Logistic growth for the Nuzi cuneiform tablets: Analyzing family networks in ancient Mesopotamia

•We reconstruct family trees and social networks from “Nuzi Personal Names”.•We formulate the least squares problems with constraints of the trees and networks.•We estimate the published years of cuneiform tablets for “Nuzi Personal Names”.•It seems the published tablets increased by the logistic growth for about 60 years.

We reconstruct the published year of each cuneiform tablet of the Nuzi society in ancient Mesopotamia. The tablets are on land transaction, marriage, loan, slavery contracts, etc. The number of tablets seems to increase by logistic growth. It may show the dynamics of concentration of lands or other properties into few powerful families in a period of about sixty years and most of them are in about thirty years. We reconstruct family trees and social networks of Nuzi and estimate the published years of cuneiform tablets consistently with the trees and networks, formulating least squares problems with linear inequality constraints.