The thousands of tablets excavated at Tell Hariri constitute one of the most important sources for the Old Babylonian period. They document not only the history of Mari’s kingdom but also the functioning of the palace. Moreover, many of these texts deal with sesame, oil, and fat and their uses. We focus here on the texts dating to the beginning of Yaḫdun-Lîm’s reign until the end of Zimrī-Lîm’s reign, and not on the texts dated to the Šakkanakku period.
1. The Royal Archives of Mari
Mari[geogr=Mari] was an ancient city located on the western bank of the Euphrates River in northern Mesopotamia (in modern Tell Hariri, southeast of present-day Syria), which was active in the Early Bronze and Middle Bronze ages. For 1,200 years, Mari was a major centre of northern Mesopotamia until Ḫammurāpi of Babylon destroyed it in 1762 BCE (see Charpin/Ziegler 2003 ).
The palace archives of Mari, consisting of more than 17,000 tablets and fragments, are the largest palace archives ever discovered in the Ancient Near East. Most of the tablets found during the excavation campaigns led by André Parrot in Tell Hariri between 1934 and 1939 represent the so-called “royal archives,” dating to the first half of the 18th century BCE. They concern the last three kings of Mari, Yaḫdūn-Līm (ca. 1810-1793 BCE), Samsī-Addu (ca. 1815-1775 BCE), who was the true “great king” of Mari but installed his son Yasmaḫ-Addu (1792-1775 BCE) as ruler, and, above all, Zimrī-Līm (1775-1762 BCE)1See Charpin 2019. Most documents date from the reigns of the last two kings (10% and 80%, respectively).
According to the archaeological data, tablets were found in more than 40 rooms of the royal palace of Mari, ranging in number from a single one to several thousand tablets per room (Arkhipov 2019); see the plan of the palace in Margueron 1986: 136. It seems that the Babylonians sorted out the documents before the city’s destruction to select interesting diplomatic correspondence for political reasons (Charpin 2014). In particular, during this selection process, they used a specific room (room 115) as a repository of thousands of administrative texts and letters (ca. 9,000). However, most of the approximately 2,000 tablets found in a room belonging to the king’s quarters (room 108) are similar in terms of typology and subject. It suggests that the documents found in room 115 were initially stored in room 108. They constitute the archives dealing directly with the management of the palace and the royal chancellery (the “king’s house,” see below).
The tablets cover a wide range of categories (letters, protocols, scribal memoranda, legal texts, rituals, cultic documents, drafts, and school texts…). In particular, the royal archives contain about 4,000 administrative texts and 7,000 letters, mainly addressed to King Zimrī-Līm and from a dozen localities having economic and/or political relations with Mari. The first category, of great diversity, includes records of transactions (goods moving in and out of the palace), accounting summaries, lists registering individuals, memoranda. The second corresponds to the epistolary exchanges between kings, officials, and diplomats.
2. The “King’s Household”
During the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE), kingdom administration and resource management in both southern and northern Mesopotamia were influenced by the concept of the “king’s household,” which included the royal family, servants, and vassals (Charpin 2004). As a patrimonial pattern based on blood ties (inter-dynastic marriages) and tribal ties, this concept reflects the domestic household.2See Lafont 2001, Reculeau 2016
In this respect, the royal archives of Mari actually represent the kings‘ private records. They belong to a palatial organisation, centred on (but not identical to) the king’s household – that is, an architectural and communal complex that included the king’s family, his servants, his administrators, and his movable and immovable properties, as well as manufactured and perishable goods (Durand 2016, 81). The main concern of this organisation (called “palace” for convenience) was twofold: on the one hand, to meet the immediate or short-term needs of the daily life of the palace staff (raw materials, foodstuffs, textiles, manufactured goods…) and thus to constantly procure what was lacking, and on the other hand, to acquire prestigious goods (silver, gold, luxurious garments, delicacies…) for the royal treasury (Sallaberger 2013).
The management of these resources was based on agricultural production and animal husbandry and involved compulsory services. The palace transferred the responsibility of the exploitation of resources, the organisation of transport, and the collection of fees to intermediaries (farm managers, tax collectors, governors, and officials…).
We can distinguish three kinds of resource management frameworks according to the availability of resources (Chambon 2020). Firstly, the exploitation of resources directly under the control of the palace includes the cultivation of the lands of the kingdom of Mari, whose primary resources are barley, emmer wheat, leguminous plants, and sesame, but also the animal husbandry or the exploitation of rivers to catch fish and birds. Secondly, some resources – especially raw materials or luxury products – were not directly available to the palace. The royal administration, therefore, had to organise operations (opportunistic but not commercial in the true sense of the word) to obtain these products, mainly from the northwestern regions. Thirdly, a way of getting resources was through the acquisition by the king of Mari Zimrī-Līm of the settlement of Alaḫtum (alias Alalaḫ, modern Tell Atchana) in the northwest region near Aleppo at the end of his reign (Durand 2002). One of the reasons for this strategy probably stems from the fact that the palace was then too economically dependent on its western neighbours and therefore preferred to have direct access to this region. Thus a representative of the king of Mari was in charge in Alaḫtum of managing the exploitation of the land and organising the transport of agricultural products (mainly barley, oil, honey, wood, etc.) directly sent to Mari.
3. Oil and Animal Fat in Texts
The royal archives of Mari provide interesting information about the use of oil and animal fat in the palace.
The most important groups of tablets concerning oil management were in seven rooms of the palace: S.75, S.79, S.108, S.110, S.115, S.116, and S.134 (Chambon 2008). About 220 administrative texts mentioning oil expenditures are dated from Samsī-Addu’s reign (S.75, S. 108, S.115 and S.116) and about 170 to Zimrī-Līm’s reign. In particular, 107 tablets found in the same loci (S.79) form a homogeneous group dated to the first year of the last ruler. They document various uses of oil for the palace: for anointing, for personal hygiene of the palace staff or the people working in royal fields, for worshiping the gods, or for the lighting of the palace lamps. The study of 11 oil distribution lists gives the monthly quantities allocated to different groups of the “royal harem” (including the queen, the royal princesses, the female dancers and musicians, the female servants…) in a hierarchical order (???).
Several other administrative documents, also dated to Zimrī-Līm’s reign, provide important information about the “chaîne opératoire” of oil in the palace, from the extraction of sesame oil by specialists or the purchase of olive oil from northwestern regions, to the storage in large jars inside the palace and then to the delivery of the oil to perfumers, who were responsible for preparing a fine, aromatic oil, which was highly prized as luxury goods (Joannès 1993).
In addition, the hundreds of texts recording the ingredients for the king’s meals during Zimrī-Līm’s reign often mention sesame or sesame oil, which shows that oil was essential for the preparation of some dishes.
The texts recording sheep fat are much less numerous (a dozen) but mention large quantities (up to 22 talents, ca. 660 kg) used for softening clothes or cleaning weapons.