Administration and Society in Kassite Babylonia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3963224 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J A Brinkman, Leonhard Sassmannshausen |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 124 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 283 |
| Publication date | 2004-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/4132216 |
| OpenAlex | W2323948211 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Leonhard Sassmannshausen's book, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, discusses political, social, and economic institutions of Babylonia under the Kassite dynasty. It also publishes for the first time several hundred economic texts from the period. This ambitious combination of new documentation and detailed evaluation of data provides a reference work that will be consulted with profit by scholars. Part I of the volume (pp. 1-181), entitled Social Groups and Institutions in Babylonia during the Kassite Period, has three principal divisions: (a) offices and occupations, (b) ethnic groups, and (c) institutions and buildings. It assembles a useful compendium of textual data on these topics, including occasional references to unpublished material. The section dealing with offices and occupations (pp. 7-129) is the longest in the book. It discusses governmental officials, including the monarchy (the king, royal family, courtiers), provincial administrators, the judiciary, and town and village supervisors. It covers a variety of occupations including temple personnel, the military, agricultural and pastoral workers, craftsmen, merchants, the learned professions (e.g., scribes, physicians), and slaves. Sassmannshausen describes at length the contexts in which each of these types of officials, professionals, and workers is found, their attested activities, and their relative status in the ration networks documented by the Nippur archives. He adds historical perspective with observations on continuity and discontinuity with comparable Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian occupations. Not surprisingly, when one collects and discusses a diverse assortment of textual references arranged separately by office or function, the view tends to be fragmented and static. Though each specialty may be illumined in turn, there is little sense of how the complex political and economic system worked as a dynamic whole. Also, because the discussion sections are philologically oriented and focused for the most part on explicit attestation of the titles involved (s'arru, s'andabakku, etc.), significant connections may be missed: for example, the king (sarru), in the context of water ordeals, is given the title sakkanakku; but such occurrences are discussed only under sakkanakku in the section on provincial administration, with no cross-reference provided under the main entry for king. One may also question the advisability of providing categorical translations for official titles such as Kanzler
Administration (probate law) · Ancient history · Political science · Ancient Near East History · Botanical Research and Chemistry · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |