The Administration of Storage in Early Babylonia

Abstract

This article examines the epigraphic sources from the late third millennium BC from the city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia in order to reconstruct the organization of the city’s centrally controlled storehouse e₂-kišib₃-ba, and to analyze the in- and outflow of products and commodities in this facility. It is argued that a better understanding of the administrative context of this institution as it is reflected in the textual documentation can help us reconstruct in more concrete terms the overall structure of the higher levels of the so-called household economy of the third millennium Sumerian city-states.