book
Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead
Oppenheim, A. Leo. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization. Revised by Erica Reiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Why this matters here
Oppenheim describes ancient Mesopotamian economic and temple institutions using cuneiform evidence. The chapter invokes that scholarship for administrative systems rather than projecting modern organizational motives onto them.
