Economic Complexity in the Ancient Near East. Management of Resources and Taxation (Third – Second Millennium BC)

0537403 - OÚ 2021 RIV CZ eng M - Monography Chapter
Alivernini, Sergio
“Management of Resources and Taxation in an Early Mesopotamian Empire: the Case of the Third Dynasty of Ur”.
Economic Complexity in the Ancient Near East. Management of Resources and Taxation (Third – Second Millennium BC). Prague: Charles University, 2020 - (Mlynářová, J.; Alivernini, S.), s. 69-86. ISBN 978-80-7308-991-7
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA18-01897S
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : Taxation * Management of resources * Southern Mesopotamia * Third Dynasty of Ur * Administrative documentation
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

The development of economic thinking represents a basic component of the formation of a state and its pivotal administrative structures. It is one of the most important tools to express the political authority of its ruler(s). The majority of the documentation in the ancient Near East come from the end of third Millennium, in the so-called Ur III (or Third Dynasty of Ur) period (2112-2004 BC). The administrative activities of the III Dynasty of Ur are documented by a large number of textual records, especially of economic nature, as result of the primary role which bureaucracy played in the administration of every level of the State. We have, more or less, 100000 known texts from this period but probably other hundreds of thousands are kept in the museums of the world or they have to be excavated yet. More than the 95% of the documentation is of administrative nature and records all the aspects linked with the management and the organization of the Empire: productive units (mills, fields, orchards, etc), account of cattle, labour-force and goods, food assignments to workers, letter-orders and so on. The state collected resources from the provinces and the periphery of the state by means of a widespread system of taxation. The paper is aimed at highlighting the different typologies of taxation during the Ur III period, how the state organized the collecting of these taxes, and how the state used the resources obtained through taxation
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0316574