But also in the city, closely knit extended family groups were important and active. One of such groups inhabited houses 4—12, Paternoster row, in Ur. To it belonged the brothers (or cousins) AnaSīnwuššur, Abūni, Imlikum, Šagišabūšu, Ilīiddinam, Attāia et al. (UET V, 76 et al.). They appear in sundry business documents sometimes alone and sometimes in groups of two or three but, apparently, always representing the same «family firm». Also other similar family groups can be attested.
Inside an extended family group, not all were connected with business or official activities; some of them appear only in documents concerning the division of inheritance, marriage contracts etc. Many houses excavated in OB Ur, some of them very big and apparently rich, did not contain any documents, which probably means that the families in question, whether belonging to the priesthood or connected with agricultural or animal-breeding activities, were not involved in business money transactions which need ed to be fixed in writing.
Documents and terracottas from the block Paternoster row 4—12 show that certain girls belonging to the extended family served as ukbābātum-priestesses (the title ukbābtum in Ur being equivalent to qadištum elsewhere). They were (at least originally) clearly distinguished from the prostitutes, the harimtum. Although also the latter were under the protection of the goddess Ištar, they were, in contradistinction to the qadištum and the ukbābtum, not priestesses. In the author's conjecture, the ukbābtum / qadištum were destined to coition with a stranger representing a god (cf. Herodotus, I, 199), in what was an equivalent to the Sacred Marriage Rite in the great temples.
If a princess royal could become an ēntum (high priestess) and (in Ur) spouse of the Moon-god, girls belonging to the elite might be recruited as lukur, or concubines of the same or other great gods, and probably substitutes of the ēntum as she grew older; families of somewhat lower standing gave some of their daughters away as ukbābtum or qadištum; it was probably a matter of dowry which the family could spare for the girl's initiation. In the poorest families the girls that did not marry became harimtum.
Part of the contents of this chapter are published in the «Zeitschrift für Assyriologie» NF 74—1 (1985) as Extended Families in Old Babylonian Ur, and in the «Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient», XIX (1985), as Women in Old Babylonia not under Patriarchal Authority.
Chapter VII. Slaves and poor people, is based on documents discovered in the same block 4—12, Paternoster row, but deals with impecunious people only, either living in the same extended family complex, or being clients of the businessmen in that family: Abūni, Ilušunāsir, Umussu, NidnatSīn, LudlulSīn, Dulātum, Narāmtum, the pauper-prostitute Bawurīšat, et al.
Chapter VIII. Servitors of the Temple. Another School is based on the archives of 5 and 7, Quiet street, connected with the family of the temple administrator UrNanna, and later with Kug-dNingal, and their neighbours and associates. The text 7804 = UET V 666, belonging to this archive, erroneously listed by H. H. Figulla and D. Charpin as a «list of logs», is shown to be a cadastre of lands belonging to the Temple of Nanna; the lands are listed once according to their quality, and the second time according to their being apportioned to certain social groups under different conditions.
The family in question was that of a šandabakku which seems thus to have been the economic administrator of the Nanna temple; hence, it is doubtful that the family inhabited only the modest house 7, Quiet street; more probably, it owned, like the Imlikum clan, the whole block of houses in Quiet street. UrNanna's descendant, Kug-dNingal, was an abrikku-ipriest of Ēia.
An interpretation different from that given by D. Charpin is suggested for the «school» in 5 Quiet street, and to the «Children's corner» containing dozens of burials of children (school-children?), apparently synchronous, and belonging to children of approximately the same age; victims of Samsuiluna's raid?
Chapter IX. The Spouse of the Moon-gоd is devoted to the «Gipar», the temple of the goddess Ningal and also the residence of the ēntum-priestess; the stress is upon its latter role. Some new evidence on the Sacred Marriage Rite between the Moon-God and the ēntum-priestess, dating from periods earlier and later than the OB, is adduced. It is stressed that the rituals in the temples, apart from praises and prayers to the gods, consisted mainly of imitations of the deity's everyday life, including awakening, feeding, dressing, guest parties to other deities, and imitation of the deity's sexual life which, as Sacred Marriage Rite, had a tremendous importance for the thriving of grain, animals, and humans. Also the qadištu-priestesses, far from being prostitutes, may have treated their guests as representatives- of an Unknown Deity.
