During the Old Babylonian period, Šamaš-ḫāzir was a šassukkum-dignitary, “head of the land registry,” responsible for the royal estate for King Ḫammurāpi since the time of his conquest of the Larsa[geogr=Larsa] and the Yamutbalum[geogr=Yamutbalum] region in 1763 BCE. His archive consists of nearly 200 documents, including his correspondence with the king or his ministers (like Lu-Ninurta, who appears as a “minister of the economy” of Ḫammurāpi), harvest records, field lists, and farmers‘ activity reports. Šamaš-ḫāzir’s archive is mainly famous as it illustrates Babylonian agricultural policy from the time of Ḫammurāpi’s conquest of southern Mesopotamia.
1. A Reconstructed Archive from Tablets in Various Collections
This archive is a reconstruction: indeed, the letters and administrative documents that can be linked to Šamaš-ḫāzir’s archive are the results of clandestine excavations of Tell Senkereh (Larsa), at the beginning of the 20th century (Fiette 2018a: 4). According to Fiette, although the archaeological context of the tablets, unfortunately, remains unknown, it is likely that Šamaš-ḫāzir may have lived in the residential area excavated by Jean-Louis Huot in 1987-1989, consisting of vast mansions built during the reign of King Rīm-Sîn, which Babylonian dignitaries then occupied after Ḫammurāpi’s conquest of Larsa.
While most of this archive deals with the management of the royal estate, there are texts relating to the management of Šamaš-ḫāzir’s personal estate (Fiette 2018a: 4). The most recent text in the archive is dated to the 2nd year of Samsuilūna’s reign (1748 BCE), which allows Fiette (2018a: 320-321) to date its end during the first years of Ḫammurāpi’s successor’s reign; after that, there is no trace of Šamaš-ḫāzir or his domain. Therefore, it is likely that Šamaš-ḫāzir carried out his šassukkum-dignitary activity during the thirteen years of Ḫammurāpi’s reign following his conquest of the Larsa kingdom (1763-1750 BCE).
2. An Important Family Archive on Agriculture in the Old Babylonian period
In the Old Babylonian period, and more particularly in the 18th century BCE, Šamaš-ḫāzir’s archive is one of the three main records concerning agricultural activities along with the Royal Archives of Mari1See in particular the work of Reculeau (2018) and the archives of Upper Yaḫrurum.2See in particular the work of De Boer (Fiette 2018b)
Šamaš-ḫāzir’s archive is particularly famous for its wealth of information on agriculture and the management of fields and agricultural commodities in the Old-Babylonian period. It has been exploited by many Assyriologists who have worked on the subject. In 2018, Fiette published a synthesis on Šamaš-ḫāzir’s archive and proposed a re-examination of the tablets already edited on the ARCHIBAB database (Fiette 2018a), and published several unedited texts (Fiette 2018a: 325-362); he also wrote an article summarising the management of the royal estate by Šamaš-ḫāzir (Fiette 2018b). For detailed references to the letters in the Šamaš-ḫāzir’s archive, see Stol 2008, to complete with Fiette (2018a: 4-8), who was able to make up other lots of tablets and determine that these were indeed the archives of Šamaš-ḫāzir.
3. Sesame Cultivation in Šamaš-ḫāzir’s Archive
In Šamaš-ḫāzir’s agricultural estate, sheep and goat breeding are documented, as well as cultivation of barley, sesame, date palms, and various fruit trees; see Dossier A.1.1.16. Within the framework of the i3.MesopOil project, this archive is essential because several letters and administrative documents attest to the cultivation of sesame in Larsa. These include a farming contract for a sesame plot belonging to Šamaš-ḫāzir (BIN 07 177), the cultivation and management of the sesame crop in several letters (AbB 04 141, AbB 04 156, AbB 11 168, AbB 14 163), and an administrative text (OECT 15 101). This sesame production was likely used to make oil, presumably produced locally (AbB 04 141), even though the milling of sesame oil is not clearly attested in the archive.
Among these documents, several letters were written by Šamaš-ḫāzir’s wife, Zinû[individual=Zinû], or addressed to her. Moreover the administrative text OECT 15 101 testifies to the receipt by her of the harvested sesame. Zinû was obviously managing the estate in the absence of her husband (Fiette 2018a: 317-319).