Scholarship on Babylonian administration during the Kassite period (ca.
1595–1155 BCE) has tended to paint the provincial government under the
governor of Nippur (šandabakku) as a highly centralized one that exerted
significant political, economic, and religious control over the
province at large, as well as the city’s temples. In this dissertation, I
investigate the relationship between Nippur’s provincial administration
and the city’s temple households through a case study of the economic
transactions recorded between the šandabakku and a pair of EREŠ.DINGIR
priestesses. The documents in question include those pertaining to the
care and management of institutional livestock, a topic that has been
historically understudied for the Kassite period. Although scholars have
interpreted some of the documents as evidence of the governor’s
authority over the use and disposal of temple property, I argue that
such a reconstruction is founded on uncritical assumptions, misreadings,
and misinterpretations of the texts, which can be traced back to a
feudal model of the Kassite state proposed by Kemal Balkan in the 1940s.
By reanalyzing and synthesizing these texts, I propose instead that the
EREŠ.DINGIR household functioned as a distinct and semi-autonomous
economic entity rather than a mere arm of the provincial administration.
Furthermore, the evidence I consider also brings into question the
overarching extent of economic centralization as it pertains to the
province of Nippur.
Degree Type
Ph.D.
Content Type
Dissertation
Publication Date
2020-08
Language
en
Record Created
2020-09-10
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