Ancient Mesopotamian Animal Herding

What role did pastoralists, nomadic pastoralists in particular, play in ancient Mesopotamian society?  In my opinion, ancient Mesopotamian pastoralists and nomadic pastoralists did not have just one role.  Their place in society was diverse and changed depending on the time and place.  This is clear from both archaeological and textual evidence from periods like the third and second millennia BCE and from places like Ur and Mari.  Sometimes they are portrayed as closely integrated with urban society, and other times as completely separate from it.  Despite their changing status, what does appear constant is the sense of separateness that existed between pastoralist (especially nomadic pastoralists) and sedentary agriculturalists.  The latter were the ones who left most of the evidence we see in the archaeological record and produced texts, all of which show that sedentists regard themselves as different from pastoralists, specifically as more civilized.  

In his article Shepherds at Umma in the Third Dynasty of Ur: Interlocutors with a World Beyond the Scribal Field of Ordered Visions, Robert Adams uses bureaucratic texts from the late third millennium BCE to argue that pastoralists in the Ur III period were part of the state economy and corvee labor system.   In this system, shepherds worked as foremen, managing herds and other workers, who were largely family and kinsmen.  These foremen-shepherds interacted with the administrative class, a group of people who did not care about what the shepherds did so long as the products animal husbandry yield kept coming.  There are no records outlining how to care for animals, the decisions a shepherd had to make in terms of movement, pasture selection, fodder allocation, and possible hazards.  Consequently, these essential factors must have been left in the hands of the shepherds themselves, who were hired based on experience and skills learned from being an underling of past shepherds (in other words, belonging to a pastoralist family).  Although pastoral practices are closely tied to the economy in this model, it also gave the shepherds a certain separateness and autonomy.  

In his article Growth of a Herd of Cattle in Ten Years, I. Gelb presents a model of animal husbandry in the Ur III period that supports Adams’.  He examines a text describing the growth of a herd of cattle over a decade.  This text outlines what the animals produced in that time as well as how that changed as the number of animals in the herd increased and decreased.  Clearly, general practice in the Ur III period was to regulate animal husbandry, track their production over a specific time period based on the number of animals to attempt to improve herd production with greater numbers of cattle.  This too reflects the Ur III period’s administrative class’ interest in husbandry regulation for economic purposes.  In their paper The Rise of Pastoralism in the Ancient Near East, Arbuckle and Hammer similarly relate that Ur III texts (from sites like Beydar and Ebla) describe the export of wool and never its import.  This indicates that the state was not importing secondary products from independent pastoralists but that pastoralists were tied to and controlled by the state economy.  

Subsequently, in the second millennium BCE (ca. 1775-1761 BCE) the status of pastoralists and nomadic pastoralists shifted.  Texts and settlement patterns indicate that mobile pastoralism became more widespread and pastoralists may have moved away from state economy to become more independent.  Royal letters from this period mention distinctly separate groups of people called hana or “tent dwellers” who practiced herding and migrated to pastures seasonally, despite being related to sedentary populations (See Arbuckle and Hammer).  

These hana are discussed by D. Fleming in Kingship of the City and Tribe Conjoined: Zimri Lim at Mari.  Zimrilim himself claims to be king of the hana’s land.  However, based on other texts, specifically governors’ letter to the king, it is clear that these hana practiced a form of nomadic pastoralism, migrating and acting under no authority but the king’s, which cause the city governors to complain.  Fleming claims that these hana were a separate people group, but not ethnically different from the sedentary agriculturalists, just practicing a different way of life.  Their nomadism would make it hard for city governors to exert control over them, but they were subject to the king who presumably ruled all the land they migrated across and pastured in.  

This apparent growing independence of pastoralists is also reflected in the literary texts of the period.  In her article The Other and the Enemy in the Mesopotamian Conception of the World, Pongratz-Leisten shows the disconnected sentiments sedentary, urbanites felt toward nomadic pastoralists.  In her view, these literary texts use several models to portray pastoralists: invasion model (in which they are seen as marauders and destroyers of civilization), infiltration model (in which they are seen as unwanted intruders in society), and dimorphic society model (in which sedentists can embrace enclosed nomadism while keeping in mind there are other nomads farther from society).  These texts reflect pastoralists’ disconnection from society that also led to their repulsion by those in it.  

Arbuckle and Hammer explain that this movement was not ubiquitous.  Faunal data from southeastern Turkey indicates that pastoralists in the vicinity did not travel to and from sites seasonally, but remained year-round.  Similarly, they explain that pastoralists were, based on texts, tied and important to the Hittite economy in the second millennium, yet they make no mention of large scale pastoral nomadism.  

The research of these scholars points to a shift in the status of Mesopotamia pastoral nomads over time, from being closely tied to the state economy in the third millennium to acting independently and living a more separate lifestyle in the second millennium.  This was not however the case across the landscape and goes to show that pastoralists and nomadic pastoralists had an ever shifting role in society depending on the time period and place.  More research may yield a better understanding of pastoralists and nomadic pastoralists on the local level and how it changed over time.  In my opinion, this is the best way we can attempt to paint a bigger picture of nomadic pastoralism in the entire Mesopotamian region.

Sources:

• Adams, R. (2006). Shepherds at Umma in the Third Dynasty of Ur: Interlocutors with a World beyond the Scribal Field of Ordered Vision. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 49(2), 133-169. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165137
• Arbuckle, Benjamin & L. Hammer, Emily. (2018). The Rise of Pastoralism in the Ancient Near East. Journal of Archaeological Research. 10.1007/s10814-018-9124-8. 
• Fleming, D. (2009). Kingship of City and Tribe Conjoined: ZImri-Lim at Mari. Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. 227-240. 
• Gelb, I. (1967). Growth of a Herd of Cattle in Ten Years. Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 21, 64-69. doi:10.2307/1359359
• Pongratz-Leisten, Beate. (2001). “The Other and the Enemy in the Mesopotamian Conception of the World.” In: R. M. Whiting (ed.). Mythology and Mythologies. Methodological approaches to intercultural influences. Melammu Symposia 2. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001, 195-231.