This dossier provides information on the process of sesame oil production and the people involved in this process, according to Old Babylonian administrative texts from the Royal Archives of Mari[geogr=Mari]. For an equivalent study on Babylonia and a terminology review, see Dossier A.1.1.22.
1. When Was Sesame Oil Produced in Mari?
Sesame oil was produced all year round, according to ARM 22 276, which relates, for each month, the quantities of oil produced by oil millers. It supposes that sesame seeds, after the harvest, were stored all year round in containers, waiting to be delivered to oil production specialists.
There are nevertheless some production peaks. Sesame seeds are harvested during Months VII/VIII (September/October, see Dossier A.1.1.18). This period corresponds to the cultic celebration named kinūnum, known in Mari, Ešnunna[geogr=Ešnunna] and Sippar[geogr=Sippar]. During that time, oil was used to anoint high-ranking palace officials and to carry out worship activities1 According to the Mari documentation: see Jacquet 2011: 43.. Perfumer’s receipts from Mari also attest to a particular anointing activity during Month V/July.
2. Oil Production Specialists
2.1. Oil Millers Working for the Palace
Oil millers are referred to by the ideograms lu₂i₃.sur in Mari. Managers of the oil miller service in Mari appear to have been male: Balaĝunamḫe[individual=Balamu-namḫe] and Ilī-ašrāya[individual=Ilī-ašrāya] at the beginning of Zimrī-Lîm’s reign, who apparently operated on an alternating monthly basis (Sasson 1987: 583). Then, Aḫlamû[individual=Aḫlamû] and Ilu-šu-nāṣir (ARM 22 262, ARM 23 442: see the comments in Duponchel 1997: 204). But the list of personnel ARM 22 262 also mentions a woman working in the oil milling service for the Mari palace. The fact that this woman was bought out by her family gives interesting information on the status of (some?) workers involved in the oil milling process, who may not have been free. Another oil miller is attested, Mūt-Ramê[individual=Mūt-Ramê], during Zimrī-Lîm’s reign (ARM 07 120).
2.2. Places of Oil Production
Although lots of administrative texts record deliveries of oil in the palace for different purposes, there is no evidence that oil production took place inside the palace, and oil milling services were probably situated outside (Chambon 2008: 10), as at Ebla (e2.i3.ĝiš: see Archi 1991: 217). Moreover, the Queen Mother, who provided the palace with oil, probably owned her oil millers (ARM 22 276 and ARM 21 112) in her household near Mari.
2.3. Mobility of Oil Specialists
Either oil itself or the specialist was sent directly (with his equipment?) to the place where oil was required (ARM 18 032). In particular, oil millers could be sent to foreign courts: for example, the text ARM 23 442 (and the pseudo-duplicate ARM 23 443) mentions the departure (zi.ga) of an oil miller who used to belong to Balaĝunamḫe’s service for oil milling in Mari (see above), and who now works for Sibkūna-Addu, the king of Šudā. According to another letter from Mari (ARM 33 228), foreign princes ‚kidnapped‘ an oil miller from Dūr-Yaḫdūn-Lîm[geogr=Dūr-Yaḫdūn-Lîm], which shows the importance of such specialists.
3. Qualities and Qualification of Sesame Seeds in the text ARM 22 276
All the information we have on the status of sesame seeds before, during or after the oil production process is provided by a single text, ARM 22 276, a balanced account of sesame oil production. According to ARM 22 276, the ratios between these states of sesame seeds and the amount of (raw) sesame seeds can be summarised as follows:
| (Raw) sesame seeds without a qualifier (še.i₃.ĝeš) | |||
| 97% | 3% | ||
| 99.40% | 0.22% | 0.23% | še.i₃.ĝeš gurnum |
| i₃.ĝeš 10% |
še.i₃.ĝeš bara₂.ga 62% |
še.i₃.ĝeš dīkūtum 33% |
še.i₃.ĝeš sīkūtum 56% |
Work on these ‘qualities‘ or ‘states‘ of sesame is still in progress, as some of the terms are hapax legomenon; however, we offer a brief description of each word in this dossier.
3.1. Gurnum Sesame Seeds: Sesame Seeds of Low Quality?
According to dictionaries (CAD, AHw), the term gurnum[glossary=gurnum] (with its vernacular by-form gunnum: (Stadhouders/Johnson 2018: 606)) means “of low/average quality”2There was no sumerogram equivalent to gurnum.. The term is associated in lexical lists with wool, fruits (figs, dates), and copper and in administrative texts with these and other products such as beer. The Old Babylonian administrative documentation of Ašnakkum (modern Chagar Bazar) clearly shows the meaning of the term by distinguishing qualities of beer in decreasing order:
– kaš sig5 (1 volume of barley needed for 1 volume of beer)
– kaš us2 (1/2 volume of barley required for 1 volume of beer)
– kaš gurnum (1/4 volume of barley needed for 1 volume of beer).
A list from Mari also distinguishes three qualities of wool (ARM 09 035):
– sig2 sag (wool of high quality)
– sig2 us2 (wool of standard quality)
– sig2 gurnum (wool of lower quality).
In the west semitic documentation from Emar (13th century BCE), gurnum means “threshing floor” (Hebrew goren < *gurn-), but it is difficult to relate it to commodities quality (Pentiuc 2001: 53).
The ratio of gurnum sesame seeds to total raw sesame seeds is extremely low (3%), according to the balanced account ARM 22 276. Almost all of the sesame is used to produce oil. Does gurnum sesame refer to the low quality sesame that was sorted from the total quantity of harvested sesame, or is it the sesame that remained on the threshing floor (thus linking to the meaning of the term in Emar, as seen above)? ARM 22 276 mentions gurnum sesame seeds, which are used to produce sīkūtum-sesame at a rate of 56%.
3.2. Ḫalṣum (bara₂.ga) Sesame Seeds
62% of ḫalṣum[glossary=ḫalṣum]-sesame seeds were produced from a quantity of sesame (see the table above).
ḫalṣum-sesame means “hulled” sesame seeds (see Dossier A.1.1.22), and the dehulling operation, therefore, results in a loss of 38% of the volume3It does not mean that the rest was thrown away because the hulls of the seeds could be used for human food or animal feed.. According to the letter AbB 09 058, hulled sesame seeds were used to produce the eponymous sesame oil, a very fine oil.
3.3. Sīkūtum Sesame Seeds
The term sīkūtum[glossary=sīkūtum] associated with sesame is only attested in ARM 22 276. It probably comes from the Akkadian verb sâkum, “to crush, to pound”. As mentioned above, this kind of sesame is obtained from gurnum-sesame. In the lexical list MSL IX 79, the entry ninda še.ĝiš.i₃ is translated in Akkadian as akal sīkāti, a type of bread or food (sikāti certainly comes from the same root as sīkūtum). Bread made from sesame seeds is well attested, for example, for the king’s meal in Mari4See the text ARM 09 320, in which an amount of sesame for the king’s meal is indicated in the total as a kind of ninda, “bread”.. One might assume that the sesame of lower quality (gurnum) was pounded to make sīkūtum-sesame (with a loss of 44% of the volume; see supra), itself used to make bread but not to produce oil, which requires sesame of better quality.
3.4. Dīkūtum Sesame Seeds
The term dīkūtum[glossary=dīkūtum] is also only attested in Mari, to our knowledge. The etymology of this word is not clear. It could be a form from the verb dekûm, but its meanings “to remove; to mobilize; to collect tax” seem inadequate. Indeed, its rarer sens “to clear away” fits better: the fact that 33% of dīkūtum-sesame could be produced from some raw sesame seeds (see table 3 below) suggests a cleaning or grinding of the sesame seeds. Therefore, it seems that this term, as well as the term sīkūtum, is not explicitly related to oil production but could have been a specific preparation for food production.
4. Ratios of Oil Production for Administrative Purposes
While the documentation from Babylonia attests to a percentage of about 20 to 25% of oil obtained from some sesame seeds (see Dossier A.1.1.22), implying a ratio of 1/5 – 1/4, the ratio in Mari texts seems to be lower at first glance: 1/10 according to ARM 22 276 and T.340 (Chambon 2008). In fact, this ratio is not natural but set by the palace of Mari for administrative purposes. T.340 mentions that the rate set is 1 ugāru (= 1,200 qa, i.e. 1,200 or 600 litres) of oil produced from 10 ugāru (= 12,000 qa, i.e. 12,000 or 6,000 litres) of sesame seeds (1/10), for the “rations” (i3.ba) of the “workforce” (lu2.lu2.meš) under the responsibility of the “agrarian entrepreneurs” (ikkarū) working in sesame fields. For a quantity of 4,000 qa (4,000 or 2,000 litres) of sown sesame, the text states that theamount of oil produced for this purpose is therefore 394 qa (394 or 197 litres; ca 1/10). The final total of accounts ARM 22 276 records two different quantities of oil (30,736 qa 59 shekels = ca. 30,736 or 15,368 liters, and 2,110 qa = 2,110 or 1055 litres) produced for two and a half years from two quantities of sesame seeds (respectively 307,345 qa = ca. 307,345 or 153,672.5 litres, and 21,120 qa = 21,120 or 10,560 litres), with the ratio of ca. 1/10. Although the reason why the scribe distinguished these two quantities of oil in the text is still unknown, the rate of 1/10 seems to be also based on administrative purposes. Indeed, these totals corresponds to the two-and-a-half-year expenditure (zi.ga) of Mukannišum’s service, an official in charge of supplying the palace staff with various commodities, including oil. Thus, the quantities of oil recorded at the 1/10 rate do not necessarily represent all but only part of the oil actually produced during two and a half years and distributed for the palace rations and needs.
Therefore, if the percentage of oil produced from sesame seeds is the same in Mari as in Babylonia (ca. 20%), it can be assumed that half (10%) of this production was given as remuneration to agrarian entrepreneurs and their teams working on sesame fields, and the other half (10%) was distributed for the needs of the palace of Mari.