Mesopotamian technologies

[sheshki]

Orientation for this thread is to discuss mesopotamian technologies
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from:
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East,
Mining and Metalwork in Ancient Western Asia
Mari and the Tin Trade [page 1509]

...That is, no smelting was being carried out in the vicinity of the Mari palace. Rooms 216-218 of the Zimri-Lim palace had been identified as a series of copper workshops, relying on the mention in texts of a bīt šurīpim. Šurīpum was translated as "copper ore," and one of the Mari letters (ARM 1 21) was interpreted as describing the preparation of the copper ore prior to smelting. We now know, however, that šurīpum means "ice" and that a bīt šurīpim was an "ice house" rather than "a place for treating copper ore." The ice manufactured and stored at Mari was used to chill wine (at Mari they drank their wine chilled, their beer warm).

In the bibliography this article is mentioned:
IZAK CORNELIUS, "Ice and Ice-House in the Mari Texts," Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 13 (1987)

Does anyone of you have an idea a: how ice was manufactured in the ANE or b: how to access the mentioned article? JSTOR does not have it and to access it via the journal homepage costs alot of money, and chances are that the article itself probably wont say much about the process of ice manufacturing itself, just about the textual evidence.
One possibility is to get snow or ice down from high mountains, but if you look at a map there are no big mountains near Mari (eastern Syria).

[sheshki]

Well....i asked Chuck Jones (Head, ISAW Library) about the topic and here is his quick reply:

The word occurs in Mari and Boghazakoi Akkadian. If I remember rightly (and I don't have the books at hand at the moment), all the reference are to "getting" or "bringing" ice, none to manufacturing it. I can tell you from personal experience that while ice and snow are not common, they are also not unusual in northern Syria, though certainly not on a scale north Americans or northern Europeans would think twice about.


problem solved

[lilitudemon]

If I recall from looking at places around Mesopotamia like Afghanistan, there was a lot of snow/ice cover on the mountains. I can't confirm anything with out looking at an ancient map of Mesopotamia, but I would assume this would be where they got it from. Inanna and An seem to be associated with them, and of course there was the mountain Ebih.

[sheshki]

I think the ice came from north of Mari, so northern Syria or south-east Turkey....or in other words somewhere north from Mari near the Euphrates, the "main road".
Afghanistan is a bit far away for transporting ice.
Oh, Mari is near the spot where the Euphrates crosses the Syrian-Iraqi border.

[lilitudemon]

Sorry I should have worded that better. I mean that it didn't come from Afgan, but a mountain. What I am curious about is these storehouse and how the ice was kept. They kept them in Mari but they didn't get them from Mari, so how was ice transported in the hot weather? I know from talking to troops that it woulc get hot enough to literally fry an egg on the sidewalk.

[sheshki]

Well, i dont know for sure, but my theory is that the ice was transported in larger quantities on the Euphrates, which shortens the time of transport and also the water probably had a cooling effect. The ice was also probably insulated with some form of packing material (straw). The storeroom itself would be on the basement level of the building where it is cooler anyway...i think the very thick walls of their buildings also kept the heat outside because mudbrick is a very good insulating material. And maybe they transported the ice during the night, nights can get pretty cold (i once slept out in the sahara desert and did almost freeze my butt off ).

[sheshki]

Here you can see the location of storeroom 216 and 218, lower left corner of the kings house .



Interesting website about the palace of Zimri-Lim in Mari.

cnes.cla.umn.edu/courses/archaeology/1044/Mari/Zimri_Palace.html#