All Queries 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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?

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Illustrations List for Chapter 3

3.1 Gudea statues F and B from the Louvre,Illustration QueryThese hints may help in identifying this image/these images.OpenSee All Queries 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).Specify CitationWe’re not sure which Van Buren text was meant.OpenSee All Queries

3.4 Bevelled-rim bowl, and Sumerian sign meaning “to eat.”

From Nissen 1988a[2]: Figure 33, p. 84.
Nissen 1988b[3]Verify CitationCan you help us verify the year in this citation?OpenSee All Queries: Figure 30, p. 123, Bevelled Rim Bowl and the sign-forms for KU2 “to eat.”Illustration QueryShould Illustration 3.4 be split into two images instead of one?OpenSee All Queries

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).Illustration QueryIs a second illustration called for here that should be added to Chapter 3 body?OpenSee All Queries

3.6 Guitel[6] 1975: sign for silver, like barley.Illustration QueryThere is no indication where in the chapter body this could go. What do you think about where Illustration 3.6 belongs?OpenSee All Queries

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).Illustration QueryThere was no indication in the chapter body of where Illustration 3.7 should go.OpenSee All Queries

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.Illustration QueryThere was no indication in the chapter body of where Illustration 3.8 should go.OpenSee All Queries

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Spelling of Term

Quoted text:

shusi

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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?”

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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).
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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?
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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Quoted text:

—Cylinder A, verses xv–iixx, tr. Jacobsen[9] 1987: pp. 409–413.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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])?
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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?
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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?
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.”

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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.
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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.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.”

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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:

  1. Maurice Lambert, “Textes commerciaux de Lagash,” Revue d’Assyriologie, Vol. 47 (1953), pp. 37–69 and pp. 105–120.
  2. Maurice Lambert, “La naissance de la bureaucratie,” Revue Historique, Vol. 224 (1960), pp. 1–26.
  3. Maurice Lambert, “La premier triomphe de la bureaucratie,” Revue Historique, Vol. 225 (1961a), pp. 21–46.
  4. Maurice Lambert, “Recherches sur la vie ouvriers,” Archiv Orientalni, Vol. 29 (1961b), pp. 427–438.
  5. 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.
  6. Maurice Lambert, “La Guerre entre Urukagina et Lugalzagesi,” Rivista degli studi Orientali, Vol. 41 (1966).
  7. Maurice Lambert, “L’Expansion de Lagash au temps d’Entemena,” Rivista degli studi Orientali, Vol. 47 (1972), pp. 9–13.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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.”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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).
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

Quoted text:

Daniel Snell[18] (1982: p. 182) rejected the term “equivalency” in favor of “the modern category of bulk price.”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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.”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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).”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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)
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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).”

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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.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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.”
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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Quoted text:

the laws of Bilalama c. 1900 BC (para. 18A21 in ANET: pp. 134f.)
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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.)
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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.”

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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]
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Citation Needed

Quoted text:

The idea of “one” meaning “man” and the word for “two” meaning “woman,” for instance, is found throughout the world.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Specify Citation

Quoted text:

metal itself was barren, as Aristotle emphasized in classical antiquity

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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

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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)


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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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)

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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.”

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Law number 51 is a little different in this Wikisource and in this other Wikisource and very different in this source.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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Quoted text:

Paragraph 89 repeated this simdatu

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Missing Quotation Mark

Quoted text:

Ellis[23] [1972: p. 81] translated simdatu as “Standard Operating Procedure,”

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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).

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Fact Check

Quoted text:

Urukagina’s “reform” text of 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 to check that this date is correct and as specific and accurate as is currently known?

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Dead Source Link

Quoted text:

Peter Damerow and Robert K. Englund, “Die Zahlzeichensysteme der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk,” in M.W. Green and Hans J. Nissen, Zeichenliste der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk (Berlin: 1987) (ATU 2), pp. 165–166.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Dead Source Link

Quoted text:

Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (2nd ed., 1957) (New York: 1969).

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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.
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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.

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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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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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Quoted text:

Arthur Ungnad, “Die platonische Zahl,” Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatisch-Aegypt. Gesellschaft, 19__ (1914?)
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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Quoted text:

Karl Veenhof, “Babylonian Expressions for ‘Over/at a Distance of…,’” JEOL, Vol. 27 (1981–1982), pp. 65–75.

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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Quoted text:

Native American hogans are made of 16 branches and aligned to the proper direction (Adrian Snodgrass, Architecture, Time and Eternity: Studies in the Stellar and Temporal Symbolism of Traditional Buildings [New Delhi: 1990]).
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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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

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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__).
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The Creation of Order »  Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices

Verify Citation

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.
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  1. ↑ E. Douglas van Buren, “The Rod and the Ring,” Archiv Orientalni, Vol. 17 (1949), pp. 434–450.
  2. ↑ Hans J. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000–2000 BC (Chicago: 1988a), Figure 33, p. 84.
  3. ↑ Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b),Verify CitationCan you help us verify the year in this citation?OpenSee All Queries Figure 30, p. 123.
  4. ↑ A.E. Berriman, Historical Metrology (New York: 1953), pp. 56, 8.
  5. ↑ Leonard R. Palmer, Mycenaeans and Minoans: Aegean Prehistory in the Light of the Linear B Tablets (New York: 1963), p. 110.
  6. ↑ Geneviève Guitel, Histoire Comparée des Numérations Écrites (Paris: 1975), see esp. pp. 328f.
  7. ↑ André Parrot, Tello (Paris: 1948).
  8. ↑ A. Seidenberg, “The Ritual Origin of Geometry,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 1 (1962a), p. 520.
  9. ↑ Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps that Once…: Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven: 1987).
  10. ↑ 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.
  11. ↑ Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b).
  12. ↑ Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b).
  13. ↑ 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.
  14. ↑ Maurice Lambert, “La naissance de la bureaucratie,” Revue Historique, Vol. 224 (1960), pp. 1–26.
  15. ↑ Maurice Lambert, “La premier triomphe de la bureaucratie,” Revue Historique, Vol. 225 (1961a), pp. 21–46.
  16. ↑ Alexander I. Tyumenev, “The Working Personnel on the Estate of the Temple of dBa.ú in Lagaš During the Period of Lugalanda and Urukagina (25th–24th cent. BC)” [1954], in Igor M. Diakonoff (ed.), Ancient Mesopotamia: Socio-Economic History (Moscow: 1969), pp. 88–126.
  17. ↑ Maurice Lambert, “L’Usage de l’argent-métal a Lagash au temps de la IIIe Dynastie d’Ur,” Revue d’Assyriologie, Vol. 57 (1963), p. 84.
  18. ↑ Daniel C. Snell, Ledgers and Prices: Early Mesopotamian Merchant Accounts (New Haven: 1982).
  19. ↑ Daniel C. Snell, Ledgers and Prices: Early Mesopotamian Merchant Accounts (New Haven: 1982).
  20. ↑ Leonard R. Palmer, Mycenaeans and Minoans: Aegean Prehistory in the Light of the Linear B Tablets (New York: 1963).
  21. ↑ I.M. Diakonoff, “Some Reflections on Numerals in Sumerian Towards a History of Mathematical Speculation,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 103, No. 1 (1983), pp. 83–96.
  22. ↑ I.M. Diakonoff, “Some Reflections on Numerals in Sumerian Towards a History of Mathematical Speculation,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 103, No. 1 (1983), pp. 83–96.
  23. ↑ Maria de Jong Ellis, “Simdatu in the Old Babylonian Sources,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 24 (1972), pp. 74–82.
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