their obligations towards the overlord are fulfilled.^97 The linkage of such communities
into higher groupings and the build-up of conical clans has been documented by
Charles Maisels.^98
Commoners could have access to the political arena through various means. First,
as passive participants in ventures proposed by the elites,^99 and then as ‘customers’
of enterprises initiated and carried out by elites (e.g. peasants profit from land-
reclamation projects such as those initiated by Urnanshe or Lugalzagesi).
In contemporary written documents, these peasants assumed most likely the garb
of the ‘sovereign’s bondsmen (shub-lugal)’,^100 or ‘ration-takers’ (lu 2 -kur 6 -dab 5 -ba),^101
sharecroppers who received rations for a part of the agricultural year. Profit could be
made by those who chose to serve the sovereigns: a number of persons on all-year
rations under Enentarzi rose to the lu 2 -kur 6 -dab 5 -ba status under his successor
Lugalanda. They must thus have received arable land, which they tilled themselves.^102
There was also the possibility that commoners formed politically active groups.
The legitimizing claims of both the Enmetena^103 and Uru’inimgina^104 point to the
conclusion that the Early Dynastic Lagash polity was perceived as a collective entity,
composed of a given number of essentially equal subjects. When the ruling dynasty
changed, the Lagash public enforced a written record of activities deemed as being
of common good. Agenda of the Bau temple at Lagash had been put in writing since
— Petr Charvát —Figure 17. 3 Fragment of a storage jar from Tepe Gawra, layer VI,
twenty-fourth century BCE. A snake is depicted on the jar’s rim.