A History of Agriculture in India v1.c19.s6.7

v1.c19.s6.7

The granaries also indicate that payment to labourers was in kind. As in the Indus Valley, all important cities in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley had granaries. A text from Ur implies that one of the granaries stored enough barley to provide wages for 4,020 days; another text refers to the commandant of the granary who was responsible for seeing that 10,930 man-days’ payment was made out of his store, presumably in barley, to meet the wages of the workers from the town; the workers included scribes, overseers, shepherds and irrigators. Another text refers to royal barley, to be returned with interest, received by Lulamu from the granary of the canal-bank. All these documents are of *c.* 2130-2000 B.C. Another tablet of the same period records a harvest gathered from certain fields belonging to the temple of Nan-she in Lagash.⁵