children and in return provided them and their dependents, including babies and the
elderly, with rations and other kinds of remuneration. These institutions seem to have
defined fully the social identity of numerous individuals, but they also interacted with
people whose primary affiliations were elsewhere, hiring their part-time labor, for
example. Those people were part of nuclear or extended families whose primary
activities were outside the institutional domain. The fundamental building blocks of
society were “households” –the Sumerians used the term é– units comprising people
related by blood or dependence. These could be small or large families, the household
of a god incorporating thousands of people, or the great household, Sumerian é-gal,
that is, the palace. The latter did not include all people of the state, however, but only
those who depended directly on the household of the king. People did not only
associate with their family members, of course; for certain purposes they felt closer to
colleagues in their profession or to neighbors where they lived. Sumerian terminology
may distinguish between these types of associations, but the interpretation is difficult
and debated. When Gudea of Lagash called up for labor service men of groups called
im-ru-a, some scholars see a reference to clans, others to some geographical entity (cf.
Van De Mieroop 1997 : 105 ). Such associations remain a characteristic of ancient
Mesopotamian society for its entire history.
What also remained a constant in Mesopotamian history is that the members of
associations held meetings. The status and functions of those meetings are controversial
but crucial for our understanding of the political structure of Sumerian society. The
term used most often to refer to them is the Akkadian puærum, from the verb paæΩru,
“to gather,” which became a loanword in Sumerian texts of the Ur III period. A
Sumerian synonym, unkin, is attested from the Early Dynastic period on and remained
the Sumerogram for puæru(m)until the end of cuneiform writing. Both terms are
extremely rare in the third millennium, and even in the better-documented early
second millennium references are few and far between. Puærumand its Sumerian
equivalent unkinare ordinarily translated as “assembly.” Most scholars see it as an
institutionalized decision-making body, albeit with diminishing powers as time passed;
others consider it to be an ad hocmeeting of people with shared interests.
Legal accounts and letters from early second millennium Babylonia and Assyria
occasionally mention that an “assembly” decided a lawsuit. Those from Assur do not
state much else than that the puærumissued a verdict. Many Babylonian accounts are
from the city of Nippur and not actual documents but paradigms to teach scribal
students legal terminology. One such text may give more detail, if the procedures
described are real. It records a trial for homicide taking place in Nippur. When the case
was brought before the king, he convened “the assembly of Nippur.” The names and
professions of some of the men who spoke are recorded and include potters and
gardeners, apparently commoners in the society. They do not discuss the question of
guilt, only what the proper punishment of the various accused should be (Van De
Mieroop 1997 : 12 ). A letter from Sippar suggests that the discussions could be quite
acrimonious and that contestants used their connections to get the upper hand. After
Ilåu-ibni had written to Iluni in Babylon that the judge Ipqu-iliåu had spoken at length
against him in the assembly, Iluni replied:
I have spoken to the gentleman [i.e., a man called Nabium-nΩœir in Babylon] and
I have written a strongly worded letter on his behalf for the director of the assembly–– Marc Van De Mieroop ––