Official prices for major public services and commodities were inscribed by the Ur III ruler Shulgi c. 2100 BC,
Bilalama of
Eshnunna c. 1900 BC… The prologue and beginning of the laws of Ur-Nammu’s son Shulgi are broken off from the surviving tablet, but they probably started like those of Bilalama of Eshnunna two centuries later, by establishing a parity between barley and silver. Lines 143–149 reported that Ur-Nammu “fashioned the bronze
sila-measure, he standardized the one-
mina weight, and standardized the stone-weight of a shekel of silver in relation to one
mina” (
ANET II: p. 32)
Can you help us find the full citation, so we can add it as a footnote and bibliographical note?
Missing Illustration
Quoted text:
Numerous Sumerian weights have been recovered from archaeological contexts in the temple and palace precincts beginning around the middle of the third millennium BC. These weights typically are in the shape of ducks or other animals (Illustration 3.5)
Question 1:
Can you help us find the image that goes here, or something like it if it’s not in the public domain or creative commons? According to
the author’s Illustrations list, we think this should be:
“Mesopotamian weights from third-millennium BC Lagash: The earliest known weight (of Dudu, c. 2400 BC), and duck measure, etc. (reproduced in A.E. Berriman, Historical Metrology (New York: 1953), pp. 56, 8).”
Any image suggested for inclusion in
The Creation of Order must be licensed under
Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
Question 2:
Should we add a second illustration, and update the illustration numbering in Chapter 3 and its Illustrations list, to also include the second illustration mentioned in the author’s Illustrations list, for Illustration 3.5?: “A 29 kilogram octopus weight from Knossos, the capital of Crete, approximated the Bronze ingot weights from Hagia Triada (Palmer 1963: p. 110)”: Leonard R. Palmer, Mycenaeans and Minoans: Aegean Prehistory in the Light of the Linear B Tablets (New York: 1963).
See also: this query from the Chapter 3 Illustrations list.
Again: Any image suggested for inclusion in The Creation of Order must be licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
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Quoted text:
Palmer
[20] found for Mycenaean Greece the proportions 5:2:1 (with smaller children receiving 1/2), recalling measures familiar from
Nuzi, “where the man–boy ratio is 6:1 and the woman’s allocation was only twice that of a child, not even daughters of the royal house rising above the level of a slave’s, which was three times the child’s ration and half the free man’s allocation.”
Can someone with access to this text verify that the text in the quotation is accurate to the original source?
Citation Needed
Quoted text:
Powell (1977) noted that the Middle Babylonian word for 1/8 shekel, bitqu (literally “cutting”), suggests silver rings and coils, and may originally have denoted “a piece of standard size cut off from such a silver coil.”
Do you know what text was meant by Powell (1977)? We could not find it any of this book’s Bibliographies. Provide a full citation (link preferred) so we can add a citation and bibliographic note.
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Quoted text:
It therefore is not surprising that Greek and Italian cities adopted Near Eastern measures along with arithmetic and alphabetic writing, as well as numerous commercial contract practices first innovated by the temples, palaces, and their merchants (Hudson 1991).
What source is being referred to here? It’s likely a text by Michael Hudson, but we’re not sure which. If you let us know, we’ll add a full citation in a footnote here and a bibliographic note.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
the laws of Bilalama c. 1900 BC (para. 18A21 in ANET: pp. 134f.)
Can you help us find the full citation, so we can add it as a footnote and bibliographical note?
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Quoted text:
Official interest-rate levels were inscribed in stone and set at 20 percent (12/60) annually… by Hammurapi c. 1750 BC (para. 88f., ANET: pp. 148f.)
Can you help us find the full citation, so we can add it as a footnote and bibliographical note?
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Quoted text:
The Soviet cuneiformist Igor Diakonoff
[21] (1983: p. 83) has described how archaic languages lean heavily on the use of metaphor to convey the idea of abstract concepts as literal extensions of the concrete. He defined an archaic language as one which, “on the lexical level, has no or only poorly developed means of expressing abstract ideas.”
Can you help us to check this quotation against the source (the Diakonoff text in the footnote)?
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Quoted text:
“In an archaic language there are no adequate means, either lexical or grammatical, to express such abstract ideas as ‘time,’ ‘space,’ ‘subject,’ ‘object,’ ‘cause,’ ‘beauty,’ ‘liberty,’ ‘invention,’ ‘multiplication,’ ‘division’ and many others, some of which appear to us elemental, as, e.g., the distinction between ‘darkness,’ ‘calamity,’ ‘illness,’ and ‘pain,’ etc., or between ‘good,’ ‘enjoyable,’ ‘kind,’ ‘happy,’ ‘useful,’ ‘lucky,’ etc. … In the absence of means to express general ideas, one resorts to generalization by tropes (metaphors and metonymies).”
[22]
Can you help us to check this quotation against the source (the Diakonoff text in the footnote)?
Citation Needed
Quoted text:
The idea of “one” meaning “man” and the word for “two” meaning “woman,” for instance, is found throughout the world.
Citation needed. Can you help us identify it and add it?
Specify Citation
Quoted text:
metal itself was barren, as Aristotle emphasized in classical antiquity
Can you help us specify a citation/citations?
Citation Needed
Quoted text:
It thus is not surprising that whereas the capital:birth metaphor for interest was not coined until about half a millennium after interest was implied in Sumer, it turned up in Greece and Italy full-blown from the first time we find interest implied, in the eighth century BC.
Is a citation needed? If so, can you help us identify it?
Table Query
Quoted text:
Table 3.4
| Smallest Fractional Unit
|
Normal Rate of Interest
|
Region
|
| 1/60th
In the decimal system, 1 2/3 percent
|
1 shekel per month per mina owed per month = 20 percent per year
|
Bronze Age Mesopotamia
|
| 1/10th
|
10 percent per year (dekate)
|
Classical Greece
|
| 1/12th
|
8 1/3 percent (1/12th) per year (uncia)
|
Classical Rome
|
See the source material from which we made this table (line breaks appeared to be incorrect and text appeared to be scrambled line to line in the source material). Does the finished version look like a correct interpretation?
Source Material
Smallest
Normal rate Region
Fractional
Unit
Bronze Age Mesopotamia
<nowiki>1/60th
<nowiki>per month = 20 percent per year.
Classical Greece
1/10th
10 percent per year
(''dekate'')
<nowiki>Classical Rome
<nowiki>8 1/3 percent (1/12th) per year
(uncia)
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
In addition to being used on a monthly basis for commercial loans, this fraction 1/60th was used annually for applications where only a nominal charge was deemed appropriate. One finds it stipulated, for instance, for the storage of grain in number 121 of
Hammurapi’s laws.
Is 121 the right number law of Hammurapi’s Code? That appears to be a 1:5 ratio, not 1/60:
“Anyone storing grain in the house of another shall compensate the bailee by paying to him 5 ‘ka’ of grain for every 1 ‘gur’ of grain stored during the year.”
(Source)
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
They would enter the debtor’s or renter’s house to take payment—a goat or other livestock, often for merely a nominal debt (Stephens 196_).
This was originally written as “(Stephens 196).” Can you help us figure out what text was here—the full author name, work title, and year (presumably 196_)—so we can add a citation in the footnote and a bibliographical note?
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Quoted text:
Hammurapi’s laws (numbers 94 and 95) stipulated that merchants who lent grain or money by a small weight but demanded payment by a larger one should have forfeited whatever they had lent.
Hammurapi’s laws numbers 94–95 were lost according to this source. Can you help us figure out how the author was counting or what his source is?
See also: “[The enumeration of the paragraphs from this point gives rise to the supposition that the gap takes in 35 paragraphs and goes on from 100.]” from Wikisource.
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Quoted text:
Paragraph 51 laid down that if a debtor “does not have silver, he will pay the merchant in barley or sesame in accordance with the ratio fixed by the ruler,” that is, “by the royal
simdatu.”
Can you help us verify this quotation? We couldn’t find a translation with this exact quotation. We can add a link if you find one.
Law number 51 is a little different in
this Wikisource and in
this other Wikisource and very different in
this source.
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Paragraph 89 repeated this simdatu
Hammurapi’s law number 89 was lost according to this source. Can you help us figure out how the author was counting or what his source was? We can add a link if you find one.
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Quoted text:
the following paragraph 90 stipulated that if the creditor took more interest than was allowed, or collected interest after a misharum act had been proclaimed, the entire debt was nullified
Hammurapi’s law number 90 was lost according to this source. Can you help us figure out how the author was counting or what his source was? We can add a link if you find one.
Missing Quotation Mark
Quoted text:
Ellis
[23] [1972: p. 81] translated
simdatu as “Standard Operating Procedure,”
The close-quotation mark was missing here. Can you help us to verify this is accurate?
Illustration Query
Quoted text:
His contemporary
Gudea of
Lagash is portrayed (
Statues F and B) holding a measuring rule.
These may refer to what were called Illustrations 3.1 or 3.2. See the Illustrations queries page later for more details.
Any image suggested for inclusion in The Creation of Order must be licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 or in the public domain if it is to be embedded in the chapter. If it is not CC4.0 or PD, please suggest a link to somewhere externally readers might find the correct image. Please include a source link and attribution information for any image suggestion (Wikimedia Commons links are preferred if available).
Fact Check
Quoted text:
This was originally dated to 2350 BC, but Wikipedia says Urukagina died before 2350 BC, c. 2372 BC. Can you help to check that this date is correct and as specific and accurate as is currently known?
Dead Source Link
Quoted text:
The source link may not be functional. Can you find another link to this source that loads more quickly?
Dead Source Link
Quoted text:
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This affects the
Chapter 2 Bibliography, the footnote citing this work in
Chapter 2, the
Chapter 3 Bibliography, and the book
Bibliography chapter.
See also
this query on Chapter 2.
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Quoted text:
Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b).
Can you help us verify the year in this citation? It might be 1987 rather than a second 1988 date in Chapter 3’s Bibliography and Chapter 4’s Bibliography per a web search, but we’re not sure.
See
the same query in Chapter 4.
See also
this query affecting
Chapter 3’s Bibliography,
Chapter 4’s Bibliography, the book
Bibliography chapter for Chapter 3, and the book
Bibliography chapter for Chapter 4.
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Quoted text:
Arthur Ungnad, “Die platonische Zahl,” Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatisch-Aegypt. Gesellschaft, 19__ (1914?)
Can you help us verify the year?
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Quoted text:
Karl Veenhof, “Babylonian Expressions for ‘Over/at a Distance of…,’” JEOL, Vol. 27 (1981–1982), pp. 65–75.
What does JEOL stand for?
And is part of the article title missing? If so, what is missing?
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Quoted text:
Originally in this
Chapter 3 footnote, this was written as “(Snodgrass 1990:–)”; we assumed the source meant was the text that we wrote in here that was cited in
Chapter 11’s Bibliography, but a page number/page numbers was/were still missing. Can you help us confirm that this is the correct Snodgrass text cited here, and also let us know what page number(s) is/are missing for this particular footnote’s context?
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Quoted text:
A famous case arose when famine occurred in the reign of Ur III’s final ruler
Ibbi-Sin. He delegated ships to his subordinate
Ishbi-Erra to buy barley upstream, but when prices rose a hundredfold Ishbi-Erra broke away to set up his own regime at
Isin (Oppenheim 19__).
Originally this was written as “(Oppenheim 19–)”; can you help us figure out what text was meant so we can add a full citation, including year and title?
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Quoted text:
In the biblical poetic tradition, observed Cyrus Gordon (1978: p. 25), when Zechariah 14:9 states that “on that day Yahweh shall be one, and His name One,” the idea is not merely monotheistic but also numerological.
Can you help us find the full citation, so we can add it to this footnote and as a bibliographical note?
