The main building linked to the economic life of the Nanna sanctuary was the Ganun-mah. It is known both from archaeology and from a large number of written sources: commemorative inscriptions (names of years and royal inscriptions), as well as archival documents. The building is located to the east of the temenos, in the corner between the courtyard of Nanna and the terrace of the ziggurat. It took the form of a 57-metre square, surrounded by a 2.70-metre thick wall. The layout is characterized by parallel, elongated rooms with openings on one of the shorter sides, typical of storage spaces in Mesopotamian architecture.
The Ganun-mah had a dual function. Firstly, it was a place where temple money and precious objects were deposited; it was also used to store perishable foodstuffs for offerings to Nanna and other deities. This duality is evident from royal inscriptions, but also from archival documents: these are out-of-date tablets discarded under the floor of certain rooms. Some were found on site; others were discovered in two houses in the AH district. Lot YOS 5nos. 1-110 also belongs to the Ganun-mah accounts, but its archaeological provenance is unknown as these tablets come from irregular excavations carried out before the First World War. Many of these documents are indicated as having been sealed by "stewards"(šatammû). This term indicates a function, but it is not a title: in fact, among these seals we often find that of the šandabakkum, i.e. the person in charge of the sanctuary's finances.
It was into the Ganun-mah's coffers that money from the sale of certain temple goods was deposited, whether for exceptional transactions such as the alienation of land, or more routine sales such as fish. Many precious objects were offered to the god Nanna as more or less voluntary "offerings". A large part of the Ganun-mah's accounting relates to cattle herds. The ecological context allows us to understand that these were primarily buffalo living in the marshes, in ways that still exist today. The temple of Nanna in Ur not only owned large herds of cattle: the dairy activities it housed were conceived as intrinsically linked to the nature of the god, as certain hymns indicate [1]. Nanna was not only understood as the protector of cattle, he was himself one of them; his animal attribute was the bull, the crescent moon being seen as the animal's horns. Other deities close to Nanna also had close links with herds and the production of dairy products.
