The Old-Babylonian Family Cult and Its Projection on the Ground, published version in RAI 55, 2014

La famille dans le Proche-Orient ancien:

réalités, symbolismes, et imagesProceedings of the 55th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale

at Paris 6–9 July 2009

edited byLioneL Marti

Winona Lake, Indiana eisenbrauns

2014

Offprint From:

© 2014 by Eisenbrauns Inc. All rights reserved

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na-tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materi-als, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ♾ ™

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rencontre assyriologique internationale (55th : 2009 : Paris, France)La famille dans le Proche-Orient ancien : réalités, symbolismes, et images :

proceedings of the 55th Rencontre assyriologique internationale at Paris, 6–9 July 2009 / edited by Lionel Marti.

pages cmIncludes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-1-57506-254-9 (hardback : alkaline paper)1. Middle East—Antiquities—Congresses. 2. Middle East—Civilization—

To 622—Congresses. 3. Families—Middle East—History—To 1500—Congresses. 4. Middle East—Social life and customs—Congresses. 5. Social archaeology—Middle East—Congresses. I. Marti, Lionel. II. Title.

DS56.R46 2009306.850935--dc23 2014014916

v

Contents

Avant-propos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixProgramme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Conception de la famille, réalités humaines et divines :

les mots et les chosesFamille élargie ou famille nucléaire? Problèmes de démographie antique . . . . 3

Laura battini

Belief in Family Reunion in the Afterlife in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

nikita arteMov

The Old-Babylonian Family Cult and Its Projection on the Ground: A Cross-Disciplinary Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

sara tricoLi

The Social Family Unit in the Light of Bronze Age Burial Customs in the Near East: An Intertextual Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

Monica bouso

Les termes sémitiques de parenté dans les sources cunéiformes : L’apport de l’étymologie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87

Leonid kogan

Les Relations Parents – Enfants dans la Mythologie Mésopotamienne . . . . . 113auréLien Le MaiLLot

Fathers and Sons in Syro-Mesopotamian Pantheons: Problems of Identity and Succession in Cuneiform Traditions . . . . . 133

Maria grazia Masetti-rouauLt

Die Familie des Gottes Aššur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141Wiebke MeinhoLd

The Astral Family in Kassite Kudurrus Reliefs: Iconographical and Iconological Study of Sîn, Šamaš and Ištar Astral Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

sara PizziMenti

“Semence ignée”: pahhursis et warwalan en hittite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163Jaan PuhveL

IIIe millénaireCherchez la femme: The SAL Sign in Proto-Cuneiform Writing . . . . . . . . . 169

Petr charvát

Contentsvi

Urnanshe’s Family and the Evolution of Its Inside Relationships as Shown by Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Licia roMano

The Ebla Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193rita doLce

Muliebris imago : reines, princesses et prêtresses à Ebla . . . . . . . . . . . . 207PaoLo Matthiae

Family Portraits: Some Considerations on the Iconographical Motif of the “Woman with Child” in the art of the Third Millennium b.c.e. . . . 227

davide nadaLi

Ier moitié du IIe millenaireFamily Daily Life at Tell Mardikh-Ebla (Syria) during the

Middle Bronze Age: A Functional Analysis of Three Houses in the Southern Lower Town (Area B East) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

enrico ascaLone, Luca PeyroneL, giLberta sPreafico

To Dedicate or Marry a Nadîtu-Woman of Marduk in Old Babylonian Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

LuciLe barberon

Why Are Two Royal Female Members Given to the Same Man? . . . . . . . . . 275danieL bodi

Awīlum and Muškēnum in the Age of Hammurabi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291eva von dassoW

Les activités de Gimillum, frère de Balmunamḫe. Une gestion familiale des ressources agricoles et animales à Larsa au temps de Rīm-Sîn . . . . . 309

MichèLe Maggio

Famille et transmission du patrimoine à Larsa : Une approche anthropologique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

MarceLo rede

Families of Old Assyrian Traders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341kLaas r. veenhof

Deuxième moitié du IIe millenaireThe Scribes of Amarna: A Family Affair? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Jana Mynářová

Family in Crisis in Late Bronze Age Syria: Protection of Family Ties in the Legal Texts from Emar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Lena fiJałkoWska

Modèle familial et solidarités sociales à Émar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397soPhie déMare-Lafont

La famille hittite : ce que les lois nous apprennent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413isabeLLe kLock-fontaniLLe

La naissance d’après la documentation archéologique d’Ougarit . . . . . . . . 429vaLérie Matoïan

Contents vii

The Families in the Middle Assyrian Administrative Texts from the “Big Silos” of Assur (Assur M 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

JauMe LLoP

nam-dub-sar-ra a-na mu-e-pad3-da-zu . . . De l’apprentissage et l’éducation des scribes médio-assyriens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

kLaus Wagensonner

Astuwatamanzas 0 and the Family of Suhis in Karkemiš . . . . . . . . . . . . 481frederico giusfredi

Des néo-assyriens aux parthesSammu-Ramat: Regent or Queen Mother? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497

Luis robert siddaLL

Family Affairs in the Neo-Assyrian Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505frances Pinnock

La notion de famille royale à l’époque néo-assyrienne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515Pierre viLLard

The Multifunctional Israelite Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525baruch a. Levine

Apprenticeship in the Neo-Babylonian Period: A Study of Bargaining Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537

sivan kedar

Eine ungewöhnliche Adoption und ein fataler Totschlag – Babylonische Familiengeschichten aus dem frühen 1. Jt. v. Chr. . . . . 547

susanne PauLus

The Case of Fubartu: On Inheriting Family Debts in Late 6th-Century Uruk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

Małgorzata sandoWicz

Tappaššar and Her Relations with Iddin-Nabû, the Adopted Son of Her Husband in the Light of a New Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 573

stefan zaWadzki

Le rôle de la famille de Nusku-gabbē au sein de la communauté de Neirab . . . 591gauthier toLini

Von der gelehrten Schreibung zum anerkannten Standard . . . . . . . . . . . 599Juergen Lorenz

Images of Parthian Queens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605Joost huiJs

Parenté réelle et symbolique au sein de la communauté du temple en Babylonie tardive : l’exemple de l’archive des brasseurs de Borsippa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

JuLien Monerie

Communications hors thèmeUne question de rythme au pays d’Apum : Les quatre agglomérations

de Tell Mohammed Diyab durant la période Khabour . . . . . . . . . . 665christoPhe nicoLLe

Contentsviii

The Wall Slabs of the Old Palace in the City of Ashur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683steven LundströM

L’évolution d’une colonie néo-assyrienne dans le bas Moyen-Euphrate syrien (9 e–8 e siècle av. J.-C.) : recherches archéologiques et historiques récentes à Tell Masaikh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689

Maria grazia Masetti-rouauLt

“In Order to Make Him Completely Dead”: Annihilation of the Power of Images in Mesopotamia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701

nataLie n. May

Art Assyrien et Cubisme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727nicoLas giLLMan

Nonfinite Clauses in Gudea Cylinder B, Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743fuMi karahashi

Remarques sur la Datation des Campagnes Néo-Babyloniennes en Cilicie . . . 753andré LeMaire

On Abbreviated Personal Names in Texts from Ugarit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761WiLfred van soLdt

La famille multicolore des bovins dans l’Uruk archaïque . . . . . . . . . . . . 769roseL Pientka-hinz

43

The Old-Babylonian Family Cult and Its Projection on the Ground:

A Cross-Disciplinary Investigation

Sara TricoLi

This analysis represents an inquiry about the domestic architectural assets in lower Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period. It aims to assess how the houses deeply reflect the cultural categories shared by their inhabitants, in specific relation to the problematic spheres of cult and religion, and how the religious orga-nization of a family can mirror the nature of the socioeconomic ties among its mem-bers. The approach will be concentric: first, individual houses, then their connection to a topographical context and the written documents related to them. The sites with evidence of domestic architecture in the Old Babylonian period are, from south to north: Ur, Girsu, Larsa, Nippur, Maškan Šapir, Isin, Kiš, Sippar Amnānum, Sippar Jahrurum, Šāduppum, and Zaralulu in lower Mesopotamia; Khafaja, Nerēbtum, Ešnunna, and perhaps Altlila in the Diyala basin. 1 The documentation is highly variable both in quantity and quality. There are entire quarters extensively dug but not well documented in detail (because of the date of the excavations) and single buildings excavated with a highly scientific and stratigraphical approach in more recent times but without connection to a broader topographical context. It is none-theless possible to attempt a comparative analysis.

House Types

During the Old-Babylonian period, the typologies of the houses are only ap-parently various. Two main types can be detected and, notably, not through a rigid recognition of identical layouts but by obvserving instead the repetition of specific key spaces, as Peter Miglus has already pointed out. 2 Miglus has detected a new

1. For a general résumé, see P. A. Miglus, Städtische Wohnarchitektur in Babylonien und Assyrien (Berlin, 1999), which is taken as a point of reference for the archaeological descriptions throughout this article.

2. Miglus has presented an analysis that aims to detect recurring structural forms. His typological analysis is elastic and flexible, contrasting with the previous “dogmatism” about house typology. He has pointed out that the detection of common forms does not have to relate to the whole domestic unit, since this varies according to the available space, the preexisting conditions, and even the economic condition of the owners. He has focused instead on rooms or groups of rooms inside the domestic building, which he defines as Kernräume, and has recognized them in relationship to repeated patterns in shape, location, and circulation. These key-spaces are assumed to have been felt as indispensable by the inhabitants of the house, while the other rooms could vary in position and size, although preserving some fixed circula-tion relationship with the former ones. See Miglus, Städtische Wohnarchitektur, introduction.

O�print from:Marti Lionel ed., La famille dans le Proche-Orient ancien: réalités, symbolismes, et images: RAI 55 Paris© Copyright 2014 Eisenbrauns. All rights reserved.

sara tricoLi44

model focusing on two main rooms, rather than the traditional one, defined by him as Hof and Hauptsaal. I agree with Miglus’s model but I label it and its two focuses differently, basing myself on an analysis of the social functions covered by these key spaces. The first category is related to the more extended houses which, although varying in extension, orientation, and other factors, show a constant repetition of specific spaces. I call this first type a “bipolar model,” since it seems to bisect the

Fig. 1. Ur. AH site. Old-Babylonian bipolar houses in context.

The Old-Babylonian Family Cult and Its Projection on the Ground 45

house in two poles, two distinct domains. The classic bipolar model is to be found mainly at Ur, where it is attested in small as well as in extended houses (fig. 1), but it was widespread throughout lower Mesopotamia (fig. 2). In a typical bipolar house, such as Old Street 1 in Ur (fig. 3), the front pole is in my opinion the seat of daily activities, centered on the courtyard. The courtyard covers more functions: it was a location that served to sort circulation toward single rooms or compounds; it was the seat of day-time activities; and it was a source of light.

The rear pole is more debated (fig. 3). In my opinion, its location and character point to a more private sphere. In it, there are two spaces whose connection and location is repeated in most of the large houses. The first is a rectangular room, always located at the very back of the house. Intermediate rooms and circulation de-vices obstructed the view of this space from the front part. In the analysis presented here, I refer to it as the “R-C hall.” The acronym is related to the hypothesis that this

Fig. 2. Old-Babylonian bipolar houses from various places in lower Mesopotamia.

sara tricoLi46

Fig. 3. Old Street 1 in the AH site at Ur as an example of a typical bipolar house. In (3a) above, the front pole of the house, with the circulation, centered on the courtyard. In (3b) below, the rear pole with the R-C hall and the Zip Room served to mediate between the two poles, and visibility was also mediated by staggered passageways.


space had complex functions. (The demonstration of this assumption on a textual basis will be provided later on.) R stands for “residential,” meaning that the use of this space was private; it was a resting room. 3 The second part of the acronym, “C,” represents the term “cultic.” This space was connected to the cult of the ancestors, and this will be demonstrated later on by a comparison between the attested archae-ological evidence (underground tombs and altars) and the contemporary textual

3. This assumption raises the vexed question of whether domestic buildings had a second storey or not. It is impossible, with the limited documentary evidence, to resolve this dilemma with certainty and this of course partly compromises a social study of the house, since a second floor would double the living space of a building and could lead to residential distinctions not detectable in the archaeological record. There are texts mentioning a second floor (Akk. rugbu) as well as tablets depicting house-plans that could point to the presence of a second floor (see J.-C. Margueron, La Maison Orientale, in K. R. Veenhof, Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia [Leiden, 1996], 22–24 and fig. 1) in addition to problems related to the frequent mention in the texts of numerous servants living with the family. The archaeological evidence for houses of the bipolar model that certainly did not have a second floor nevertheless point to a residential use of the rectangular hall, even apart from textual evidence. With the exception of the unicum of the domestic building called Nabschnitt II in Isin (Hrouda, Isin- Išan Bahriyat I [Münich, 1977], 22-25), where carbonized beams were found in the courtyard, no archaeological report mentions similar findings in other buildings. Furthermore, the very careful excavation led by Gasche (H. Gasche, La Babylonie au 17e siècle avant notre ère [Ghent, 1989]) in the so-called Maison d’Ur Utu at Sippar has produced a conclusive solution, at least for this structure: it did not have a second floor. The carbonized beams found in the house of Isin may also have been part of the roof supports, while the stair rooms attested at Ur and—less frequently—at other sites could have been used to reach the flat roof, which was an important space in the Middle East, even until the present; flat roofs were used to dry vegetables and even for sleeping during hot summer nights. Even the thickness of the walls does not speak in favor of a second floor: their thickness is near the minimum required to sustain a second floor. Battini (L. Battini-Villard, L’espace domestique en Mésopotamie de la IIIe dynastie d’Ur à l’époque paléo-babylonienne [Oxford, 1999]) argues for the opposite. It is nonetheless evident that the ground layout was not used as a servants’ floor, and we know that in ancient houses the custom usually was to have the residents on the second floor and the servants below.

Fig. 4. Ur, AH site. Straight street 4. Drawing of the zip-room and its features.

sara tricoLi48

documentation. It is also important to stress that family archives have frequently been recovered in the rooms adjacent to this hall. 4

4. The statistical analysis led by Brusasco about the Old-Babylonian houses in Ur shows a major presence of tablets in the private side of the house. Moreover, in the so-called Maison de Ur-Utu in Sippar the archive of the family was found in the rear part of the house. See P. Brusasco, “Family Archives and

Fig. 5. Ur, AH sector. Linear houses in context.


Mediation between the two poles was primarily “filtered” through a third, not less important, room (fig. 4). In its more canonical form, the room was rectangular and covered an extension more or less equal to the rear room, especially in length. Here, this space is preliminarily labeled “zip-room”; later, I will connect it to the original Sumerian-Akkadian term. Inside the domestic building, this room is always connected to the rear pole and is at a right-angle or parallel to it. In the second case, visibility is mediated by means of staggered passageways. This room presents two

the Social Use of Space in Old Babylonian Houses at Ur” (Mesopotamia 34–35 [1999–2000], 1–173. Even in the Dyala region, the élite residence of Nerēbtum shows the location of family tablets in the same context. The objects and tablets preserved in these sectors were probably important enough to preserve them in the less accessible part of the domestic building.

Fig. 6. Linear houses from lower Mesopotamia.

sara tricoLi50

peculiarities. In the majority of cases, it opens onto the courtyard through a cen-tral, wide passageway, and the openings of the other rooms appear to be narrower and cornered. The wall separating the room and the court is often very thick, even double the other internal walls. It has the thickness of a perimeter wall rather than of an internal partition. The visual impact had to be evident to anyone enter-ing the house. The courtyard is in fact the point of major visibility in the house: it is a control point in addition to being a sorting spot. Inside the open space of the courtyard, the zip-room’s side was polarizing, as a result of its wide, central open-ing. The thickness of the wall, even if not visible, could also stress the presence of a

Fig. 7. Above: Store street 4 and Straight street 6 in the AH site, linear houses in Ur. Note the articulation, simpler for the first, with an added zip-room in the second. Below: Ur. EM site. Quiet street 2 and New street 1. Example of linear house split by a bipolar house due to division of inheritance.


clear boundary between two domains: trespassing the zip-room sill would have been understood as entering another building, pointing to the intentional separateness of the rear portion.

The second category of domestic building is the “linear house”: they are build-ings, not as extended, found at sites where the classic bipolar model is also present, such as Ur (fig. 5), as well as at other sites from the south to the north of lower Mesopotamia (fig. 6). Not every example of a linear building is to be interpreted as a house. In the AH quarter of Ur, for example, are linear structures that clearly were not used as residences. 5 The typical layout has a linear sequence of rooms. 6 When it is possible to follow the evolution through time, it is clear that linear buildings are “derived” types midway between more canonical and larger structures: for example, in New street 1 and Quiet street 2 in EM site at Ur (fig. 7) and in House I in TA block at Nippur. This perspective is supported by both archaeology and textual evidence: the shape of this house is derived from division of an inheritance among brothers, as E. Stone has pointed out. 7 It is worth noticing that many linear structures show a reduced version of the above-mentioned key spaces (fig. 7). The smaller ones have, in sequence: vestibule; central space, comparable with the courtyard of the bigger units on a smaller scale; a rear space, where cultic installations and underground tombs are often found, as in the rear hall of the bi-polar houses. The passages are never axial. When the structure is more elongated, the first space to be added is an equivalent of the zip-room, an intermediate space between the small court and the rear room. The leading hypothesis regarding the difference in extension of these dwellings is that the dimensions correspond to the degree of integration of the fam-ily: the broader dimensions reflect extended family solutions, and the smaller struc-tures attest the destabilizing of the family institution in the period: the interpreta-tion is that they were inhabited by separate, nuclear families. 8 There is nonetheless something that does not fit neatly into this solution. A nuclear family would be expected to have installations related to its self-sufficiency inside its house. In the linear houses, however, only the “symbolic” spaces 9 are preserved and all the others

5. As was probably the case in the three linear buildings of AH site: Paternoster row 5, 7, 9.6. Their vertical form is probably due to the need to adapt to a fully urbanized landscape. They in

fact exploit the lack of space on the street axes by opening on them with the minimum possible extension while at the same time developing the structure in depth.

7. The textual evidence from House I is exemplary, as analyzed by Elizabeth Stone: one of the sons of the owner succeeds in tearing apart a four-room linear building for himself (with vestibule, court, zip-room, and R-C hall), due to a complex buy-and-sell strategy adopted in relation to the owners of the other rooms of the house. See E. C. Stone, “Texts, Architecture and Ethnographic Analogy: Patterns of Residence in Old Babylonian Nippur,” Iraq 43 (1981) 19–34.

8. See especially E. C. Stone, “The Social Role of Nadītu Women in Old Babylonian Nippur,” Jour-nal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 25 (1982) 50–70 and Nippur Neighboroods (Chicago, 1987); E. C. Stone and D. I. and Owen, Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-mešu-Liṣṣur (Winona Lake, 1991); and M. Van de Mieroop, Society and Enterprises in Old Babylonian Ur (Berlin, 1992).

9. In my opinion, the repetitions in the very different examples of domestic units in Mesopotamia reflect “symbolic logic.” Talking about cultural and symbolic elements does not exclude their social impor-tance. On the contrary, these elements point to an interesting, common sharing of conceptions that cross the economic barriers and stress the presence in Mesopotamia, at least in the city-scape, of a recognized basic social organization. For a definition of symbol, I rely on C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973). For Geertz, a symbol is every object, act, quality, and relation meant to be a vehicle for a concept. The symbol for Geertz is public—that is, shared by a culture and recognized as such by a group in its meaning.

sara tricoLi52

Fig. 8. Ur. AH site. Above: the cultic furniture in the rear hall of Straight street 3 in the AH sector of Ur. Below: Boundary street 1 in the AH sector of Ur. Note the cultic installations and their location on one side of the rear hall.


Fig. 9. Above: Ceremonial ritual value of the Papaḫum: the evidence from Sippar and Nippur. Below: Papaḫum as a place of meeting for the family. Benches in Church lane 5 and Paternoster row 11, AH site at Ur. Enlarged side in New street 2–3, AH site at Ur. Podium axial to the entrance in Maison B27 in Larsa.

sara tricoLi54

are sacrificed; in these houses, ovens, fireplaces, and similar functional installations have not been found. At Ur, installations for food preparation are attested only in houses larger than 160 m2. 10 An analysis of the buildings in relation to one another permits us to solve (in my opinion) this contradiction.

The Clan Compounds

As a study sample, I chose sector AH at Ur because it is the most extensive avail-able urban segment of this period. The agglutinated texture of the sector permits us to single out different compounds (fig. 15). One of these has long been recognized on a textual basis: the area centering on Paternoster row 4 (fig. 11). This sector has been studied on a textual level by Diakonoff and Van de Mieroop, who defined this block as a residential complex of an extended family. 11 The most extensive house (225 m2), Paternoster Row 4, is located in the northern part of the area and consti-tutes the ideological focus of the sector. Its plan is unbalanced: the rear part has a major extension, and the structure has one of the more complex cultic apparatuses recovered in Ur. To the south of Paternoster row 4, Paternoster Row 8–10, Pater-noster Row 12, and Bazaar alley 2 are three-room linear houses, judging from the

10. See Battini-Villard, L’espace domestique.11. I. M. Diakonoff, “Extended Families in Old Babylonian Ur,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 75 (1985)

47–65; idem, “Extended Family Household in Mesopotamia: III–II Millennia b.c.,” in K. R. Veenhof, Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia (Leiden, 1996) 58–59; Van de Mieroop (Society and En-terprises, 153) asserts: “The large number of tablets found in this area show the existence of an extended family there, and it seems most likely that at certain times the entire southern part of Paternoster Row, formed one large complex.”

Fig. 10. Terminological identification. Plan of a house from Telloh in comparison with Haus Y at Tell Harmal. Note the zip-room pa-pah and the R-C hall, k i tuš with a niche where the cultic space was located


parallels at Nippur and the tombs and installations recovered here. 12 There were previous interconnections between them, later closed, reflecting a more integrated initial phase. Paternoster Row 4A and 6 are instead probably work areas, on the basis of the items found there and the atypical plans—the first is triangular-shaped and the second L-shaped. Paternoster row 14 is a unique building: initially, it was a standard house; later, its function changed: the openings on three of the four sides made it reachable from all of the buildings on the block and a “kitchen-room” with a windowsill leads us to think of communitarian uses. Considering its peculiar per-meability and the economic documents found inside, it is possible to interpret this space as a meeting hall for the clan. In this phase, the building was also deprived of its southeastern corner, which became an independent building—a small urban temple. An internal lane seems to be a private connection inside the clan sector. The texts recovered throughout the sector confirm the connections among the people inhabiting the houses, their being part of the same family, and even their participa-tion in common activities. 13 Although the philological research has begun and ended in this sector, I decided to recover similar connections around the quarter.

12. Not so Van de Mieroop, Society and Enterprises, 153: “the residential quarters of this complex were probably located in no. 4 while the other buildings with exit to the streets were probably used for business purposes.”

13. Van de Mieroop singles out the Imlikum group: in a text are mentioned nine persons involved in land and fish sale; their names are present also in many other texts from the sector. Van de Mieroop

Fig. 11. Ur, AH site, the Paternoster row compound. Note the different sub-units and their functions.

sara tricoLi56

The Niche Lane compound (fig. 12) is the sector abutting a small lane in the northwest part of the AH quarter and shows a similar pattern. There is a main house, which strangely does not have a cultic pole. In this unique case, the cultic part was external but very near to the house. 14 Toward the north are small build-ings showing a high degree of structural exchange. 15 There are also buildings prob-

notices that “it’s likely that the land was held in common by all male members of the family” (Society and Enterprises, 154). The texts reflect flourishing activity during the 19th century b.c.e. connected to sheep-farming and fishery, with ownership of ships as well as land-rentals and interest-bearing loans. Mentions of payments in fish and silver to the temple of Nanna and transactions between temple and fishermen with the sealing of the šatammu point to a complex set of relations between private persons and the “great organizations.” The texts thus confirm the history and corporate unity of the building compound (Van de Mieroop, Society and Enterprises).

14. This hypothesis is based on the analysis of the other so-called urban temples found in the sector, a matter that cannot be discussed here. Woolley himself noticed this peculiarity, commenting: “this was the only example found in the site of a typical domestic chapel not directly connected with any one house” (C. L. Woolley and M. Mallowan, Ur Excavations VII: The Old Babylonian Period [London, 1976) 121.

15. On the lane toward the north are various small buildings: from south to north, the mono-room no. 7, the three-room no. 5; the peculiar four-room no. 3; and the small house Niche lane 1. The many changes in dimension and circulation among these buildings (openings and closure of passages between them) recalls the fluidity of the small houses in Paternoster Row sector.

Fig. 12. Ur, AH site. Niche lane compound. Note the sides Niche lane 3 and the privatized ending of the sector lane.


ably devoted to storage. 16 Perhaps also related to this compound is the building to the south, where large ovens were found. 17 All of the buildings in this case also face an internal lane. In a later phase, the main house literally “polarizes” the lane, end-ing in a sort of small enclosed private square (fig. 12, detail). Another indication of the interaction among the buildings inside the sector is the archive found in small building no. 3, extended only 55 m2 (fig. 12, detail). According to the documents, it

16. Presumably nos. 3 and 7, because of their atypical plans.17. Bakers’ square IB. This building was originally a typical bipolar house later transformed into a

work area with big ovens. According to Miglus (Städtische Wohnarchitektur), the ovens were used for cop-per smelting, probably because of the large diameter of the furnaces. For Van de Mieroop, however, the ovens could have been devoted to a sort of “industrial” bakery superintended by Dumuzi-Gamil (Society and Enterprises, 161).

Fig. 13. Ur, AH site. Straight street compound. Note the sub-units.

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was the house of an important businessman, Dumuzi-Gamil, who traded in silver, bread, and wool between 1796 and 1787 b.c.e., provided loans with monthly interest in the name of the god Nanna (despite himself not being a temple official but a free citizen) and sometimes also large sums of money without interest invested in trad-ers’ enterprises in foreign lands. Between 1792 and 1790 b.c.e., he was also respon-sible for the distribution of large quantities of barley and bread to many “clients,” among them kings, temples, and even the deceased kings’ statues. 18 Although it is very difficult to see the little perhaps-not-even-a-house as the residence of such a powerful man, the archive would acquire new meaning if it is related to the entire block of buildings. The Niche lane compound seems thus to be another family corpo-rative unit.

18. Ibid.

Fig. 14. Ur. AH site. The Khan compound. Note the sub-units.


Another compound that has been detected is the one located on Straight street (fig. 13). Here also we find a main house, Straight street 3, with a very extensive cultic wing marked by a sort of internal perimeter wall. There are four linear houses and a more irregular dwelling. 19 The mono-room building no. 5 was probably a stor-age room or stable. In this compound, there were also storage areas inside the main house. The degree of interrelationship between buildings is here confirmed in the circulation patterns between houses. 20 There is also a common facing onto a “pri-vate” lane, an urban temple with a secondary opening onto the lane itself, and an-other large house, no. 4—this last element probably pointing to a balanced share of power in the clan. The copper tools found in the tomb furnishings also point to a corporate other than the family unit. 21 The texts coming from the temple confirm the unity of this complex and the common participation of the family in economic as well as juridical matters. 22

Another sector is probably to be located in connection to the so-called Khan (fig. 14). Here also we find a main house, Paternoster row 11, an enormous building with a very well articulated cultic side. There are linear houses on one side and stor-age buildings on the other. 23 To the north, the peculiar triangle originating at the crossing of two streets is topped by a small urban temple. There is also a small bi-polar house. Here there is no internal lane, since the sector abuts on both sides onto public streets. There are no documents to support our hypothesis in this example.

The singled-out blocks thus seem to form unitary and interrelated compounds where a high degree of structural exchange is attested (fig. 15). In these compounds are several linear houses, one or two extended houses whose layout and functional annexes are more complex, and uninhabited buildings with storage and work-areas. In the unique case of the Paternoster row compound, there is even a meeting hall. Almost every block presents a spatially contiguous urban temple. The connections between the houses indicate family and at the same time corporate ties. In every compound, there seems to be a “main house” with more-articulated cultic installa-tions. Although the lack of ovens and similar devices would be puzzling if we read the structures as independent, framing them as a compound reveals a completely different economic model. The sharing of functional spaces points to primary eco-nomic cooperation among the extended families, which shared not only land tenure and business but also primary needs. The structural divisions of the houses do not negate this assumption: the family living in the linear house, by separating its ar-

19. Four linear houses are very similar in plan (nos. 6–10–12), not as extended but characterized by the presence of cultic installations in their rear part and having tombs with rich furnishing, plus a structure (no. 7) whose shape implies that it was adapted to a lack of space for the linear scheme.

20. The degree of interrelation between the buildings is here confirmed in the circular connection of the linear buildings nos. 10 and 12, which share a common access: they were probably two related nuclear families sharing the entrance while at the same time maintaining their “privacy” in different houses.

21. Straight street 12: in the furnishing of tomb LG/38 under courtyard 12 was a set of miniature copper tools. Straight street 6: in the furnishing of tomb LG/33 under room 4 was a hematite cylinder seal, a copper amulet, a copper bowl, and a copper bracelet.

22. In the “cella” of Straight street 2 was found a pot with 64 tablets inside. The texts, dated to the kingdom of Rim-Sin I of Larsa, show that the temple was used as a sort of storage place for documents related to many people. The texts are legal and economic documents recording sale contracts, property shifts, inheritance divisions, and so on: they thus probably pertain to a family context. See Woolley and Mallowan, UE VII.

23. The buildings on the side of Paternoster row, despite their linear layout, do not have the domes-tic key spaces and in two cases have installations pointing to their use as work and storage areas.

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chitectural space distinguishes its own “private” space while at the same time con-tinuing to share with the clan activities in which group cooperation is undoubtedly more profitable. This portrait fits the documents of the period, which do not tes-tify—as traditionally held—for a desegregation of the family but for strong family and corporate ties. 24 At the same time, they confirm a view of the clan as strongly hierarchal and divided into primary and secondary lineages, with unequal partici-pation in common activities and derived privileges.

24. According to I. J. Gelb (“Household and Family in Early Mesopotamia,” in E. Lipiński, State and Temple Economy in Ancient Near East [Leuven, 1979] 123–41), the chief of the extended family was the oldest member of the clan. Strong solidarity rules are attested in legal documents: they tried to keep the whole property undivided; there was corporate participation in judicial cases and reciprocal help in case of difficulty.

Fig. 15. The clan compounds in the AH site in Ur.


The Cultic Setting of the Extended Family: The Ancestors’ Cult

But there is more. The identification of some repetitions has led me to think that the sectors were also cultically marked in a way that affected the topographical pattern of the buildings. Two elements appear to be constant: the presence of a house more extended and articulated in its rear portion, and the presence of an “ur-ban temple” connected to each compound. The first element in my opinion is related to the identity of the clan in its inner relations, and the second has to do with the identity of the clan with respect to the world outside the compound. In this article, I analyze the first element, but it is important to stress that, in my opinion, the two poles constituted complementary ways in which the family legitimized itself and its relations from a cultic point of view.

The inner identity of the family was accomplished through a connection with the past—its own past. The action of remembering gave a basis for and existence to the present. 25 It is the ritual of kispum (Sum. ki.sì .ga), which has been evaluated extensively in many studies, that, through the invocation of the names of the an-cestors 26 and offerings and libations to the dead, revivified the memory of the clan and so legitimized its existence. 27 The connection between living and dead was also physical: the dead lay in tombs under the floors of the houses. 28 The polarity of time “now-before” was projected in the private space in a vertical dimension, between “above-below.” 29 The theater of kispum is no doubt the R-C hall, in which the most

25. The family cemented its identity by linking itself to the past, its own past, as is made clear simply by observing the Old Babylonian family genealogies that have been recovered. A text from Sippar (BE 6/2 111: 1–33), dated to the thirty-third year of Ammi-Ditana, lists the Sin-Nasir élite-family geneal-ogy until the fifth generation, for a total of 27 persons whose parental relations are also named. At the beginning and at the end of the list is a prayer to the god Sin on behalf of the kimtum-clan of Sin-Nasir. The final sentence is: “release the family-kimtum of Sin-Nasir son of Ipqu Annunitum / that they may eat his bread and drink his water!” See the comments by G. Jonker (The Topography of Remembrance [Leiden, 1994] 226–31) and K. van der Toorn (Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of religious Life [Leiden, 1996] 52–55). It is therefore not a simple genealogical list but probably a transcription of a ritual performed. Jonker comments: “The ancestor cult is the set-ting in which such genealogies functioned and—presumably—originated; the cult also fostered a sense of connection with the past” (Jonker, The Topography, 354).

26. The central part of the rite consisted of the invocation of the dead, pronouncing their names (šumam zakāru). It is not by chance that the first son and heir was called zākir šumim, “the one who calls the name.” Jonker, in an interesting retrospective on Mesopotamian cultural memory, notices that the same term is connected to the action of remembering (Jonker, The Topography, introduction).

27. See Jonker The Topography; see also A. Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen zur Totenpflege (kispum) im alten Mesopotamien (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1989) and van der Toorn, Family Religion, chapter 3.

28. With regard to Ur, Luby shows that the tombs do not occupy an exclusive location under the houses but that the so-called “corbel-vaulted-tombs,” probably the most important family tombs, are mainly located in the rear part of the house; see E. Luby, Social Variation in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Architectural an Mortuary Analysis of Ur in the Early Second Millennium b.c. (Unpublished Ph.D. dis-sertation, State University of New York). In Larsa, buildings B27 and B59 have a vaulted brick tomb under the rear hall; see Y. Calvet, “Les grandes residences paléo-babyloniennes de Larsa,” in H. Gasche et al., Cinquante-deux réflections sur le Proche-Orient ancien offertes en l’hommage à Léon de Meyer (Leuven, 1994) 215–28. The same situation is attested at Isin and Sippar. For Isin, see B. Hrouda, Isin-Išan Bahriyat I–II–III–.IV (Münich, 1977–1981–1987, 1992), and for Sippar, L. de Meyer, Tell ed Der II (Leuven, 1978) and Gasche, La Babylonie.

29. The kispum rite was performed inside the house where the dead were actually buried. The con-nection was thus not only conceptual but also practical. Jonker notices that in the exorcism texts of the Old Babylonian period the emphasis is always laid in the opposition between above (elēnu) and below

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important burials were located, along with cultic installations such as benches, po-diums, altars, and chimneys (fig. 8).

One important thing I would like to stress is that the rear hall was not merely a cultic place; the recovered installations are in fact always located only on one of the short sides of the room. There frequently are also recesses located alongside the cultic area (fig. 8). 30 It seems to me that they could be the terminals of a sort of tent or “curtain” made of perishable material, since often they are found in pairs on two sides of the installation. In my opinion, this element is the išertum, sometimes spelled ešertum 31 or aširtum, of the texts (Sum. zà-gar-ra; zà-gu-la; zà-gal-la), a term that can mean “dedicated” and thus a secluded space. 32 The Sumerian term points to its being located on one side. 33 Following this line of thinking, it is possible to conclude that the išertum cannot be identified with the entire R-C hall but only with one part of it, appropriately defined, which the recesses for curtains would confirm. Van der Toorn, who examined an Old-Babylonian text regarding the en-trance of a lamaštu demon into a house, 34 noticed that the išertum was located in the less accessible part of the house, if the path of the demon is seen as a sequence from the outside to the inner part of the house. 35 It is moreover worth noticing that a copy of this text was found in the rear hall of a house in Sippar Jahrurum. 36 The inheritance texts confirm the fact that this specific part of the house had a minor extension and was connected to the offering table: 37 it could thus refer to a specific part of the hall—namely, the one where the cultic installations were concentrated.

(šaplānu): “These two words express the transition form a temporal to a spatial incongruity between the living and the dead and are used in texts which have been found in graves” (Jonker, The Topography, 194) and “the difference in time between the ‘dead’ and the ‘living’ (‘then and now’) was transferred to space (‘below and above’)” (ibid., 195). See also the curses collected by Bottéro: usually, whoever will not touch the tomb, “May his name resound above / May his spirit drink pure water below” (J. Bottéro, “Les inscriptions cunéiformes funéraires,” in G. Gnoli and J.-P. Vernant, Le Mort, les Mort dans les sociétés anciennes (Cambridge, 1982) 373–406, esp. 388–89.

30. Mostly in Ur, where recesses are attested in 11 cases. A similar purpose could have been served by the brick line delimiting the cultic installation in the great rear hall of the so-called Khan, Paternoster row 11 in the AH sector. See Woolley and Mallowan, UE VII. In the only attested domestic building at Girsu, there are 4 symmetrical niches in the rear hall. See A. Parrot, Telloh: Vingt campaignes de fouilles (1877–1933) (Paris, 1948).

31. See CAD E for eširtu: “a special room in a private house for cultic purposes.”32. Van der Toorn, Family Religion, 123 and related footnotes.33. The Sumerian term includes the sign zag or zà with the meaning “side” (ETCSL dictionary).34. “The evil eye has secretly entered and flies around (. . .), she passed by the door of the babies,

and created rash among the babies, she passed by the door of the women in childbed and strangled their babies, she entered the storage room and broke the seal, she desperded the secluded fire-place and turned the locked house into ruins, she destroyed the išertum and the god of the house has gone. Hit on the cheek, mack her turn backward! Fill her eyes with salt, full her mouth with ashes! May the god of the house return.” See W. Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, schlaf! Mesopotamische Baby-Beschwörungen und Rituale (Winona Lake, 1989) and van der Toorn, Family Religion, 122.

35. Van der Toorn, Family Religion, 122: “The god has his dwelling place in the išertum, a spot that must be located in the recesses of the house. The description of the route which the evil eye has taken is instructive in this respect, since it leads from the outer parts of the house to its private sector.”

36. S. Dalley and F. Al-Rawi, Old Babylonian Texts from Private Houses at Abu Habba, Ancient Sippar (London, 2000) 3–6.

37. E. Prang, “Das Archiv des Imgûa,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 66 (1976) 1–44: two Old Baby-lonian inheritance texts from Nippur. TIM 4,16: the first son receives the built (é-dù-a) a-zag-gar-ra = aširtum (5 gìn). In the list, the offering table banšur za-gu-la appears next. TIM 4,4: the first son receives again the offering table and the built-up part of the house, whose dimensions are ca. 10 m2.


Here it is possible to locate the seat of the god of the house, ili bītim, a deity who is always anonymous, 38 probably representing the collective ancestors. 39 Accord-ing to the texts, the god of the house guaranteed the survival of the family in the future through providing fertility, 40 in the present by guaranteeing good health; 41 but above all, he governed the internal cohesion of the family, thus guaranteeing proper kinship relations inside the clan. 42 The departure of the god was understood, according to the texts, as the collapse of the family. 43 The connection with the past was thus considered the most important cohesive element supporting family unity. It is also important to stress that the majority of space in the hall was empty and that this room was less reachable and visible from the anterior area. The texts lead us to conclude that this was the main bedroom of the house. 44 Here the owner found rest, as well as his ancestors, as is clearly stated in the texts; 45 and here the rite was performed by him, as it is possible to deduce for the Larsa houses on the basis

38. See van der Toorn, Family Religion, 25–28. 39. Ibid., 125–27 for the textual references.40. On the biological side, god and ancestors guaranteed fertility and thus the survival of the family

in the future: without their blessing there was danger of sterility, the “extinguished brazier” (AbB 13, 21 cited in van der Toorn, Family Religion, 62). A first-millennium behavioral omen states that if a man does not honor (palāḫu) the father, his virility will be carried away, while if in his fireplace there is always fire the god blessing would be forever for him in his house (KAR 300 rev. cited in van der Toorn, Family Religion, 129 and n. 60). In a first-millennium prayer, the god of the house clearly “provides abundant seed” (mudeššu zēri) (van der Toorn, Family Religion, 62 and n. 108).

41. The ancestors were also linked to family health, as is made clear in the exorcism texts: missing the observance of rituals honoring the ancestors resulted in illness. See JoAnn Scurlock, Magico-Medical Means of Treating Ghost-Induced Illness in Ancient Mesopotamia (Leiden, 2005), for many references.

42. On the “ethical” side, the gods and ancestors acted as glue for the family, calling for help and solidarity. This is quite clear again from an area outside the boundaries of our study area. In an Old Assyrian letter, a sister calls for help to his brother, telling him: “act so that you please the gods and the spirits and I do not perish!” (BIN 4,96, cited in van der Toorn, Family Religion, 63). In addition, whoever acts against the family’s interests “shows contempt” toward the ancestral spirits (BIN 6, 59, cited in van der Toorn, Family Religion, 63). There were also frequent invokings of the moral authority of gods and ancestors during family disputes, even with legal implications: a letter attests that they could be called to testify together with the god of the city and of the state (van der Toorn, Family Religion, 63 and n. 113). Van der Toorn stresses that only seldom were the ancestors invoked against people outside the family nucleus, and when it did occur, it involved an offence against the family as a whole: van der Toorn, Fam-ily Religion, 64.

43. It is also possible to read the sequence of the lamaštu movements in the above-mentioned text in a double sense, a spatial sense and a conceptual one, as van der Toorn also has noticed (Family Re-ligion, 126: “The spatial and temporal axes converge: the intruder moves from periphery to the centre, and from offspring to the ancestor”). Spatially, the lamaštu follows a sequence from outside to inside. Conceptually, the lamaštu destroys in sequence the rooms of babies and pregnant women (which are the guarantee of the family’s survival in the future); the food in the storage room (guarantee of family’s survival in the present); the house-god seat connected with the dead (guarantee of connection with the past: family’s memory). The departure of the god after the extinguishing of the fireplace is the ultimate act, representing the most basic cohesive element of the family.

44. The most interesting is in Gilgameš VI 170–80: when the hero kills the Bull of Heaven, he takes as a trophy its horns, fills them with oil, and offers them to “his god Lugalbanda.” The horns hang in “the bedroom of the father” (ušērimma itattal ina urši ħammūtišu). Dalley has already argued that Gilgameš may have had a figurine representing Lugalbanda in his bedroom and that he anointed it regularly (Myths from Mesopotamia [Oxford, 1989] 129). See also van der Toorn, Family Religion, 59 and for other references, pp. 58–62.

45. Among others, see the Utu Hymn, 151–52: “Let the dead man eat in front of his house / let him drink water in his house / let him sleep in the shade of his house.”

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of the inheritance texts cited by Charpin in relation to the vexed term gá-nun. 46 The lack of direct light in the room is further implied by the appellation attributed to the išertum—a “house of darkness” 47—and this has a logical connection with the use of the room as a resting place. The room was isolated not only from the light but also from noise due to the buffer-function of the zip-room and to the staggered passages (fig. 4). Confirmation of this is the description of the offering-place as a “place of silence.” 48 It is important here to stress that the boundary above-below was considered dangerous in Mesopotamia, and it was controlled through domestic rituals and sustained by public ones following calendrical rhythms. Boundaries in time such as the monthly and yearly turns were considered more risky. 49 They were exorcized through a meeting of the clan in a banquet in honor of the ancestors. 50 The kispu rituals thus show a further cohesive goal in the duty of real reunification of the extended family at particular moments of the year.

Text and Archaeology: The Identification of Cultic Places

In my opinion, the house chosen for the family meetings is the house in every compound identified as the main one (figs. 11–14). This house is the seat of primary

46. See Erra IV 99–101: “These are my living quarters (gá-nun); I have personally made them and will have my peace within them; and when fate has carried me off, I will sleep therein.” On the basis of the Erra excerpt, Charpin argues that the gá-nun could be the room with underground burial chambers in the residences of Larsa. This text, connecting the rest in life and death of the subject, confirms the double use of the hall and gives it a possible name. See Charpin in J. L. Huot, Larsa, travaux de 1987 et 1989 (Beyrouth, 2003). Jahn instead interprets the place as a granary, mainly citing a parallel with the Ganunmah of Ur; see B. Jahn, Altbabylonische Wohnhäuser: Eine Gegenüberstellung philologischer und archäologischer Quellen (Rahden/Westfalen, 2005) 21–22 and references.

47. See van der Toorn, Family Religion, 127 and related footnotes.48. The semantic value of the Sumerian term for kispum, ki-sì-ga, is still under discussion; for

some it means “place of silence” (van der Toorn, Family Religion, 61 and 126) in parallel with one of the names of the tomb: ekal ṣalāli, “palace of sleep” (see Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen, n. 14, and van der Toorn, Family Religion, 126).

49. According to Cohen, in lower Mesopotamia there was a belief that the world of the dead was monthly and yearly connected with the world of living beings. Monthly, this connection took place during the critical moment of the “black moon” at the end of the month; seasonally, during summertime, when all the agricultural activities were suspended. See M. E. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, 1993). The monthly kispum was performed during black moon, the day of biblum, called “the 30° day, the day of the kispu, of the bath and purification” (MSL 5:23–24, lines 192–202, a lexical list). The texts from the third to the first millennium show the association of this moon phase with the rituals of the dead and stress its subtended danger. During this day, moreover, every departure was interdicted: “one should not go through the gate.” See van der Toorn, Family Religion, 49–50. The yearly festival was the ne-IZI-gar festival at Nippur, the month of Ninazu at Ur, and the ab-è at Adab and Uruk. There are more details about the festival in Nippur. This month is translated by Cohen as “(the month when) lamps/braziers are lit,” and it seems that during the festival the dead were believed to come up and visit their families. The rituals were performed during the night between the eleventh and twelfth day of the month, just before full moon, in order to help the dead with a natural source of light beside the artificial light of torches and fires, so that they could be driven correctly toward their houses. The mention of a threshold led Cohen to argue for the presence of a unique passage; additional torches were set inside the houses, allowing the ancestors to recognize them and share with the living a ceremonial banquet. See Cohen, The Cultic Calendars, and Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen.

50. Van der Toorn cites a text where the gods invite (qerû) the living to a meal. See van der Toorn, Family Religion, 57 and n. 75. See also R. Labat, Un calendrier babylonien des travaux, des saisons, et des mois (Paris, 1965), 128, 59, 2: during the 29th day of Ayyar, people “were to hold nigûtu, festive meals.”


lineage, the one given as inheritance to the first son in the course of generations. The main heir in fact received a major share of the property along with some prop-erty connected to ritual such as the offering table and the išertum, which, being fixed installations, point to the permanence of the first son in the house of the fa-ther. 51 In the inheritance texts, the first son is attested as receiving the išertum and the ki-tuš, which I think refer to the R-C hall. 52 Because this is the cultic part of the room and the bedroom, the implication is that the first son is the person in charge of the kispu rituals. The heir received the “paternal authority” nam-ad-da (Akk. abbūtum), and he therefore was the paqidu, the one in charge of the kispu rituals on behalf of his extended family 53 and at the same time the new clan chief. The duty of the kispum was an honor because it legitimized the first son as the new paterfamilias at the head of the family. In addition, the participation of all members of the clan in the banquets implies that the meeting place had to be large enough to host many people. In my opinion, this place was the zip-room. This room did not serve only a technical function of mediation. Otherwise, some details would be un-explainable, such as its often extended area; its intentional visibility and centrality of access; and the thickness of its front wall compared to the others (fig. 4). It also had a secondary ritual role; evidence for this includes the occasional presence of cultic installations; 54 the fact that it is the second room having a concentration of tombs underneath; 55 the frequent recovery of terracotta plaques; 56 a foundation offering found just under this room in the so-called Bâtiment Centrale of Sippar Amnānum; 57 the major presence of bowls with pure sand underneath the house in Nippur WB (fig. 9). 58 All of these elements point to this space having a ceremonial

51. See Prang, “Das Archiv des Imgûa,” 16 and 28 and idem, “Das Archiv des Bitûa,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 67 (1977) 217–34, esp. p. 224. In the inheritance texts discussed by Prang, there is a clear sequence of offering table / aširtum as well as a connection of both with the first son and heir.

52. The inheritance texts show that the first son received a major share of the property and the “ceremonial table” (Prang, “Das Archiv des Imgûa,” 16 and 28; idem, “Das Archiv des Bitûa,” 224). Others also mention the fire-place kinūnum; see M. Bayliss, “The Cult of Dead Kin in Assyria and Babylonia,” Iraq 35 (1973) 115–25, esp. p. 120. This leads is to think that the first son was the one in charge of the rite after his father’s death. The hypothesis that the offering table was the fixed installation in the corner of the house; the recovering of hearths at Nippur (see R. C. Haines and D. E. McCown, Nippur I [Chicago, 1967]) and the identification of fixed cult places such as the aširtum and papaḫum as rooms in the house point to the permanence of the first son’s residence in the paternal house.

53. Miranda Bayliss claims that the paqidu, literally, “the one who takes care of or attends to,” was the person in charge of the kispum ritual and had to be a member of the deceased family, male or female: he/she had to share the same “blood”; see Bayliss, “The Cult,” 116 and 119.

54. See at Ur, AH sector: in Old street 1, the zip-room at the southwest side has a low “altar” and on it in the west corner is the lower part of an “offering table”; in front of this installation was found the burial of a newborn in a pot. Under the floor was found a “barrel vaulted tomb.” In Paternoster row 4, in the zip room were found a base with an offering table on the top in the north corner and a platform on the northwest side.

55. See Luby, Social Variation.56. Notice the frequent recovery of terracotta plaques and figurines in this place (see J. Assante,

The Erotic Reliefs of Ancient Mesopotamia; Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2000).57. Inside the house—before the construction of the upper walls—a “foundation offering” was laid

on a patch of six baked bricks under locus 6, the zip-room of the house: the central brick was pierced with a draining-hole, and on the bricks to the north were found the bones of a bird that had been killed before deposition. The whole had been later covered with fragments of a large jar. More or less 40 cm higher, but always under the floor, were laid four little bowls; see Gasche in De Meyer, Tell ed Der.

58. House A in WB sector, completely investigated with the exception of its southeastern corner, was a result of unitary planning: the area was cleared; foundations were set up and later the gaps were filled with ashy earth almost completely void of pottery fragments. Under the floors of the first phase and

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function and to its connection to the R-C hall. In the texts, the first son is said to inherit the pa-paḫ, as well as the ki-tuš. 59 Contra Prang and Kalla, who translate pa-paḫ as “private chapel,” 60 a house plan from Telloh shows the courtyard con-nected to an orthogonal pa-paḫ mediating the passage between the courtyard and the ki-tuš (fig. 10). 61 This is in fact the zip-room of the attested house-plans. When the term is found in connection with temples, it also points to an intermediate area, according to Jacobsen the meeting place of mortals and gods. 62 It is my hypothesis that the zip-room papaḫum was used for a periodic reception of the members of the clan during festive meals. In building B27 at Larsa, just in the middle of the long side of the zip-room in front of the central passage to the courtyard, there was a po-dium (fig. 9). 63 A text tells us that the kispum officer took a seat “for the dead of the family” during the ritual. 64 This isolated citationn has been connected to the seat of the rite where the effigies of the dead were laid, 65 but in my opinion in this case it points to the symbolic position of the chief of the family during the ritual monthly or yearly kispu banquets in honor of the ancestors. In a house at Ur, a zip-room has benches that could have been used as seats for the members of the family (fig. 9). 66

In one case, the zip-room has a broadened short side, which could be another way of stressing a hierarchical division (fig. 9). 67 Moreover, being the zip-room papaḫum close to the courtyard, it would surely have provided for the extension of the meal into the courtyard itself, especially in particular cases such as wedding celebrations.

We have no direct mention of houses but clear references to contemporary pal-aces, whose articulation follows the ceremonial arrangement of the houses, with

immediately upon the foundation walls were 39 bowls, in twos, inverted against each other. Inside these double bowls was pure sand. It is interesting to notice that their location was primarily connected to the thresholds above, especially in relation to the passage between zip-room and R-C hall. See J. Franke, “WB Area,” in McG. Gibson, Excavations at Nippur, Twelfth Season (Chicago, 1978) 54–61.

59. In one Old Babylonian inheritance text from Nippur (TIM 4,1) discussed by Prang (“Das Archiv des Imgûa”), the first son inherits, in addition to the offering table, the doors of pa-paḫ and ki-tuš (lines 22–23). The same association is found in other contemporary texts. See also G. Kalla, “Das alt-babylonische Wohnhaus und seine Struktur nach philologischen Quellen,” in K. R. Veenhof, Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia (Leiden, 1996) 247–56 and Jahn, Altbabylonische Wohnhäuser.

60. Prang translates pa-paḫ as “Hauskapelle” (“Das Archiv des Imgûa” 25) following von Soden’s translation of the term as “Heiligtum, Zella, Kultraum” (AhW 823a). Kalla, in his analysis of Old Baby-lonian house components, notices that in inheritance texts from Nippur, Ur, and Sippar (UET 5, 115; PBS 8/2, 169+ ARN 23 from Nippur; CT 8, 4 from Sippar), there are three partitions: a part named é-pa(4)-paḫ = papaḫum; a “Nebentrakt” named é-da = edakkum; and a “Wohntrakt” named é-ki-tuš = šubtum. Kalla agrees with Prang about the identification of the papaḫum as the cultic space of the house. For Kalla, papaḫum is a synonym of é-zag-gar-ra (TIM 4, 8//18:1) or é-sag-gar-ra (BE 6/1, 63:2) and é-ki-sì-ga (TEBA 37:4): “Haus des Totenopfers,” which Kalla connects to the family tomb; see Kalla, Das altbabylonische Wohnhaus, 251.

61. Jahn moreover notices that according to the Old Babylonian inheritance sequences the papaḫum is never connected with the area of the house connected to the outside (ká.bar.ra or é.bar.ra) and com-ments: “Dies deutet auf eine Lage im mittleren oder rückwärtigen Hausteil”: Jahn, Altbabylonische Wohnhäuser, 128.

62. Jacobsen in P. Delougaz, H. D. Hill, and T. Jacobsen, T., Old Babylonian Buildings in the Diyala Region (Chicago, 1990).

63. See Calvet, “Les grandes residences.”64. Ana eṭemmē kimtišu. BBR 52:12–14 cited in van der Toorn, Family Religion, 52 and the related

footnote.65. Van der Toorn, Family Religion, 52. 66. In Paternoster row 11 in AH sector of Ur, there is a bench all along the long side of the room

toward the courtyard that could have functioned as the seat of the members of the family.67. New street 2–3 in EM sector in Ur.


much larger implications. 68 The position of the father in the papaḫum during the meetings was enhanced by his having the cultic and personal residential space be-hind him, where the ancestors legitimized his role in the family hierarchy. The ideo-

68. See S. Tricoli in press (“Erasing the Memory of an Old Friend”: The Ritual Destruction of the Palace of Mari by Hammurapi in the Light of the Cult of the Ancestors’ Seat in Mesopotamian Houses and Palaces; 52nd CRAI Münster).

Fig. 16. The so-called Bâtiment centrale at Sippar Amnānum. Note the evolution from a single, newly founded house to a semi-integrated compound; the cultic furniture in the rear hall and the unnexplained plugged openings in its reconstruction (phases Ii3, Ii1, and Ig2).

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logical value of the papaḫum as a place of legitimation of the family’s ties at various hierarchies finds confirmation in the compounds where a house has a rear hall more complex than the others, which was where the god of the house, the representative of the entire clan, resided.

The archaeological documentation analyzed does not give us a diachronic view of the dynamics leading to the formation of a compound. For this, we have a unique and precious case where it is possible to follow the development of a family as mirrored in architecture: the so-called Batiment Centrale in Sippar Amnānum (fig. 16). 69 It is an interesting picture of a development over time of a family around its original nucleus. The central building at the beginnings is an isolated unit. Later, it is possible to follow the gradual crowding-in of rooms around the original struc-ture. These blocks of rooms are connected to the circulation of the Batiment Cen-tral, being an expansion of it during generational shifts, and are structured as semi-independent units, residences probably of nuclear families. It is interesting to notice that the cultic installations and the underground tombs under the hall were laid at the time when the house was enlarged by the new surrounding structures and also that the original nucleus maintained its features in every phase. The Sondage A case also confirms the presence in the north of a main house, cultically character-ized and symbolically respected. The semi-integrated satellite buildings reveal the practical counterpart of the texts that refer to an inheritance of the main house by the first son and of nearby houses by the brothers. This confirms the strong solidar-ity rules attested in legal documents.

69. See Gasche in De Meyer, Tell ed Der.

The Old-Babylonian Family Cult and Its Projection on the Ground, published version in RAI 55, 2014

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