"I raised it as high as a mountain using bitumen and baked brick." Brick Production in the Eanna Archive. Text Editions and Commentary

The aim of this study is to reconstruct the brick production process as documented in the southern Babylonian temple archive of Eanna, during the so-called ‘long sixth century’ B.C. The documentary basis for the study are slightly more than one hundred texts: economic and legal documents, along with letters from the Eanna archive, currently held in some of the world’s most prominent cuneiform tablet collections, most of which are previously unpublished. In the first part, the focus will be on the production, firing, distribution, and use of unbaked bricks (libittus) and kiln-fired bricks (agurrus), as well as on the individuals involved in these activities, including both laborers and administrative officials. Prosopographic and social network analysis models will be employed to evaluate the examined data against the background of their socio-economic context and to reconstruct the chronological coordinates of some incomplete tablets. In the second part the edition of part of the relevant unpublished sources is offered, including a transliteration, translation and commentary.