5.1.1 The Murašû Archive

The Murašû archive was found in situ in Nippur during the American excavations led by John Henry Haynes in May and June of 1893. The clay tablets and twenty clay bullae were unearthed in a small room in the so-called Camp Hill, west of the Inanna temple and Ekur. As no excavation reports were published, only meagre information on the archaeological context can be obtained from Haynes’ field notes and letters. According to them, the tablets were discovered in a single room which was part of a larger house.⁸⁶⁶ The bulk of the clay tablets were divided between Istanbul and Philadelphia, and currently they are kept at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. A number of tablets found their way to Jena, Yale, the British Museum, and other collections.⁸⁶⁷ Hermann V. Hilprecht and Albert T. Clay published a significant number of Murašû tablets in 1898–1912, and Matthew W. Stolper and Veysel Donbaz continued their work in the last quarter of the twentieth century.⁸⁶⁸ In addition to these major publications, small groups of tablets have been made available in several publications.⁸⁶⁹

Unlike the Neo-Babylonian cuneiform documents in general, the texts from the Murašû archive hardly ever identify persons using three-tier genealogies with family names.⁸⁷⁰ Thus, the members of the Murašû family are not descendants of an eponymous ancestor from time immemorial but the sons and grandsons of Murašû, son of Hatin, who is attested in two early documents of the archive.⁸⁷¹ The chief protagonists of the family were Enlil-šum-iddin (active in 445/444–421 bce) and his nephew Rīmūt-Ninurta (429–415/414 bce),⁸⁷² but the servants of the family also play a prominent role in the archive, the most important of them being Rībātu/Bēl-erība.⁸⁷³ Although family names cannot be used to link the Murašû family to a specific segment of society, their residence in Nippur,⁸⁷⁴ high socio-economic status,⁸⁷⁵ and personal names referring to Enlil and Ninurta, the chief deities of Nippur, indicate that they belonged to the urban Nippurean upper class.

The business activities of the Murašû family took place in a certain economic sphere.⁸⁷⁶ Persian aristocracy and high officials administered royal lands in the Nippur countryside, and smaller landholdings, attached to larger administrative units, were given to individual farmers or families to cultivate. The basic structure of this land-for-service scheme resembles the one we encountered in the texts from the surroundings of Yāhūdu: people – often of foreign origin – were settled on royal lands, given a plot to cultivate, and expected to pay taxes and perform service in exchange. Like in Yāhūdu, the farmers of the state lands are occasionally called šušānus in the documents, and they were part of a complex hierarchical structure of land tenure. The typical designation of a single plot of land remained bīt qašti (‘bow land’). However, the system developed over time and some terms which are not attested in Yāhūdu figure prominently in the Murašû texts. The two most important of these are the haṭru and šaknu. The former refers to the organisational units into which the holders of bow lands and other crown properties were grouped, and the latter to the official who was in charge of land tenure and the fulfilment of obligations in a given haṭru.

The Murašû archive documents the business transactions of a family of entrepreneurs working in the land-for-service sector. The archive consists of promissory notes, leases, receipts, and other legal texts primarily relating to credit granting and agricultural management.⁸⁷⁷ The Murašûs served as middlemen between small landholders and the administrative apparatus, as they facilitated the payment of taxes by granting credit to landholders. The Murašûs received payments from the farmers in agricultural produce but paid rent and taxes primarily in silver; retail sales of produce were an essential part of their business, as is shown by a number of texts on beer brewing in the archive.⁸⁷⁸ The Murašûs also managed the cultivation of royal lands in the Nippur region. They acquired landholdings in two ways: first, they leased land and water rights directly from the representatives of the crown. Second, they granted credit to farmers in the land-for-service sector and gained control over the plots that were pledged to secure the debts. The Murašûs then subleased lands, water rights, and draught animals to tenants, including the actual holders of the pledged lands.

In contrast to the abundance of business documents in the Murašû archive, there are no texts referring to the family’s houses or other property than slaves. This implies that the present archive is a selection of tablets removed from the main archive when not needed anymore.⁸⁷⁹ However, it remains unclear who was responsible for selecting the texts that remain to us. This uncertainty is caused by the last documents of the archive, which do not refer to the Murašûs anymore but to a certain Enlil-supê-muhur, a former servant of the family.⁸⁸⁰ After the Murašûs disappeared, Enlil-supê-muhur worked as the paqdu (‘manager’) of Prince Aršam, leasing out the prince’s herds of sheep and goats. Here private business, the interests of the crown, and administrative mechanisms of the land-for-service sector seem to be intertwined, like in the texts from Yāhūdu and its surroundings.

5.1.2 Judeans in the Murašû Archive

The economic and legal aspects of the Murašû archive have been thoroughly studied,⁸⁸¹ and the ethnic and onomastic diversity in the Nippur region has been surveyed in several studies.⁸⁸² However, there has been less interest in the life of the people figuring in the archive. This applies to the Murašûs themselves, as well as to their clients, many of whom were descendants of foreign deportees. The social and religious history of Judeans in the Nippur region has been briefly discussed by Daiches, Bickerman, and Zadok,⁸⁸³ and although the presence of Judeans in the Murašû archive is acknowledged in most studies dealing with the Babylonian exile, only a page or two is normally devoted to discussing the material.

Although the Murašû archive documents business activities from the viewpoint of the archive-holding family, it is a relatively rich source for the study of Judeans in Babylonia. Altogether 61 Judean individuals appear in 64 different documents, making the archive the most extensive source for the study of Judeans after the texts from Yāhūdu and its surroundings.⁸⁸⁴

The documents pertaining to Judeans cover the whole chronological span of the archive. A Judean is already attested in the second earliest text of the archive from the thirteenth year of Artaxerxes i (BE 9 3, 452 bce), and another Judean features in the late Aršam group in the eleventh year of Darius ii (pbs 2/1 148, 413 bce). Moreover, the chronological distribution of the documents featuring Judeans also fits the distribution of the whole archive. As the graphs presented in Donbaz and Stolper 1997 clearly show,⁸⁸⁵ the fortieth year of Artaxerxes i marks a watershed in the chronological distribution of the tablets in the archive, as the majority of documents were written during a period of peak activity in 40 Art i – 7 Dar ii (425–417 bce). The same pattern can be seen in Figure 9, which records the datable transactions pertaining to Judeans in the Murašû archive.

Murašû texts pertaining to Judeans

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Murašû texts pertaining to Judeans

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Murašû texts pertaining to Judeans

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Some features of Figure 9 require explanation. First, the peak in the thirty-fourth year of Artaxerxes i is incidental, and it results from the fact that Pili-Yāma/Šillimu happened to witness three documents in Nippur on the same day (BE 9 34; imt 7, 8). Second, there is no peak in the number of documents from the last year of Artaxerxes i and the first year of Darius ii. In the archive as a whole, the peak in these two years results from the large number of debts to the Murašûs by landholders whose plots were pledged to secure the debts. As Stolper suggests, these mortgages may have resulted from the financial difficulties that farmers in the Nippur region experienced because of the increased burden of tax and service obligations during the fight for the Persian throne after the death of Artaxerxes i.⁸⁸⁶ Some Judeans were also affected by the crisis (BE 10 33; pbs 2/1 27, 185), and it remains unclear if the small number of Judeans involved only results from the accidental preservation of texts or if their situation was different from landholders in general. Third, there is a sharp peak in the number of documents pertaining to Judeans in the fourth year of Darius ii. This year is very well documented in the archive in general, but such a steep rise in numbers is unexpected. There seems to be no common denominator between the eleven texts, and Judeans are attested as witnesses, minor officials, landholders, and creditors. Given the small sample of texts pertaining to Judeans, this anomaly may be incidental as well.

These statistics indicate that no major changes occurred among the Judean population in the Nippur region in the last half of the fifth century. Because the chronological distribution of Judean texts mirrors that of the archive as a whole, large groups of Judeans hardly migrated to or from the region. As this chapter shows, nothing in the texts suggests that the socio-economic status of Judeans was any different from other deportees in the Nippur countryside, and the statistical anomalies in 41 Art i – 1 Dar ii and in 4 Dar ii are probably incidental.

5.1.3 Seal Impressions

The sealing of cuneiform tablets has a long history in Babylonia. In addition to their legal value, seal impressions conveyed other messages: some seals were connected to a certain office or royal authority, whereas seal use and imagery can shed light on the social status and cultural values of an individual. Accordingly, seal impressions can effectively supplement the picture emerging from the texts themselves. The use of personal seals became increasingly common in the Persian period, and the Murašû archive is a rich source for the study of sealing practices in Babylonia. Judeans followed the general trend: the single Judean seal owner attested before the mid-fifth century is Ahīqam/Rapā-Yāma, who impressed his seal on a single tablet in the twelfth year of Darius i (B9). This changes in the Murašû archive, in which fourteen Judeans used seals, some of them even two different ones.⁸⁸⁷

This remarkable difference is the result of changes in sealing practices in Babylonia from the sixth to the late fifth centuries.⁸⁸⁸ In the archives from the early sixth century, only documents pertaining to the transfer of real estate were sealed, and the sealers belonged to a distinct group of scribes or notaries. The sellers of real estate impressed their nail marks on the tablets, but their seal impressions are never attested.⁸⁸⁹ Sealing practices started to change in the late Neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods: new document types were sealed or marked with nails and sealing was not practised exclusively by scribes. The sealing of a tablet still remained an exception, rather than the rule. The change accelerated in the reign of Darius i, and Ahīqam’s use of a seal in Darius’ twelfth regnal year should be seen in this context.⁸⁹⁰

Seal use became more widespread during the fifth century, and the Murašû archive is a very rich source for the practice.⁸⁹¹ The principals who ceded rights or took an obligation rather consistently impressed their seals or nail marks on the tablet, and if judges were present at the transaction, they always used a seal. Impressing a nail mark did not necessarily imply that the person could not afford to buy a seal, as the use of nail marks was preferred in certain types of transactions.⁸⁹² Witnesses occasionally impressed their seals on tablets in the early reign of Artaxerxes i, but this custom changed drastically in the late reign of Artaxerxes i and the early reign of Darius ii, when the majority of witnesses sealed tablets.⁸⁹³

These developments are the underlying factor for the scarcity of Judean seal owners in the environs of Yāhūdu and their frequent attestation in the Murašû archive. Some Judean seal owners will be treated in the discussion below, and Judean seal use in its socio-economic and cultural context will be treated in Section 5.7.

5.2.1 Business Partners of the Murašûs?

The earliest document pertaining to Yadi-Yāma/Banā-Yāma was written in Nippur in 5-V-24 Art i (EE 2). He leased out the Bēl and Mušēzib-Bēl canals and perhaps uzbāru land to Enlil-šum-iddin/Murašû for the annual rent of 200 kurru of produce.⁸⁹⁵ Two documents from the twenty-eighth (BE 9 16) and thirty-first (EE 30) years of Artaxerxes i show that Enlil-šum-iddin later subleased the Bēl canal to his tenants and slaves.⁸⁹⁶EE 2 is not explicit about the status of Yadi-Yāma, and one might interpret him either as a royal agent or sub-lessor. According to Stolper, the Murašûs leased canals predominantly – if not exclusively – from the royal administration, but van Driel is open to the possibility of subleases as well.⁸⁹⁷EE 2 could well be a sublease, judging by the fact that Yadi-Yāma did not bear any official title and that the royal administration is referred to only at the end of the operative part, where Yadi-Yāma guarantees that the canal manager (ša muhhi sūti ša nār^d[x]) will not contest the lease. This assumption is further supported by the analysis of other documents in this cluster, which show that Yadi-Yāma was involved in the exploitation of canals and adjoining lands rather than their management.

Pili-Yāma/Šillimu appears for the first time in Nippur in 28-X-28 Art i (BE 9 14). He and Enlil-šum-iddin/Murašû pay the sūtu rent of 97 kurru of millet to the manager of the Sîn canal, the servant (mār bīti) of the mašennu official Artabara.⁸⁹⁸ The payment is due from the land of Bēl⁸⁹⁹ and (a part of) the Puratti-Nippur canal. The receipt suggests that Pili-Yāma and Enlil-šum-iddin were business partners or at least shared an interest in obtaining rights to land and water from the royal administration or its representatives. The document is witnessed by a certain Šillimu/Pa-ni-a, who might be Pili-Yāma’s father.⁹⁰⁰

These two texts alone would suggest that Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma appear to be entrepreneurs like the Murašûs, leasing and subletting royal properties in the Nippur countryside. However, their transactions in the following years indicate that they may be better understood as representatives of larger communities, not merely as entrepreneurs acting for their own profit.⁹⁰¹

5.2.2 Yadi-Yāma and the Village of Bīt-Gērāya

Yadi-Yāma’s economic status worsened over time, which is already apparent in the thirty-first year of Artaxerxes i. In a document written in Nippur (BE 9 25, 17-I-31 Art i), he leases the Urâti canal, his bīt ritti, ‘the land for which he is agent’ (a.šà na-áš-par-ti-šú),⁹⁰² and his pledged property for three years from Enlil-šum-iddin for the annual rent of 200 kurru of barley. The rent was to be paid in a place called Gērāya. Some of his landholdings had apparently been pledged as a security for some previous debt, and they had come into the disposal of Enlil-šum-iddin. In BE 9 25, Yadi-Yāma asks his creditor to lease the pledged lands to Yadi-Yāma himself instead of leasing them to someone else. This transaction is a good example of the business model of the Murašûs: credit granting allowed the family to get hold of land properties, which could be leased back to their actual holders.⁹⁰³ The meaning of bīt ritti is not completely understood, but it does not seem to denote a specific type of landholding in the land-for-service sector like bīt qašti. In the Murašû archive, it was perhaps more of an umbrella term which could refer to various types of landholdings, sometimes – if not usually – belonging to a temple or the crown. In Hellenistic Uruk, bīt ritti properties were closely related to the temple of Anu.⁹⁰⁴ It is quite probable that the bīt ritti was not Yadi-Yāma’s private property.

Three details of the transaction shed light on Yadi-Yāma’s economic role in the land-for-service sector. First, he was the nominal holder of some of the leased lands, not just a businessman taking them on lease. Second, the lease also involved lands (a.šà na-áš-par-ti-šú) that were not Yadi-Yāma’s personal holdings. Našpartu means ‘agency, proxy’ or ‘service, business’ in comparable Neo-Babylonian legal and economic contexts,⁹⁰⁵ and, in the present document, Yadi-Yāma obviously held a plot of land on behalf of other people, or he represented them in the transaction. Third, his sons Yāhû-natan and Padā-Yāma witnessed the document, and the caption next to Yadi-Yāma’s seal impression reads ‘the seal of Yadi-Yāma and his brothers’. The explicit reference to a seal owned by several people is unique in the Murašû archive,⁹⁰⁶ and it seems to imply that Yadi-Yāma was not acting only on his own behalf. He represented at least his family or even a larger community, as the word ahu (‘brother’) often refers to collegial relations in general.⁹⁰⁷ Yadi-Yāma and his sons are, however, the only Judeans attested in this document. In addition to this seal,⁹⁰⁸ Yadi-Yāma also owned another seal, which he impressed on BE 9 45.⁹⁰⁹ No other Judeans impressed their seals on the documents belonging to this dossier.

Yadi-Yāma’s representative role in BE 9 25 is corroborated by BE 9 45 (Nippur, 20-V-36 Art i). Enlil-šum-iddin leases water rights and land to Yadi-Yāma, his three sons, a Judean man, four other people, and their anonymous colleagues (kinattu) in Bīt-Gērāya for three years. The leased property consists of the Urâti canal, tithe land (bīt ešrî) and Yadi-Yāma’s bīt ritti on the banks of the Urâti, lands on the left bank of the Milidu canal, and three plots of land irrigated by waterlifts⁹¹⁰ on the right bank of the same canal. The annual rent was 700 kurru of barley, two oxen, and twenty sheep, far more than a single farmer could produce in a year.⁹¹¹ Here the lessees quite clearly constitute a community of farmers who not only leased new lands to cultivate them, but also sought to retain their hold on Yadi-Yāma’s bīt ritti. As the interests of the larger group and Yadi-Yāma appear to be intertwined and as BE 9 25 and 45 partially pertain to the same landholdings, it seems quite certain that Yadi-Yāma’s transaction in BE 9 25 relates to this community of farmers as well.⁹¹²

This community of farmers should be geographically connected to (Bīt-)Gērāya,⁹¹³ a settlement which was probably located by the canal system fed by the Euphrates of Nippur (Purat Nippur).⁹¹⁴ The place name is only mentioned in BE 9 25, BE 9 45, and EE 98 (20-IX-36 Art i), which was written in the same village. The latter document (EE 98) is a promissory note for 70 vats of beer, owed by a certain Bēl-idrī to Yadi-Yāma. The repayment of the debt was to take place after the next date harvest. If read together only with EE 2, this promissory note would corroborate the idea that Yadi-Yāma was an entrepreneur like the Murašûs, practising agricultural management and turning his revenue of agricultural produce into silver by beer brewing and retail. EE 98 undoubtedly reflects commercial activity, and it might well be connected to the retail of date beer to urban customers. However, as the transaction took place in Bīt-Gērāya only four months after BE 9 45, it is fully possible that Yadi-Yāma did not act only on his own behalf here either. The debtor’s name Bēl-idrī cannot be found in any other Murašû document, and thus his identity and the relationship of this transaction to the Murašûs remain unknown. It is noteworthy that both EE 98 and BE 9 45 were witnessed by Pili-Yāma, while a certain Satturu/Šabbatāya witnessed EE 98 and was Yadi-Yāma’s co-lessee in BE 9 45. EE 98 is the last attestation of Yadi-Yāma.

The village of Bīt-Gērāya was evidently the focal point of Yadi-Yāma’s activities. He had colleagues in the village, he was supposed to deliver his rental payment there, and one of his transactions was concluded there. At the same time, the communal aspects of his transactions suggest that he was not merely a businessman working in Bīt-Gērāya but more like a representative or foreman of the local community.

5.2.3 Pili-Yāma’s Transactions

After his first appearance as Enlil-šum-iddin’s co-lessee in 28 Art i (BE 9 14), Pili-Yāma is attested five times as a witness before he appears again as a debtor and lessee in 37 and 38(?) Art i (EE 94, 26). In addition to Yadi-Yāma’s transactions BE 9 45 and EE 98, Pili-Yāma witnessed three documents (BE 9 34; imt 7, 8) which were written in Nippur in 7-IV-34 Art i by the same scribe before the same witnesses.⁹¹⁵ All documents are leases of animals and/or land granted by Enlil-šum-iddin to three different lessees. None of the lessees bore a Judean name, and Pili-Yāma had no obvious connection to them. It is possible that he happened to be present in Nippur when the documents were written and, being Enlil-šum-iddin’s old acquaintance, he was asked to witness the transactions.

Two documents from the late years of Artaxerxes i shed more light on Pili-Yāma’s connections with the Murašû family. The first document is a promissory note for a kur.ra textile⁹¹⁶ worth 30 shekels of silver, written in Nippur in 26-V-37 Art i (EE 94). The debtor is Pili-Yāma and the creditor Tīrīkāma, a well-known servant of Enlil-šum-iddin.⁹¹⁷ The value of the textile is surprisingly high in comparison to the prices of kur.ra textiles from the late seventh to the late sixth century, when the prices fluctuated generally between two and seven shekels of silver.⁹¹⁸ Although the price of kur.ra textiles rose in the late sixth century,⁹¹⁹ the general trend of prices in Persian-period northern Babylonia⁹²⁰ does not favour the assumption that kur.ra textiles were on average worth half a mina in central Babylonia in the late fifth century. As far as I know, there are no other Murašû texts referring to kur.ra textiles. The textile in EE 94 is described as biršu⁹²¹eššu, ‘coarse (fabric and) new’, which does not unequivocally indicate that the high quality of the textile made it exceptionally valuable. As kur.ra was a common type of textile in Babylonia, the promissory note cannot be related to any specific type of economic activity. However, the exceptional value of the textile and the absence of other kur.ra texts in the Murašû archive make this an intriguing document.

The last document (EE 26) pertaining to Pili-Yāma⁹²² is a lease of the Badiātu canal of Marduka (nār Badiāti ša Marduka). The transaction is badly broken, but it shows that Pili-Yāma and two other men leased the canal from a member of the Murašû family, most likely Enlil-šum-iddin, around 38 Art i.⁹²³ In order to understand the context of this transaction, it is necessary to study two earlier documents concerning this branch or part of the Badiātu canal.

In 12-V-32 Art i (BE 9 29), Marduka, the slave of Enlil-šum-iddin, rented the Badiātu canal of Yadi-Yāma (nār Badiāti ša Yadi-Yāma), adjoining lands, ploughs, oxen,⁹²⁴ and seed corn from his master for three years for the annual rent of 1,025 kurru of produce.⁹²⁵ It is likely that the canal was named after its former holder, Yadi-Yāma, although there are no texts which pertain to Yadi-Yāma’s tenancy of this canal. Three years later, Pān-Enlil-adaggal, another servant of Enlil-šum-iddin, leased the Badiātu canal of Marduka (nār Badiāti ša Marduka) under similar conditions for three years from Enlil-šum-iddin (imt 10, 16-XIIb-35 Art i).

In light of these three transactions, ‘the Badiātu canal of Marduka’ and ‘the Badiātu canal of Yadi-Yāma’ refer to one and the same canal. The name of the current or previous tenant served as an identification marker which helped to distinguish the canal from other homonymous watercourses or to specify which part of the canal was meant.⁹²⁶ Because Pān-Enlil-adaggal’s three-year lease was recorded in 35 Art i, Pili-Yāma and his two co-lessees leased the canal after Pān-Enlil-adaggal, probably in 38 Art i (EE 26).⁹²⁷

Nothing is known about Yadi-Yāma’s tenancy of this branch or part of the Badiātu canal, but given the other documents referring to him, two scenarios are possible: first, Yadi-Yāma leased the canal directly from the royal administration and it came into the possession of Enlil-šum-iddin by a sublease or as a result of Yadi-Yāma’s insolvency. Alternatively, Yadi-Yāma leased the canal from Enlil-šum-iddin, like Marduka and others after him. Be that as it may, the Badiātu canal of Yadi-Yāma and Marduka was at the disposal of the Murašûs for almost a decade or more, and the family repeatedly leased it out to its servants and other tenants. The document referring to Pili-Yāma’s lease (EE 26) is badly broken, and the names of his two co-lessees survive only as PN/Barīk-il and Minyamin/PN. Barīk-il and Minyamin are both West Semitic names,⁹²⁸ and the Judean background of these people remains a possibility that cannot be confirmed or excluded.⁹²⁹ However, Minyamin is perhaps attested together with Pili-Yāma in BE 9 45, when a certain Minyamin/Bānia figures on the witness list right after Pili-Yāma.⁹³⁰

The information on the extent of the lease and the size of the rent has been mostly destroyed in EE 26, and only the references to the Naˀilti-il canal and 76 kurru of emmer remain. Emmer was usually only a subsidiary component of the annual rent in the leases of canals,⁹³¹ and the extent of the lease in EE 26 may resemble imt 10, which refers to the fields extending as far as the Naˀilti-il canal. As the annual rent in the earlier leases of the Badiātu canal of Yadi-Yāma and Marduka was around 1,000 kurru of produce, it is likely that the scope of EE 26 was roughly the same.

At first glance, Pili-Yāma’s transactions could well pertain to his private business. The two leases of canals and the promissory note for a kur.ra textile do not directly pertain to the community of farmers in Bīt-Gērāya. However, Pili-Yāma and Yadi-Yāma shared an interest in the tenancy of one and the same canal, and Pili-Yāma was also connected to Bīt-Gērāya. He witnessed Yadi-Yāma’s transaction in the village and another document connected to Yadi-Yāma and his colleagues in Bīt-Gērāya. The leases of the Badiātu canal could have merely been private transactions, but they may also indicate that the canal was important to the community to which the two Judeans belonged.

5.2.4 Yāhû-natan, Son of Yadi-Yāma

After Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma disappear from the scene, Yadi-Yāma’s son Yāhû-natan appears in yet another lease of the Urâti canal in 29-V-40 Art i (EE 92). He had been involved in the leases of this canal already earlier: he witnessed a lease of the canal in 31 Art i (BE 9 25) and was among his father’s co-lessees in 36 Art i (BE 9 45). In EE 92, he and Bānia/Amēl-Nanâ promise Enlil-šum-iddin to perform maintenance work on part of the canal during a two-week period until the twelfth day of the sixth month. This period from late August to early September coincides with the time when the water level in the Euphrates was low after the annual flood season was over.⁹³² This was a natural moment to dig canals and repair damage caused by the flood. In compensation for their work, Yāhû-natan and Bānia were granted a lease of the canal,⁹³³ but it remains unclear how long it was for. In any case, a very short lease, such as only for the duration of the maintenance work, makes little sense from an agricultural perspective.

This document again stresses the fact that Yāhû-natan and Bānia could not have acted alone, but they had to have had a considerable workforce at their disposal. The workers digging the canal were most probably the inhabitants of Bīt-Gērāya, represented here by Yāhû-natan and Bānia. This link is not only suggested by the connections to Yadi-Yāma and the Urâti canal, for Bānia was also a member of the community in Bīt-Gērāya. He was Yadi-Yāma’s co-lessee in BE 9 45 and a witness to Yadi-Yāma’s promissory note for beer (EE 98), which was written in Bīt-Gērāya. Furthermore, he might have been the father of Minyamin/Bānia, the aforementioned witness of BE 9 45 and a possible co-lessee of Pili-Yāma in EE 26.⁹³⁴

5.2.5 Representatives of a Community of Farmers

The picture emerging from the documents relating to Yadi-Yāma, Pili-Yāma, and Yāhû-natan is one of men who were capable of organising the cultivation of large tracts of land and mustering a sufficient workforce to dig a canal. In the earliest documents, both Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma deal with Enlil-šum-iddin like business partners, but in the later documents they only appear as tenants of the Murašû family. Yadi-Yāma’s economic situation was evidently difficult after the thirtieth year of Artaxerxes i, and his dependency on the Murašûs is reflected by the fact that he had to lease his own pledged lands from Enlil-šum-iddin. Nothing suggests that the social or professional status of Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma changed over time, and the changes in their economic status may reflect the fact that they were actually the more vulnerable party in their transactions with the Murašû family.

One way to explain Yadi-Yāma’s and Pili-Yāma’s transactions is to perceive them as entrepreneurs who were engaged in agricultural management, similar to the Murašûs. That would neatly explain the earliest leases: EE 2 would be a sublease of the properties which Yadi-Yāma had leased from the state administration, and in BE 9 14, Pili-Yāma and Enlil-šum-iddin would simply be business partners leasing some royal properties. The later leases would bear testimony to the tenancy of royal lands one step below the Murašû family: the Judean men leased rights to water and land from the Murašûs and then subleased those rights to their tenants. Yadi-Yāma’s and Pili-Yāma’s profit was generated from the difference between the rent they paid to the Murašûs and the rent they charged from their tenants. The reference to date beer perfectly fits this entrepreneurial scenario, because brewing was a necessary activity for many business-oriented people in an agricultural setting.⁹³⁵

The weakness of the entrepreneurial scenario is the strong communal aspect of Yadi-Yāma’s and Pili-Yāma’s activities. This is apparent in the lease of the Urâti canal in BE 9 45, in which Yadi-Yāma does not act alone but with eight co-lessees and their unnamed colleagues in Bīt-Gērāya.⁹³⁶ The Urâti canal is the subject of two other leases (BE 9 25; EE 92), both of which exhibit strong connections to BE 9 45. There is only one more Murašû text (imt 24) referring to this canal,⁹³⁷ but the contents of this small fragment are incomprehensible. The three leases of the Urâti canal not only show that the canal was of great importance to the family of Yadi-Yāma, but all establish a firm connection to the village of Bīt-Gērāya.

Bīt-Gērāya is only attested in three documents in the Murašû archive, all of which are related to Yadi-Yāma’s transactions (BE 9 25, 45; EE 98). Several other people link these documents to each other: Pili-Yāma, Satturu/Šabbatāya, and Bānia/Amēl-Nanâ appear in BE 9 45 and EE 98, and Yāhû-natan is attested in BE 9 25 and 45.⁹³⁸ The population of Bīt-Gērāya was at least partially of Judean origin. In EE 98, which is the only document written in Bīt-Gērāya, almost every witness bears a West Semitic name or patronymic. The only exception is Bānia/Amēl-Nanâ, but, as shown above, Bānia was not an outsider but a man with close ties to Yadi-Yāma’s family. West Semitic names are also well represented among Yadi-Yāma’s co-lessees in BE 9 45, who, according to the document, appear to be people from Bīt-Gērāya.⁹³⁹ Bānia/Amēl-Nanâ is again the only person bearing both an Akkadian name and patronymic. Yahwistic names are well represented among the West Semitic onomasticon, both in EE 98 and in BE 9 45.

It thus appears that Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma were connected to the settlement of Bīt-Gērāya, which was inhabited by people of Judean and generally non-Babylonian origin, and which was insignificant enough to be very rarely mentioned in the Murašû archive. It was apparently a village located near the Urâti canal, as people from Bīt-Gērāya rented the canal in BE 9 45, and the rental payment of the canal was to be delivered to the village (BE 9 25). The canal was important to the village, and the leases in BE 9 25 and EE 92 are to be seen in the context of BE 9 45. The roles of Yadi-Yāma, Yāhû-natan, and Bānia/Amēl-Nanâ were as representatives, and they acted on behalf of the village community. While the large rents could only be met by a group of farmers, it was not practical or necessary for all the villagers to travel to Nippur to close deals.

Pili-Yāma had close connections to Yadi-Yāma and Bīt-Gērāya, but he was also in regular contact with the Murašûs and often present in Nippur. The most revealing document about his status is EE 26, in which he leases the Badiātu canal of Marduka, the same canal which was held or leased by Yadi-Yāma several years earlier. His two co-lessees were of non-Babylonian descent, and one of them was perhaps attested as a witness in BE 9 45. The case bears resemblance to that of the Urâti canal, and it is reasonable to suggest that this derivative or part of the Badiātu canal was also of special importance to Yadi-Yāma, Pili-Yāma, and the community in Bīt-Gērāya. The Badiātu canal of Yadi-Yāma and Marduka cannot be geographically located in relation to Bīt-Gērāya,⁹⁴⁰ but it is hardly a coincidence that Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma shared an interest in this canal. Moreover, Pili-Yāma’s lease of the Badiātu canal of Marduka took place in 38 Art i or later, and as Yadi-Yāma is not attested after 36 Art i, there is a good chance that Pili-Yāma took over some communal responsibilities after Yadi-Yāma’s death. This scenario also fits Yāhû-natan’s lease of the Urâti canal in 40 Art i.

Despite the entrepreneurial features of Yadi-Yāma’s and Pili-Yāma’s transactions, they cannot simply be labelled as businessmen.⁹⁴¹ Both men were Judeans, closely linked to the village of Bīt-Gērāya where they perhaps also resided. There is no reason to suppose that the community in Bīt-Gērāya was exclusively Judean,⁹⁴² but it is evident that many of its inhabitants were of Judean origin. Surprisingly, bow lands, haṭrus, or minor officials of the land-for-service sector are not referred to in the documents pertaining to Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma. Therefore, these men were hardly officials, such as šaknu-type foremen of a haṭru in the environs of Bīt-Gērāya, but influential members of the village community.⁹⁴³ In this function, they travelled to Nippur to represent the community and lease canal rights from the Murašû family. This does not exclude the possibility that their private interests are present in the documents as well. Pili-Yāma’s debt of a kur.ra textile need not concern the economic interests of the people in Bīt-Gērāya, and Yadi-Yāma’s brewing activities may have been very beneficial to him personally. As will be shown in the context of similar documents below, it is difficult to say if Yadi-Yāma’s bīt ritti was held by him and his family alone or if he was its nominal holder on behalf of a larger community. Yadi-Yāma’s and Pili-Yāma’s earliest transactions show that the two men leased water and land to Enlil-šum-iddin and together with him. This was hardly possible without the backing of the rural community, although the responsibility rested nominally on a single man alone.

The size of the transactions pertaining to Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma is very different from what we see in the documents from Yāhūdu and its surroundings. Ahīqam’s largest transactions of over 5 minas of silver or 160 kurru of barley (B5, 6; C17, 18) are of comparable size, but, in general, the transactions from the environs of Yāhūdu are significantly smaller. It is noteworthy that Ahīqam’s largest transactions pertain to his business with the royal administration (B6; C17, 18) or dealings in Babylon (B5); accordingly, they do not relate to his interaction with farmers or small landholders. Texts pertaining to Ahīqam testify that he acted as an intermediary between farmers and the royal administration. Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma occupied the same functional position in the administrative hierarchy of the land-for-service system. As representatives of the villagers of Bīt-Gērāya, they acted as intermediaries between the farmers and the next level of hierarchy, the Murašû family or state administration. Private, communal, and official roles should not be seen mutually exclusive, and all three of the Judeans were in a position to benefit from their status of an intermediary.

5.3.1 General Features

The Murašû archive is held as the prime example of the land-for-service sector in Babylonia, but the documents pertaining to Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma hardly touch upon this issue. No haṭrus or bow lands are mentioned, and although Yadi-Yāma’s bīt ritti may not have been his private property, the term itself is not characteristic of the land-for-service sector. The Bīt-Gērāya dossier was written in 24–40 Art i, and it belongs to a less intensively documented phase of the Murašû archive. The dossier constitutes a distinct group, and none of its Judean protagonists is attested after 40 Art i.

The absence of certain terminology does not necessarily mean that Yadi-Yāma, Pili-Yāma, and their colleagues in Bīt-Gērāya were not integrated into the land-for-service sector, but the reason may lie in the distribution of different text types in the Murašû archive. As discussed above, the majority of documents in the archive were written in 40 Art i – 7 Dar ii, and especially mortgages are clustered in the last year of Artaxerxes i and the first year of Darius ii. Receipts of rents and taxes paid by the Murašûs are also concentrated in 40 Art i – 7 Dar ii.⁹⁴⁴ These are all document types which are not attested in the Bīt-Gērāya dossier but typically pertain to bow lands and other land properties managed by the Murašûs.⁹⁴⁵ On the contrary, leases of land and canals from the Murašûs are more evenly distributed over time.⁹⁴⁶ Because Judean holders of bow lands are attested after 40 Art i, it is likely that the invisibility of the land-for-service sector in the Bīt-Gērāya dossier results from the internal composition of the archive.

Eleven Judeans in seven different documents are attested as holders of bow lands in the Murašû archive.⁹⁴⁷ It is evident that ‘bow land’ does not simply refer to a plot that was held or cultivated by a single farmer: in six documents, bow lands are held nominally by at least two people, and four documents refer to an undetermined group of ‘brothers’ (šeš.meš; BE 10 118; EE 111) or ‘lords of the bow land’ (^lúen.meš ^gišban; pbs 2/1 89, 218) as co-holders of these properties.⁹⁴⁸ This applies to the Murašû archive as a whole, and, in the promissory notes with real estate securities, bow lands are normally held by more than one person.⁹⁴⁹ This is not unattested in the environs of Yāhūdu either, where six documents refer to the co-ownership of a bow land.⁹⁵⁰ Inheritance divisions are often given as the reason for the co-ownership of bow lands,⁹⁵¹ but this is not the entire picture, as co-holders also bore different patronymics and were thus presumably unrelated.⁹⁵² There is also one example of a Judean holding a share in a horse land (ucp 9/3, 18-X-2 Dar ii); I will discuss this important document in more detail below.

Like the number of co-holders, the size of bow lands varied considerably. In the Murašû archive, the debts secured with landholdings range between 10 and 11,270 kurru of dates,⁹⁵³ and the security usually consists of a single bow land.⁹⁵⁴ Furthermore, the amount of rent in silver paid by the Murašûs per bow land ranges between 3 and 60 shekels.⁹⁵⁵ As these payments have to be in some relation to the size of the respective landholdings, the variation in their size suggests a variation in the size of bow lands.⁹⁵⁶ A comparison with the data from the environs of Yāhūdu also attests to variation, but, surprisingly, the transactions are generally smaller than in the Murašû archive. The payments related to bow lands range from less than 1 kurru to 28 kurru of produce, the majority being smaller than 10 kurru.

A critical question regarding the functioning of the land-for-service system is the relationship between the size of a bow land and the number of its holders. If the scenario of successive inheritance divisions is right, most bow lands should have been split into tiny fragments by the late fifth century. As Judeans were settled in the Babylonian countryside soon after the deportations from Judah in the early sixth century, the holders of the bow lands in the Murašû archive must have belonged at least to the fifth or sixth generation. If a man held a hereditary bow land which was divided in equal parts and given to two sons in successive generations, his descendants in the fifth generation would only inherit a 1/16 share of the bow land, or 1/32 in the sixth generation. On the contrary, the available evidence shows that an average share in a bow land was still large enough to support a family. Based on his analysis of promissory notes with real estate securities, imittu rents, and leases of date gardens, Jursa concludes that the average share in a bow land in the Murašû archive roughly corresponded to the size of a plot held by a family in other Babylonian sources.⁹⁵⁷

As shares in bow lands were hereditary,⁹⁵⁸ it is reasonable to suggest that more royal lands were taken under cultivation as the rural population grew over time. The low cost of land and the prevalence of extensive arable farming suggest that land was readily available.⁹⁵⁹ This supports the commonly held view that one of the fundamental aims of the land-for-service system was to bring new lands under cultivation and royal control, and thus increase agricultural output and tax income.⁹⁶⁰

Even if a single plot was cultivated by a single family, the communal aspect of landholding is evident. Most bow lands were cultivated by several landholders, but only some of them often acted as representatives of the whole group, in the same vein as Yadi-Yāma and Pili-Yāma above. The use of representatives makes sense from a practical perspective: if a group of people shared the responsibilities related to a certain landholding, it was not necessary to record everybody’s name on the document. As the majority of documents were written in Nippur while the landholdings were located in the countryside, it was good for the agrarian community if not everybody had to make the journey to the city. A clear example of the use of representatives is found in pbs 2/1 218, a receipt of sūtu rent paid by Rīmūt-Ninurta/Murašû concerning the bow land of Abī-Yāma/Šabbatāya, Zabad-Yāma, and ‘all the other holders of their bow land’ (^lúen.meš ^gišban-šú-nu gab-bi). At the end of the operative part of the document, Abi-Yāma takes responsibility for the whole group and guarantees that his colleagues (kinātātišu) will not contest the transaction. This phenomenon is reminiscent of the structure of the Yāhūdu imittu lists, in which a group of ten landholders is represented by one of their peers (C14, 15).

The communal aspects of landholding are apparent in the texts pertaining to the three bīt ritti lands (co-)held by Judeans in the Murašû archive. As argued above, Yadi-Yāma’s leasing operations were closely related to certain canals and the community at Bīt-Gērāya, and, accordingly, it is possible that his bīt ritti may actually be a property held by a larger group of people (BE 9 25, 45). Two other bīt rittis were held by two persons. Haggâ and Mattan-Yāma hold a bīt ritti together in EE 24. In BE 9 3, Arad-Gula and Hanan-Yāma’s bīt ritti is leased to five persons for sharecropping. This indicates that the size of the landholding was rather large and that there may have been other landholders in addition to Arad-Gula and Hanan-Yāma.

In order to place these observations in a larger context, it is necessary to examine the size of transactions pertaining to Judeans in the Murašû archive. Table 1 presents all transactions with quantifiable data: documents in which Judeans appear as debtors or lessees, documents in which the Murašûs cultivate land on behalf of Judean landholders, and documents in which Judeans appear as creditors or lessors. The table reveals that small transactions of no more than 10 kurru or 10 shekels – those typical to the tablets from the environs of Yāhūdu – are very rare in the documents pertaining to Judeans in the Murašû archive. Only two transactions (10%) belong to this category. When the total size of the payment is divided by the number of obliged persons, the share of a single person remains above 10 kurru or 10 shekels in all but two cases. This emphasises a key difference between the texts from the environs of Yāhūdu and those from the Murašû archive: Ahīqar and Ahīqam dealt directly with individual farmers and landholders, whereas the Murašûs more often operated with the representatives and foremen of larger communities of landholders.

View Table

5.3.2 Haṭru of the Sēpirus

5.3.3 Large-Scale Landholding: Rahīm-il and His Family

Not all Judean landholders in the land-for-service sector farmed a modest plot of land. Some had significantly larger holdings. An important example is Rahīm-il, who together with his family held several plots, including a horse land, in the Nippur region.¹⁰²³ At least some of Rahīm-il’s landholdings belonged to the haṭru of the sēpirus: Gadal-Yāma, who was discussed above in the context of his trip to Uruk to perform military service, was Rahīm-il’s son (ucp 9/3). The family is attested in eleven documents from the thirty-third year of Artaxerxes I until the fifth year of Darius ii. Figure 10 presents their family tree.

The descendants of Rahīm-il

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The descendants of Rahīm-il

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The descendants of Rahīm-il

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The earliest document pertaining to the family is EE 35 (17-I-[33] Art i), a receipt of a sūtu payment in silver from Barīk-il/Rahīm-il to Munnātu/Umahparê. The amount of silver is broken and the juridical status of the pertinent landholding remains unclear. Munnātu/Umahparê, the recipient of the rental payment, was probably a royal official, judging by his Iranian name and Egyptian patronymic.¹⁰²⁴ Udarnaˀ, a brother of Barīk-il, witnessed the transaction.

Udarnaˀ’s Iranian name¹⁰²⁵ betrays his father’s familiarity with the onomasticon of the foreign elite, which most likely resulted from regular contact with the officials in the land-for-service sector. This view is supported by two documents which Udarnaˀ witnessed in the following years. The first one pertains to Enlil-šum-iddin’s leasing of land for thirty years from Halabesu/Paṭ-Esu and Halabesu/Mukēšu (imt 3, 8-XI-34 Art i), and the second one to Enlil-šum-iddin’s sūtu rent payment to Mitrēn, a servant of the mašennu official Tattannu (BE 9 59, ?-?-37 Art i). Mitrēn’s name is Iranian,¹⁰²⁶ and Halabesu’s Egyptian patronymic Paṭ-Esu¹⁰²⁷ suggests that he was connected to the royal administration.

The life of the family was affected by distrust and tension between the brothers. In the thirty-ninth year of Artaxerxes i, Udarnaˀ addressed Enlil-šum-iddin at the assembly (puhru) of Nippur, claiming that Enlil-šum-iddin’s servants and agents together with Udarnaˀ’s brother Zabdia and a certain Bēl-ittannu, had come to Udarnaˀ’s house and taken his property illegally (BE 9 69, 4-XII-39 Art i).¹⁰²⁸ The nature and value of the property is not specified, but the accusation was apparently well founded, as Enlil-šum-iddin had to return the property to Udarnaˀ. The litigation was witnessed by Udarnaˀ’s son Hanan-Yāma, and both the father and son impressed their cylinder seals on the tablet.¹⁰²⁹ The fact that they possessed such objects implies that they needed them regularly.

The extensive size of Rahīm-il’s landholdings becomes apparent in BE 9 86a (?-?-[41] Art i). This document is a lease of several plots of land from Enlil-šum-iddin to his slave Ea-zittišu/Ahdatuše and a certain [G]a-da-al-ˀ-a/Šabbatāya. The leased lands consist of the holdings of Enlil-šum-iddin and two bow lands of Rahīm-il and his sons (^Ira-hi-im-dingir.meš u dumu.meš-šú). Rahīm-il’s bow lands must have been vast, as one holding was located in Til-Gabbāri, Bīt-il-šakā, Til-Rahīmu, and the environs (limītu) of Til-Gabbāri, and the other in Titurru ša simmagir, Huṣṣēti ša [rēˀê?],¹⁰³⁰ Išqallūnu, Bīt-Kikī, Bīt-Akkē, and extending onto both sides of the Simmagir canal. In addition to these lands, 72 oxen, 18 ploughs, seed corn, and barley for the wages of workmen were included in the three-year lease, the annual rent of which was 2,700 kurru of produce and additional payments.

A reference to the bow lands of Rahīm-il and his sons in BE 9 86a would not alone confirm that the Rahīm-il in question is identical with the Judean man discussed in this section. However, [G]a-da-al-ˀ-a/Šabbatāya, the lessee of the lands in BE 9 86a, can be connected to the Judean family. First, there was a close relationship between a certain Gadal-Yāma/Šabbatāya and the family of Rahīm-il. Hanan-Yāma/Udarnaˀ and Gadal-Yāma/Šabbatāya together witnessed two documents, the litigation document BE 9 69 and BE 10 7 (2-I-1 Dar ii), a receipt of tax payment from horse and bow lands belonging to the haṭru of the sēpirus of the troops. Second, Ga-da-al-ˀ-a is a hypocoristic writing of Gadal-Yāma. A similar writing of the name Gadal-Yāma is attested in EE 65 (20?-VI-[41 Art i]), in which a seal caption naming a certain Ga-da-al-ia is preserved on a partially illegible tablet. The same cylinder seal is attested in ucp 9/3, in which the seal user’s name is Gadal-Yāma.¹⁰³¹ We may conclude that [G]a-da-al-ˀ-a/Šabbatāya in BE 9 86a was identical with Gadal-Yāma/Šabbatāya in BE 9 69 and BE 10 7, and, furthermore, that the landholder Rahīm-il in BE 9 86a is the Judean man discussed in this section.

It becomes apparent that Rahīm-il was not a subsistence farmer cultivating a small plot with his family but a significant landholder in the land-for-service sector. The same picture emerges from ucp 9/3, which concerns the horse land of Rahīm-il. His son Gadal-Yāma travelled to Uruk to perform the military service incumbent on the holder of the horse land. This Rahīm-il is most likely identical with the Rahīm-il discussed in this section, as, according to the text, he had given Barīk-il’s share in the horse land to Enlil-šum-iddin by means of a fictional adoption. Our Rahīm-il had a son named Barīk-il as well, and the document fits the picture of a family that was a significant landholder in the Nippur region but suffered from financial difficulties in the late reign of Artaxerxes i. During that difficult period – perhaps related to the accession wars after Artaxerxes’ death – Enlil-šum-iddin was able to interfere with the family property. The fictional adoption of Enlil-šum-iddin was obviously a way to transfer part of the horse land to the Murašûs and perhaps settle some outstanding claims (ucp 9/3).¹⁰³² Similarly, some bow lands of the family had come into the disposal of Enlil-šum-iddin, possibly via a lease or as pledged property (BE 9 86a). Finally, the tensions between Enlil-šum-iddin and Rahīm-il’s family are betrayed by the litigation over Udarnaˀ’s stolen property (BE 9 69).

Despite its difficulties, the family did not disappear from the scene after the accession of Darius ii, and Hanan-Yāma is attested twice as a witness in the fourth and fifth years of the king (BE 10 84; pbs 2/1 107). It is noteworthy that he impressed a different seal on the later document, compared to BE 9 69 seven years before.¹⁰³³ Ownership of seals was very common in this family, as Udarnaˀ, Hanan-Yāma, and Gadal-Yāma¹⁰³⁴ all impressed their seals on one or more documents in the archive. This is suggestive of the high socio-economic status of the family. An interesting feature of the seals is their imagery, which always employs the motif of a bull or lion. This may tell something about the preferences of the family, because these motifs were not otherwise favoured by Judean seal owners.¹⁰³⁵

The texts pertaining to Rahīm-il and his descendants constitute an exceptionally informative group about an important Judean family in the Nippur region. The family had several large landholdings in the land-for-service sector, including a horse land, which implies that the family belonged to an upper social stratum in the hierarchy of the land-for-service sector. Their use of seals, their frequent presence as witnesses, and Udarnaˀ’s Iranian name point towards the same conclusion. Their horse land belonged to the haṭru of the sēpirus of the troops, and Hanan-Yāma/Udarnaˀ and Gadal-Yāma/Šabbatāya witnessed another transaction pertaining to the same haṭru. This was perhaps the general administrative context of Rahīm-il’s landholdings.

The only comparable group of texts related to Judeans are the documents on the community in Bīt-Gērāya. Although the groups differ in many ways, they show a similar relationship between the Murašûs and the protagonists of the text groups. The protagonists had significant resources at their disposal, but their distressed financial situation or aspiration to expand their farming activities forced them to seek help from the Murašûs. This is a common pattern in the archive, and Judean landholders are usually attested only when they needed the services provided by the Nippurean family. Those Judeans who never sought such help or support are invisible to us. This aspect of the archive’s composition needs to be taken seriously, as it can greatly affect the conclusions about Judean landholding in the Nippur region.

5.3.4 Other Judean Landholders

Apart from the documents discussed above, one more Judean landholder can be connected to a particular haṭru. BE 10 92 (13?-IX-4 Dar ii) is a receipt of a sūtu rent of grain fields (zērū pī šulpi) in Appāru ša Tahmiya and Gammalē, which belonged to the haṭru of the gardu. Šabbatāya/Hi-il-lu-mu-tu – a man of Judean origin¹⁰³⁶ – held these lands together with Il-gabrī and Nabû-nā, the sons of Šūzubu, and their anonymous colleagues. The same brothers appear again in imt 32 (?-V-? Dar ii) as holders of a bow land which was leased out for date cultivation. The communal nature of landholding is apparent again, as the brothers held this date plantation with two other named colleagues from the haṭru of the gardu. The appellation gardu is somewhat elusive in Babylonia, but its semantic range corresponds to its Elamite counterpart kurtaš, which is a designation for state-dependent workers in the Persepolis archives.¹⁰³⁷

The rest of the land properties (co-)held by Judeans cannot be linked to any particular haṭru or estate. In two documents related to the same litigation over land properties in Gammalē and Išqallūnu (BE 10 118, 13-I-7 Dar ii; and EE 111, date broken), seven Judeans and their anonymous brothers are attested as co-holders of a bow land. The landholders belonged to two families, being sons of Ṭūb-Yāma and Zabīnâ. Although the Judeans were holders of a bow land, they also owned land and houses that could be sold. They accuse Rīmūt-Ninurta of taking their lands illegally, whereas Rīmūt-Ninurta claims that he has bought them for 30 minas of silver from the sons of Ṭūb-Yāma (BE 10 118) and for 10 minas of silver from the sons of Zabīnâ (EE 111). These are very large amounts of silver, and they emphasise the fact that people in the land-for-service sector could own and sell valuable real estate.

In addition to the documents pertaining to the bow and horse lands, four texts relate to bīt rittis and one text to a date garden (co-)held by Judeans. The earliest attestation of a Judean landholder and the second earliest text in the whole Murašû archive is BE 9 3 (26-II-13 Art i), in which Enlil-hātin/Murašû leases the bīt ritti land of Arad-Gula and Hanan-Yāma to five people for sharecropping. As customary, any institutional affiliation of the bīt ritti is not given, but as pointed out above, landholdings designed like this may also have belonged to a temple or the crown. Another bīt ritti, held by Haggâ/PN and Mattan-Yāma/PN, is mentioned in passing in EE 24 (?-X-? Art i). The landholders rent two oxen from Enlil-šum-iddin to plough the fields in their bīt ritti. The bīt ritti lands of Yadi-Yāma (BE 9 25, 45) were discussed in Section 5.2.2.

There is only one document that refers to a Judean landholder not explicitly linked to the land-for-service sector or an institutional landholding. Hanan-Yāma/Aplâ had leased his date plantation (zēru zaqpu) in Bīt-Murānu by the Harri-Piqūdu canal to Rīmūt-Ninurta, who paid the imittu rent in 20 shekels of silver instead of dates (EE 34, 4-VII-7 Dar ii). It is interesting that Hanan-Yāma bore the title sēpiru (see Section 5.4) and he had given an Iranian name Bagēšu¹⁰³⁸ to his son. Gukkaˀ,¹⁰³⁹ the slave of Bagēšu, collected the rental payment from the sēpirus of Rīmūt-Ninurta. There is no reason to suppose that Hanan-Yāma was a high-ranking official like Mannukiya; more likely he was one of the petty officials attested in the Murašû archive. His duties perhaps brought him into regular contact with the Persians, which could have encouraged him to give an Iranian name to his son.

5.3.5 Patterns of Judean Landholding

The results of the previous survey of Judean landholders and landholdings conform to the general patterns of the Murašû archive. Judeans are primarily attested as holders of bow lands and bīt rittis, and only one Judean landholder cannot be linked to any institution or institutional landholding. Moreover, the Judean landholdings were regularly at the disposal of the Murašûs as a result of a lease or as a security for a debt. This picture is somewhat skewed, of course, because we can only perceive Judeans from the viewpoint of the Murašû family who ran their business in a specific sector of the Babylonian economy. The majority of Judeans in the Nippur region were hardly ever in contact with the Murašûs, although it may well be that they were all integrated into the land-for-service sector.

There seems to be no reason to doubt that most Judean deportees worked in the land-for-service sector in Babylonia. The picture emerging from the Murašû archive is consistent with that from the environs of Yāhūdu: Judeans were settled in communities and assigned to certain administrative units which were still observable 150 years after the deportations from Judah. The strong Judean presence in Bīt-Gērāya and the haṭru of the sēpirus emphasises this observation, but there are also other villages in which Judeans are regularly attested. Noteworthy examples are Gammalē¹⁰⁴⁰ and Išqallūnu:¹⁰⁴¹ Judeans are present in every document pertaining to the former, and a group of Judeans owned houses in the latter (BE 10 118; EE 111).¹⁰⁴² The landholders in Išqallūnu bore exclusively West Semitic names, and, in addition to Judeans, Philistines obviously lived in this twin town of Ashkelon.¹⁰⁴³ There is no evidence of a haṭru of Judeans, but the administrative logic behind the local communities and the haṭru of the sēpirus was the same. It was practical to retain the basic communal structures which allowed the local officials to deal with the representatives of the community, not directly with each family unit.

The communal aspect of landholding characterises the transactions pertaining to Judean farmers. There is no direct evidence of landholdings being split into tiny fragments by inheritance divisions; rather, judging by their patronymics, the co-holders of land properties were often unrelated. As I argued above, the idea of shrinking landholdings is contradictory to the aims of the land-for-service sector. If land was readily available and the crown strived to increase agricultural output and tax flows, there was every reason to bring new lands under cultivation when the existing fields and gardens could not support their holders anymore.

It must also be emphasised that there was a lot of flexibility in the terminology pertaining to the land-for-service sector. A bow land was not a plot of standard size, designed to support one landholder and his family. Some bow lands could produce huge tax and rental payments, whereas others appear to be very tiny. In the same vein, the frequent references to anonymous co-holders of bow lands attest that larger communities were involved in farming them. There were no fixed representatives of a particular landholding, as the same bow land could be represented by different people on different occasions.

Finally, it must be emphasised that farming communities and groups of co-landholders were hardly homogenous. Some co-landholders of Judeans bore Babylonian names, and Philistine deportees must have composed the bulk of the original population in the village of Išqallūnu. These two phenomena – the survival of communities and their constant interaction with other deportees – have important implications for the discussion of Judean culture and identity in the Nippur countryside. I will return to these questions in Section 5.7 below.

5.6.1 The Framework of the Archive: the Land-for-Service Sector

The text groups discussed above shed light on different aspects of life in the Nippur countryside. The documents pertaining to Yadi-Yāma, Pili-Yāma, and the villagers in Bīt-Gērāya show few affinities with the texts relating to the haṭru of the sēpirus. The former group lacks the keywords typical of the land-for-service sector, such as haṭru, bow land, and šaknu, and it attests to the efforts of villagers and their representatives to make the best of their economic situation in the Babylonian countryside. On the other hand, Judeans attached to haṭrus and Judean officials were evidently living in the framework of the land-for-service sector and under the control of high officials and royal estates. It is not immediately clear if the seeming difference between the two groups is real or if it only results from the composition of the archive; as pointed out above, the Bīt-Gērāya texts predate the bulk of the texts in the archive, especially the cluster of texts pertaining to bow lands in 40 Art i – 7 Dar ii.

However, the structures of the land-for-service sector were not created in the beginning of Darius ii’s reign. Bow lands and haṭru-like structures existed in the environs of Yāhūdu long before the Murašû archive. Given the importance of the land-for-service sector in the Nippur countryside, it is unlikely that the villagers in Bīt-Gērāya – many of them descendants of Judean deportees – were left outside of it. Although bīt ritti is an ambiguous term in this regard, it implies that Yadi-Yāma’s landholdings were not exclusively his private property. At the same time, the case of Bīt-Gērāya reminds us that the landholders in the land-for-service sector were not deprived of their agency and that they could strive to improve their economic situation. This picture is corroborated by other texts as well. BE 10 118 and EE 111 show that owning private lands and holding bow lands were not mutually exclusive, and Ahīqam and Ahīqar did much more than cultivate their landholdings in Yāhūdu and Našar. The texts pertaining to Bīt-Gērāya should be seen in this context.

In general, it has to be kept in mind that the Murašû archive emphasises certain social and economic aspects of life in the Nippur countryside. Because credit granting and agricultural management dominate the contents of the preserved texts, Judeans are usually attested when they needed assistance with farming their lands or fulfilling the state obligations imposed on them. Those who did not require such services had little reason to deal with the Murašû family. Alternatively, the Murašûs met some Judean minor officials when managing lands belonging to the state and royalty. This structural skew may lead to inaccurate conclusions about the economic status of agricultural communities, because their financial difficulties are more likely to be reflected in the archive than their ability to pay taxes and fulfil service obligations. Consequently, other economic activities than farming are obviously underrepresented. A couple of texts shed light on other ways of making a living in the countryside: in one case, a Judean fisherman and his colleagues lease nets from a servant of the Murašûs (pbs 2/1 208),¹⁰⁶⁸ and in another a Judean herd the sheep and goats of Prince Aršam (pbs 2/1 148). In any event, half of the population is absent from the archive: not a single Judean woman is attested.

5.6.2 Taxation and Service Obligations

Given the fact that the Judeans in the Murašû archive were primarily attached to the land-for-service sector of the Babylonian economy, taxation and service obligations had a decisive impact on their life and economic situation. However, only two texts shed light on the taxation of Judean landholders in particular. These documents pertain to the taxation of the bow land held by Aqbi-Yāma, together with his co-landholders in the haṭru of the sēpirus of the troops. Even in this case the payment was indirect, as members of the Murašû family paid taxes on behalf of landholders. In the first year of Darius ii, Enlil-šum-iddin paid the qēmu and bāru taxes (pbs 2/1 27), and three years later, the landholders owed 60 kurru of dates to Rīmūt-Ninurta, who had paid their taxes in silver (pbs 2/1 89). An instructive case is also BE 10 65, in which the Judean šaknu Išrib-Yāma collects the taxes incumbent on a number of bow lands. The payment of 2 minas of silver comprises the whole ilku, the king’s man (ṣāb šarri), flour (qēmu), bāru, and any other presents to the house of the king (mimma nadānātu ša bīt šarri).

The terminology employed in these documents is representative of the Murašû archive as a whole.¹⁰⁶⁹ The usual phrase covering the annual tax obligation is ilku gamrūtu ṣāb šarri qēmu ša šarri bāru u mimma nadānātu ša bīt šarri, meaning ‘the whole ilku tax, the king’s man, the king’s flour, the bāru tax, and any other presents to the house of the king’. In the Murašû archive, this tax obligation is normally paid in silver. The word ilku originally denoted a service obligation towards the state, but in the late fifth century, it had become an umbrella term which could include all other tax payments as well. In fact, it is customarily used alone, having the same general meaning as the entire long phrase.¹⁰⁷⁰Ṣāb šarri, the king’s troops, still designated actual service in the sixth century, but the documents from the Murašû archive refer to it as a type of tax payment.¹⁰⁷¹ The flour tax (qēmu) relates to agricultural produce provided for the king. As grinding flour was considered a menial task, delivering flour to one’s overlord can be seen as a symbolic act. The nature of the bāru tax – an Iranian loanword meaning ‘to carry’ – is not well understood.¹⁰⁷² The litany of taxes paid in silver is completed by the reference to any other deliverables to the king (mimma nadānātu ša bīt šarri), affirming that everything was included in the tax payment. Thus, it appears as if a whole range of obligations was neatly covered with a single payment in silver.

It has to be noted, however, that there was a real link between landholdings and service obligations in the late fifth century as well. This is emphasised by the texts from the second year of Darius ii, which show how the holders of bow and horse lands in the Nippur region had to equip bowmen and horsemen and send them to Uruk.¹⁰⁷³ The service was performed by the landholders themselves. Gadal-Yāma, the co-holder of a horse land, travelled to Uruk with a horse, arms, and other necessary gear of a horseman. This text group is exceptional in the Murašû archive, but the affair was perhaps not exceptional in itself. Ad hoc recruitment of soldiers would have been extremely impractical, especially when it came to horsemen and charioteers. As one cannot ride a horse or chariot – let alone engage in battle – without training, it would have been a waste of resources to equip unskilled farmers with very expensive animals and gear and then send them to perish in their first encounter with the enemy. Horses were not used in Babylonian agriculture, and, unlike in early modern Europe, the average farmer or landholder probably had no experience of riding or handling a horse. It therefore seems likely that Gadal-Yāma and his colleagues had received training and that they belonged to a permanent reserve of the army. Work service in the land-for-service sector was also concrete: two documents pertaining to Judean communities (EE 92, 113) show how a large group of people could be assigned to dig a canal or work for the Murašû family in order to pay back a substantial debt.

The documents from the environs of Yāhūdu corroborate the view that tax payments and concrete service obligations could exist at the same time.¹⁰⁷⁴Sūtu and imittu payments in produce and ilku payments in silver were delivered by proxies to the officials who managed the land-for-service sector, and these payments should be considered taxes. At the same time, landholders hired substitutes to perform work and military service on their behalf. Although actual work or military service is only sporadically attested in the environs of Yāhūdu and in the Murašû archive, the preserved texts show that such levies were imposed and that ilku payments in silver did not cover all service obligations. There are obvious reasons why concrete military and work service is rarely attested in the Murašû archive: the service obligations were not incumbent on the Murašûs, and they only touched upon the Nippurean family if landholders needed credit to fulfil their duties. If a šaknu ordered thirty landholders in his haṭru to travel to Elam, this left no traces in the archive.

It also has to be taken into account that the average bow land in the late fifth century does not appear to have been cultivated by a single farmer and his family but a larger group of co-landholders.¹⁰⁷⁵ The size of bow lands varied significantly, and the tax and service obligations had to vary respectively. In any case, a larger group of landholders was obviously better suited for fulfilling the service obligations, and the single farmer did not need to balance between the agricultural duties and his other obligations. The communal aspect of landholding and the attachment of bow lands to haṭrus and larger estates imply that substitutes could easily be recruited locally.

Indebtedness among landholders and their strained economic situation in relation to the Murašû family are characteristic features of the Murašû archive.¹⁰⁷⁶ They are reflected in the texts pertaining to Judeans as well: Yadi-Yāma and his colleagues had to lease Yadi-Yāma’s pledged landholdings from the Murašûs, and Rahīm-il’s landholdings had come into the disposal of the Nippurean family. The documents pertaining to Ahīqar’s activities show that the same difficulties also touched upon some landholders in the environs of Našar. However, it is impossible to know if this picture applies to landholders in the land-for-service sector in general. We are again dependent on the available sources, which illustrate the situation from the perspective of the credit grantor. If a landholder did not need credit, this left no traces in the archives of the businessmen in the land-for-service sector.

We may conclude that Judean landholders in the land-for-service sector were subject to tax payments in silver and to concrete work and military service. Although tax payments in silver are prevalent in the Murašû archive, the central aim of the whole tax regime was to provide the state with workers and soldiers, not to fill the Persian treasuries with tons of the precious metal.¹⁰⁷⁷ However, taxes paid in silver could be used to hire troops and labour locally. It is therefore likely that many Judeans had to serve the state as workers or soldiers not only in Babylonia but also in other parts of the empire. The burden of these obligations on a single farmer remains unclear;¹⁰⁷⁸ although there are symptoms of indebtedness among Judean landholders, there are reasons to suppose that such cases are overrepresented in the Murašû archive.

5.6.3 Dependency and Freedom

The majority of Judeans in the Murašû archive are farmers, and a small number worked as minor officials in the land-for-service sector. There are no Judean chattel slaves in the archive, and the Judeans called slaves (ardu) of high officials and royalty were obviously officials themselves. Rather than being somebody’s slaves, the Judeans’ freedom was limited by the constraints of the land-for-service sector. Landholdings and the incumbent obligations were an effective means of control: as bow lands were hardly ever sold, according to the available evidence, it is likely that they were principally inalienable.¹⁰⁷⁹ Accordingly, landholders had to organise the farming of their plots one way or the other in order to pay the pertinent taxes and fulfil service obligations. Although landholders could lease out their lands and hire substitutes to perform work or military service, they were eventually tied to the land and to the obligations attached to it. As the substitutes were hired locally, the burden of work and military service rested on the rural population.¹⁰⁸⁰ Moreover, at least the holders of horse and chariot lands had to be able to provide the state with trained soldiers, which implies that some members of the rural population could be designated as farmer-soldiers in reserve.

Unlike in the environs of Yāhūdu, Judeans are not explicitly called šušānus in the Murašû archive, although the term is well attested, especially in the names of haṭrus.¹⁰⁸¹ As discussed in Section 4.2.2, the term refers to dependent people who were attached to the state or landed estates and who could not be sold into chattel slavery. Despite the lack of direct evidence, it is probable that the status of šušānu applied to some part of the Judean population in the environs of Nippur. An important text in this regard is EE 113, in which four Judeans provide Enlil-šum-iddin with forty paid workers and ten šušānus to pay a back a debt. This text seems to imply that there were two sorts of people in rural communities: those who had to be actually hired and those who could be sent to work without salary. In light of the evidence from Yāhūdu, it seems likely that the holders of bow lands predominantly belonged to the category of šušānus. Stolper might be right in suggesting that ‘[t]he frequency of the term šušānu in characterizing ḫaṭrus and their members indicates that this status was typical and perhaps universal among Babylonian feudatories’.¹⁰⁸²

The context of the land-for-service sector proved to be a successful way to control Judean deportees and their descendants for more than 150 years after the deportations to Babylonia. Although some Judeans held large plots of land and they could work as minor officials and engage in business activities, the constraints of landholding effectively limited their freedom. There was no need to enslave the deportees. As it was not possible to sell the plots and get rid of the incumbent obligations, ties to the land effectively attached Judean landholders to the Babylonian countryside.

5.7.1 Seal Use

The seals used by Judeans are an important source of information about the taste and preferences of their users. However, some caution needs to be exercised: the use of a certain seal does not necessarily imply that its imagery reflected its user’s values or beliefs. In any case, Bregstein’s analysis of sealing practices in the Murašû archive highlights some differences in the seal choice between various social and ethnic groups.¹⁰⁸³ As the number of different seals in the Murašû archive is close to 700,¹⁰⁸⁴ these statistical differences cannot be taken as completely incidental. Bregstein’s criteria for identifying Judeans are somewhat different from the ones used in the present study,¹⁰⁸⁵ and the figures which she provides cannot be used as such. Table 2 lists the seal users whom I identify as Judeans.

View Table

Following Bregstein’s typology, the seals used by Judeans can be assigned to four different categories.¹⁰⁸⁶ The two largest ones are contest scenes (6 attestations, 38%)¹⁰⁸⁷ and Western-style rings (5 attestations, 31%).¹⁰⁸⁸ Three seal impressions depict animals (19%),¹⁰⁸⁹ and the impression with a goatfish and crook (no. 491) is to be assigned to the category of composite and human-headed monsters (6%). One unclear ring impression (no. 642) cannot be assigned to any of these categories (6%).

The first remarkable feature of Judean seal usage is the large number of Western-style rings and rings in general. By ‘Western-style rings’, Bregstein refers to motifs which were not traditionally Babylonian but originated in the Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean region. The use of metal rings in general was a novelty in Babylonia, where stone was traditionally used to produce stamp and cylinder seals.¹⁰⁹⁰ Only 10% of the seals in the Murašû archive were Western-style rings, but the number is twofold among the people with a West Semitic name or patronymic (19%) and threefold among Judeans (31%). Rings, regardless of imagery, count for 33% of the seals in the whole corpus, 50% of the seals used by people with a West Semitic name or patronymic, and 44% of the seals used by Judeans.¹⁰⁹¹

Another peculiar aspect is the prominence of contest scenes on the stamp and cylinder seals used by Judeans. The scenes depict heroes who fight against monsters and animals or who hold subjugated creatures in their hands. The heroes can be divided into two categories according to their clothing, which Bregstein defines either as Babylonian or Persian.¹⁰⁹² The contest scenes with a Persian hero constitute 13% of the seals in the whole corpus, 15% of the seals used by people with West Semitic names or patronymics, and 31% of the seals used by Judeans. The scenes with a Babylonian hero count for 10% of the seals in the whole corpus, 10% of the seals used by people with West Semitic names or patronymics, and 6% of the seals used by Judeans.¹⁰⁹³

A scene that is never attested on the seals used by Judeans, and very rarely on the seals of people with West Semitic names or patronymics (3%), is that of worship.¹⁰⁹⁴ Depicting a man – namely, ‘a worshipper’ – standing alone or before divine symbols or creatures, it was one of the standard motifs of Babylonian seal impressions in the sixth century.¹⁰⁹⁵ The scene is attested in 8% of the seal impressions in the Murašû archive. Favoured by scribes and regular witnesses of the documents, it was also used by people with Iranian names.¹⁰⁹⁶

Based on the rarity of worship scenes on the seals used by Judeans and other people with West Semitic names, Bregstein argues that these people deliberately avoided scenes depicting foreign religious rituals.¹⁰⁹⁷ However, when the texts from the environs of Yāhūdu have now become available, her statement needs to be adjusted. Ahīqam’s seal on B9 depicts the Babylonian worship scene, even though Ahīqam’s patronymic Rapā-Yāma and the Yahwistic names of his sons leave little doubt about his Judean origin.¹⁰⁹⁸ Using a seal with the worship scene was evidently not unthinkable for someone dealing regularly with royal officials. Moreover, it has to be emphasised that the seals used by Judeans in the Murašû archive did contain other religious symbolism. The seal of Hanan-Yāma/Udarnaˀ depicts the crescent moon above the bull held by the Babylonian hero (no. 108), and the god Ahura Mazda hovers above the Persian hero on the seal of Išrib-Yāma (no. 37). It is very unlikely that the crescent refers to something or someone else than the moon god, and it would be dangerous to suggest that the Judeans simply equalled Persian Ahura Mazda with Yahweh.

Judeans did not avoid religious imagery on their seals, and the reasons for differing preferences need to be sought in local traditions and social structures. One decisive factor seems to again be the division between the urban upper class and the rest of society. Judeans, like other people with West Semitic names, favoured rings and imagery from the Eastern Mediterranean, both of which were novelties in Babylonia. The worship scene, on the other hand, had a long history in Babylonia and it was traditionally used by scribes.¹⁰⁹⁹ Thus, it is not surprising to find that the scene was very popular among the scribes and frequent witnesses of the Murašû documents: of all people attested in the archive, these men most likely belonged to the Nippurean urban upper class. At the same time, the scribes and regular witnesses used Western-style rings (5%) and rings in general (19%) much less frequently than all seal users in the archive (10% and 33%, respectively).¹¹⁰⁰ This comparison suggests that traditional imagery was favoured by the urban Nippureans, whereas Judeans and other people with West Semitic names were open to international influences and did not share the same traditional values as the urban upper class.¹¹⁰¹

A surprising feature of Judean seal usage is the exceptional frequency of Persian contest scenes. Thirteen per cent of all seal impressions in the archive belong to this category, and the figure is roughly the same among people with Babylonian, Iranian, and West Semitic names.¹¹⁰² However, almost one third of the seals used by Judeans depict this scene.¹¹⁰³ The scene with the Persian hero was not traditionally Babylonian but created during the reign of Darius i.¹¹⁰⁴ The novelty of this imagery may again explain the Judean preference for it.

Judean seal use does not exhibit aniconic or marked religious tendencies. Different religious symbols and motifs were employed, but Judeans often used seal types and imagery that were new in Babylonia. They were open to Eastern and Western novelties, whereas the Babylonian urban upper class preserved older traditions in their choice of seals.

5.7.2 Naming Practices

Because we can only identify Judean families on the basis of Yahwistic names, it is not possible to say what percentage of Judeans used such names in the late fifth century. It becomes clear, however, that in addition to Yahwistic names, Judeans in the Murašû archive bore West Semitic, Akkadian, and Iranian names, including names which refer to other deities than Yahweh. The use of Akkadian and non-Yahwistic West Semitic names is by no means surprising, but the adoption of Iranian names is interesting, as it shows that the Persian rule affected naming practices even in the Babylonian countryside. Table 3 summarises the data on Judean naming practices in the Murašû archive. The reader immediately notices differences in naming practices between Judean fathers and sons. This phenomenon, first observed by E.J. Bickerman,¹¹⁰⁵ will be discussed in a larger context in Section 8.5.

View Table

Two Judeans, Udarnaˀ/Rahīm-il and Bagēšu/Hanan-Yāma, bore Iranian names. The use of Iranian names in these families seems to result from their interaction with Persian officials. The family of Rahīm-il held several plots, including a horse land, in the Nippur region, and their large-scale landholding makes it probable that the family had closer interaction with the Persian administration than the average Judean landholder (Section 5.3.3). Bagēšu’s father Hanan-Yāma (EE 34) was a sēpiru, which suggests that he was also regularly in touch with the Persians. If Iranian names were not simply trendy, they were perhaps seen as a way to get closer to the administrative elite in the land-for-service sector.

There are two noteworthy examples of fluctuation in the spelling of Yahwistic names. The West Semitic name Mattan-Yāma (‘Gift of Yahweh’) is often spelled in the quasi-Akkadian form Mannu-danni-Yāma (‘Who is stronger than Yahweh?’).¹¹⁰⁶ There are two persons whose name is attested in both variants,¹¹⁰⁷ and, in one case, the same scribe employed both orthographies.¹¹⁰⁸ Two different factors may contribute to this phenomenon: on the one hand, cuneiform scribes often had difficulties in spelling non-Akkadian names, and they were perhaps tempted to use a quasi-Akkadian orthography to render the West Semitic name. On the other hand, it is possible that the Judeans themselves played with the ambiguity of their name, using a quasi-Akkadian form in the public sphere.¹¹⁰⁹

There is also ambiguity in the way in which the patronymic of Yadi-Yāma’s father is spelled. Three times the patronymic is spelled Ba-na-ˀ-dingir.meš (BE 9 25, 45; EE 98), reflecting the name Banā-il. However, the patronymic is once spelled Ba-na-ia-a-ma (EE 2), reflecting the Yahwistic name Banā-Yāma. Because two different scribes employed the form Banā-il but there are no parallel cases of representing the Yahwistic element with dingir.meš, it is likely that Yadi-Yāma himself used the forms Banā-il and Banā-Yāma interchangeably when referring to his father.¹¹¹⁰

Finally, full names and hypocoristics formed from Yahwistic names were sometimes used interchangeably. Hanan-Yāma/Udarnaˀ is attested with his full name in three documents (BE 9 69; BE 10 7; pbs 2/1 107), but the hypocoristic Hananī (Ha-an-na-ni-ˀ) is used in BE 10 84. The name Gadal-Yāma appears twice in its hypocoristic form [G]a-da-al-ˀ-a (BE 9 86a) or Ga-da-al-ia (EE 65).

5.7.3 Conclusion

The texts from the Murašû archive refer to numerous ethnic minorities living in the Nippur countryside. Although deportees were originally settled in communities according to their origin, the population of the settlements had become diverse by the late fifth century. A noteworthy example of this phenomenon is Išqallūnu, a village named after the Philistine city of Ashkelon: it was one of the places with significant Judean inhabitation.¹¹¹¹ In addition to other deportees, Judeans were also in interaction with the indigenous Babylonian population and the Persian administrators of the land-for-service sector. The culturally diverse environment in which Judeans lived is reflected in several ways in the texts.

Judean seal users chose their seals on sociocultural grounds: they used seals with diverse religious imagery but favoured Western and Persian seal types, which were not traditional in Babylonia. They rarely used Babylonian seal types, which suggests that the cultural preferences of the Babylonian urban elite were quite different from those of the multi-ethnic rural population. Nevertheless, at least some Judean landholders were in regular contact with cuneiform scribes who belonged to this Babylonian urban elite. The ambiguity of some Judean names may attest to their efforts to support their own naming traditions but, at the same time, use names that sounded familiar to a Babylonian ear.

In addition to West Semitic anthroponyms, Judeans used Babylonian and Persian names. The adoption of Persian – and perhaps also Babylonian names – was related to an effort to get closer to the governing elite of the land-for-service sector. At the same time, the persistence of Yahwistic names in late fifth-century Babylonia implies that some descendants of Judean deportees still supported their own naming traditions.