i3/šamnum: Vegetable oils and animal fats in early urban societies of Syro-Mesopotamia – production, distribution and usage

油和脂肪（苏美尔语，Akkadian šamnum）与食物，住房和衣服一样满足人类的基本需求：因为油脂物质是保护皮肤不可或缺的，特别是在干旱的气候中。油脂对人类文化的基本重要性在美索不达米亚文学的杰作《吉尔伽美什史诗》中得到了最突出的反映：在吃了面包和喝了啤酒之后，野人恩奇杜在给自己涂了油之后变成了一个人。涂油作为一种日常做法是众所周知的美索不达米亚楔形文字来源，考古学上，用于石油的特殊容器分布广泛。虽然石油是叙利亚-美索不达米亚最常见的加工产品之一，如啤酒，面包或葡萄酒，但从未将其作为社会和文化背景下的产品进行过研究。这个项目首先评估了非常丰富的文本证据，主要来自行政档案，c。2500和1600 BCE，并讨论了各种动物脂肪（乳脂，猪油等）。和植物油（芝麻，橄榄，很少杏仁）证明有。该项目的目标是在以往关于其术语、生产、流通和使用的具体方面的研究的基础上，对从生产到消费的整个连续步骤（“chauberne opératoire”）进行创新性的连贯描述，这是一种在这些时期尚未系统采用的方法。特别是，城市中心的石油管理反映在早期叙利亚-美索不达米亚的大量行政记录中，这是一个特殊的原始材料，可以在各种选定的历史情况下调查其社会背景下的经济程序。该项目的重点是关于石油质量的准确信息，尤其是楔形文字文件中所示的绝对和相对数量。这种方法为将文本来源的数据整合到考古、考古测量和考古植物学调查中铺平了道路。两位申请人都曾研究并发表过行政文本、术语，尤其是定量方面的文章。该项目允许联合收割机结合德国团队的苏美尔文献（早期青铜时代）和法国团队的古巴比伦文献（中期青铜时代）的专业知识，并整合了陶瓷，考古，考古动物学和考古植物学数据的跨学科合作伙伴。另外两种方法是嵌入在这个项目的基本组成部分：石油容器的考古研究，从伊拉克南部的陶瓷的脂质残留物分析。数字专业知识由LMU慕尼黑的IT集团提供。

Oils and fats (Sumerian i₃, Akkadian šamnum) fulfil basic human needs at the same level as food, housing, and clothes: since greasy substances are indispensable to protect the skin especially in an arid climate. The basic importance of oil and fat for a human culture is reflected most prominently in the masterpiece of Mesopotamian literature, the epic of Gilgamesh: after eating bread and drinking beer, the wild man Enkidu became a human man after having anointed himself. Anointing as a daily practice is well-known from Mesopotamian cuneiform sources, and archaeologically, the special vessels used for oil are widely distributed. Although oil is one of the most common processed products in Syro-Mesopotamia, such as beer, bread or wine, it has never been investigated as a product in its social and cultural context. This project evaluates first the exceptionally rich available textual evidence mostly from administrative archives, between c. 2500 and 1600 BCE, and discusses all kinds of animal fats (milkfat, lard, etc.) and vegetable oils (sesame, olive, rarely almonds) attested there. Building on previous studies on specific aspects of their terminology, production, circulation and use, this project’s goal is to provide an innovative coherent description of the successive steps (“chaîne opératoire”) from production to consumption as a whole, an approach which has not been systematically adopted for these periods. In particular, the management of oil in the urban centers is reflected in the enormous administrative record from early Syro-Mesopotamia, an exceptional source material to investigate economical procedures in their societal context at various selected historical situations. The project focuses on the precise information on the qualities of oil and, above all, on absolute and relative quantities indicated in the cuneiform documentation. This approach paves the way for an integration of the data from textual sources into archaeological, archaeometric, and archaeobotanic investigations. Both applicants have worked and published on administrative texts, their terminology, and especially quantitative aspects. This project allows to combine the expertise in Sumerian documents (Early Bronze Age) of the German team with that in Old Babylonian (Middle Bronze Age) of the French team, and it integrates interdisciplinary cooperation partners for ceramic, archaeometric, archaeozoological and archaebotanic data. Two further approaches are embedded in this project as essential components: an archaeological study of oil-vessles, and a lipid residue analysis of ceramics from Southern Iraq. The digital expertise is provided by the IT Gruppe of LMU Munich.