Promotionsprojekt: „The Rich and the Poor, A Study on Income Inequality of Presargonic Girsu and Ur III Umma“

Abstract
The diverging prosperity gap is one of the problems of our modern societies. Previous studies on wealth inequality have not included the Ancient Near East so far. The abundance of administrative documents from the Early Bronze Age, which record not only the income from employed wages, but also revenues from self-employment like interest on loan, allows a study on the income of the complete society. Thus, it will be possible to create a base for further social studies, which compare early urban societies. This approach is not anachronistic since Early Bronze rulers promulgated their social reforms, which redistributed income as well. Assyriology has not undertaken a detailed statistical approach on income for the Early Bronze Age so far, even though the many forms of income are already known. Wages for example were primarily paid in grain, wool, or silver. Most of the data recording income is preserved on monthly wage lists denoting names and professions, capturing most of society. The main challenge of this study lies in finding representative data to evaluate the income of groups, which are not documented on the wage lists, as well as detecting other channels of especially self-employed income. The distribution of income will be mostly calculated, and only little estimation is necessary. The results will be presented so that the inequality of the society can be discussed as a whole. Furthermore, the different groups, clustered according to profession or gender for example, will be analyzed according to their position in society.