1
Introduction
This book is about imprisonment at the dawn of history from Late Uruk until the first fall of Babylon (ca. 3200–1600 BC).1 The beginning of history, in its strict sense, is typically related to the invention of writing.2 The two earliest examples of writing in the history of the world are the Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the Proto-cuneiform of ancient Mesopotamia. Although formerly Assyriologists held that writing was invented in Mesopotamia and spread to Egypt and China, this theory has been displaced. Now, it is generally viewed that writing was invented independently four times in the history of the world in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mayan Mesoamerica.3
From the outset, writing in Mesopotamia was very basic and administrative, but two significant changes occurred in the third millennium. The earliest texts did not include the signs in their proper linguistic position, and the texts were limited by the lack of grammatical elements.4 With the addition of syntax and grammar in the early to mid-third millennium, writing became adaptable to produce numerous text types and genres. Still, most of the writing of the third millennium was tied to officialdom. But that was soon to change. Niek Veldhuis writes of the second millennium, “In this period, writing lost its almost exclusive link to officialdom, resulting in a broad array of changes in the form, function, and social location of writing.”5 By the end of the Old Babylonian Period, cuneiform writing was quite advanced with literature, law collections, royal inscriptions, legal texts, and administrative documents all being well-attested.6
This rich textual record attests to the social and economic structures of the early second millennium, which, although not static, had very “deep roots” in the third millennium.7 After the fall of Babylon, the written record and our knowledge about prisons lessens until the first millennium.
Limiting the period of investigation to the early phase of Mesopotamia is inspired by Nicholas Postgate, who wrote on social and economic structures in his book, Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. Postgate chose this period and confined his investigation to Southern Mesopotamia because of its rich documentation and how the early to mid-second millennium practices were deeply embedded in third millennium.8 Although this work is primarily focused on southern Mesopotamia until the first fall of Babylon, many of the changes of the Old Babylonian period are best understood in relation to the Mari record, which was a town in modern day Syria and positioned on the Euphrates River.9 As such, this material will be drawn upon at numerous points. Finally, evidence from later periods will be mentioned where relevant in order to offer illuminating examples from ancient Mesopotamia and to highlight some changes in practice that occurred.10
The nature of the evidence of imprisonment from early Mesopotamia is both rich and rather limited for this period. The richness of the data can be seen in the written documentation that touches on the practice. Imprisonment is attested in numerous text types from literary to administrative.
The written documentation, however, is limited by accidents of discovery and the general unevenness of the record. For example, as will be discussed, the documentation of imprisonment for the Ur III period is largely administrative, while the material for the Old Babylonian period relates less to administrations and some of it is also literary in nature. Beyond the written record, to date a clear physical prison has not been found for early Mesopotamia (Figure 1). This may never change, since the evidence points to imprisonment occurring in multifunctional spaces that were employed primarily for different purposes, such as temples, households, and roadhouses. So, while much can be gleaned about the physical context surrounding imprisonment through the written documentation, the archaeological record is rather limited in relation to imprisonment.
Figure 1. Map of Ancient Mesopotamia. Courtesy of Jarett Hall.
As with all Assyriological research, the findings of this work must be taken to be ongoing in nature, since new things are being discovered, and numerous texts already in museums await publication. It may be safely assumed that at least some of these relate to imprisonment.11 And yet, the significant body of evidence assembled here demonstrates that such a work as this is long overdue.
The presentation of this evidence follows standard Assyriological conventions. Akkadian is transliterated in italics. Sumerian is transliterated in normal script. Uncertain readings are indicated by all caps. Full brackets ([…]) indicate a full break in the text, while partial brackets (˹…˺) indicate a partial break. Erasures are marked by the degree symbol (°). A superscript exclamation point (!) indicates that the reading has been corrected, while a question mark (?) denotes uncertainty.
I have chosen to include transliterations for most of the quoted texts, so those with Assyriological training can easily access the original language behind the translation, while those outside of the Assyriological community may want to skip the transliterations. When a text is transliterated in the footnote, the line numbers are indicated but not written out. Each text is presented with tablet sides indicated and line divisions denoted by a (/). Changes in the side of the tablet are denoted by (//) and the side (i.e. // Reverse:).
What We Know and What We Don’t
Although there is a lot of evidence relating to prisons in ancient Mesopotamia, there is much we don’t know. While limitations will surely remain, the subject of imprisonment deserves fuller treatment.
In this section, I discuss secondary literature pertaining to imprisonment in ancient Mesopotamia. This section consists of two main parts followed by a summary of the state of research. Although I am restricting this work to the period leading up to the first fall of Babylon, it is useful to explain what has been written about the later periods and how scholars have drawn upon the ideas of the earlier texts to discuss imprisonment in the later periods.
Although prisons have been discussed in Assyriological research for some time, the study of imprisonment in Mesopotamia was significantly advanced in the 1990s by Piotr Steinkeller and Miguel Civil. Steinkeller’s article, “The Reforms of UruKAgina and an Early Sumerian Term for ‘Prison,’” considers UruKAgina’s claim that he released various people from “prison” (e2-eš2).12 Steinkeller compiles a substantial amount of evidence relating to prisons, particularly in the Old Akkadian and Ur III periods. In his article, Steinkeller seeks to draw implications about the humaneness of “Sumerian social and legal institutions”13 and in the process provides seminal lexical work on the early terminology related to prisons. While, as will be seen in this work, I am not convinced of the humaneness of imprisonment, at least as it is often employed, Steinkeller’s research on the topic of prisons and indeed the third millennium remains indispensable.
Civil studied another important Sumerian term related to prisons (ennuĝ), discussing a semantic range for this important term for the Ur III period.14 When an imprisonment context is suggested by the texts in Assyriological research, attempts are made at understanding functionality and context. This is often done by considering whether or not imprisonment was used as a means of punishment and by discussing the length of time someone spent in detention. For example, even though the terminology for imprisonment is not present in the two texts he discusses, Claus Wilcke points to two fragmentary texts from Nippur that read like prison rosters, since these include offenses such as theft, flight, arson, murder, and plundering a house.15 Wilcke contextualizes his discussion of these fragmentary texts with the following statement: “The consequences for the offenders are in no instance mentioned. One may assume that, as Ur III texts suggest, the duration of the stay in prison was limited to a certain time and that there one had to compensate the offence with labour.”16 This is not the only discussion in which the Mesopotamian evidence related to prisons is partially assessed by the recorded lengths of time people spent in prison.17 The lengths of stays in prison during early Mesopotamia is reconsidered below, since this has been one of the key points of inquiry.
Another key point of inquiry is the question of punishment, since punishment is linked so closely to imprisonment in the modern Western world. For example, when discussing the Ur III period, Bertrand Lafont and Raymond Westbrook write:
Imprisonment is mentioned but not specifically as punishment. It applied to debtors and criminals pending payment of penalties. If Wilcke’s interpretation of LU 3 [Laws of Ur-Namma] is correct, a person guilty of false imprisonment is imprisoned and pays a fine of fifteen shekels. If the talionic principle is involved, the imprisonment is best understood as imposed pending payment.18
Elsewhere, Westbrook summarizes his understanding of prisons in the ancient Near East as follows: “Prison was used as an interim measure to hold persons until their punishment was decided or until they paid a penalty or debt owing.”19 By so doing, Lafont and Westbrook view ancient Mesopotamian imprisonment as coercive for payment rather than a form of punishment. This seems to be a rather accurate description and reflects the consensus in the secondary literature that mention prisons in ancient Mesopotamia.
Earlier studies had already recognized the problems with freely applying the term prison to the ancient Mesopotamian example. Johannes Renger, for example, argues that modern notions of prisons are not applicable to the Old Babylonian evidence and deliberately avoids the term prison, while employing imprisonment throughout to denote the type of confinement used during the period.20 Much like the conclusions of Westbrook, Renger argues that imprisonment during the Old Babylonian period was coercive for payment rather than a form of punishment.21
Scholarship on prison contexts in Old Babylonian Mari came to similar conclusions. Marie-France Scouflaire argues that various forms of coerced detainment and restraint were employed during the period, but prisons, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist. Rather than institutions of punitive confinement and rehabilitation, Scouflaire argues that workhouses existed and that prisons were used prior to guilt being determined. Prisons were also used after trial but only until acts of punishment were carried out, such as the payment of a fine or the death penalty.22 In sum, within the field of Assyriology, prisons in ancient Mesopotamia are not viewed as utilized for punishment.
Outside of the field of Assyriology, little attention has been devoted to the subject of imprisonment in ancient Mesopotamia. This is understandable, since much of the Mesopotamian evidence has not been available to non-specialists. The material more widely known from Mesopotamia, however, has been handled largely through the lenses of biblical data rather than an extensive treatment of the subject in its own right. The Old Babylonian bīt asīrī is one of the complexes that has been related to prisons and is referenced twice in The Oxford History of the Prison.23
Since the publication of that volume, Andrea Seri has produced a significant monograph on the bīt asīrī. While the bīt asīrī is commonly translated “the house of prisoners” or “house of prisoners of war,”24 Seri argues that it was not a prison but functioned more like an administrative group during the reign of Rīm-Anum of Uruk, who rebelled against Babylon around 1742 bc during the reign of Samsu-iluna.25
Annunziata Rositani, however, argues that the bīt asīrī was more than an administrative unit. She suggests that it was a physical place managed by the “state” where the prisoners of war were held prior to and in between work assignments.26 Rositani writes, “All the occurrences analyzed seem to confirm that the asīrū were foreigners, not ordinary prisoners, that they were in some way under—and directly dependent on—that palace administration, given to the king as presents and employed in government activities.”27 According to this view, the “house of the prisoners (of war)” consisted of human resources that were detained and moved about as controlled labor for the crown. Either way, the bīt asīrī is not considered a place of punishment, as it functions more as an institutional body where human resources (particularly slaves and prisoners of war) were detained, worked, and allocated.
While the origin and primary functions of imprisonment seem to relate to coercing and controlling labor, as well as holding in relation to judicial process and payments, imprisonment took on ritual significance as well. Tikva Frymer-Kensky uses the Old Babylonian “Hymn to Nungal” to illuminate the River Ordeal and the role of the prison in Mesopotamia.28 Frymer-Kensky works through the text with commentary interspersed throughout. She highlights the ways in which the text claims that the prison and Nungal set free the righteous but detained the wicked. The prison held offenders prior to trial and subjected them to the River Ordeal. Perhaps the most surprising part of the text, however, is that the convicted must return to the prison. The offender is released only after the prison had purified her/him. Frymer-Kensky writes, “This time the man has not come to await trial, for he has already been snatched from the river. He is detained here in confinement as a prison sentence after his trial has been concluded.”29 According to Frymer-Kensky, this indicates that, at least from the vantage point of this text, detainment could be used as a place of holding until judgment and a place of punishment after conviction.30 It should be noted again that this literary text is very difficult to reconcile with the evidence of archives, which suggests that imprisonment was used for temporary detainment as part of the judicial process, to force job performance, and in relation to debts or fines. As noted by Hans Neumann and Susanne Paulus, imprisonment was primarily used for remand, forcing debt retirement, and fulfilling job performance. Although they remain open to the possibility that some instances may have been punitive, this was not the case normally.31
In general, similar discussions can be found in research considering imprisonment after the first fall of Babylon as well. Again, attention is given to why prisoners were held and duration. Further, as the ritual significance of imprisonment becomes known better in the later periods, the Old Babylonian “Hymn to Nungal” is often referenced to understand some of the intersection between imprisonment and purification.
It should be noted that like the earlier period, people were detained for a variety of reasons. When dealing with the Middle Babylonian period, Jonathan Tenney observes that runaway workers were sometimes captured and placed in prison or in fetters alongside people who were being detained because of “crimes,” such as striking a mother or elder brother and unsanctioned uses of temple personnel. People could act as guarantors to secure the release of runaways. Beyond this, little information is known about imprisonment during the period.32
Recently, Yuval Levavi published four Middle Babylonian texts dealing with the prison. Levavi writes, “The modern concept of prison as a place of rehabilitation for criminals was foreign to the ancient near east (van der Toorn 1992: 468), and the different Mesopotamian law codes only mention detention as collateral, and not as punishment (Versteeg 2000: 125–27).”33 Levavi helpfully discusses prisoner release, as well as the contexts and functions of imprisonment. Contra Levavi it does seem that the concept of rehabilitation does exist in literature and ritualistic texts. Perhaps, it would have been better to say that the concept is not attached to the actual practice in any visible way. Still the distinctions Levavi draws are important and accurate on the whole.
When considering the late period, the questions of punishment and duration are used to assess the well-attested practice of imprisonment. For the Neo-Babylonian period, Joachim Oelsner, Bruce Wells, and Cornelia Wunsch devote a paragraph to the topic of imprisonment, referencing “ample evidence that prisons were in use.”34 The authors note that theft, fraud, and likely other offenses resulted in imprisonment. Cities, temples, and even individuals had prisons. The evidence also includes escape attempts and prosecution. They conclude: “It is not clear if prisons were used primarily for punishment, or if suspects and criminals were detained under guard only while the authorities awaited the payment of a fine or the conclusion of an on-going investigation (TCL 13 219).”35 While Oelsner, Wells, and Wunsch leave open the possibility that prisons were used for punishment, Mariano San Nicolò, writing over fifty years prior, argues that the instances in which people were held under guard are best explained as those awaiting a judicial decision or because of a debt that needed to be paid.36
Other lines of inquiry must also be made since the evidence points to ritualistic imprisonment. Claus Ambos, although noting that the prison goddess Nungal does not play a role in the later ritual and the tradition of the hymn ends after the Old Babylonian period, argues a similar idea of transformation can be found in the ritual of the king during the month of Tašritu in which the king lodged the night in a reed hut that symbolized a prison.37 On the next day, the king came out of the hut as a new person whose offense had been cleared. This purifying concept of the prison represents an ideological motive behind the use of prisons that extends beyond mere punishment to include the rehabilitation of the offender with the goal of assimilation back into society. With the royal ritual, the king is able to resume his former duties after ritualistic incarceration. Making reference to San Nicolò,38 Ambos views prisons as holding places until punishment such as a fine or physical punishment was meted out.39
If imprisonment is supposed to transform, it leads to the question if it ever really worked. Kristin Kleber and Eckart Frahm publish a text dealing with a failed escape attempt from prison during the Neo-Babylonian period. They situate their study in the broader context of other evidence relating to prisons in ancient Mesopotamia. In particular, the authors offer a prosopography of prison wardens in the Eanna archive, and they compare a text that deals with an escape attempt and the consequences to the ideal of character reform through imprisonment found in the “Hymn to Nungal,” the Sumerian hymn cited below that deals with the prison and the prison goddess Nungal.40 In the “Hymn to Nungal,” the prison gives birth to the prisoner; refines the character like silver; and preserves life by delivering the offender from the death penalty.41 In Kleber and Frahm’s text, by contrast, an incarcerated thief fails to conform and commits murder in order to escape. Kleber and Frahm appear to lean toward being somewhat open to the possibility that some of the instances of detention were more than holding, citing texts which refer to people being held for longer periods of time and those instances which may indicate that the detainee was held as punishment.42 Even if this were the case, instances of imprisonment for punishment would at the very least be the exception and not the rule. Rather, the prison, when relating to punishment, was a mechanism to hold someone in relation to punishment not for punishment.
In summary, it is recognized that people were held under guard in ancient Mesopotamia, but the notion that people were held for the purpose of punishment has been generally rejected or at least treated as an exception to the more common purposes of such confinement. These assessments largely revolve around two key questions:
1.Why were people held under guard?
2.How long were people held under guard?
As seen above in the survey of scholarship, the purpose of detainment is the most frequently referenced question in the Assyriological discussion about imprisonment in relation to the broader theoretical conversation about prisons and jails. The related question of length of time, which features prominently in the systems found in the US, is also referenced in Assyriological discussions. In the US, jails are often local institutions used for holding and punishment. But sentences in jails do not typically exceed one year.
Previously, I wrote on prisons in early Mesopotamia and argued that prisons were multifunctional and occurred in private and administrative contexts.43 Beyond this, I also demonstrated that people were held in prisons for longer periods of time than previously documented. However, I viewed this spike in lengths of time as potentially explained by unique political circumstances rather than reflective of normal practice. I sought to assess the Mesopotamian prison in relation to purpose, context, and duration, rather than strictly in relation to the question of punishment. By so doing, I sought to understand the multifunctional imprisonment of early Mesopotamia on its own terms while also asking questions of broader historical concern. That article in many ways laid the foundation for this more expansive work. Nevertheless, this book moves beyond the jail/prison distinction to understand the origin of imprisonment/detention in relation to gaining access to and controlling labor.
Methodology and the Hymn to the Prison Goddess Nungal
When seeking to understand imprisonment in early Mesopotamia, one must determine how the documentation relates to historical reality. Since there is an extant hymn to a prison goddess that introduces numerous key concepts and offers a dramatic picture of life on the inside together with a goal of imprisonment, I will use the hymn as a launching point from antiquity for this discussion of imprisonment. But before doing so, it is important to introduce the text briefly and articulate how the text is being used in this study.
The literary text, the “Hymn to Nungal,” from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1900–1600 BC) describes the prison and the work of Nungal, the daughter of Ereškigal and a goddess of the Netherworld, who was the lady warden of the prison (Figure 2).44 The “Hymn to Nungal” belonged to the so-called Decad, which was a group of ten literary texts that were frequently copied as part of scribal training during the Old Babylonian period.45 With the hymn’s claims of compassion in lieu of the death penalty and the refinement of character through ritual lament, this text provides an entry point from antiquity to ask historical questions about the nature, functions, and goals of imprisonment in ancient Mesopotamia.
Figure 2. Obverse of a tablet of the “Hymn to Nungal,” YBC 4667. Courtesy of the Yale Babylonian Collection. Photography by Klaus Wagensonner.
Mario Liverani discusses four main approaches to literary texts employed in historical writing. First, early literature can be demythologized in search of the actual events lying underneath the stories. When the various elements which are deemed ahistorical are removed from the narrative, a “kernel of history” is left.46 Second, literature may be treated as historical fiction, which, simply put, is the addition of historical events to a fictitious story.47 Third, the literature can be ignored completely. This approach is sometimes employed in studies which focus on documents of practice but has been criticized for not considering all of the available evidence. Finally, literature can be viewed as representative of the thoughts and political contexts at the time of composition rather than informative of the events or periods described.48
In this study, literary texts, such as the “Hymn to Nungal,” are compared to other documentation that may be more securely connected to historical practice. As such the ideas introduced in literary texts will be assessed against administrative documents, legal texts, “law collections,”49 and other text types. While literary texts do not always tell us what happened, they provide a window into some of the conceptual world and ideology that came to be attached to imprisonment. In general, it appears that the literary text to the prison goddess has explanatory power for developments in later rituals that deal with the prison, and how it points to some reliable aspects of imprisonment. However, these aspects have to be tested against the evidence found in the other documentary record.
Disentangling ideology attached to imprisonment from the everyday practice is not a problem with antiquity alone. As seen with modern Western examples of imprisonment, the historical inquiry into prisons is not just about what happens, it also involves the concepts and ideology attached to the practice, which in turn flows from and at times contributes to the context in which actual events occur. So, with these methodological considerations, which show both the relevance and limitations of literary texts, I now include a translation of the hymn itself.
“A Hymn to the Prison Goddess Nungal”50
1–11 House, furious storm of heaven and earth, battering its enemies; prison, jail of the gods, august neck-stock of heaven and earth! Its interior is evening light, dusk spreading wide; its awesomeness is frightening. Raging sea which mounts high, no one knows where its rising waves flow. House, a pitfall waiting for the evil one; it makes the wicked tremble! House, a net whose fine meshes are skillfully woven, which gathers up people as its booty! House, which keeps an eye on the just and on evildoers; no one wicked can escape from its grasp. House, river of the ordeal which leaves the just ones alive, and chooses the evil ones! House, with a great name, nether world, mountain where Utu rises; no one can learn its interior! Big house, prison, house of capital offences, which imposes punishment! House, which chooses the righteous and the wicked; An has made its name great!
12–26 House whose foundations are laden with great awesomeness! Its gate is the yellow evening light, exuding radiance. Its stairs are a great open-mouthed dragon, lying in wait for men. Its door jamb is a great dagger whose two edges……the evil man. Its architrave is a scorpion which quickly dashes from the dust; it overpowers everything. Its projecting pilasters are lions; no one dares to rush into their grasp. Its vault is the rainbow, imbued with terrible awe. Its hinges are an eagle whose claws grasp everything. Its door is a great mountain which does not open for the wicked, but does open for the righteous man, who was not brought in through its power. Its bars are fierce lions locked in stalwart embrace. Its latch is a python, sticking out its tongue and hissing. Its bolt is a horned viper, slithering in a wild place. House, surveying heaven and earth, a net spread out! No evildoer can escape its grasp, as it drags the enemy around.
27–31 Nungal, its lady, the powerful goddess whose aura covers heaven and earth, resides on its great and lofty dais. Having taken a seat in the precinct of the house, she controls the Land from there. She listens to the king in the assembly and clamps down on his enemies; her vigilance never ends.
32–39 Great house! For the enemy it is a trap laying in wait, but giving good advice to the Land; fearsome waves, onrush of a flood that overflows the river banks. When an individual is brought in, he cannot resist its aura. The gods of heaven and earth bow down before its place where judgments are made. Ninegala takes her seat high on its lapis-lazuli dais. She keeps an eye on the judgments and decisions, distinguishing true and false. Her battle-net of fine mesh is indeed cast over the land for her; the evildoer who does not follow her path will not escape her arm.
40–47 When a man of whom his god disapproves (?) arrives at the gate of the great house, which is a furious storm, a flood which covers everybody, he is delivered into the august hands of Nungal, the warden of the prison; this man is held by a painful grip like a wild bull with spread (?) forelegs. He is led to a house of sorrow, his face is covered with a cloth, and he goes around naked. He……the road with his foot, he……in a wide street. His acquaintances do not address him, they keep away from him.
48–54 Even a powerful man cannot open up its door; incantations are ineffective (?). It opens to a city in ruins, whose layout is destroyed. Its inmates, like small birds escaped from the claws of an owl, look to its opening as to the rising of the sun. Brother counts for brother the days of misfortune, but their calculations get utterly confused. A man does not recognize his fellow men; they have become strangers. A man does not return the password of his fellow men, their looks are so changed.
55–61 The interior of the temple gives rise to weeping, laments and cries. Its brick walls crush evil men and give rebirth to just men. Its angry heart causes one to pass the days in weeping and lamentation. When the time arrives, the prison is made up as for a public festival; the gods are present at the place of interrogation, at the river ordeal, to separate the just from the evildoers; a just man is given rebirth. Nungal clamps down on her enemy, so he will not escape her clutches.
62–74 Then the lady is exultant; the powerful goddess, holy Nungal, praises herself: “An has determined a fate for me, the lady; I am the daughter of An. Enlil too has provided me with an eminent fate, for I am his daughter-in-law. The gods have given the divine powers of heaven and earth into my hands. My own mother, Ereškigala, has allotted to me her divine powers. I have set up my august dais in the nether world, the mountain where Utu rises. I am the goddess of the great house, the holy royal residence. I speak with grandeur to Inana, I am her heart’s joy. I assist Nintud at the place of child-delivery (?); I know how to cut the umbilical cord and know the favourable words when determining fates. I am the lady, the true stewardess of Enlil; he has heaped up possessions for me. The storehouse which never becomes empty is mine; . .…. .
75–82 “Mercy and compassion are mine. I frighten no one. I keep an eye upon the black-headed people: they are under my surveillance. I hold the tablet of life in my hand and I register the just ones on it. The evildoers cannot escape my arm; I learn their deeds. All countries look to me as to their divine mother. I temper severe punishments; I am a compassionate mother. I cool down even the angriest heart, sprinkling it with cool water. I calm down the wounded heart; I snatch men from the jaws of destruction.
83–94 “My house is built on compassion; I am a life-giving (?) lady. Its shadow is like that of a cypress tree growing in a pure place. Birtum the very strong, my spouse, resides there with me. Taking a seat on its great and lofty dais, he gives mighty orders. The guardians of my house and the fair-looking protective goddesses….…My chief superintendent, Ig-alim, is the neck-stock of my hands. He has been promoted to take care of my house;….…My messenger does not forget anything: he is the pride of the palace. In the city named after (?) Enlil, I recognize true and false. Ninḫarana brings the news and puts it before me. My chief barber sets up the bed for me in the house imbued with awesomeness. Nezila arranges joyous.
95–105 “When someone has been brought into the palace of the king and this man is accused of a capital offence, my chief prosecutor, Nindimgul, stretches out his arm in accusation (?). He sentences that person to death, but he will not be killed; he snatches the man from the jaws of destruction and brings him into my house of life and keeps him under guard. No one wears clean clothes in my dusty (?) house. My house falls upon the person like a drunken man. He will be listening for snakes and scorpions in the darkness of the house. My house gives birth to a just person, but exterminates a false one. Since there are pity and tears within its brick walls, and it is built with compassion, it soothes the heart of that person, and refreshes his spirits.
106–16 “When it has appeased the heart of his god for him; when it has polished him clean like silver of good quality, when it has made him shine forth through the dust; when it has cleansed him of dirt, like silver of best quality……, he will be entrusted again into the propitious hands of his god. Then may the god of this man praise me appropriately forever! May this man praise me highly; may he proclaim my greatness! The uttering of my praise throughout the Land will be breathtaking! May he provide……butter from the pure cattle-pen, and bring the best of it for me! May he provide fattened sheep from the pure sheepfold, and bring the best of them for me! Then I will never cease to be the friendly guardian of this man. In the palace, I will be his protector; I shall keep watch over him there.”
117–21 Because the lady has revealed her greatness; because she has provided the prison, the jail, her beloved dwelling, with awesome radiance, praise to be Nungal, the powerful goddess, the neck-stock of the Anuna gods, whose……no one knows, foremost one whose divine powers are untouchable!
By way of summary, the text begins by praising Nungal’s house. As the text continues, the prison’s strength and ability to terrify the evildoer but release the righteous is articulated using various common features of houses, such as a door jamb or architrave, together with literary imagery that declares the house’s ability to capture the wicked within its net. After describing the house, the text transitions to discuss Nungal, the lady warden of the prison. Nungal’s work supports the king. Nungal’s house is only a terror to the wicked. She provides justice and distinguishes from that which is true and that which is false. The text shifts focus to consider the prisoner, who is no longer protected by their personal god. The prisoner is taken to the house of sorrow and led around naked. The prison is inescapable, and it is so miserable that the prisoner is changed beyond all recognition.
Inside the temple/prison, there is lament and weeping. This is all prior to the River Ordeal, which will be used to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. Again, the just person is set free, but the evildoer cannot escape.
This leads to the praise Nungal and her house again. She is described as compassionate and snatches people from destruction. After this, the following section likely picks back up with the person found guilty of a “crime” through the River Ordeal. Rather than being killed, the prisoner re-enters Nungal’s terrible house. The suffering the prisoner experiences is in the end good for him. The prison purifies the prisoner and restores a right relationship between the prisoner and his personal deity. The hymn ends with praising Nungal.
This hymn belongs to a broader religious tradition in ancient Mesopotamia that utilizes ritualistic imprisonment as a means to control malevolent forces and purify offenders. Whether the imprisonment of the troublesome rays in Gilgameš (Bilgameš and Ḫuwawa A)51 or putting a figurine of the demon, Lamaštu, in a house of prisoners (bīt ṣibitti) as part of a ritual to prevent her malevolent actions,52 the prison in this literary context, which will be discussed more fully below, relates to the attempt to prevent destruction. This desire is also expressed in the purification of prisoners in the “Hymn to Nungal.” Without purification, malevolent forces could attack the prisoner through the abandoning of their personal god.
This is but the literary and religious reception of imprisonment into the ideology of ancient Mesopotamia and must be distinguished from the various forms of imprisonment attested to in everyday life in ancient Mesopotamia. Unlike literary texts, administrative documents provide more straightforward details about certain aspects of everyday life, such as the health, rations, and movement of prisoners. While these details are likely more reliable, they offer limited insight into imprisonment, since the questions we might want answered by these texts do not always align with their purposes for composing them. For example, while we are asking fundamental questions about multifunctional imprisonment in Mesopotamia, these texts assume the practice of imprisonment and its context rather than describe it. Still, they provide numerous points of data to move toward answers.
Letters offer more description, but it must be remembered that they are written from a particular vantage point and are written as appeals. As such, exaggeration and urgency, such as the distress, beatings, and starvation mentioned in letters by prisoners, are intended to elicit a response from the recipient of the letter.53 While these aspects of imprisonments surely occurred and fit the other documentation, it is important to keep in mind the reasons such letters were written.
Through comparison with documents of practice and other text types, it will be seen that imprisonment, as it functioned in everyday life, may best be described as temporary detention as part of the judicial process; detention to force job performance; and detention in relation to debts or fines. This evidence reveals a multifunctional and multicontextual practice of detention that rarely deals with prisoners in relation to “crimes.” In fact, detention or imprisonment as a means of punishment is at best hidden and more likely non-existent in the historical record of practice. To demonstrate this further, I turn attention now to the terminology from ancient Mesopotamia that intersects with imprisonment.
Prisons in Ancient Mesopotamia: Confinement and Control until the First Fall of Babylon. J. Nicholas Reid, Oxford University Press. © J. Nicholas Reid 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192849618.003.0002
1 On the debate about chronology, see, for example, Aström 1987; Cryer 1995: 651–64; Roaf 2012: 147–74.
2 See Hallo 1996: 271.
3 For the diffusion model, see Gelb 1963. With the diffusion model, Mayan hieroglyphs were not viewed as real writing (Thompson 1972; Gelb 1963: 58). For more recent views, see, for example, Cooper 2004: 71; Michalowski 1994: 53. For an important study on cuneiform, see Charpin 2010a. There is a debate about whether cuneiform in Mesopotamia or the hieroglyphs in Egypt came first. The earliest texts are proto-cuneiform, while the earliest examples of hieroglyphs are more advanced, suggesting that hieroglyphs could have developed earlier. On early Egyptian writing, see in particular Baines 2010: 134–49; Baines 2012: 25–63; Baines 2004: 150–89. On cuneiform, see Veldhuis 2012: 3–23; Cooper 2004: 71–99.
4 Veldhuis 2012: 5–6 and Cooper 2004: 80–81.
5 Veldhuis 2012: 3. See further elaboration in Veldhuis 2012: 11–12.
6 On the development of cuneiform writing in relation to levels of literacy, see in particular Veldhuis 2011: 68–89.
7 Postgate 1992: xxi–xxiii.
8 Postgate 1992: xxi–xxiii.
9 On Mari, see Durand 1997: 41–56. On the Amorites in the Ur III period, see Michalowski 2011: 82–121 and Sallaberger 2007a. See now de Boer 2014.
10 A project on imprisonment for the later periods is planned by the author.
11 For example, it was conveyed to the author in personal correspondence that many of the texts in the Museum of the Bible Collection related to prisons. Since most of their texts were from the Ur III period, it is likely that this data would have some implication for the length of time or rations discussion below. However, without access to these texts that were subject to seizure by the Federal Government because of illegal acquisition, I cannot be certain.
12 On the spelling of the ruler’s name, the capital KA indicates that we do not know how the sign was to be read.
13 Steinkeller 1991: 232.
14 Civil 1993: 75.
15 Wilcke 2007a: 117–19.
16 Wilcke 2007a: 120.
17 See discussion of Kleber and Frahm 2006: 116 n. 30, who conclude that some recorded lengths of time during the Neo-Babylonian period were extensive even though it is typically denied that prison sentences existed in the ancient Near East.
18 Lafont and Westbrook 2003: 221. See similar interpretation in Neumann and Paulus 2011: 201. They view the imprisonment to be for payment.
19 Westbrook 2003a: 75 n. 54.
20 Renger 1977: 76–77.
21 Renger 1977: 76.
22 Scouflaire 1987: 25–35; Scouflaire 1989.
23 Peters 1998: 3, 9.
24 For the translation, “house of prisoners of war,” see Leemans 1961; Rositani 2018: 43; Rositani 2020: 194.
25 Seri 2013: 20, 139–40.
26 Rositani 2018: 46; Rositani 2020: 204; Rositani 2021: 24. This perspective follows the viewpoint of Charpin (2014: 132–33), who considers the bīt asīrī to be a “camp de transit” for prisoners of war who were not currently on assignment.
27 Rositani 2018: 62.
28 Frymer-Kensky 1977a: 78–89.
29 Frymer-Kensky 1977a: 87.
30 Frymer-Kensky 1977a: 89.
31 Neumann and Paulus 2011: 201.
32 Tenney 2011: 115–20.
33 Levavi 2017: 99.
34 Oelsner, Wells, and Wunsch 2003: 967.
35 Oelsner, Wells, and Wunsch 2003: 967. See Contenau 1929 pl. CXVI (text 219).
36 San Nicolò 1945: 1–2.
37 Ambos 2013: 104–16.
38 San Nicolò 1945: 1–2.
39 Ambos 2013: 104.
40 Kleber and Frahm 2006: 109–22.
41 See recent editions in Civil 1993: 72–78; Attinger 2003: 15–34.
42 Kleber and Frahm 2006: 116 and nn. 29–30.
43 Reid 2016.
44 Cavigneaux and Krebernik 1998: 615–18. See also George 1992: 284, who points to the appearance of Manungal (=Nungal) among underworld deities in An = Anum (CT, 25 4, 4ff.).
45 On the Decad, see Tinney 1999: 159–72 and Delnero 2012: 11–15.
46 See discussion in Liverani 1993: 42–46.
47 For a summary and criticism of these first two approaches, see Liverani 1993: 42–46, 51–52.
48 See, for example, Liverani 1993: 42–52.
49 See discussion of “law collections” in Chapter 3.
50 This translation is cited with permission after the composite edition on “The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature” (ETCSL—https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk). This translation was formally published in Black, Cunningham, Robson, and Zólyomi 2004: 339–42. The “Hymn to Nungal” is an Old Babylonian text, at least as it is preserved for us. Pascal Attinger states that the text was likely composed originally during the Ur III period (Attinger 2003: 15), but there remains uncertainty as the oldest extant manuscripts belong to the Old Babylonian period. Attinger (2003: 15–34) provides the premier edition of the text. The original publication of the text is Sjöberg 1973: 19–46. Miguel Civil also provides an important edition of the text; Civil 1993: 72–78. Other key studies include Frymer-Kensky 1977b; Frymer-Kensky 1977a: 78–89; Komoróczy 1975: 153–74. More recently Nungal has been considered in Ambos 2013: 104–7; Reid 2016: 81–115; and Annus 2016: 61–64. Other recent treatments and key references to the text also include Kleber and Frahm 2006: 109; Charpin 2017: 76–83. See further, Delnero 2012: 12 n. 14.
51 To avoid confusion, the name Gilgameš will be used throughout this work, except when referring to the title of the Sumerian epic.
52 See Lamaštu Series I: 23 in Farber 2014: 146–47.
53 For example, see the discussion of starvation by Richardson 2016: 769–70.