Apart from the "Harran Census," many other texts in the archives of the Assyrian central administration deal with land. Unfortunately, little if any inner coherence in scope and methods of compilation is visible from one text to the other in this group; so that a number of interesting details here and there, concerning the economic and legal status of rural properties, stand in the main alone, and are thus of little use for the study of the system of land tenure in the Sargonid empire. In any case, a glance through these materials may help to single out their distinctive features.
Two texts deal directly with lands assigned by the king to his subject through grants. No. 22 1 is a complete text in sections, bearing a list of estates, with the name of each owner, and only very occasionally the whereabouts of the land, by province. The landowners are all palace officials, of various bureaus and ranks, from the sartinnu and the vizier to the lowly guard or chariot driver. The purpose of this document is, apparently, that of a "checkup" on crown land, granted to the named officials, effected by noting the economic status of the individual estates: one is described as "in good standing" (cf. r. 13), others prove to have changed hands, either within the same family (r. 15 , r. 17) or from one official to another, whatever the rank (in line 8, the chief eunuch' s estate is passed over to a doorman). In the very last section (r. l 9ff) , 4 estates, previously owned by members of the military, are said to have been made over to the "princess of the New Palace," i.e. they had reverted back to the Crown.
No. 222 is a record of the sale of a vast estate, described in its constituent parts: as in the "Harran Census" and the schedules attached to land grants, we are dealing with a comprehensive property formed of many different plots, located here and there. The frequent mention of the crown prince makes it reasonable to suggest that the text concerned his possessions, or those of people closely associated with him. The first two sections list plots going back to the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser III; particularly interesting are the remarks on the loss of the attached serfs in one of the holdings as compensation for a murder ( l 'ff) , and on the past acquisition of another such holding by a messenger. (7'ff). The third section records land issued in usufruct to a number of dependents of the crown prince himself and of the commander-in-chief, with their yearly interest fee. After the totals, we find the list of the sum put up by a pool of individuals of various professions (a horse trader, a weaver, a goldsmith, a priest, a village administrator, etc.), amounting to 26 1/4 minas (= approx. 26 kg) of silver.
N os. 223 and 224 are two brief texts on private landed property. In the first document, a count of sown and fallow lands - in equivalent measures (cf. Fales, SAAB 4 [1990] 119f) - in various towns is given; the owner is unspecified, but the property would seem to form part of a hereditary portion. The second text also lists the real estate owned by a single person in various towns: it could be a record of land leased by him in usufruct, on the basis of the concluding remark (r.4 ).
The status of the listed rural property is much vaguer in a further group of texts and fragments of varying format, often marked by section rulings (nos. 225-230). Little more than quantities, cultivation types, and localizations of plots are usually given: but small clues point to possibly different administrative contexts. Thus, no. 225 bears a fragmentary list of landed possessions in different provinces which closely resembles the records of vast latifundia in the cadastral schedules attached to royal grants, and may be set apart from the latter only for the physical format, which rather recalls that of the "Harran Census." Much smaller holdings are represented in the "memos" nos. 226 and 227: the latter records some plots of cornland "in the steppe," in a scenario already encountered in the previous section. Holdings changing proprietors, for whatever reason, are the object of the fragments no. 228 and no. 229, perhaps originally parts of the same tablet or series. No. 230 is an exemplar very closely reminiscent of the summary portions of the "Harran Census" - the town of Sarugi (see previous section) might even be mentioned; and the same may be said for no. 232, a list of people and cornland of exempt status. No. 231 is a list dedicated exclusively to groves (cf. Fales, SAAB 4 [1990] , 126f), of an arboreal species which is not mentioned in the extant fragment: on the basis of the "Harran Census," and due to the mention of a "brook" here (11'), Euphrates poplar or similar riverbank trees are likely candidates. It may be noted that such groves were considered fully part of landed properties, since they were subject to royal donation (4'ff).
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate, 'Schedules of Land and People', Imperial Administrative Records, Part II: Provincial and Military Administration, SAA 11. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1995; online contents: SAAo/SAA11 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2021 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa11/militaryadministrationandpopulationmanagement/schedulesoflandandpeople/]