The e₂.mušen.ḫi.a in the Rīm-Anum Texts: a New Document

This paper presents a study of a small group of texts from the bīt asīrī, ‘the house of prisoners of war’ dating to the reign of Rīm-Anum, in which the e₂.mušen.ḫi.a occurs. To the four documents already published, another unpublished tablet kept in the British Museum may now be added: BM 86101, dated to 1st.VIII.Rīm-Anum 2. In the text here published is mentioned a prisoner of war, man of Ešnunna. Men of Ešnunna are frequently mentioned in the bīt asīrī texts, sometimes – like here – simply as men; elsewhere they are qualified as messengers, or as men of high rank, for example ugula mar.tu, ensi₂, and maybe rubûm of Ešnunna. Together, the texts register the assignment of eight prisoners of war to the e₂.mušen.ḫi.a, the “house of the birds”. In all five texts, the prisoners assigned to the “house of the birds” are male, and they were always received by Marduk-mušallim, of (ša) the e₂.mušen.ḫi.a. In more than 400 texts dated to Rīm-Anum’s reign only five attestations are found of the e₂.mušen.ḫi.a, “house of the birds”, or “poultry house”, that we may presume to be an administrative unit. We may also conclude that this e₂.mušen.ḫi.a or bīt iṣṣūrī is a real place with a physical collocation, such as the “house of the weaver(s)”, the same bīt asīrī itself and the other “houses” mentioned in Rīm-Anum’s texts. Some elements in the Rīm-Anum texts let us imagine the e₂.mušen.ḫi.a as a place where the birds –different species of birds– were also fed, something more generic than a “poultry house”, so I think it is better to imagine it as a “house” similar to the “birdhouse”, e₂.mušen, of the royal “Industrial Park” of Ĝirsu/Lagaš in the Ur III period. Therefore, we can imagine the Sîn-kāšid palace, from which come all the texts dated to the reign of Rīm-Anum, as a production complex comprising several economic units.