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April 8, 2008
The Final Missing Administrative Tablet: RS 1957.701 (KTU 4.709)
KTU 4.709 is part of the set missing Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets that I've been discussing. The picture to the left is of a cast of the obverse of the tablet with the name Ashdod circled. The tablet itself is light brown. The text is in Ugaritic. My reading, based on the cast of the tablet and the published photographs, tends to agree more with KTU than with Dahood, 33-34. For this reason, my translation will differ from Dahood's. My current understanding also differs somewhat from my own earlier efforts. I now tend to follow Liverani, 195, far more closely than I did two years ago.
[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that doesn't look right, please install the Charis SIL font.]
Obverse:
1) šbʿ . kkr . šʿrt
2) b . kkr . aḏdd
--------------------------
3) ˹w˺ b kkr . ugrt
4) ḫmš . kkrm
5) alp . ṯmn . mat kbd
6) d . mnḥt
Reverse:
1) ṯmnym arb˹ʿ˺ṯt
2) kbd ksp
3) ˹ʿšr˺t ˹mn˺ḥt
--------------------------
4) w ṯlṯm ˹ksp˺
5) ʿšrm ṣin˹m˺
Obverse
1) Seven talents (kkrs) of wool
2) according to the Ashdod talent (kkr).
----------------------------
3) according to the Ugarit talent (kkr)
4) five talents (kkrs).
5) one thousand eight hundred heavy (shekels)
6) that have been delivered.
Reverse:
1) Eighty four
2) heavy (shekels) of silver,
3) (for) ten (talents of wool?????) (that) have been delivered.
-----------------------------
4) and thirty (heavy shekels) of silver
5) (for) twenty sheep (or goats).
Liveranti understands the obverse to reflect differing rates of exchange between Ugarit and Ashdod. Lines 1-5 seem to tell us that seven Ashdod talents of wool equal five Ugarit talents plus one thousand eight hundred heavy shekels of wool. Which if I understand Liveranti correctly, he takes to be 5.6 talents (at 3000 shekels per talent). Why do these Italians always write in Italian? He then uses this and other data to conclude that the Ugaritic (and Hittite) talent was 28.2 kg and Ashdod talent was 22.56 kg. This compares favorably to the two 'official' weights of a shekel of silver as discussed, all too briefly, by Heltzer, 448. It would indicate that Ashdod followed, at the time, the Mesopotamian exchange rate as expressed in shekels of silver, rather than the Hittite exchange rate. From other sources, the price of a talent of wool at Ugarit varied from 1 to 7 shekels of silver. See Heltzer, 446, and KTU 4.158, 4.337, 4.341, 4.707 4.721 among others. Remember a shekel is a weight not a price or a value in and of itself. If the "ten" in KTU 4.709 reverse line 3 refers to talents of wool, then the price would be 8.4 shekels of silver per talent of wool for this transaction, somewhat higher than otherwise documented. But I'm not so sure to what the "ten" refers.
On a barely related subject, according to 2 Kings 3:4, Mesha, king of Moab, paid tribute to the king of Israel in lambs and wool. Was it paid to Omri, Ahab, Jehoram or all three? I think Mesha did not pay tribute to Jehoram. The Mesha Stele and 2 Kings 1:1 seem to indicate that Mesha rebelled upon the death of Ahab. 2 Kings 3:4 is somewhat out of place. The transaction between Ugarit and Ashdod was purely commercial rather than one of tribute. If reverse line 3 does refer to wool, then it is interesting in an irrelevant sort of way that Mesha's tribute and the commercial transaction recorded in KTU 4.709 both consisted of wool and lambs/sheep or goats. The Ugarit word used here is somewhat ambiguous: ṣinm, "small stock" The scribe could have used a less ambiguous word. He or she just didn't.
The reverse of KTU 4.709 is strange. Dahood, 33, thought it was in a different hand than the obverse. But I'm not so sure. I think the letters on the reverse look different, and smaller, only because the surface of the reverse was rubbed or otherwise worn down in some way. While it might just be wear caused by how it came to be wherever it was found (looted) and/or conditions in the tel, I think there was a deliberate attempt in antiquity to obscure or cancel the writing on the reverse. There is no sign of writing on the bottom edge of the obverse. If the text on the reverse is a continuation of the text on the obverse, the text does not wrap around the bottom of the obverse as one might expect. By the way, the interpretation of the whole tablet suggested above assumes that the text on the reverse is a continuation of the text on the obverse (or the other way around). Take a look at the picture of the cast of the reverse to the left. It's not just that the lines aren't straight. They aren't straight in a peculiar way. The last line, for example, curves up. It looks to me that someone pushed it up rather than wrote it that way. Also, on the right of the reverse are two shallow indented areas, one more or less between lines 1 and 3 and another between lines 3 and 4 that fit my thumb perfectly. In fact, the area starting at the left between lines 3 and 4 looks and feels like someone pushed their thumb or finger across the once soft tablet at this point. On the other hand, I see no signs of fingerprints per se. Likewise, it appears to me that someone removed a "slice" along bottom of the reverse and did it rather smoothly. Of course, the leather hard tablet could have been ground on its reverse (and its reverse only) by abrasive action as the building it was in collapsed. But, as I said, several factors make me think that there was a deliberate attempt to cancel the reverse side of the tablet. I know not why. It is true, as Dahood noted, that one can't see any word dividers on the reverse. But they are quite faint even on the obverse and whatever caused the "wearing" on the reverse likely would have erased them. It appears to me that the "wearing" obscured vertical wedges more than the horizontal wedges. I also think there is room between the letters for there to have once been word dividers. See for example the space between ṯmnym and arb˹ʿ˺ṯt in line 1 or between kbd and ksp in line 2.
In a day or two I'll post on the last of the "missing tablets:" RS 1957.2. It's a very frustrating letter in Akkadian. It is addressed to some king of Ugarit. But which one? It is not clear which of several people (if any of them) it is from. The location of the place of origin is unknown. The heart of the message is lost. But it still has a certain sense of importance. "The following news was reported in the presents of Tateya." And shortly thereafter, the tablet becomes increasingly unreadable. Oh yeah, no one knows who Tateya was.
References
Heltzer, Michael, "The Economy of Ugarit," Watson, Wilfred G. E. and Nicolas Wyatt eds., Handbook of Ugaritic Studies, Leiden: Brill, 1999, 422-454
Liverani, Mario, "Talento di Ashdod," Oriens antiquus, 11. 1972, 193-199
Posted by Duane Smith at April 8, 2008 8:20 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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Comments
Duane, on the weights in different cities and equivalences, see now Weights in Context. Bronze Age Weighing Systems of Eastern Mediterranean: Chronology, Typology, Material and Archaeological Contexts, edited by M.E. Alberti, E. Ascalone, and L. Peyronel. I've reviewed the book for AJA 112.2 which is about to appear. It's a metrological feast.
Posted by: judith weingarten at April 9, 2008 8:42 AM
Judith,
Thanks, I will look it up and I also look forward to your review.
Posted by: Duane at April 9, 2008 8:51 AM
This is amazing, quality stuff, Duane. Keep up the fine blogging. Here in WI, by the way, we still have snow on the ground, and more, perhaps, on the way.
Posted by: John Hobbins at April 9, 2008 1:38 PM
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