Multi-quark energies in QCD

Four-quark potentials for SU(2) are evaluated in the static limit with the quenched approximation - using a lattice of 163x32 and β=2.4. The four quarks are restricted to the corners of rectangles with sides up to seven lattice spacings long. The results are analysed in terms of a strategy based on interquark two-body potentials - as advocated earlier by the authors. This show that a standard two-body approach overestimates the four-quark binding energy by up to a factor of about three for the largest rectangles. (orig.)