The Nimrud Tablets, 1953

Extract

The fifth season's campaign at Nimrud (Kalḫu) has resulted in a further one hundred Assyrian texts which, with the archaeological evidence to be published later in Iraq, will add to our knowledge of the Assyrian military capital especially during the years preceding the fall of Nineveh. Forty-seven of the tablets were found together in good condition, for the fire which had destroyed the private dwelling built against the inside of the Eastern citadel wall (TW 53 Room 19) had happily baked the clay tablets hard and thus preserved them so that they were immediately legible and could be copied in the field. This group of tablets comprised the records of Šamaš-šar-uṣur, a high-official (SAG) who, besides owning a house, probably that in which the tablets were discovered, and land in Calah, set himself to conduct a lively business, mainly as a money-lender like most of his wealthy contemporaries, for forty years from 666—c. 626 B.C. During this period Šamaš-šar-uṣur acquired six female and two male slaves at an average cost of 50 shekels of silver, the price of such male and female slaves being about the same. One girl, Urkittu-uknu, who a few years earlier had fetched 54 shekels, he was able to buy for the reduced sum of 15 shekels, perhaps because of her advancing age or some disability, for the physical condition of a slave controlled the price and was written into the contracts.