The work of the foresters in the forests of the Levant, the east coast of the Mediterranean, has gone largely unrecorded, as has that of most of the wood-gatherers elsewhere in the Ancient Near East who must have provided important lumber for the cities and fuel for the furnaces and kilns. Steinkeller notes that the Ur III period marked a time of the systematic exploitation of resources (1987b: 101); yet, in reality, the system of quotas represented the systematic exploitation of labor. The deliveries of wood to the community of workmen at Deir el-Medina in New Kingdom Egypt were also recorded, but it is unclear if the entire ‘‘forest sector’’ was organized.
The Umma foresters were usually members of the same nuclear family organized into working groups by forest. They were classified according to the rations they received. They were required to work for several months during a period from the sixth month through the thirteenth month. This matches the period between sowing and harvesting, and also the best time for gathering grass and wild plants. However, since the ‘‘foresters’’ were also soldiers, they were free to campaign during the summer and gather wood during the winter, and thus it is more probable that this determined their annual schedule than the weather or the agricultural cycle. Tamarisk, willow, and poplar grew along the banks of the Euphrates, among reeds and grasses. The foresters not only delivered logs and beams, but also levers, pegs, stakes, plow shares, and other prepared forms of wood. The deliveries were made directly to the authorities of the state.
During this period, the foresters were provided barley and wool. Their 60-liter-a-month rations were thus for subsistence and supplemented their other income as beneficiaries of land grants. They also owned sheep and cattle. The supervisors may also have acquired income through the sale of grasses.
Possibly in a similar way, fishermen in Egypt were obliged to pay an in-kind tax on their revenues, resulting in the state receiving tons of fish, some of which was passed on to state dependents. Some fishermen were employed by the state in Mesopotamia; their produce delivered to the state authorities was sold on the market.
World History
