This accounting summary was edited by (???). No photo was available, and it was still impossible to collate the text. Therefore, all changes made in the transcription (marked with an *) are based on assumptions.

This summary is divided into two parts. The first part (o.i.1 to o.i.49) records amounts of sesame seeds, sesame oil and olive oil received by the palace official Mukannišum from the Month IX/December of the year ZL 02 to the end of ZL 04.

1. Amounts of Sesame Seeds, Sesame Oil and Olive Oil

2. Amounts of Sesame Seeds, Sesame Cultivation and Taxes in Mari

A list of sesame oil ration (T.340) dated to the first years of Zimrī-Lîm’s reign indicates that the area assigned per plough team was 20 ikū for the sesame cultivation in the region of Mari. It also informs us that 4,000 qa (4,000 or 2,000 litres) of sesame seeds were used to sow a surface area of 800 ikū with the rate of 5 qa (5 or 2.5 litres) of sesame seeds per ikū (Chambon 2008). It, therefore, represents the work of 40 plough teams. The first line of ARM 22 276 mentions the production of 106,200 qa of sesame (106,200 or 53,100 litres) from a similar number of plough teams (34) for the second year of Zimrī-Lîm’s reign and 86,160 qa of sesame (86,160 or 43,080 litres) from a (broken) number of plough teams for the third year. The average production per plough team could be ca 3,123 qa (3,123 or 1,561.5 litres) of sesame (26 kor) for one year. This big amount of sesame was received just after the harvest (months VIII and IX). The plough teams were agricultural units working on land directly managed by the palace administration and were led by agrarian entrepreneurs (ikkarum).  The ikkarum had to pay biltum-“dues” for the right to use royal land (Chambon 2020). As their recompense for their charge seems not to lie in the margin by which the actual production would normally exceed the expected yield (as suggested by van Koppen 2001: 480; see Driel 2000 for Southern Mesopotamia) but in a salary in kind (land and/or rations), as was the case for all personnel working for the palace (Reculeau 2018: 212), the amount of sesame in the first line certainly represents all the harvested quantities.

3. A Year Round Production of Sesame Oil in Mari

A small amount of sesame seeds come from the “House of the perfumers” (bīt raqqî) and probably corresponds to the rest of the sesame, which was not pressed to obtain the oil. In the second year, Mukannišum also received 43,780 qa (43,780 or 21,890 litres) of sesame corresponding to the biltum-“dues”; as line 14 is damaged, is it difficult to know whether it represents the rest of biltum–dues of the previous month or the rest of the biltum–dues of the previous year.

The amount of sesame seeds received from the plough-teams in the third year is less than in the second year. But 4,800 qa (4,800 or 2,400 litres) were brought from the household of the king’s mother, which owned her own arable land in the Mari region (???). Small quantities of sesame oil come from Ṭābatum, which was located on the Ḫabur in the north of the province of Qaṭṭunān and was administered by the official Iddin-Dagan for Zimrī-Lîm at the beginning of his reign (Ziegler 2011). Other quantities of sesame oil were brought from Dūr-Yaḫdūn-Lîm, upstream of Mari. It means there was small-scale sesame oil production in cities north of Mari. However, the amount of olive oil, which was brought from Dūr-Yaḫdūn-Lîm, was most certainly purchased in the north-western regions where olive trees were cultivated.

For the fourth year, the summary mentions only quantities of sesame oil produced in the households of the king’s mother and the king’s son (in the Mari region), who own their oil millers.

It is difficult to explain why the total mentioned in the text (o.i.44: 19,020 qa of sesame seeds and o.i. 43: 746 qa of sesame oil) does not correspond to the sum of all recorded quantities, which is 250,770 qa (250,770 or 125,385 litres) of sesame seeds and 4,333+x qa (4,333+x or 2,166+x litres) of sesame oil. Does it represent the actual amount received by Mukannišum?

The second part of the summary (o.ii.1′ to r.iv.15) concerns the monthly expenditure of sesame oil and sesame seeds by Mukannišum(’s service):

The fact that the totals of sesame oil which was produced each year are different from the actual sum of the recorded quantities is difficult to explain. The total of ZL 04 (1,499 1/3 qa 4 1/2 shekels of sesame oil, ca. 1,499 or 750 litres) probably was a scribal error in recording the numerical data, because 1,499 1/3 qa 4 1/2 shekels = (ca) 734 2/3 qa + 756 qa, the amounts of sesame seeds needed to make hulled sesame and dīkūtum-sesame.

The term dīkūtum[glossary=dīkūtum] related to sesame is an hapax in the Old Babylonian documentation. A form of the verb dekûm “to remove; to mobilize; to collect tax” is unlikely unless one retains the rarer meaning “to clear away” of the verb. Indeed, the fact that 33% of dīkūtum-sesame could be produced from a number of raw sesame seeds (see table 3 below) suggests a kind of cleaning or grinding of the sesame seeds.

The gurnum[glossary=gurnum]-sesame is considered a kind of sesame seed because the account breakdown total includes the amount of 10,285 qa (10,285 or 5,142.5 litres) of gurnum-sesame. In administrative documentation, gurnum usually refers to products of low quality. It was not used to obtain oil but to make sīkūtum[glossary=sīkūtum]–sesame, probably “pounded sesame” (*s’k, “to pound”).

The qualifications for sesame, therefore, more likely refer to processed sesame for a meal than to different states of sesame seeds during the oil extraction process (work in progress on sesame seeds consumption). For more details, see the Dossier A.1.1.21 and A.1.1.22.

Note: The percentages in each box are calculated in relation to the quantity in the box above.