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i₃，阿卡德语šamnum）与食物、住房和衣服一样满足了人类的基本需求：因为油性物质对保护皮肤是必不可少的，尤其是在干旱的气候下。油和脂肪对人类文化的基本重要性在美索不达米亚文学杰作《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。从美索不达米亚楔形文字的来源来看，涂油作为一种日常做法是众所周知的，从考古学的角度来看，用于油的特殊容器广泛分布。虽然油是在叙利亚-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，但从未在其社会和文化背景下作为一种产品进行过调查。本项目首先评估了异常丰富的现有文本证据，主要来自公元前2500年至公元前1600年之间的行政档案，并讨论了那里证实的各种动物脂肪（乳脂，猪油等）和植物油（芝麻，橄榄，很少有杏仁）。在以前对其术语、生产、流通和使用的具体方面进行研究的基础上，本项目的目标是对从生产到整个消费的连续步骤（“cha<s:1> neopsamatoire”）提供一种创新的连贯描述，这种方法在这些时期尚未系统地采用。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，这是在各种选定的历史情况下调查其社会背景下经济程序的特殊来源材料。该项目的重点是关于石油质量的确切资料，尤其是楔形文字文件中所显示的绝对和相对数量的资料。这种方法为将文本来源的数据整合到考古、考古计量和考古植物学调查中铺平了道路。两位申请人都曾在行政文本及其术语，特别是数量方面工作并发表过文章。该项目可以将德国团队在苏美尔文献（早期青铜器时代）方面的专业知识与法国团队在古巴比伦文献（中期青铜器时代）方面的专业知识结合起来，并整合陶瓷，考古，考古和考古植物学数据的跨学科合作伙伴。在这个项目中，有两种进一步的方法是必不可少的组成部分：对石油容器的考古研究，以及对伊拉克南部陶瓷的脂质残留物分析。数字专业知识由慕尼黑大学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.