Overseas Expenditures

From the Ea-nāṣir archive:

UET 5, 471 is a list of silver amounts regarding entry into Dilmun, an escort fee, and associated costs / rates for oil, barley, a slave and her child, milk and textiles. The milk belonged to Atta, the textiles to Sin-mude, two other merchants.

UET 5, 471 (P415347):

1 shekel: entry tax
4 shekels: escort
1 shekel: fat for [ex]port
2 shekels: grain [for export]
31 1/6 shekels: a slave and her son
[products of] Ea-nāṣir
[x] shekels: milk
* [product of] Atta, product? Burašum? *
[x shekels:] clothing
[x shekels:] …
[products of] Sin-mude ...

The difficulty of this text is line 8: [NÌ.ŠU?] a-ta-a-a NÌ bu-ra-ši. Literally "Products of Atta, thing of burāšu." Burāšu is the word for juniper -- is this a someone's name or is it an item made of or containing juniper?

Baptiste Fiette (2020) made the case that it may be a woman, if not a trader alongside Ea-nāṣir then the owner of the milk. More likely, this is associated with the sale of aromatics / perfumes for copper between southern Mesopotamia and Dilmun, known since the 2300s BCE.

That research is ongoing as part of the history of oil (e.g. and their use in perfume and aromatics). For more on this, check out the i₃.MesopOil Project: www.i3-mesop-oil.gwi.uni-muenchen.de/about-us/