Wheat and barley in Mesopotamia: Terminology, cultivation, and use according to cuneiform sources and against the background of paleobotanical and ethnographical evidence

• Applicant: Dr. Aron A. Dornauer
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 259147815

The cultivation of grains forms the economic basis for life in the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia. However, despite abundant relevant data, no up-to-date treatment of the grain species exists today. In an interdisciplinary approach, the project focuses on the cuneiform and paleobotanical evidence of the barley, glume wheat and naked wheat species in Mesopotamian Bronze Age. According to the results of paleobotanical and ethnographical investigations, the characteristics of specific cereal crops affect cultivation and processing. Thus the evidence regarding cultivation and processing selected from cuneiform sources in Sumerian and Akkadian, allows conclusions about the particular cereal species. The key project objectives are to collect the specific botanical, agricultural and processing characteristics of the particular cereal crops, to identify Akkadian and Sumerian words for cereal crops as precisely as possible, and to analyse them in their ecological, agronomical and ecotrophological environment. "Specific botanical characteristics" are colour, size, taste, habitat, geographical distribution, stress tolerances, and growing season length."Specific agricultural characteristics" are the dates of sowing, harvesting, and threshing as well as the rate of sowing, the yield, and the seed/yield rate, the scale and mode of irrigation, as well as the system of crop rotation. "Specific processing characteristics" mean whether the specific cereal species were processed for animal or human consumption, to which kind of food the cereals were processed, and how they were processed. The project's goals are: 1. The Sumerian and Akkadian textual evidence from Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Syria concerning the specific botanical, agricultural and processing characteristics of barley and wheat species is collected and classified against the background of paleobotanical and ethnographical research. Thus, the scientific community is supplied with comprehensive tables of characteristics of cereals according to the paleobotanical, ethnographical, and cuneiform evidence. 2. The Akkadian and Sumerian terms for barley (SHE and its compounds), glume wheat (ZÍZ and its compounds, as well as SIG15), and naked wheat species (KÌB and its compounds, as well as burrum) should be identified as precisely as possible. Therefore, we compare the textual evidence with the paleobotanical and ethnographical data concerning the specific botanical, agricultural and processing characteristics. 3. The collected information concerning specific characteristics allows conclusions about the ecological, agronomical, economic, and ecotrophological environment of ancient Mesopotamian agrarian societies. In this context, the data first has to be analysed and then critically compared with the current ethnographical models regarding the workflow in traditional field cropping and post-harvest activities, in order to elaborate the diatopic and diachronic differences and similarities.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Dr. Reinder Neef; Professor Dr. Walther Sallaberger