This dossier provides information on sesame cultivation according to the royal archives of Mari, combining administrative texts and letters. The city of Mari[geogr=Mari] was located on the middle Euphrates, where the river is very heavily embedded in highlands, and had, therefore, only a small flood plain.

1. The organisation of field cultivation in the Mari Kingdom during the reign of Zimrī-Lîm

During Zimrī-Lîm’s reign (1775-1762 BCE), the palace owned many crop fields (eqel ekallim, “palace fields”) and supervised their cultivation according to a system of so-called “plough teams” (^gišapin /epinnum; van Koppen 2001: 468–482). These were agricultural units on royal land, led by “ploughmen” (lú engar, lú ^gišapin / ikkarum), actually agrarian entrepreneurs who did not till the land themselves but managed teams of workers. In contrast to the iššakum in Babylonia, who were independent entrepreneurs bound by farming contracts with the palace, they were part of the palatial organisation and had to follow royal protocol (isiktum). This protocol concerning the management of cultivated fields sets the number of workmen required for a plough team and the agricultural area (in ikû, “acres”, ca. 3,600 m²) to be cultivated (ARM 33 188). This normative area assignment per plough team actually depended on each region; the quota of work has been fixed at ca. 70 to 100 ikû in the land around Dūr-Yaḫdun-Lîm[geogr=Dūr-Yaḫdun-Lîm] (ARM 33 226), ca. 112.5 to 166 ikû in the land around Qaṭṭunān[geogr=Qaṭṭunān] (Reculeau 2015: 213; contra van Koppen 2001: 462), and ca. 50 to 80 ikû in the region of Mari (ARM 13 037 and ARM 13 039: see the comments of ARM 23 111). The palace fields were assigned to district governors (šāpiṭum) in provinces, who entrusted the cultivation to the agrarian entrepreneurs at their disposal and received from the palace equipment such as plough oxen with their rations, seed stock, or agricultural tools (Durand 1998: 532).

The main oilseed plant grown in the irrigated fields of the Mari region was sesame, referred to in the texts by še.i₃.giš (Akkadian šamaššammū[glossary=šamaššammū]). Although the management of sesame in the royal archives of Mari is less mentioned than that of barley, some letters from the correspondence between the king and his administrators, as well as some administrative texts, give information about its cultivation.

2. Sesame cultivation in the kingdom of Mari

The most important production centre of sesame seems to have been in Dēr [geogr=Dēr](modern Abou Kemal) and its environs, about 10 kilometres south of Mari (ARM 21 135, ARM 21 137: see Durand 1983: 128) and the land directly around Mari (ARM 08 097, ARM 21 136, ARM 22 276). A list of sesame oil ration (T.340) dated from the first years of Zimrī-Lîm’s reign indicates that the area assignment per plough team was 20 ikû for sesame cultivation in the region of Mari, and that 4,000 qa of sesame seeds were used for sowing a surface area of 800 ikû with the rate of 5 qa of sesame seeds per ikû (Chambon 2008). It, therefore, represents the work of 40 plough teams. The administrative summary ARM 22 276 mentions a production of 106,200 qa of sesame (ca. 106,200 or 53,100 litres) from an almost similar number of plough teams (34) for the second year of Zimrī-Lîm’s reign, and 86,160 qa of sesame (ca. 86,160 or 43,080 litres) from an unknown number of plough teams for the third year; the average production per plough team could be ca. 3123 qa of sesame (26 gur) for one year. But it is difficult to generalize this result because the harvest depends on good and bad seasons and the area assignment per plough team, which could change yearly (T.340). In any case, these agricultural yields appear to be much lower than those attested in Babylonia (see A.1.1.17).

The task force performing land cultivation included palatial dependents depicted as “those to go to the field” (âlik eqlim) or simply as “menials” (kinattū; Durand 2019: 111). The sesame oil rations for these palatial dependents were intended to be 1/10^th of the total amount of produced sesame expected (T.340: see Chambon 2008). This ratio of 1/10^th also seems to have been set for oil rations obtained from the sesame delivered to the palace and distributed to the palace staff (ARM 22 276).

Sesame was also cultivated upstream (ARM 26/1 265) and in the kingdom’s northern region. In a letter (ARM 27 003), Ilūšu-naṣir[individual=Ilūšu-naṣir], governor of Qaṭṭunān[geogr=Qaṭṭunān] on the Ḫabur river, informs the king of Mari that the plough teams under his responsibility will sow sesame in traditionally cultivated land (šerʾum fields), belonging to an irrigation district, as well as in disseminated land (siphum fields).

All these areas mentioned for sesame cultivation involve palace fields directly managed by the royal administration. But members of the royal family, such as the queen mother or the crown prince, also owned lands in the region of Mari as part of their “household” (bītum), where sesame was cultivated and could be brought to the palace for festive occasions (ARM 22 276). Also, “commoners” (muškēnum) had the right to cultivate fields alongside the land reserve of the palace. It is still unclear whether the commoners held these lands as individuals in their own right or as members of a community to which the king had granted a right to use the land (Durand 1998: 522-523). But in any case, in exchange for this right, they had to pay the king a grain tax collected on the harvest and this tax could be produced in sesame (see A.1.1.18). A list of arrears concerning this tax (ARM 21 138) records localities where the sesame (as well as barley) was cultivated in the region of Mari: Ḫutnum, Nu’abum, Mišlan, Zurmahhum (within 15 km upstream of Mari) and Armatum, Suqāqum, Uraḫ, Šakka and Hiddān (within 15 km downstream of Mari); for the location of these places, see Reculeau 2018.