Managing the harvest: The administration of agricultural production in Kassite Babylonia

拟议的项目旨在通过分析宗教和政治首都尼普尔以及一个尚未确定的城镇（该城镇一定是一个主要的行政中心）的已出版和未出版的楔形文字泥板，研究公元前世纪后半叶至公元前13世纪末巴比伦尼亚的集中收获管理。尽管这一主题对于重建古代近东经济和社会历史具有中心地位，但在漫长的卡西特或中巴比伦时代（约1500年），管理谷物和其他农产品的机制仍然存在。公元前1475-1155年）以前在古代近东研究中基本上被忽视，因此这一研究领域的潜力还远远没有被耗尽。目前的项目旨在解决这一不足，并旨在研究这些机制，以了解在Kassite时期，中央政府如何对农业生产行使其利益和控制。通过这种方式，可以填补对公元前2000年后半期巴比伦经济史的评估和理解的实质性空白，从而使文献充分记载的Kassite时期完全融入目前对古代近东经济和管理的研究。

The proposed project aims at examining centralized harvest management in Babylonia between the second half of the 14th century and the end of the 13th century BC through an analysis of published and unpublished cuneiform tablets from the religious and political capital Nippur, as well as from a still unidentified town, which must have been a major administrative centre. In spite of the centrality of this subject for the reconstruction of ancient Near Eastern economic and social history, the mechanisms of managing cereals and other agricultural products during the long Kassite or Middle Babylonian era (ca. 1475-1155 BC) have previously been largely neglected in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, so that the potential of this research area remains far from being exhausted. The current project seeks to address this deficit and aims at studying these very mechanisms in order to understand how during the Kassite period the central administration exercised its interest in and control over agricultural production. In this way, substantial lacunae in the assessment and understanding of Babylonian economic history in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC can be filled, thus allowing the well-documented Kassite period to be integrated fully into current research on economy and administration of the ancient Near East.