Subsistence- and Tenant-Land Data in Ur III Umma Texts

Subsistence- and Tenant-Land Data in Ur III Umma Texts Author: Andrew PottorfDate of release: September 13, 2026License: CC BY 4.0 Recommended Citation APA format: Pottorf, A. (2026). Subsistence- and Tenant-Land Data in Ur III Umma Texts [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22735865 Chicago format: Pottorf, Andrew. “Subsistence- and Tenant-Land Data in Ur III Umma Texts.” Zenodo, September 13, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22735865. Abstract / Description This dataset compiles quantitative and contextual data on subsistence (šuku) and tenant (apin-la2) lands producing barley in Ur III Umma administrative texts. The data were assembled from all relevant texts accessible in BDTNS up to mid-2026. Each entry includes references to text editions, transliterations, and citations following BDTNS conventions, with occasional simplification. Entries record land areas in iku (≈ 0.35 ha) and yields in sila3 (≈ 1 L) per iku, organized by gender, status group, and occupation of the individual landholder where identifiable. These data permit the reconstruction of land-tenure structures, social hierarchy, and agricultural economics in the Umma province under the Third Dynasty of Ur. Scope and Methodology ● Corpus coverage: All known Ur III Umma cuneiform sources mentioning subsistence or tenant land searchable in BDTNS up to mid-2026. ● Transliteration standards: BDTNS, except where otherwise indicated. All Sumerian words are underlined in the Excel table. ● Chronology and dating: Dates formatted per Pottorf 2022, 14–15. ● Measurement units: Land = iku (≈ 0.35 ha); Yield = sila3 (≈ 1 L) per iku. ● Assumptions: Citizen vs. un-il2 status groups can be inferred based on families, occupations, land-tenure details, and other details. ● Limitations: Large-scale or domain-level records (e.g., MVN 21 341) excluded; governor/prince allotments (> 108 iku) omitted. ● Uncertainties: Entries marked (?) when interpretation or restoration is uncertain; see dataset comments. Future versions may include other crops, field descriptions, and further discussions of omissions, among other details. Data Format ● File type: CSV (UTF-8, tabular) ● Primary fields: Text, BDTNS, CDLI, Date, Identification Transliteration (in Context), Identification Transliteration (Simplified), Identification Line(s), PIN, PIN Frequency, Gender, Status Group, Status-Group Citation(s), Status-Group Inference(s), Occupation (Sumerian), Occupation (English), Economic Sector, Land Type, Land Productivity, Land Line(s), Area (in iku), Yield (in sila3/iku), Silver Tax (Tenant Land Only), Barley-Rent Rate (in sila3/iku) (Tenant Land Only), Subsistence-Land Amount, Number, Comment(s). ● Source metadata: CDLI and BDTNS identifiers provided where available. Acknowledgements I thank Adam Anderson for guidance on FAIR-compliant data publication and repository best practices. I am grateful to the British Museum and Yale Babylonian Collection for permission to study and collate texts cited in Pottorf 2026. Introduction This table includes data regarding subsistence (šuku) and tenant (apin-la2) lands that either produced barley and sesame or did not produce any crop for various reasons in all relevant Ur III Umma texts searched in BDTNS up to mid-2026. All citations, dates, and transliterations follow BDTNS (citations are sometimes simplified), unless otherwise stated, and all Sumerian is underlined in the Excel table. Sometimes BDTNS transliterations are formatted differently without comments. Note that dates are formatted according to Pottorf 2022, 14–15. Abbreviations follow CDLI, though “coll.” and “ed.” are “collated” and “edited,” respectively (Pottorf 2026). These data relate to land areas and yields according to gender, status group (also known as order in Pottorf 2025), occupation, and economic sector. The two status groups that had access to these lands in Umma were citizens and un-il2. Areas are measured in iku (ca. 0.35 hectares), and yields are measured in sila3 (ca. 1 liter) per iku. Subsistence-land areas are assumed to be the full amounts of land allotted to people as compensation for their conscription on an annual basis. Tenant-land areas, however, are only the known minimums, since people could rent more land than is recorded in a single text. For more on subsistence and tenant lands and their relationship to gender, status group, and occupation, see Pottorf 2025. For economic sectors, see Pottorf 2022, 162–69, though they are edited to more closely follow Schafran et al. 2018 with the addition of the cultic sector. Comments or questions can be sent to apottorf21@gmail.com. People with subsistence or tenant lands, whether they were individually named, referred to by their occupations, or grouped in any way, are provided according to their identifications, which can include their names or occupations (if they are not named), their relatives and occupations, and locations, among other possible details. Identifications are provided as they appear in their contexts as well as in simplified forms for searchability. Every person, whether named or just referred to by their occupation, is provided a PIN (“personal identification number”), unless multiple unnamed people are combined in one line, which is rare. The frequencies of these PINs are provided so that people who occur multiple times can be easily searched. Because the status groups of people with subsistence and tenant lands are not usually specified (except for Nisaba 6 1 and 26 93, which overlap significantly), they must be known from other attestations or by various inferences. When possible, citations are provided to demonstrate people’s status groups, and inferences may be included as well or in place of citations. Inferences are made on the basis of families, occupations, land-tenure details, and other details. People are inferred to share the same status groups as their families, whether they were citizens or un-il2. People are inferred to have been citizens with the following occupations: archivist (ga2-dub-ba), chief household administrator (šabra), chief lamentation singer (gala-mah), chief livestock manager (šuš3), chief plot inspector (nu-banda3 gu4), chief temple administrator (sanga), consecrated-water attendant (lu2 a gub-ba [Huber Vulliet 2019, 336 and n. 1544]), field surveyor (sag-du5), granary supervisor (ka-guru7), lamentation singer (gala), high-ranking military officers (translations follow Steinkeller 2013, 352), physician (a-zu), various priests and priestesses (translations of gudu4 and išib follow Steinkeller 2019, 115), and scribe of ten domain units (dub-sar gu4 10), among others, are inferred to have been citizens, along with their relatives, some of whom were their assistants (šeš-tab-ba). Any woman with subsistence or tenant land is inferred to have been a citizen. People with subsistence-land areas of more than 36 iku or with subsistence-land yields of 700 or more sila3/iku are likewise inferred to have been citizens. Since there is only one possible attestation of an un-il2 with tenant land, which was only 1 iku, people with tenant-land areas of 15 iku or more are inferred to have been citizens. It is possible that this un-il2 had more tenant land in a lost section of the text, and the threshold of 15 iku may be too high, but it is probably not too low. Plus, anyone who donated a person is inferred to have been a citizen. If a person with inferences is attested in two or more texts, each text is parenthetically cited for each inference, unless it is based on gender. When the subsistence- or tenant-land area of a person is tabulated according to his or her occupation, occupations modified with ablative -ta and terminative -še3 are not counted (Pottorf 2022, 341). Being an assistant (šeš-tab-ba) is counted as an occupation, though it does not belong to an economic sector. The same applies to gardeners (nu-giškiri6) based on Greco 2015, 168. The translation of agar4-nigin2 is based on Civil 2011, 266 n. 88. With regard to the occupations e2-nig2-lagar (a location following a person’s name) and nig2-lagar-il2, Walther Sallaberger (1993, 1:242) considers whether nig2-lagar may be read as ni3-sagx and be equivalent to or related to nesag (“first-fruit offering”), and Fabienne Huber Vulliet (2019, 242 n. 1106), among others, interprets e2-nig2-lagar as a temple. While this latter suggestion is not followed here, e2-nig2-lagar appears to be a worker in a cultic context, but it is not clear what economic sector this worker belongs in, and nig2-lagar-il2 is some kind of carrier functioning in this cultic context. The translation of gu-za-la2 is similar to the translation in Molina 2025, 94, which demonstrates that this occupation fits in the control sector. In the nearly identical texts Nisaba 6 1 and 26 93, the subsistence-land areas of some cowherds and a chief herder are not counted because the areas vary based on their herd sizes, which is not clearly the case for these occupations in other texts. All subsistence and tenant lands are categorized according to their productivities, whether they produced barley or sesame or whether they did not produce any crops. Land that did not produce any crop was “badly drained” (a-a uš2-a [Maekawa 1995, 187]), brackish (a-sis), fallow (su3), perhaps from the “rear part” of the field (murgu2 [Maekawa 1992, 180]), or uncultivated (kislah). While it is not considered further here, kislah can refer to a kind of threshing floor at times. Land that did not produce any crop was rarely allotted as subsistence land and mostly rented as tenant land. This kind of land did not have explicit silver taxes, as is expected (Steinkeller 1981, 132–35), but this is not assumed when it is not explicit. Land that did not produce any crop may have been all or part of a person’s subsistence land. As such, all subsistence land is described as a person’s