Ugaritian Labourers: On the Ugaritic Administrative Documents RS 17.312, RS 18.258 and RS 18.026

According to some authors, the archives of Ugarit have preserved a small group of texts that could be classified as ‘censuses’. Other authors, however, have argued that these texts record people who were able to work in some way. This article examines the clearest examples of this type of text, the...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Vita Barra, Juan Pablo
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2024
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/382315
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/382315
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Ugarit
Hatti
Administration
Censuses
Primary documents
Description
Summary:According to some authors, the archives of Ugarit have preserved a small group of texts that could be classified as ‘censuses’. Other authors, however, have argued that these texts record people who were able to work in some way. This article examines the clearest examples of this type of text, the two Ugaritic administrative documents RS 17.312 (KTU 4.295) and RS 18.258 (KTU 4.417). The analysis is carried out in conjunction with the Akkadian letter RS 94.2524, which may provide a better understanding of the nature of the two Ugaritic texts. The discussion also includes a third Ugaritic administrative text, RS 18.026 (KTU 4.339), which seems to complete the process described in both RS 17.312 and RS 18.258. In our view, the four texts provide further evidence of the control that the Ugaritian administration exercised over the population of the kingdom in order to mobilise them for labour purposes.