Prisons in Ancient Mesopotamia:

Confinement and Control until the First

Fall of Babylon J. Nicholas Reid
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Prisons in Ancient Mesopotamia
Prisons in Ancient Mesopotamia
Confinement and Control until the First
Fall of Babylon

J. N I C H O LAS R E I D
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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© J. Nicholas Reid 2022
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 To my children, Cooper, Noah, Caleb, and Hannah

πορευθέντες δὲ μάθετε τί ἐστιν ἔλεος θέλω καὶ οὐ θυσίαν (Matt.

9:13a)
 Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Tables
Introduction
The Birth and Evolution of the Prison in Modernity
The Prison and Punishment
A Roadmap to This Book
1. Imprisonment from the Dawn of History to the First Fall of
Babylon
Introduction
What We Know and What We Don’t
Methodology and the Hymn to the Prison Goddess Nungal
2. Confine and Control: Lexical and Social-Historical Summary
Introduction
e2-eš2
bīt asīrī
e2 ennuĝ = bīt ṣibitti
Other Key Terms
The Prison in Literary Texts
Conclusion
3. How to End up Imprisoned
Introduction
Law Collections in Ancient Mesopotamia
Imprisonment in Edicts and Law Collections
 Reasons for Imprisonment
Conclusion
4. Judicial Process and Proof
Introduction
Justice in Mesopotamia
Judicial Summoning
Detainment of Suspects
Judicial Process
The Awe of the Judicial Process
Oaths
The River Ordeal
Imprisonment of the Guilty
Conclusion
5. The Imprisoned Life
Introduction
Life on the Inside: A Literary Perspective
Personal Accounts of Life on the Inside
Ur III Prison Rations
Old Babylonian Prison Rations
Time Served
Conclusion
6. The King in the Cage: Ritual Purification and Imprisonment
Introduction
Purity and Purification
Purity and the Gods
Control Through Imprisonment
Ritual Purification Through Imprisonment
Imprisonment and Positive Change
Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Authors
Primary Texts
General Subject Index
 Acknowledgments

This project has been my constant companion for many years now. I
began thinking about prisons in ancient Mesopotamia during my
doctoral work at the University of Oxford. After defending my
dissertation on slavery, I was awarded a fellowship as a Visiting
Research Scholar (VRS) at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient
World (ISAW), New York University. It was then that I was able to
enjoy focused time to work on the project. ISAW has continued to
support my research by allowing me to maintain a research
affiliation since my time as a VRS. Finally, I have continued working
on it while teaching at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando
(RTSO). I remain grateful to these institutions and the persons
affiliated with them for the ways they supported my research.
A few individuals deserve particular mention here. Jacob Dahl, my
doctoral supervisor, has supported my research in numerous ways
and has remained a mentor and friend through these many years.
Thank you.
Betrand Lafont and Vitali Bartash also read earlier drafts of this
book. The project is much better because of each of you.
I also owe thanks to the anonymous reviewers. Thank you for
giving of your time and for providing invaluable insight into this
project.
I have presented on aspects of this research at ISAW, Oxford, and
Emory and have also taught two classes on the subject of prisons at
RTSO. Thanks to those who invited me to present on my research
and to those who took my classes.
As I was working on this project, I published some of the findings
with the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History. I am grateful to
the editorial board for accepting that project. Steven Garfinkle
shepherded that article through the publication process and taught
me a lot along the way.
Several people have also contributed to this volume in other
ways. Klaus Wagensonner, who has supported me with friendship,
collaboration on other projects, and numerous photos of tablets
through the years, allowed me to use some photographs in this
volume. Eleanor Robson kindly provided me with permission to use
the translation of the “Hymn to Nungal” included in this volume.
Jarett Hall provided me with drawings. Zach Pennington discussed
with me the data related to the length of time people spent under
guard. He also helped by producing the charts included in this
volume to show the findings more clearly. Thanks to each of you.
I would also like to thank Oxford University Press for accepting
this project. Working with Charlotte Loveridge, my acquistion editor,
has been great.
While I owe each of you a debt of gratitude, I accept full
responsibility for any errors that remain.
Finally, I would like to thank Blair, my wife, for her constant
friendship and support and for not once asking when I would be
done with it. It is to our children that I dedicate this volume. I hope
they will grow up to be people who love mercy.
 List of Figures

1. Map of Ancient Mesopotamia. Courtesy of Jarett Hall.

2. Obverse of a tablet of the “Hymn to Nungal,” YBC 4667. Courtesy of the Yale
Babylonian Collection. Photography by Klaus Wagensonner.
3. Prisoner bound by ropes depicted on an Akkadian vase from Uruk. Paris, Musée
du Louvre, AO 5683. Rendering courtesy of Jarett Hall.
4. Male and female SAG×MA and ERIMa from Jemdet Nasr representing a human
head with a rope and a yoke respectively. Drawing by J. Nicholas Reid.
5. Living in Prison. Obverse of Sumerian tablet from Umma, YOS 4, 183. Courtesy
of the Yale Babylonian Collection. Photography by Klaus Wagensonner.
6. Graph showing number of attestations of imprisonment during different reigns.
7. Histogram depicting days spent under guard during different reigns.
8. Omens of Sacrificial Lambs. Old Babylonian tablet, YOS 10, 47. Courtesy of the
Yale Babylonian Collection. Photography by Klaus Wagensonner.
 List of Tables

1. Ur III Prison Texts.

2. Prison Rations.
3. Captives at Girsu.
 Introduction

My house gives birth to a just person but exterminates a false one.

Since there are pity and tears within its brick walls, and it is built with
compassion, it soothes the heart of that person, and refreshes his
spirits.
“Hymn to Nungal,” the prison goddess (lines 103–5)

Ancient Mesopotamia is known for being a land of historical firsts.

The title of Samuel Kramer’s book, History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-
Nine Firsts in Recorded History,1 illustrates the point well. While
Kramer did not include prisons in his list of firsts, his discussion of
another, more benevolent institution can serve as an example of one
of the problems with his approach. The initial chapter is entitled,
“Education: The First Schools.” Yet, scribal education in Mesopotamia
was not exactly like school as we understand it. Dominique Charpin
writes,

The term “school” appears to be misleading, then, in that it confers an

institutional character on the training of scribes. It also suggests a certain
continuity of that activity at a single site. The archeological evidence yields a
different image: that of houses of literati who trained apprentices at home.
All in all, scribal apprenticeships may hardly have been different in their
sociological reality from the other ways of transmitting knowledge. That is,
they occurred primarily within the context of the family.2

Charpin rightly notes that there are a number of ways in which the
term school, as we understand it, blurs certain distinctions about
Mesopotamian scribal training, which might have been very similar
to the transmission of other knowledge such as making pottery.
While not strictly a school, at least as we understand them, the
Mesopotamian historical phenomenon surely belongs to a history of
education and schools, because it serves as an early example of
humans passing on the knowledge and the skill of reading and
writing from one generation to the next, even if numerous
differences exist and a direct linear connection cannot be made.
History should not be restricted to an assessment of our
institutions against theirs. This is where Charpin’s more nuanced
approach is valuable. How they educated and passed on the craft of
reading and writing is more important than whether or not their
schools were like our schools. The same may be said of prisons. And
although it will be discovered that imprisonment or detention was
multifunctional and only had limited intersection with “crime,” this
work shows how religion, power, and politics can shape ideology
attached to very different social-historical realities.
As such, this book is not about whether Mesopotamia had the
first prisons, as defined predominantly by modern, Western political
realities. The answer to that question hardly deserves a page.
Instead, this book is concerned with discovering how imprisonment,
as an historical phenomenon, was employed at the dawn of history.
The editors of the Oxford History of Prisons connect the origins of
the prison to the existence of the cage:

If the cage exists, and if we do not know what else to do with a convicted
criminal who does not need to be killed or whipped or exiled yet who cannot
be allowed to escape adverse consequences for his crime, why not continue
caging? So, we are suggesting, the original justification for the prison may
well have been incapacitation. Whatever else, incarceration serves to
remove a potential offender from the community.3

Such a statement suggests the prison, which they define as an

institution of punishment, finds its origin in the jail as the holding
place, which they call the cage. This book, however, is about what
happened before the cage. The various forms of detention and
imprisonment in early Mesopotamia arose originally out of the desire
to gain access to and control labor, resulting in a multifunctional and
multicontextual practice that was adaptable to a variety of
circumstances. Detention in ancient Mesopotamia had limited
intersection with “crime,” a term which will be used loosely to refer
to any action that is considered a breach of a norm that is
punishable in some manner. When those accused of some infraction
were detained, the existing social structures for corporal
confinement were available to be used in order to meet the needs of
the controlling entity. The need to detain in relation to judicial
process likely only increased with the emergence and expansion of
city states, where detention and transportation were employed to
bring certain high-level cases before the palace.
This origin of imprisonment helps to elucidate and assess stated
or literary goals about the prison, disentangling the ideology that
came to be attached to imprisonment from the much more
complicated realities of the everyday practice. As will be seen,
imprisonment, as a mechanism of detention that restricts movement,
has a long history of being adaptable to a variety of circumstances
for practical reasons and through the attachment of ideology.
Further, it will be evident that imprisonment has been employed to
meet a number of social goals, as it is historically multifunctional.
This is true of then as it is of now. For example, modern
imprisonment in the US where the stated goals of correction and
punishment must be squared with the everyday realities of how
imprisonment is employed and what it accomplishes is illustrative of
this reality.

The Birth and Evolution of the Prison in

Modernity
What is it about imprisonment that resulted in it being fully
enveloped into modern society as a just, safe, and productive
response to crime? Until recently, the almost wholesale acceptance
of imprisonment has been viewed as an advancement in humanity.
Criminals were taken off the streets. Society was safer. And
punishment was more humane. Convicts had their needs met as
they were taken out of society and provided with the opportunity to
reflect on their misdeeds, with many even afforded the chance to re-
enter normal life, after paying their debt to society. If the system
worked, the end result was a positive change in the prisoner, who
through punishment, isolation, and reflection became a better
citizen. In fact, many Americans believe that imprisonment will result
in some form of rehabilitation.4 But rarely does it work.5 I will limit
myself to one example.
On June 6, 2015, a young man named Kalief Browder was found
by his mother hanging from her window-unit air conditioner.6 He had
attempted suicide on at least four prior occasions, but this time was
successful. As a young, black man growing up in New York City,
Browder was accused of stealing a backpack with some valuable
belongings. A few months before his seventeenth birthday, Browder
was arrested and taken to the jail at Rikers, where he would spend
the next three years imprisoned without conviction or trial. For two
of those years, Browder lived in solitary confinement. Eventually,
Browder was unceremoniously released from jail when the charges
were finally dropped. But the damage was done. This is but one
example of a negative outcome of a very broken system that has
numerous problems.
Efforts to raise awareness have resulted in what appears to be a
general recognition of the problems of imprisonment, even if most
do not seem to grasp the full scale of the problem.7 Even as many of
the problems come into focus,8 few positive alternatives have been
offered,9 leaving the system broken and largely unchanged.
The nature and effectiveness of imprisonment, as well as the
need for reform, has been a topic of debate for some time, but the
study of prisons as an historical discipline is a relatively recent
trend.10

The Prison and Punishment

The historical inquiry into prisons has been dominated by the idea
that the prison is by definition the use of imprisonment for the
purpose of punishment. I have written on this topic and even utilized
this approach to some extent, while also attempting to move beyond
it.11 The reduction of the prison to its relationship with punishment
intends to reflect modern notions about prisons particularly in the
West, as opposed to related institutions such as jails; a distinction
that has nothing to do with ancient Mesopotamia.
From a methodological perspective, the editors of the Oxford
History of Prisons, although recognizing the limitations of the
approach, state that the punishment of prisons separates such
institutions from jails, which are used for temporary confinement as
part of a judicial process or in relation to relatively short stays,
typically under a year in the US.12 Other approaches to the historical
inquiry into prisons have also been taken.
David Skarbek, in his book on diversity among approaches to and
various contexts of imprisonment around the world, states there are
certain fundamental realities belonging to all modern prisons:

All prisons are similar in fundamental ways. They incarcerate people who
are charged with or convicted of crimes. They tend to hold a
disproportionately large number of people from disadvantaged and ethnic,
racial, and other minority communities. Prisoners tend to be more violent,
less patient, less trusting, and less educated than the population outside of
prison. Most prisoners must live and interact with other prisoners; they have
no voluntary exit option. When social scientists think about social dilemmas,
these are some of the most important theoretical characteristics that
determine the nature and outcome of the interaction.13

For Skarbek, the prison is for those who are charged and those who
are convicted, which means he takes a broader view of what
constitutes a prison than the editors of the Oxford History of Prisons.
Skarbek, as such, does not confine his study to the distinctions
based on punishment and time, which are formed largely by the US
prison/jail distinction. These central characteristics of prisons provide
Skarbek with the theoretical basis to compare diversity among
approaches to imprisonment in different locales.
 In my prior research on Mesopotamian imprisonment, I sought
further connections beyond punishment such as concepts of reform
and administrative mechanisms, both of which are found in the
ideology connected to modern examples of prisons.14 I expanded my
research question to understand functionality, length of
imprisonment, and what life was like on the inside. The goal,
however, was not to assert that prisons, as we currently understand
them in the modern Western world, were also present in ancient
Mesopotamia. Instead, I sought to understand how Mesopotamian
imprisonment functioned, while arguing for the relevance of the
Mesopotamian evidence for the broader inquiry into a world history
of prisons.
The more time I have spent reflecting on the Mesopotamian
phenomenon, the more I am convinced that the historical inquiry
into a world history of prisons cannot be reduced to the notion of
punishment. In other words, the historical inquiry should not be
restricted by the claimed modern motivation of punishment through
imprisonment as a supposed civilized form of justice when even the
modern mechanism is used much more expansively to include the
control of the population or subsets of the population and to achieve
certain religious and political ends.
For example, modern, Western examples of the prison cannot be
reduced to whether they are used for punishment or not. In Britain,
all local and state facilities are called prisons because of current
political realities.15 Length of time, while a factor, cannot be viewed
consistent either. In places where the US court system is inundated
with cases, the District Attorney’s office may file extensions, holding
non-convicted individuals for over a year.16 Finally, those convicted
of minor violations, such as simple assault or public intoxication, can
be punished with very short stays in a jail. Further, it should be
noted that in certain cases in the US, the prison has been used to
detain high-profile suspects while they wait for trial. In the book,
Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson writes about an example from the
1980s where two suspects were detained on Death Row in Alabama
prior to conviction.17 While anomalous and unjust, as one person
was innocent and the other was held there to coerce false testimony
against the innocent person, it shows the complicated and
multifunctional life of imprisonment, even in our modern political
context. This suggests that intentionality must be squared with
functionality in the history of prisons. All of this together with the
historical process and non-linear development of imprisonment
indicates that our inquiry should not be restricted merely to the
important question of punishment.
Despite the expressed concepts of just punishment and correction
with modern examples of imprisonment, the functional nature of
imprisonment extends beyond mere punishment and relates to
control. With the US, some theories link mass incarceration to an
attempt to control and/or diminish the rights of minorities through
criminalization and imprisonment.18 The punishment, in a sense,
relates to a broader concept of asserting dominance. The primary
goal is not punishment; it is rather the assertion of power through
the mechanism of punishment. It is through this concept of control
that one can further grasp the connection between imprisonment
and correction. If imprisonment is about controlling society and
asserting prescribed norms, the movement from imprisonment to the
release of the offender naturally relates to the goal of submission to
those norms as a precondition for reinsertion into society. The role of
power is but one contributing force to the practice of imprisonment
as it exists today.
Whether you love it, hate it, or find yourself somewhere in
between, one of the most impactful books on the study of prisons is
written by Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison.19 In it, Foucault argued that prisons are a modern
phenomenon that developed as punishment moved from the
spectacle of public, corporal punishment towards the stated goal of
affecting positive change in the person of the prisoner, even if in
reality the assertion of power was the real goal.
Foucault situates his study of the prison in relation to power,
knowledge, and the body.20 Foucault’s work is reasonably easy to
understand, yet he chose to adopt a more literary style, which
makes it useful to summarize his works in relation to reviews that
draw out his theses in a concise manner.21
David Garland describes Foucault’s conception and use of power
as follows: “the various forms of domination and subordination that
operate whenever and wherever social relations exist.”22 Knowledge
is a mechanism of power. Increased knowledge allows greater
control for Foucault. Finally, as summarized by Garland, for Foucault
“the human body is the ultimate material that is seized and shaped
by all political, economic, and penal institutions.”23 Power, as such, is
offered by Foucault as the cause for the shift in punishment from
torture to imprisonment.
Despite numerous great insights found in his work, Foucault’s
argument that the movement from the punishment of the body to
the punishment of the soul for the purpose of control fails to account
sufficiently for the gradual shifts in punishment in modern Western
society. Thus, although simple historical explanations can be
attractive, since they offer straightforward answers to complicated
developments and changes, historical factors that lead to major
social changes are often more complex and variegated.
As such, Foucault’s account of the birth of the prison has received
criticism for his structuralist philosophical approach and his failure to
argue his case on the basis of documentary evidence.24 Further, his
notion that power and control are the driving forces behind the
prison fails to recognize many other factors, which contributed to
shifts in approaches to punishment. As stated by Garland, “The
prison may thus be retained for all sorts of reasons—punitiveness,
economy, or a plain lack of any functional alternative—which have
little to do with effective control or political strategy.”25 While
Foucault offers numerous cogent insights into the birth of prison,
power for the purpose of control is but one reason for the modern
prison system, and it is precisely the multifunctional nature and
adaptability of prisons that require more nuanced historical
explanation.
Pieter Spierenburg offers a “counter paradigm” and several
critiques to Foucault’s history. Spierenburg criticizes Foucault’s
explanation for its structuralist approach. As such, Foucault treats
the historical development of punishment as a series of sudden
changes rather than as gradual overlapping shifts that existed
between one approach to punishment and another.26 Further,
Spierenburg notes that Foucault fails to discuss the societal
developments that contributed to the changes that took place.27
Most Western European countries shifted from early modern to
nation-states during the same periods that saw radical changes in
approaches to punishment.
The movement from the early modern to the nation-state carried
with it a growing distaste for physical suffering.28 The city and
county stopped being treated as “individual entities” in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The early modern state
continued beyond the revolutionary period until the nineteenth
century. During the nineteenth century, the distaste for physical
torment only increased. “Repugnance to the sight of physical
punishment spread and intensified. In the end the ‘political
conclusion’ was drawn and public executions were abolished. Still the
privatization of repression had been completed.”29 The focus became
less on physical torment as a deterrence for crime. The certainty of
being caught through the presence of policing, a product of the
growing central power of the nation-state, became the focus of
crime deterrence.30 The privatization of punishment continued to
have a public presence in the strategic placement of prisons and
across media such as newspapers.31 Other factors should also be
considered.
In the England, the Convict and Penitentiary Acts of 1776 and
1779 resulted in extended periods of imprisonment for criminals
“with hard labour, solitude, and religious instruction in hope that
their character could be amended.”32 When considering the
eighteenth century, Laurie Throness describes a complex overlap
similar to what is depicted by Spierenburg, as described above.
There was not an immediate shift from physical punishment to focus
on the soul. Instead, Throness discusses conflicting desires existing
in a single historical context in eighteenth-century England. The
competing desires to afflict and transform the criminal co-existed in
a single legal context. “Sentimental choruses about the leniency and
humanity of English law were contradicted by awful conditions in
prisons and on convict ships. Both proportion and disproportion in
punishment were thought to follow the divine pattern.”33 The
penitentiary promised to reconcile these two, where the severity of
punishment, sometimes in solitary confinement, placed the prisoner
under the gaze of God.34 Through isolation, prayer, reflection, and
religious instruction, the criminal was to be reformed. The
establishment Protestant Church, such as the Church of England,
thus helped to create effectively a “Protestant Purgatory,” which was
intended to spare the criminal from the torments of Hell.35 Throness
writes,

As God mercifully, allowed all a lifetime to repent, so long prison sentences

in proportion to the gravity of the crime would be a benevolent gift to
serious criminals to allow them enough time to reflect, to produce sorrow in
proportion to their faults, and to demonstrate the fruits of reformation found
in a pattern of industry.36

Since death is final for Protestants, as they do not hold to the

doctrine Purgatory, the Penitentiary became a place where judgment
and mercy could meet. If punishment produces positive change and
spares the criminal from the torments of Hell, then punishment
becomes an act of kindness and moderation, at least conceptually.
The goals of social control and criminal reform can also be seen
in the American example. By 1876, the Elmira Reformatory was
opened in New York state, which marked the beginning of a new
approach to crime in the United States. Twenty reformatories were
opened between 1876 and 1920, promising “benevolent reform:
humane, constructive, and charitable treatment.”37 Andrew Pisciotta
describes how attempts at instilling a Protestant work ethic of
discipline and self-control for the purpose of creating good, Christian
citizens, who are productive members of society, failed. Instead,
Pisciotta concludes that “reformatories did not achieve their overt
goal of benevolent reform or their covert aim of benevolent
repression.”38 Further, the end result was not the effective control of
criminals that Foucault describes; Pisciotta states “these institutions
did not effectively discipline the dangerous class.”39 Despite the
failures of the reform movement, the notion that imprisonment was
an effective means of benevolent punishment that could lead to
positive change in criminals remains reflected in many institutions
bearing the name penitentiary or correction to this day. But power
can take mechanisms that exist for one purpose and use them in
other ways, as seen in imprisonment in the US.
To understand the more recent historical implementation of
imprisonment in the US, one has to go back to at least the Civil
War.40 The thirteenth amendment to the US Constitution, which in
1865 abolished slavery, includes one exception. It reads: “Neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for ‘crime’
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within
the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This
caveat, which permitted involuntary servitude for criminals, became
exploitable to control minority populations and to gain access to
labor.41
Not long after the abolition of slavery, laws were developed in
order to control the newly freed people.42 After the Civil War, Union
troops occupied the Southern States. But with the Compromise of
1877, Southern Democrats negotiated the withdrawal of federal
troops in exchange for not contesting the Republican presidential
victory of Rutherford B. Hayes in the election of 1876. This left the
newly freed black population, which had been integrated in the
South, vulnerable to segregation and violent control in the years that
would follow.
The gains made during the Reconstruction period were curtailed
in part by the Jim Crow laws of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, where segregation and discrimination were also
implemented by white vigilante “justice.” As the only legal form of
“slavery” remaining in the US, imprisonment became an effective
means of repression and control of the black population. In her
book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander writes,
 After a brief period of progress during Reconstruction, African Americans
found themselves, once again virtually defenceless. The criminal justice
system was strategically employed to force African Americans back into a
system of extreme repression and control, a tactic that would continue to
prove successful for generations to come.43

Even after the Civil Rights movement and the end of Jim Crow
segregation, Alexander demonstrates how incarceration extended
many of the problems of the Jim Crow era by continuing
disenfranchisement and dehumanization under the term “criminal”
instead of the former overtly racial terminology employed.44
For Alexander, the now infamous “War on Drugs,” through stiff
sentencing and aggressive policing, resulted in the disproportionate
incarceration of minorities. This insightful work raised awareness of
the problem of mass incarceration in the United States and inspired
the popular Netflix documentary, 13th. Although highlighting a very
important contributing factor to the problem of mass incarceration in
the United States, numerous other problems also exist with the
modern American system. As Anthony B. Bradley writes: “we could
legalize all drugs and release everyone from prison incarcerated for a
drug-related charge and America would still have a mass
incarceration and overcriminalization problem.”45 As such, the US
problem of mass incarceration extends well beyond drugs.
John F. Pfaff is perhaps the most important voice for
understanding the greater problems related to mass incarceration in
the United States. Pfaff writes:

In other words, the single biggest driver of the decline in prison populations
since 2010 has been the decrease in the number of people in prison for
drug crimes. But focusing on drugs will only work in the short run. That it is
working now is certainly something to celebrate. But even setting every
drug offender free would cut out prison population by only about 16
percent. There is a hard limit on how far drug-based reforms can take us.46

Pfaff argues convincingly on the basis of data that the larger

structural problems can hardly be met by merely legalizing drugs;
nor can the legalization of drugs result in a significant change of
demographics in the prison population.47 So while drug related
incarceration remains a major problem, such reform would only
touch on a portion of the related problems of mass incarceration.
Part of the reason for the complexity of real prison reform is that
imprisonment was used as punishment and as a means of control to
deal with numerous social “problems.” Although vigilante “justice”
was also carried out in public ways during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, the private nature of punishment through
imprisonment was exploitable to meet a variety of ends but in subtle
and hidden ways. This subtlety enables an ongoing problem of
imprisonment, long after the reduction of violent, public punishment.
The jail and prison, as such, became effective mechanisms of
oppression, but largely out of plain view, precisely because of their
hidden and adaptable nature. Even if one were to buy into the public
presentation of the goals behind imprisonment, its more discreet
mode of oppression makes it exploitable for numerous ends by any
who wield the power to cage.
This complicated example of modern imprisonment illustrates that
when thinking of a history of prisons and imprisonment, one must
look beyond the stated goals and stated functions of the prison to
the actual practice. As a mechanism of punishment that has a
presence but occurs out of plain sight, imprisonment is adaptable
and easily shaped by complex social and religious factors, since the
human cost and impact of imprisonment remain largely hidden or
otherwise easily ignored by obscuring basic human dignity through
labels such as “criminals” and under promises of increased societal
safety. In the end, the human cost is deemed acceptable because it
claims to deal with “problem” individuals in service to what are
considered greater societal goals of safety and crime deterrence,
and all of this is done with the claimed hope of the betterment of
the criminals themselves.
To summarize, modern imprisonment is not just about
punishment. In the US, imprisonment is used for “deterrence,
incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and restitution.”48 As such,
imprisonment is multifunctional. This fact requires a broader
historical inquiry and suggests that simple and singular solutions to
the problem of mass incarceration will hardly account for real
change. Better conditions in prisons will hardly address
disproportionality among those who end up imprisoned.
Disproportionality can hardly be addressed until money and politics
play a smaller role in our justice system. For example, everyone
knows that those who can afford better, more competent legal
representation will receive more favorable outcomes in the current
system than those who are dependent upon public defense,
particularly in contexts where public defendants are weighed down
by volume. Much more could be said.49 But the foregoing discussion
of Western models and the developments attached to them
demonstrate the complicated history and adaptable nature of
imprisonment. Since prisons are multifunctional, the historical
investigation into imprisonment should not revolve solely around the
question of punishment. The study of early Mesopotamia provides
the opportunity to consider the origins and multifunctional nature of
imprisonment at the dawn of history. The adaptability of limiting
corporal movement through imprisonment to meet numerous social
goals and handle numerous social “problems” has deep roots in
history, even though direct connections and linear developments do
not exist.
 A Roadmap to This Book
Chapter 1 introduces the period of investigation as well various
Assyriological conventions employed when presenting the primary
evidence. This is followed by a discussion of the secondary literature
to demonstrate the current state of the discussion about
imprisonment in early Mesopotamia. After discussing the state of
research on the topic, I introduce the primary sources related to
Mesopotamian imprisonment by using a hymn to a prison goddess.
This literary text provides both an entry point into the discussion and
allows me to explain the methodological approach I use to study the
sources related to imprisonment in early Mesopotamia.
In the second chapter, I discuss key terms denoting some form of
detention in ancient Mesopotamia in relation to the socio-economic
status of the various types of prisoners housed in these centers of
detention. What will be demonstrated is that the overwhelming
evidence suggests that most prisoners were not held because of
“crimes.” This is not to suggest that imprisonment did not relate to
disputes and “criminal” activity. Rather, imprisonment was utilized
throughout the judicial process. But this intersection between
“crime” and detention seems to be a practical extension of existing
mechanisms (administrative bodies, guards, etc.), rather than a
prison in the strict sense.
In the third chapter, I consider how to end up imprisoned in early
Mesopotamia. To do so, I discuss the so-called law codes of ancient
Mesopotamia. This is followed by a discussion of the ways in which
justice was administered in everyday life. The overall approach
involved retributive and restitutive actions. While imprisonment was
not the normal response to “crimes,” I discuss the attested
infractions that led to imprisonment of one sort or another. The
numerous ways by which a person could be imprisoned points to the
multifunctional nature of prisons. This is to be expected as ancient
Near Eastern space was typically multifunctional.50 Nevertheless,
functionality is kept in view.
Chapter four deals with key aspects of the judicial process in
ancient Mesopotamia. Beyond the use of various forms of evidence
in trials, ordeals are attested. These ordeals were intended to
determine cases in reliance upon the gods, which also provided an
element of religious coercion. In particular, the River Ordeal and the
Oath Ordeal are discussed in relation to the prison goddess. The
literary vision of the judicial process is situated in the context of the
actual judicial process as attested in the documents of practice. The
literary vision and awe of the judicial ordeal are also attested in
other literary texts, which receive consideration in this chapter, as
well. The awe-inspiring context of approaching the king and
partaking in ordeals before the gods were intended to reveal the
truth, induce honesty, and determine guilt. In particular, by
considering the judicial process in connection with imprisonment, it
is demonstrated that imprisonment in relation to “crime” largely
functioned as a place of holding until trial and until punishment but
not as punishment.
Chapter five discusses what the imprisoned life was like. After
considering the descriptive account in the literary vision attested in
the relevant portion of the “Hymn to Nungal,” life on the inside will
be discussed through a number of documents of practice to answer
questions about the provision of food, abuse, suffering, and time
spent on the inside. In particular, it will become further evident that
imprisonment was multifunctional, not just in relation to purpose but
also its context. For example, the administrative approaches to
imprisonment and spikes in lengths of stay in prison are two areas in
which development can be observed, suggesting that imprisonment
was available to be used but the approach was not standardized.
Such observations fit with other known changes across locales and
periods of time in early Mesopotamia. The concepts of suffering and
misery introduce the topic of the resultant lament, which bears
mentioning in its Mesopotamian context in the following chapter.
 In Chapter six I discuss the topic of purity in ancient
Mesopotamia. Purity touched upon life from top to bottom. While
there is not a codified discussion of purity from ancient
Mesopotamia, the topic features prominently in the extant sources.51
An exhaustive discussion of the topic is beyond the scope of this
book, but ritual purification is essential to understanding the literary
vision of the prison and later rituals that connect imprisonment to
the process of purification. While this literary vision is not to be
taken as exemplary of what actually occurred, it asserts the idea that
a person can benefit from the process of imprisonment. When
imprisonment is connected to the notion of reform or positive,
personal change, it presents the prisoner’s suffering and the
assertion of control over that person’s body as something that is in
the end beneficial for the individual. This adds a further coercive
element to the process of imprisonment. As C. S. Lewis wrote in his
essay on punishment, “Those who torment us for our own good will
torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their
conscience.”52 In Mesopotamia, the transformation that occurs
through imprisonment includes the restoration of the relationship
between the prisoner and their god, adding another religious
dimension to imprisonment. This imprisonment is further presented
as a merciful act, since the “crime” deserved a greater corporal
punishment in the “Hymn to Nungal.” That is why the prison
goddess’s house is a house of compassion. Again, while not
necessarily reflective of the everyday Mesopotamian’s perspective
about prison, this literary and ideological conception came to be
attached to ritualistic practice.
In the conclusion, I reflect on imprisonment and how ideology
must be disentangled from historical realities. The social-historical
picture suggests imprisonment was a multifunctional practice that
only occasionally intersected with the detention of criminals and
almost never, if at all, related to the rehabilitation or punishment of
criminals. Yet ideology came to be attached to imprisonment in
literature and rituals that offers a very different vision of the goals of
imprisonment at the dawn of history. I conclude this book with a
discussion about the role history can play in helping to create
change in social institutions.

Prisons in Ancient Mesopotamia: Confinement and Control until the First Fall of
Babylon. J. Nicholas Reid, Oxford University Press. © J. Nicholas Reid 2022. DOI:
10.1093/oso/9780192849618.003.0001

1 Kramer 1988.
2 Charpin 2010a: 32.
3 Morris and Rothman 1998: ix.
4 Jonson, Cullen, and Lux 2013.
5 See discussion of the failure of prisons in Foucault 1995. The original French
version was published in 1975 under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la
prison. Discipline is not the best translation of surveiller, which deals with the idea
of monitoring or surveillance. For a discussion of the ways in which the prison has
been ineffective in rehabilitation, see Pisciotta 1994.
6 See the New Yorker essay: Gonnerman (October 6, 2014 Issue). See too the
New York Times article by Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip: “Kalief Browder,
Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kalief-browder-held-at-rikers-
island-for-3-years-without-trial-commits-suicide.html (accessed December 16,
2019).
7 The war on drugs was the popular answer for a while. For this important
thesis in connection to the disproportionate incarceration of minorities, see now
the updated tenth anniversary edition Alexander 2020 (originally published in
2010) and The Prison and Punishment below. See Frost and Clear 2018 for a
summary of theories related to mass incarceration.
8 See, for example, Pfaff (2017), who looks at systemic problems such as the
politicization of punishment and issues related to the authority of district attorneys
among other things. Pfaff further demonstrates how violent crimes must also be
dealt with to move beyond mass incarceration.
9 Scholars are paying increasing attention to the ways in which environment,
age, and other factors contribute to the emergence of crime. See, for example,
Sampson and Laub (2005), who apply a life-course theory to the emergence of
crime. For a fascinating article on recidivism, see Gladwell 2015. Gladwell reports
on efforts to trace rates of recidivism before and after Hurricane Katrina. They
found that those who relocated because of Katrina were more successful at
breaking the pattern of crime emergence than those who returned to their
communities. For suggestions on how to make differences in the existing system,
see Bradley (2018), who offers a number of solutions within prison systems and
communities. For a less optimistic perspective, see Sim (2009) for an argument for
the abolition of prisons.
10 Little was written about prisons from an historical perspective until the
1970s. See Morris and Rothman 1998: vii.
11 Reid 2016: 81–116.
12 Morris and Rothman 1998: ix.
13 Skarbek 2020: 149.
14 Reid 2016. Many facilities in the US, for example, bear the name correctional
facilities. This relates to the ideology that imprisonment will serve as a crime
deterrent. See Tahamont and Chalfin 2018 and Bonta and Wormith 2018.
15 McConville 1998: 267–87.
16 See discussion in The Birth and Evolution of the Prison in Modernity above
on Kalief Browder for an example of this. On the inefficiencies of the system, see
further the recent work of Pfaff 2017.
17 Stevenson 2015: 52–53, 55–57, 60, 63.
18 See most prominently the work of Alexander (2020), whose work was made
famous in part by the Obama Administration. For an overview of theories relating
to mass incarceration and its potential demise, see Frost and Clear 2018: 104–22.
19 Foucault 1995.
20 Foucault 1995. See Garland 1986: 852.
21 See similar observation in Garland 1986: 849–50.
22 Garland 1986: 852. According to von Schriltz, “Foucault’s approach revolves
around his theory that ‘power’—his term for clandestine social forces—shaped
history more decisively than the more visible forces of religion, intellectual
currents, or individuals” (von Schriltz 1999: 391).
23 Garland 1986: 852.
24 Spierenburg 1984: viii. See criticism of Foucault’s historical work in Garland
1986: 868–72. See further von Schriltz (1999) who criticized Foucault’s inaccurate
portrayal of history. Von Schriltz goes as far to say, “Nor should it be forgotten that
this tale is, in virtually every major detail, wrong” (von Schriltz 1999: 410). Note
further still, Alford, who argues that “the empirical reality of prison (not the same
thing as the discourses of penology) shows Foucault to be wrong” (Alford 2000:
125).
25 Garland 1986: 876.
26 Spierenburg 1984: viii.
27 Spierenburg 1984: viii.
28 See Spierenburg 1984: 204–5.
 29 Spierenburg 1984: 205.
30 Spierenburg 1984: 205.
31 Spierenburg 1984: 205. Privatization is not being used here to indicate who
owns the prison, which is a matter of no small importance for current debates
about imprisonment. Privatization is being used here to refer to the non-public
nature of punishment with the modern prison. On private prisons, see Pfaff 2017:
79–104.
32 Throness 2008: 2.
33 Throness 2008: 295.
34 Throness 2008: 295.
35 Throness 2008: 295–300.
36 Throness 2008: 296–97.
37 Pisciotta 1994: 4.
38 Pisciotta 1994: 4.
39 Pisciotta 1994: 5.
40 This is not to suggest that earlier examples and overlap are not significant.
The Civil War, however, remains a significant historical marker in many
developments that would later take place. Interestingly, the history of the prison
begins much earlier in what would become the US; von Schriltz states, “In 1690,
William Penn made prison the sole means of punishment in Pennsylvania, until the
Queen restored the English penal law in 1718” (1999: 398).
41 Note for example Alexander’s discussion of the Thirteenth Amendment in
relation to the Jim Crow laws (2020: 38–44).
42 See, for example, Blackmon 2008.
43 Alexander 2020: 40.
44 The disenfranchisement of criminals was one key way in which the Jim Crow
laws were revitalized after they were long gone. According to the study found at
sentencingproject.org, “A record 6.1 million Americans are forbidden to vote
because of felony disenfranchisement, or laws restricting voting rights for those
convicted of felony-level crimes. The number of disenfranchised individuals has
increased dramatically along with the rise in criminal justice populations in recent
decades, rising from an estimated 1.17 million in 1976 to 6.1 million today”
(Uggen, Larson, and Shannon 2016). On these issues, see Alexander 2020.
45 Bradley 2018: 2.
46 Pfaff 2017: 35. It is surprising that Alexander chooses not to engage with
Pfaff directly in her recent tenth anniversary volume of The New Jim Crow when
she offers explanations for her decision to discuss drugs not violence, since she
offers a different picture than the one provided by Pfaff and other scholars. See in
particular Alexander 2020: xxii–xxxi.
 47 Pfaff 2017: 26.
48 Bradley 2018: 18.
49 For the structural problems and many real solutions, see Pfaff 2017 and
Bradley 2018. Among these include less politicization and more oversight of
District Attorneys and increased flexibility with sentencing for judges. For a
scathing critique of the effectiveness of reform movements in relation to
imprisonment, see Sim 2009. Sim, who has been very influenced by Foucault,
states that the reform movements have been good for bringing to light many
problems that were hidden but argues that such piecemeal efforts have been
incapable of producing real, positive change.
50 See Reid 2016.
51 See the excellent discussion in Guichard and Marti 2013.
52 Lewis 1987: 151.
 1
Imprisonment from the Dawn of
History to the First Fall of Babylon

Introduction
This book is about imprisonment at the dawn of history from Late
Uruk until the first fall of Babylon (ca. 3200–1600 BC).1 The
beginning of history, in its strict sense, is typically related to the
invention of writing.2 The two earliest examples of writing in the
history of the world are the Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the Proto-
cuneiform of ancient Mesopotamia. Although formerly Assyriologists
held that writing was invented in Mesopotamia and spread to Egypt
and China, this theory has been displaced. Now, it is generally
viewed that writing was invented independently four times in the
history of the world in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mayan
Mesoamerica.3
From the outset, writing in Mesopotamia was very basic and
administrative, but two significant changes occurred in the third
millennium. The earliest texts did not include the signs in their
proper linguistic position, and the texts were limited by the lack of
grammatical elements.4 With the addition of syntax and grammar in
the early to mid-third millennium, writing became adaptable to
produce numerous text types and genres. Still, most of the writing of
the third millennium was tied to officialdom. But that was soon to
change. Niek Veldhuis writes of the second millennium, “In this
period, writing lost its almost exclusive link to officialdom, resulting
in a broad array of changes in the form, function, and social location
of writing.”5 By the end of the Old Babylonian Period, cuneiform
writing was quite advanced with literature, law collections, royal
inscriptions, legal texts, and administrative documents all being well-
attested.6
This rich textual record attests to the social and economic
structures of the early second millennium, which, although not
static, had very “deep roots” in the third millennium.7 After the fall of
Babylon, the written record and our knowledge about prisons
lessens until the first millennium.
Limiting the period of investigation to the early phase of
Mesopotamia is inspired by Nicholas Postgate, who wrote on social
and economic structures in his book, Early Mesopotamia: Society
and Economy at the Dawn of History. Postgate chose this period and
confined his investigation to Southern Mesopotamia because of its
rich documentation and how the early to mid-second millennium
practices were deeply embedded in third millennium.8 Although this
work is primarily focused on southern Mesopotamia until the first fall
of Babylon, many of the changes of the Old Babylonian period are
best understood in relation to the Mari record, which was a town in
modern day Syria and positioned on the Euphrates River.9 As such,
this material will be drawn upon at numerous points. Finally,
evidence from later periods will be mentioned where relevant in
order to offer illuminating examples from ancient Mesopotamia and
to highlight some changes in practice that occurred.10
The nature of the evidence of imprisonment from early
Mesopotamia is both rich and rather limited for this period. The
richness of the data can be seen in the written documentation that
touches on the practice. Imprisonment is attested in numerous text
types from literary to administrative.
The written documentation, however, is limited by accidents of
discovery and the general unevenness of the record. For example, as
will be discussed, the documentation of imprisonment for the Ur III
period is largely administrative, while the material for the Old
Babylonian period relates less to administrations and some of it is
also literary in nature. Beyond the written record, to date a clear
physical prison has not been found for early Mesopotamia (Figure 1).
This may never change, since the evidence points to imprisonment
occurring in multifunctional spaces that were employed primarily for
different purposes, such as temples, households, and roadhouses.
So, while much can be gleaned about the physical context
surrounding imprisonment through the written documentation, the
archaeological record is rather limited in relation to imprisonment.
Figure 1. Map of Ancient Mesopotamia. Courtesy of Jarett Hall.

As with all Assyriological research, the findings of this work must

be taken to be ongoing in nature, since new things are being
discovered, and numerous texts already in museums await
publication. It may be safely assumed that at least some of these
relate to imprisonment.11 And yet, the significant body of evidence
assembled here demonstrates that such a work as this is long
overdue.
 The presentation of this evidence follows standard Assyriological
conventions. Akkadian is transliterated in italics. Sumerian is
transliterated in normal script. Uncertain readings are indicated by all
caps. Full brackets ([…]) indicate a full break in the text, while
partial brackets (˹…˺) indicate a partial break. Erasures are marked
by the degree symbol (°). A superscript exclamation point (!)
indicates that the reading has been corrected, while a question mark
(?) denotes uncertainty.
I have chosen to include transliterations for most of the quoted
texts, so those with Assyriological training can easily access the
original language behind the translation, while those outside of the
Assyriological community may want to skip the transliterations.
When a text is transliterated in the footnote, the line numbers are
indicated but not written out. Each text is presented with tablet sides
indicated and line divisions denoted by a (/). Changes in the side of
the tablet are denoted by (//) and the side (i.e. // Reverse:).

What We Know and What We Don’t

Although there is a lot of evidence relating to prisons in ancient
Mesopotamia, there is much we don’t know. While limitations will
surely remain, the subject of imprisonment deserves fuller
treatment.
In this section, I discuss secondary literature pertaining to
imprisonment in ancient Mesopotamia. This section consists of two
main parts followed by a summary of the state of research. Although
I am restricting this work to the period leading up to the first fall of
Babylon, it is useful to explain what has been written about the later
periods and how scholars have drawn upon the ideas of the earlier
texts to discuss imprisonment in the later periods.
Although prisons have been discussed in Assyriological research
for some time, the study of imprisonment in Mesopotamia was
significantly advanced in the 1990s by Piotr Steinkeller and Miguel
Civil. Steinkeller’s article, “The Reforms of UruKAgina and an Early
Sumerian Term for ‘Prison,’” considers UruKAgina’s claim that he
released various people from “prison” (e2-eš2).12 Steinkeller compiles
a substantial amount of evidence relating to prisons, particularly in
the Old Akkadian and Ur III periods. In his article, Steinkeller seeks
to draw implications about the humaneness of “Sumerian social and
legal institutions”13 and in the process provides seminal lexical work
on the early terminology related to prisons. While, as will be seen in
this work, I am not convinced of the humaneness of imprisonment,
at least as it is often employed, Steinkeller’s research on the topic of
prisons and indeed the third millennium remains indispensable.
Civil studied another important Sumerian term related to prisons
(ennuĝ), discussing a semantic range for this important term for the
Ur III period.14 When an imprisonment context is suggested by the
texts in Assyriological research, attempts are made at understanding
functionality and context. This is often done by considering whether
or not imprisonment was used as a means of punishment and by
discussing the length of time someone spent in detention. For
example, even though the terminology for imprisonment is not
present in the two texts he discusses, Claus Wilcke points to two
fragmentary texts from Nippur that read like prison rosters, since
these include offenses such as theft, flight, arson, murder, and
plundering a house.15 Wilcke contextualizes his discussion of these
fragmentary texts with the following statement: “The consequences
for the offenders are in no instance mentioned. One may assume
that, as Ur III texts suggest, the duration of the stay in prison was
limited to a certain time and that there one had to compensate the
offence with labour.”16 This is not the only discussion in which the
Mesopotamian evidence related to prisons is partially assessed by
the recorded lengths of time people spent in prison.17 The lengths of
stays in prison during early Mesopotamia is reconsidered below,
since this has been one of the key points of inquiry.
Another key point of inquiry is the question of punishment, since
punishment is linked so closely to imprisonment in the modern
Western world. For example, when discussing the Ur III period,
Bertrand Lafont and Raymond Westbrook write:

Imprisonment is mentioned but not specifically as punishment. It applied to

debtors and criminals pending payment of penalties. If Wilcke’s
interpretation of LU 3 [Laws of Ur-Namma] is correct, a person guilty of
false imprisonment is imprisoned and pays a fine of fifteen shekels. If the
talionic principle is involved, the imprisonment is best understood as
imposed pending payment.18

Elsewhere, Westbrook summarizes his understanding of prisons in

the ancient Near East as follows: “Prison was used as an interim
measure to hold persons until their punishment was decided or until
they paid a penalty or debt owing.”19 By so doing, Lafont and
Westbrook view ancient Mesopotamian imprisonment as coercive for
payment rather than a form of punishment. This seems to be a
rather accurate description and reflects the consensus in the
secondary literature that mention prisons in ancient Mesopotamia.
Earlier studies had already recognized the problems with freely
applying the term prison to the ancient Mesopotamian example.
Johannes Renger, for example, argues that modern notions of
prisons are not applicable to the Old Babylonian evidence and
deliberately avoids the term prison, while employing imprisonment
throughout to denote the type of confinement used during the
period.20 Much like the conclusions of Westbrook, Renger argues
that imprisonment during the Old Babylonian period was coercive for
payment rather than a form of punishment.21
Scholarship on prison contexts in Old Babylonian Mari came to
similar conclusions. Marie-France Scouflaire argues that various
forms of coerced detainment and restraint were employed during the
period, but prisons, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist.
Rather than institutions of punitive confinement and rehabilitation,
Scouflaire argues that workhouses existed and that prisons were
used prior to guilt being determined. Prisons were also used after
trial but only until acts of punishment were carried out, such as the
payment of a fine or the death penalty.22 In sum, within the field of
Assyriology, prisons in ancient Mesopotamia are not viewed as
utilized for punishment.
Outside of the field of Assyriology, little attention has been
devoted to the subject of imprisonment in ancient Mesopotamia.
This is understandable, since much of the Mesopotamian evidence
has not been available to non-specialists. The material more widely
known from Mesopotamia, however, has been handled largely
through the lenses of biblical data rather than an extensive
treatment of the subject in its own right. The Old Babylonian bīt asīrī
is one of the complexes that has been related to prisons and is
referenced twice in The Oxford History of the Prison.23
Since the publication of that volume, Andrea Seri has produced a
significant monograph on the bīt asīrī. While the bīt asīrī is
commonly translated “the house of prisoners” or “house of prisoners
of war,”24 Seri argues that it was not a prison but functioned more
like an administrative group during the reign of Rīm-Anum of Uruk,
who rebelled against Babylon around 1742 bc during the reign of
Samsu-iluna.25
Annunziata Rositani, however, argues that the bīt asīrī was more
than an administrative unit. She suggests that it was a physical place
managed by the “state” where the prisoners of war were held prior
to and in between work assignments.26 Rositani writes, “All the
occurrences analyzed seem to confirm that the asīrū were
foreigners, not ordinary prisoners, that they were in some way under
—and directly dependent on—that palace administration, given to
the king as presents and employed in government activities.”27
According to this view, the “house of the prisoners (of war)”
consisted of human resources that were detained and moved about
as controlled labor for the crown. Either way, the bīt asīrī is not
considered a place of punishment, as it functions more as an
institutional body where human resources (particularly slaves and
prisoners of war) were detained, worked, and allocated.
While the origin and primary functions of imprisonment seem to
relate to coercing and controlling labor, as well as holding in relation
to judicial process and payments, imprisonment took on ritual
significance as well. Tikva Frymer-Kensky uses the Old Babylonian
“Hymn to Nungal” to illuminate the River Ordeal and the role of the
prison in Mesopotamia.28 Frymer-Kensky works through the text with
commentary interspersed throughout. She highlights the ways in
which the text claims that the prison and Nungal set free the
righteous but detained the wicked. The prison held offenders prior to
trial and subjected them to the River Ordeal. Perhaps the most
surprising part of the text, however, is that the convicted must
return to the prison. The offender is released only after the prison
had purified her/him. Frymer-Kensky writes, “This time the man has
not come to await trial, for he has already been snatched from the
river. He is detained here in confinement as a prison sentence after
his trial has been concluded.”29 According to Frymer-Kensky, this
indicates that, at least from the vantage point of this text,
detainment could be used as a place of holding until judgment and a
place of punishment after conviction.30 It should be noted again that
this literary text is very difficult to reconcile with the evidence of
archives, which suggests that imprisonment was used for temporary
detainment as part of the judicial process, to force job performance,
and in relation to debts or fines. As noted by Hans Neumann and
Susanne Paulus, imprisonment was primarily used for remand,
forcing debt retirement, and fulfilling job performance. Although they
remain open to the possibility that some instances may have been
punitive, this was not the case normally.31
In general, similar discussions can be found in research
considering imprisonment after the first fall of Babylon as well.
Again, attention is given to why prisoners were held and duration.
Further, as the ritual significance of imprisonment becomes known
better in the later periods, the Old Babylonian “Hymn to Nungal” is
often referenced to understand some of the intersection between
imprisonment and purification.
It should be noted that like the earlier period, people were
detained for a variety of reasons. When dealing with the Middle
Babylonian period, Jonathan Tenney observes that runaway workers
were sometimes captured and placed in prison or in fetters alongside
people who were being detained because of “crimes,” such as
striking a mother or elder brother and unsanctioned uses of temple
personnel. People could act as guarantors to secure the release of
runaways. Beyond this, little information is known about
imprisonment during the period.32
Recently, Yuval Levavi published four Middle Babylonian texts
dealing with the prison. Levavi writes, “The modern concept of
prison as a place of rehabilitation for criminals was foreign to the
ancient near east (van der Toorn 1992: 468), and the different
Mesopotamian law codes only mention detention as collateral, and
not as punishment (Versteeg 2000: 125–27).”33 Levavi helpfully
discusses prisoner release, as well as the contexts and functions of
imprisonment. Contra Levavi it does seem that the concept of
rehabilitation does exist in literature and ritualistic texts. Perhaps, it
would have been better to say that the concept is not attached to
the actual practice in any visible way. Still the distinctions Levavi
draws are important and accurate on the whole.
When considering the late period, the questions of punishment
and duration are used to assess the well-attested practice of
imprisonment. For the Neo-Babylonian period, Joachim Oelsner,
Bruce Wells, and Cornelia Wunsch devote a paragraph to the topic of
imprisonment, referencing “ample evidence that prisons were in
use.”34 The authors note that theft, fraud, and likely other offenses
resulted in imprisonment. Cities, temples, and even individuals had
prisons. The evidence also includes escape attempts and
prosecution. They conclude: “It is not clear if prisons were used
primarily for punishment, or if suspects and criminals were detained
under guard only while the authorities awaited the payment of a fine
or the conclusion of an on-going investigation (TCL 13 219).”35 While
Oelsner, Wells, and Wunsch leave open the possibility that prisons
were used for punishment, Mariano San Nicolò, writing over fifty
years prior, argues that the instances in which people were held
under guard are best explained as those awaiting a judicial decision
or because of a debt that needed to be paid.36
 Other lines of inquiry must also be made since the evidence
points to ritualistic imprisonment. Claus Ambos, although noting that
the prison goddess Nungal does not play a role in the later ritual and
the tradition of the hymn ends after the Old Babylonian period,
argues a similar idea of transformation can be found in the ritual of
the king during the month of Tašritu in which the king lodged the
night in a reed hut that symbolized a prison.37 On the next day, the
king came out of the hut as a new person whose offense had been
cleared. This purifying concept of the prison represents an
ideological motive behind the use of prisons that extends beyond
mere punishment to include the rehabilitation of the offender with
the goal of assimilation back into society. With the royal ritual, the
king is able to resume his former duties after ritualistic incarceration.
Making reference to San Nicolò,38 Ambos views prisons as holding
places until punishment such as a fine or physical punishment was
meted out.39
If imprisonment is supposed to transform, it leads to the question
if it ever really worked. Kristin Kleber and Eckart Frahm publish a
text dealing with a failed escape attempt from prison during the
Neo-Babylonian period. They situate their study in the broader
context of other evidence relating to prisons in ancient
Mesopotamia. In particular, the authors offer a prosopography of
prison wardens in the Eanna archive, and they compare a text that
deals with an escape attempt and the consequences to the ideal of
character reform through imprisonment found in the “Hymn to
Nungal,” the Sumerian hymn cited below that deals with the prison
and the prison goddess Nungal.40 In the “Hymn to Nungal,” the
prison gives birth to the prisoner; refines the character like silver;
and preserves life by delivering the offender from the death
penalty.41 In Kleber and Frahm’s text, by contrast, an incarcerated
thief fails to conform and commits murder in order to escape. Kleber
and Frahm appear to lean toward being somewhat open to the
possibility that some of the instances of detention were more than
holding, citing texts which refer to people being held for longer
periods of time and those instances which may indicate that the
detainee was held as punishment.42 Even if this were the case,
instances of imprisonment for punishment would at the very least be
the exception and not the rule. Rather, the prison, when relating to
punishment, was a mechanism to hold someone in relation to
punishment not for punishment.
In summary, it is recognized that people were held under guard in
ancient Mesopotamia, but the notion that people were held for the
purpose of punishment has been generally rejected or at least
treated as an exception to the more common purposes of such
confinement. These assessments largely revolve around two key
questions:

1. Why were people held under guard?

2. How long were people held under guard?

As seen above in the survey of scholarship, the purpose of

detainment is the most frequently referenced question in the
Assyriological discussion about imprisonment in relation to the
broader theoretical conversation about prisons and jails. The related
question of length of time, which features prominently in the
systems found in the US, is also referenced in Assyriological
discussions. In the US, jails are often local institutions used for
holding and punishment. But sentences in jails do not typically
exceed one year.
Previously, I wrote on prisons in early Mesopotamia and argued
that prisons were multifunctional and occurred in private and
administrative contexts.43 Beyond this, I also demonstrated that
people were held in prisons for longer periods of time than
previously documented. However, I viewed this spike in lengths of
time as potentially explained by unique political circumstances rather
than reflective of normal practice. I sought to assess the
Mesopotamian prison in relation to purpose, context, and duration,
rather than strictly in relation to the question of punishment. By so
doing, I sought to understand the multifunctional imprisonment of
early Mesopotamia on its own terms while also asking questions of
Another random document with
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into the boilers, and accumulated there. It saponified and formed a
foam which filled the whole boiler and caused the water to be worked
over with the steam as fast as it could be fed in. I have always
wondered why the engine, being vertical, should not have exhibited
any sign of the water working through it at the upper end of the
cylinder. The explanation after all appears simple. The water on
entering the steam chest mostly fell to the bottom and little passed
through the upper ports. The trouble from oil was not felt at all in the
Lancashire boiler. This, I suppose, was due to three causes. The
latter held a far greater body of water, had a much larger extent of
evaporating surface, and far greater steam capacity. I was always
sorry that I did not give the Harrison boiler the better chance it would
have had with a jet condenser.
In this pair of diagrams, which are copied from the catalogue of
Ormerod, Grierson & Co., the low steam pressure, 29 pounds above
the atmosphere, will be observed. This was about the pressure
commonly carried. The pressure in the exhibition boilers, 75 pounds,
was exhibited by Mr. John Hick, of Bolton, as a marked advance on
the existing practice.
In preparing for the governor manufacture I had my first revelation
of the utter emptiness of the Whitworth Works. Iron gear patterns
were required, duplicates of those which had been cut for me at
home by Mr. Pratt. The blanks for these gears were turned as soon
as possible after I reached Manchester, and sent to the Whitworth
Works to be cut. It seemed as though we should never get them.
Finally, after repeated urging, the patterns came. I was sent for to
come into the shop and see them. They were in the hands of the
best fitter we had, who, by the way, was a Swedenborgian preacher
and preached every Sunday. The foreman told me he had given
them to this man to see if it was possible to do anything with them,
and he thought I ought to see them before he set about it. I could
hardly believe my eyes. There was no truth about them. The spaces
and the teeth differed so much that the same tooth would be too
small for some spaces and could not be wedged into others; some
would be too thick or too thin at one end. They were all alike bad,
and presented all kinds of badness. It was finally concluded to make
the best of them, and this careful man worked on them more than
two days to make them passable.
The first governor order that was booked was the only case that
ever beat me. I went to see the engine. It was a condensing beam-
engine of good size, made by Ormerod, Grierson & Co. to maintain
the vacuum in a tube connecting two telegraph offices in
Manchester, and had been built to the plans and specifications of the
telegraph company’s engineer. The engine had literally nothing to
do. A little steam air-pump that two men could have lifted and set on
a bench would have been just suitable for the work. They could not
carry low enough pressure nor run slowly enough. On inspection I
reported that we should have nothing to do with it.
The custom of making whatever customers order and taking no
responsibility was first illustrated to me in this curious way. I saw a
queer-looking boiler being finished in the boiler-shop. In reply to my
question the foreman told me they were making it for a cotton-
spinner, according to a plan of his own. It consisted of two boilers,
one within the other. The owner’s purpose was to carry the ordinary
steam pressure in the outer boiler, and a pressure twice as great in
the inner one, when the inner boiler would have to suffer the stress
of only one half the pressure it was carrying.
I asked the superintendent afterwards why they did not tell that
man that he could not maintain steam at two different temperatures
on the opposite sides of the same sheets. He replied: “Because we
do not find it profitable to quarrel with our customers. That is his
idea. If we had told him there was nothing in it, he would not have
believed us, but would have got his boiler made somewhere else.”
Perhaps the most curious experience I ever had was that of
getting the governor into cotton-mills. There was a vast field all
around us, and we looked for plenty of orders. This was the
reception I met with every time. After listening to the winning story I
had to tell, the cotton lord would wind up with this question: “Well, sir,
have you got a governor in a large cotton-mill?” After my answer in
the negative I was bowed out. I early got an order from Titus Salt &
Son, of Saltaire, for two large governors but these did not weigh at
all with a cotton-spinner; they made alpaca goods.
 The way the governor was finally got into cotton-mills, where
afterwards its use became general, was the most curious part. A mill
in the city of Manchester was troubled by having its governor fly in
pieces once in a while. After one of these experiences the owners
thought that they might cure the difficulty by getting one of my
governors. That flew in pieces in a week. I went to see the engine.
The cause of all the trouble appeared at a glance. The fly-wheel was
on the second-motion shaft which ran at twice the speed of the main
shaft, and the gearing between them was roaring away enough to
deafen one. The governor was driven by gearing. The vibrations
transmitted to the governor soon tired the arms out. I saw the son of
the principal owner, and explained the cause of the failure of every
governor they had tried, and told him the only remedy, which would
be a complete one, would be to drive the governor by a belt. That, he
replied, was not to be thought of for an instant. I told him he knew
himself that a governor could not endure if driven in any other way,
and that I had hundreds of governors driven by belts, which were
entirely reliable in all cases. “But,” said he, “supposing the belt runs
off the pulley.” “The consequence,” I replied, “cannot be worse than
when the governor flies in pieces.” After wasting considerable time in
talk, he said, “Well, leave it till my father comes home; he is absent
for a few days.” “No,” said I, “if I can’t convince a young man, I shall
not try to convince an old man.” Finally, with every possible
stipulation to make it impossible for the belt to come off, he yielded
his assent, and I had the governor on in short order, lacing the belt
myself, to make sure that it was butt-jointed and laced in the
American fashion.
More than three years afterwards, two days before I was to sail for
home, I met this man on High Street, in Manchester. It was during
the Whitsuntide holidays, and the street was almost deserted. He
came up to me, holding out both hands and grasping mine most
cordially. “Do you know,” said he, “that we have increased our
product 10 per cent., and don’t have half as many broken threads as
we had before, and it’s all that belt.”
 Condenser and Air-pump designed by Mr. Porter. (Cross-section)

The tendency towards the horizontal type of engine, in place of the

beam-engine, began to be quite marked in England about that time.
This was favorable to the use of the Allen engine. The only thing that
seemed wanting to its success was a directly connected jet
condenser. No one believed that an air-pump could be made to run
successfully at the speed of 150 double strokes per minute. Yet this
had to be done, or I could not look for any considerable adoption of
the high-speed engine. This subject occupied my mind continually.
When I returned from Oporto, I had thought out the plan of this
condenser, and at once set about the drawings for it. No alteration
was ever made from the first design of the condenser, which I
intended to show with the engine at the coming Paris Exposition in
1867, and which I finally did succeed in showing there, but under
very different and unexpected relations.
The philosophy of this condenser is sufficiently shown in the
accompanying vertical cross-section. A hollow ram, only equal in
weight to the water which it displaced, ran through a stuffing-box at
the front end of the chamber, and was connected with an extension
of the piston-rod of the engine. So the center line of the engine
extended through this single-acting ram, which had the full motion of
the piston. It ran through the middle of a body of water, the surface of
which fell as the ram was withdrawn, and rose as it returned. A quiet
movement of the water was assured by three means: First, the
motion of the ram was controlled by the crank of the engine, and so
began and ceased insensibly. Second, the motion of the ram, of two
feet, produced a rise or fall of the surface of the water of only about
one inch. Third, the end of the ram was pointed, a construction which
does not appear in this sectional view, permitting it to enter and
leave the water at every point gradually. Both the condenser and the
hot-well were located above the chamber in which the ram worked.
The problem was to obtain complete displacement by means of
solid water without any admixture of free air, the expansion of which
as the plunger was withdrawn would reduce the efficiency of the air-
pump. To effect this object the air must be prevented from mingling
with the water, and must be delivered into the hot-well first. This was
accomplished by two means: First, placing the condenser as well as
the hot-well above the air-pump chamber, as already stated, and
secondly, inclining the bottom of the condenser, so that the water
would pass through the inlet valves at the side farthest from, and the
air at the side nearest to, the hot-well. Thus the air remained above
the water, and as the latter rose it sent the air before it quite to the
delivery valves. Pains were taken to avoid any place where air could
be trapped, so it was certain that on every stroke the air would be
sent through the delivery valves first, mingled air and water, if there
were any, next, and the solid water last, insuring perfect
displacement.
I have a friend who has often asked me, with a manner showing
his conviction that the question could not be answered, “How can
you know that anything will work until you have tried it?” In this case I
did know that this condenser would work at rapid speed before I tried
it. The event proved it, and any engineer could have seen that it
must have worked. The only question in my mind was as to the
necessity of the springs behind the delivery valves. Experiment was
needed to settle that question, which it did in short order. At the
speed at which the engine ran, the light springs improved the
vacuum a full pound, showing that without them these valves did not
close promptly.
The following important detail must not be overlooked. The rubber
disk valves were backed by cast-iron plates, which effectually
preserved them from being cut or even marked by the brass
gratings. These plates were made with tubes standing in the middle
of them, as shown. These tubes afforded long guides on the stems,
and a projection of them on the under side held the valves in place
without any wear. They also determined the rise of the valves. The
chambers, being long and narrow, accommodated three inlet and
three outlet valves. The jet of water struck the opposite wall with
sufficient force to fill the chamber with spray.
When the plans for this condenser were completed, and the Evan
Leigh engine had been vindicated, I felt that the success of the high-
speed system was assured, and looked forward to a rapidly growing
demand for the engines. We got out an illustrated catalogue of sizes,
in which I would have put the condenser, but the firm decided that it
would be better to wait for that until it should be on the same footing
with the engine, as an accomplished fact.
Suddenly, like thunder from a clear sky, I received notice that
Ormerod, Grierson & Co. were in difficulties, had stopped payment,
placed their books in the hands of a firm of accountants, and called a
meeting of their creditors, and the works were closed. Some of their
enormous contracts had proved losing ones. I had made such
provision in my contract with them that on their failure my license to
them became void. Otherwise it would have been classed among
their assets.
 CHAPTER XII

Introduction to the Whitworth Works. Sketch of Mr. Whitworth. Experience in the

Whitworth Works. Our Agreement which was never Executed. First Engine in
England Transmitting Power by a Belt.

was still debating with myself what course to take,

when I received a note from Mr. W. J. Hoyle, secretary
of the Whitworth Company, inquiring if I were free from
any entanglement with the affairs of Ormerod,
Grierson & Co., to which I was able to make a
satisfactory reply. Mr. Hoyle was then a stranger to
me. It appeared that he was an accomplished steam engineer, and
had been employed as an expert to test one of my engines in
operation, an engine which we had made for a mill-owner in
Bradford. He had been very favorably impressed by the engine, so
much so as to form this scheme. He had been with the Whitworth
Company only a short time, and was struck with the small amount of
work they were doing in their tool department; and after his
observation of the engine at Bradford, learning of the stoppage of
Ormerod, Grierson & Co., it occurred to him that it would be a good
thing for his company to undertake the manufacture of these
engines. After receiving my answer to his preliminary inquiry, having
Mr. Whitworth, as he afterwards told me, where he could not get
away, on a trip from London to Manchester, he laid the plan before
him and talked him into it. I directly after received an invitation to
meet Mr. Whitworth at his office, and here commenced what I verily
believed was one of the most remarkable experiences that any man
ever had.
 William J. Hoyle

In the course of our pretty long interview, which terminated with

the conclusion of a verbal agreement, Mr. Whitworth talked with me
quite freely, and told me several things that surprised me. One was
the frank statement that he divided all other toolmakers in the world
into two classes, one class who copied him without giving him any
credit, and the other class who had the presumption to imagine that
they could improve on him. His feelings towards both these classes
evidently did not tend to make him happy. Another thing, which I
heard without any sign of my amazement, was that he had long
entertained the purpose of giving to the world the perfect steam-
engine. “That is,” he explained, “an engine embodying all those
essential principles to which steam-engine builders must sooner or
later come.” This, he stated, had been necessarily postponed while
he was engaged in developing his system of artillery, but he was
nearing the completion of that work and should then be able to
devote himself to it.
I cannot perhaps do better than stop here and give my
impressions of Mr. Whitworth. He was in all respects a phenomenal
man. As an engineer, or rather a toolmaker, he addressed himself to
all fundamental constructive requirements and problems, and
comprehended everything in his range and grasp of thought,
continually seeking new fields to conquer. Long after the period here
referred to he closed his long and wonderful career by giving to the
world the hollow engine shaft and the system of hydraulic forging. At
that time he was confidently anticipating the adoption by all nations
of his system of artillery. He had made an immense advance, from
spherical shot, incapable of accurate aim and having a high
trajectory, to elongated shot, swiftly rotating in its flight and having a
comparatively flat trajectory, and which could hit the mark and
penetrate with destructive effect at distances of several miles. These
fundamental features of modern artillery thus originated with Mr.
Whitworth. All his other features have been superseded, but his
elongated pointed rotating projectile will remain until nations shall
learn war no more; a time which in the gradual development of
humanity cannot be far away. Before I left England, however, he had
abandoned his artillery plans in most bitter disappointment. He had
met the English official mind. By the authorities of the war and navy
departments it had been unanimously decided that what England
wanted was, not accuracy of aim and penetration at long range, but
smashing effects at close quarters. The record of that is to be found
in the proceedings of the House of Commons in 1868, only thirty-
nine years ago. Think of that!
Mr. Whitworth was not only the most original engineering genius
that ever lived. He was also a monumental egotist. His fundamental
idea was always prominent, that he had taught the world not only all
that it knew mechanically, but all it ever could know. His fury against
tool-builders who improved on his plans was most ludicrous. He
drew no distinction between principles and details. He must not be
departed from even in a single line. No one in his works dared to
think. This disposition had a striking illustration only a short time—
less than a year—before I went there. He had no children. His
nearest relatives were two nephews, W. W. and J. E. Hulse. The
latter was a tool-manufacturer in Salford. W. W. Hulse was Mr.
Whitworth’s superintendent, and had been associated with him for
twenty-four years, for a long time as his partner, the firm being
Joseph Whitworth & Company. Lately the business had been taken
over by a corporation formed under the style of the Whitworth
Company, and Mr. Hulse became the general superintendent.
Mr. Whitworth was taken sick, and for a while was not expected to
live, and no one thought, even if he did get better, that he would ever
be able to visit his works again. Mr. Hulse had been chafing under
his restraint, and during Mr. Whitworth’s absence proceeded to make
a few obvious improvements in their tools, such, for example, as
supporting the table of their shaper, so that it would not yield under
the cut. To the surprise of every one, Mr. Whitworth got well, and
after more than six months’ absence, he appeared again at the
works. Walking through, he noted the changes that had been made,
sent for Mr. Hulse, discharged him on the spot, and ordered
everything restored to its original form.
To return now to my own experience. Since Mr. Whitworth had
been absorbed in his artillery development he had given only a
cursory oversight to the tool manufacture. Mr. Hulse had been
succeeded as superintendent by a man named Widdowson, whose
only qualification for his position was entire subserviency to Mr.
Whitworth.
 Sir Joseph Whitworth

My drawings and patterns were purchased by the Whitworth

Company, and I was installed with one draftsman in a separate
office, and prepared to put the work in hand at once for a 12×24-inch
engine for the Paris Exposition, where Ormerod, Grierson & Co. had
secured the space, and the drawings for which I had completed. If I
remember rightly, the patterns were finished also. While I was getting
things in order, Mr. Widdowson came into my office, and in a very
important manner said to me: “You must understand, sir, that we
work here to the decimal system and all drawings must be
conformed to it.” I received this order meekly, and we went to work to
make our drawings all over, for the single purpose of changing their
dimensions from binary to decimal divisions of the inch. There was of
course quite a body of detail drawings, and to make these over, with
the pains required to make these changes to an unaccustomed
system, and make and mount the tracings, took us nearly three
weeks. When finished I took the roll of tracings to Mr. Widdowson’s
office. He was not in, and I left them for him. An hour or so later he
came puffing and blowing into my office with the drawings. He was a
heavy man, and climbing upstairs exhausted him. When he got his
breath, he broke out: “We can’t do anything with these. Haven’t got a
decimal gauge in the shop.” “You gave me express orders to make
my drawings to the decimal system.” “Damn it, I meant in halves and
quarters and all that, and write them decimals.” So all that work and
time were thrown away, and we had to make a new set of tracings
from the drawings I had brought, in order to figure the dimensions in
decimals. He told me afterwards that when Mr. Whitworth
commenced the manufacture of cylindrical gauges he made them to
the decimal divisions of the inch, imagining that was a better mode of
division than that by continual bisection, and supposing that he had
influence enough to effect the change. But nobody would buy his
gauges. He had to call them in and make what people wanted. “And
now,” said Mr. Widdowson, “there is not a decimal gauge in the
world.” He knew, too, for up to that time they made them all. So Mr.
Whitworth could make a mistake, and I found that this was not the
worst one that he had made.
 While time was being wasted in this manner, the subject of
manufacturing the governors came up. Mr. Whitworth concluded that
he would first try one on his own shop engine, so one was bought
from Ormerod, Grierson & Co. I had a message from Mr. Widdowson
to come to the shop and see my governor. It was acting in a manner
that I had seen before, the counterpoise rising and dropping to its
seat twice every time the belt lap came around. “Total failure, you
see,” said Mr. Widdowson, “and I got a new belt for it, too.” I saw a
chance to make an interesting observation, and asked him if he
would get an old belt and try that. This he did, lapping the ends as
before about 18 inches, according to the universal English custom,
which I had long before found it necessary carefully to avoid. As I
knew would be the case, the action was not improved at all. I then
cut off the lap, butted the ends of the belt, and laced them in the
American style, and lo! the trouble vanished. The governor stood
motionless, only floating up and down slightly with the more
important changes of load. Mr. Whitworth was greatly pleased, and
at once set about their manufacture, in a full line of sizes.
He made the change, to which I have referred already, from the
urn shape to the semi-spherical form of the counterpoise. In this
connection he laid the law down to me in this dogmatic fashion: “Let
no man show me a mechanical form for which he cannot give me a
mechanical reason.” But Jove sometimes nods. They were to exhibit
in Paris a large slotting-machine. The form of the upright did not suit
Mr. Whitworth exactly. He had the pattern set up in the erecting-
shop, and a board tacked on the side, cut to an outline that he
directed. He came to look at it every day for a week, and ordered
some change or other. Finally it was gotten to his mind, the pattern
was altered accordingly, and a new casting made. This was set up in
the shop, and I happened to be present when he came to see it.
“Looks like a horse that has been taught to hold his head up,” said
he. “Mechanical reason,” thought I, fresh from my lesson. When
finished the slotting-machine was tried in the shop, and found to
yield in the back. The tool sprang away from its work and rounded
the corner. Mr. Whitworth had whittled the pattern away and ruined it.
Instead of being sent to Paris, it was broken up.
 My experiment with the governor proved the defect in the English
system of lacing belts. Every machine in the land, of whatever kind,
tool or loom or spinning or drawing frame, or whatever it was, driven
by a belt, halted in its motion every time the lap in the belt passed
over a pulley, sufficiently to drop my governor, when the same
motion was given to it, and no one had ever observed this
irregularity.
I thought they would never be ready to set about work on the
engine. First, Mr. Widdowson ordered that every casting and forging,
large and small, must be in the shop before one of them was put in
hand. After this was done I found a number of men at work making
sheet-iron templets of everything. I saw one man filing the threads in
the edges of a templet for a ³⁄₈-inch bolt. When these were all
finished and stamped, an operation that took quite a week, a great
fuss was made about commencing work on everything
simultaneously.
I went into the shop to see what was going on. The first thing to
attract my attention was the steam-chest, then made separate from
the cylinder. A workman—their best fitter, as I afterwards learned—
was engaged in planing out the cavities in which the exhaust valves
worked. I saw no center line, and asked him where it was. He had
never heard of such a thing. “What do you measure from?” “From
the side of the casting.” I called his attention to the center line on the
drawing, from which all the measurements were taken, and told him
all about it. He seemed very intelligent, and under my direction set
the chest up on a plane table and made a center line around it and
another across it, and set out everything from these lines, and I left
him going on finely. An hour later I looked in again. He was about his
job in the old way. To my question he explained that his foreman had
come around and told him I had no business in the shop, that he
gave him his directions, and he must finish his job just as he began
it.
I made no reply but went to Mr. Hoyle’s office, and asked him if he
knew what they were doing in the shop. He smiled and said, “I
suppose they are finally making an engine for you.” “No, they are
not.” “What are they doing?” “Making scrap iron.” “What do you
mean?” I told him the situation. He took his hat and went out, saying,
“I must see this myself.”
A couple of hours later he sent for me, and told me this. “I have
been all around the works and seen all that is doing. It is all of the
same piece. I have had a long interview with Mr. Widdowson, and
am sorry to tell you that we can’t make your engine; we don’t know
how. It seems to be entirely out of our line. The intelligence does not
exist in these works to make a steam-engine. Nobody knows how to
set about anything. I have stopped the work, and want to know what
you think had better be done about it?” I asked him to let me think
the matter over till the next morning. I then went to him and
suggested to him to let me find a skilled locomotive-erecter who was
also a trained draftsman, and to organize a separate department for
the engine and governor manufacture, and put this man at the head
of it, to direct it without interference. This was gladly agreed to. I
found a young man, Mr. John Watts, who proved to be the very man
for the place. In a week we were running under Mr. Watts’ direction,
and the engine was saved. But what a time the poor man had!
Everything seemed to be done wrong. It is hardly to be believed. He
could not get a rod turned round, or a hole bored round.
In their toolmaking they relied entirely on grinding with “Turkey
dust.” I once saw a gang of a dozen laborers working a long
grinding-bar, in the bore, 10 inches diameter by 8 feet long, in the
tailstock of an enormous lathe. I peered through this hole when the
bar was withdrawn. It looked like a ploughed field. Scattered over it
here and there were projections which had been ground off by these
laborers. On the other hand, the planing done in these works was
magnificent. I never saw anything to equal it. But circular work beat
them entirely. I found that the lathe hands never thought of such a
thing as getting any truth by the sliding cut. After that they went for
the surface with coarse files, and relied for such approximate truth as
they did get upon grinding with the everlasting Turkey dust.
Mr. Whitworth invented the duplex lathe tool, but I observed that
they never used it. I asked Mr. Widdowson why this was. “Because,”
said he, “the duplex tool will not turn round.” After a while I found out
why. When our engine was finished, Mr. Widdowson set it upon two
lathe beds and ran it. Lucky that he did. The bottom of the engine
bed was planed, and it could be leveled nicely on the flat surfaces of
their lathe beds. The fly-wheel ran nearly a quarter of an inch out of
truth. He set up some tool-boxes on one of the lathe beds, and
turned the rim off in place, both sides and face being out. That, of
course, made it run perfectly true. I asked the lathe hand how he
could turn out such a job. He replied, “Come and see my lathe.” I
found the spindle quite an eighth of an inch loose in the main
bearing, the wear of twenty or thirty years. He told me all of the
lathes in the works were in a similar condition. That explained many
things. The mystery of those gear patterns was solved. Every spindle
in the gear-cutting machine was wabbling loose in its holes. I can’t
call them bearings. Now it appeared why they could not use the
duplex tools. With a tool cutting on one side, they relied on the
pressure of the cut to keep the lathe spindle in contact with the
opposite side of its main bearing, and a poor reliance that was, but
with a tool cutting on each side, fancy the situation. Then boring a
true hole was obviously impossible. The workmen became
indifferent; they had no reamers, relied entirely on grinding. I asked,
Why do you not renew these worn-out bushings? but could never get
an answer to the question. Some power evidently forbade it, and the
fact is that no man about the place dared to think of such a thing as
intimating to Mr. Whitworth that one of his lathe bearings required
any fixing up, or that it was or could be anything short of perfect. He
(Mr. Whitworth) had designed it as a perfect thing; ergo, it was
perfect, and no man dared say otherwise.
Our engine work was finally, as a last resort, done by Mr. Watts on
new lathes, made for customers and used for a month or two before
they were sent out. Not only in England, but on the Continent and in
America, the Whitworth Works were regarded as the perfect
machine-shop. I remember a visit I had at the Paris Exposition from
Mr. Elwell, of the firm of Varrell, Elwell & Poulot, proprietors of the
largest mechanical establishment in Paris. After expressing his
unbounded admiration of the running of the engine, he said, “I
warrant your fly-wheel runs true.” After observing it critically, he
exclaimed, “Ah, they do those things at Whitworth’s!”
The fact was Mr. Whitworth had cursed the British nation with the
solid conical lathe-spindle bearing, a perfect bearing for ordinary-
sized lathes and a most captivating thing—when new. These
hardened steel cones, in hardened steel seats, ran in the most
charming manner. But they wore more loose in the main bearing
every day they ran, and there were no means for taking up the wear.
It came on insensibly, and no one paid any attention to it. The cream
of the joke was that people were so fascinated with this bearing that
at that time no other could be sold in England, except for very large
lathes. All toolmakers had to make it. I remember afterwards that Mr.
Freeland, our best American toolmaker, who, as I have already
mentioned, went to England and worked for some years as a
journeyman in the Whitworth Works for the purpose of learning
everything there that he could, did not bring back to America the
conical bearing.
The firm of Smith & Coventry were the first to fit their lathes with
the means for taking up this wear, which took place only in the main
bearing, where both the force of the cut and the weight of the piece
were received. They made the conical seat for the back end of the
spindle adjustable in the headstock and secured it by a thin nut on
each end. This then could be moved backward sufficiently to let the
forward cone up to its seat. This made it possible to use the solid
bearing, but it involved this error, that after this adjustment the axis of
the spindle did not coincide with the line connecting the lathe
centers; but the two lines formed an angle with each other, which
grew more decided every time the wear was taken up. This,
however, was infinitely better than not to take up the wear at all.
At that time the Whitworth Works were divided into four
departments. These were screwing machinery, gauges, guns and
machine tools. The first three of these were locked. I never entered
either of them. The latter also, like most works in England, was
closed to outsiders. No customer could see his work in progress.
This department was without a head or a drawing-office. It seemed
to be running it on its traditions. I once said to Mr. Hoyle, “There
must at some time have been here mechanical intelligence of the
highest order, but where is it?” They had occasionally an order for
something out of their ancient styles, and their attempts to fill such
orders were always ruinous. The following is a fair illustration. They
had an order for a radial drill to be back-geared and strong enough
to bore an 8-inch hole. Mr. Widdowson had the pattern for the upright
fitted with the necessary brackets, and thought it was such a good
thing that he would make two. The first one finished was tried in the
shop, and all the gears in the arm were stripped. He woke up to the
fact that he had forgotten to strengthen the transmitting parts, and
moreover that the construction would not admit anything stronger.
There was nothing to be done but to decline the order, chip off the
brackets, and make these into single-speed drills. This I saw being
done.
Mr. Widdowson told me the following amusing story. The London
Times had heard of the wonderful performance of Mr. Hoe’s multiple-
cylinder press, and concluded to have one of them of the largest
size, ten cylinders. But, of course, Mr. Hoe did not know how to
make his own presses. His work would do well enough for ignorant
Americans, but not for an English Journal. The press must be made
in England in the world-renowned Whitworth Works.
Mr. Hoe sent over one of his experts to give them the information
they might need, but they would not let him in the shop. Mr. Hulse
told him they had the drawings and specifications and that was all
they needed. When the press was finished they set it up in the shop
and attempted to run it. The instant it started every tape ran off its
pulleys, and an investigation showed that not a spindle or shaft was
parallel with any other. They had no idea of the method that must be
employed to ensure this universal alignment. After enormous labor
they got these so that they were encouraged to make another trial,
when after a few revolutions every spindle stuck fast in its bearings.
Mr. Whitworth, absorbed in his artillery and spending most of his
time in London, of course had no knowledge of how things were
going on in his shop, of the utter want of ordinary intelligence.
I formed a scheme for an application of Mr. Whitworth’s system of
end measurement to the production of an ideally perfect dividing-
wheel. In this system Mr. Whitworth employed what he termed “the
gravity piece.” This was a small steel plate about ¹⁄₈ of an inch in
thickness, the opposite sides of which were parallel and had the
most perfectly true and smooth surfaces that could be produced by
scraping. The ends of the piece to be tested were perfectly squared,
by a method which I will not stop here to describe, and were finished