It is often erroneously claimed that the Lydians of southeastern Turkey invented money, when all they really invented was coinage. Here it is important to note that, even after the introduction of coinage, weights were still used to check the actual worth of coins and conduct business in bullion. Functionally the coin was a quantity of metal weighed and sealed by the state. Since the late seventh century bce coinage and weighed bullion have coexisted, and in economies where inflation runs high, one can still find weighed amounts of silver or gold metal being used for payment. In even less stable economies, such as wartime Iraq’s, less precious metals, such as recycled copper, have become a kind of currency.
It would be difficult to chronicle the prices of goods and services throughout Mesopotamian history, but we may derive a standard wage for the Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian periods. In Old Babylonian times a worker could expect to receive 10 liters of barley a day or 300 liters a month. In silver this amounted to 6 grains a day or 1 shekel a month. In Neo-Babylonian times the payment in silver remained the same, but the equivalent payment in barley was considerably less, 6 liters per day or 180 per month (Powell 1990a).
Ratios of value between monies are hard to determine since they varied over time and with different qualities of metal. The gold:silver ratio ranged normally from 2:1 to 10:1 throughout the Bronze Age, and from about 6:1 to 15:1 in the Iron Age after 1000 BCE. Silver was about 180 times more valuable than copper; and silver was 10 to 40 times more valuable than tin (Powell 1990a). The amount of barley one could buy with 1 shekel of silver can also be tracked over this time. Presargonic and Old Akkadian sources may point to an equivalence of about 240 liters of grain per shekel of silver; in Ur III and Old Babylonian times the standard equivalence was 300 liters per shekel, though it was probably less at the end of the period. When sources emerged again under the Kassites, 1 shekel of silver bought only about 150 liters; Neo-Babylonian prices seem to have stabilized at 180 liters of barley per shekel of silver.
We have prices from the middle of Ancient Near Eastern history in the city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast during Late Bronze Age, 1400-1200 bce (Heltzer 1978). A standard measure of grain (about 150 liters) cost 1 shekel of silver; a jar of olive oil cost about half a shekel; a jar of wine cost about a third of a shekel; an ox cost from 10 to 17 shekels; a sheep, 1 to 1.5 shekels; and donkeys cost from 10 to 30 shekels of silver each. Of course, there are many other prices known for this and other periods. People also were commodified, as is shown by a lively trade in human slaves. Most of these individuals entered into service willingly or were coerced by debt to enter as a means of repayment. Skilled artisans and wives were also exchanged as gifts between royal households.
Prices are also found in legal texts and law collections. While Mesopotamian punishment is popularly understood as ‘‘an eye for an eye,’’ the reality was often much more monetary. Law collections often prescribed death for homicide, but they were also full of prices, stated both as guidelines, a sort of price control, and as penalties for various harms done (Roth 1997). Usually the intent was to replace what had been lost by a transgression. This entailed the taking of one life to replace another wrongfully taken, or the replacement of lost persons with slaves from the community of the offender. But for various other crimes the compensation was in silver, and the amounts differed not only by transgression but by social class of the victim. Thus in the Hittite laws, a free person’s sight was worth 20 shekels of silver, but a slave’s only 10. To prevent cycles of blood-feuding, it was customary for the host community to pay large amounts of silver to the family of the dead if a murderer was not caught. In fact there was no death penalty for homicide in the Hittite laws, only an undefined monetary reimbursement. The penalty for killing merchants was particularly steep at 100 minas (4,000 shekels), perhaps to deter actions potentially harmful to the smooth functioning of the empire.
There is no solid archaeological evidence for a structure corresponding to what Sumerian or Akkadian speakers meant by their terms for ‘‘marketplace.’’ This is probably because fixed marketplaces did not exist as we know them, and most trading was done in the merchant’s quarter, quay, or dockside. More abstract is the attested extended meaning of‘‘market,’’ in the sense of‘‘current rate of exchange’’ or ‘‘fair market price.’’ The concept of profit, selling for prices higher than what was paid originally, was rarely called a profit in Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian texts, but frequently must be inferred from the price differentials.
The one place where trade and money abounded that has been documented both textually and archaeologically was the karum, an Akkadian term translated as embankment, quay, harbor, harbor district, merchant quarter, or trading colony. All these meanings appear related to early descriptions of places where boats docked, either on rivers or seas. Thus far the only excavated place known to correspond to this term is the Old Assyrian merchant quarter or trade colony at Kanesh in central Turkey around 1800 bce. Other important harbor towns have been excavated, such as Ur, Minet el-Beida and Ras Ibn Hani (both near Ugarit), and Memphis in Egypt, but none has produced such a wealth of explicit textual information on the karum. We know about institutions and officials connected with the karum from different times and places down to Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian times, but have no complete understanding of its function in any one situation. The ‘‘house of the karum’ was the office or building representing the authority of the karum and was probably not so different from the modern customs or exchange house in its functions. It was where one paid import taxes, which were probably divided among the local ruler and the traders in charge of the karum.
The karum was especially important to the merchants themselves since this was where they resided, stored goods, kept money and archives, and formed partnerships with other merchants. Such partnerships were necessary to amass capital and are known from a particular form of ‘‘purse-money’’ contract in the Old Assyrian archives and in references to groups of merchants in Old Babylonian sources. In Old Babylonian texts and Middle Babylonian texts from Ugarit, we learn of an overseer, the wakil karim ‘‘the agent of the quay,’’ who was legally responsible for transactions and accidents that occurred in the merchant quarter or harbor. Similar duties may have been the responsibility of a person designated as ‘‘man of the karum’ a millennium earlier at Ebla in northern Syria. Indeed, the institution of the karum and its personnel appear to be extremely long-lived if one compares the ancient evidence to the duties of the wakil at-tujjar, ‘‘the agent of the merchants,’’ an official who legally represented foreign merchants in Egypt around 1000 of our era (Curtin 1984: 113-15).
Many traders who were state functionaries no doubt bore the Akkadian title of tamkarum, ‘‘merchant.’’ So did some traders who were known to the palace as traders but who were not necessarily dependents or functionaries. Unfortunately, most of our material is not as specific as that from Ugarit, where ‘‘merchant of the king’’ and plain ‘‘merchant’’ were apparently distinguished. Moreover, one should be aware that there were many traders or moneymen documented in our texts who bore no title whatsoever, but left just their names and the records of their transactions.
From Ur III through Old Babylonian times this title applied to those working for the great households and to those conducting private enterprise. An unusually illustrative group of Ur III records called ‘‘balanced accounts’’ states allotments, expenses, and debts of merchants working for the palace (Snell 1982). In general they show merchants selling off the surplus foodstuffs produced by the palace, with merchants paying off their debts with a wide variety of goods that included imported luxury items. It is clear from Old Babylonian sources that ‘‘merchant’’ applied to those engaged in local mercantile business as well as long-distance traders. Local merchants made a living redistributing palace goods or buying debts owed to the palace by tenant farmers. Merchants could buy goods with favorable repayment contracts that allowed them to make a substantial profit for themselves. Perhaps more importantly, merchants in the service of kings or temples had access to vast capital, usually silver, which they could translate into many forms and increase in a variety of ways. At Ugarit such merchants were referred to as having royal endowments of silver. The palace benefited by the merchant's assuming responsibilities for transportation and debt collection, as well as keeping perishable commodities circulating in and out of palace storage facilities.
Unlike the generic term ‘‘merchant,’’ Early Dynastic records mentioned a profession which seems specifically involved in long-distance or foreign trade. Hittite longdistance traders were known in Late Bronze Age texts from Ugarit, but it is unclear if they were state functionaries or entrepreneurs employed part-time by the Hittite king. The Neo-Assyrian merchant was mainly a royal agent who obtained luxury imports for the court (Radner 1999). Private enterprise in the Neo-Assyrian texts is shown, however, in a group of texts mentioning the ‘‘master of the road or venture.’’ Neo-Babylonian temples apparently conducted their long-distance trade by hiring merchants outside the organization, probably foreigners.
It is difficult to say if merchants commonly specialized in local or long-distance trade. It is tempting to conclude they did, since specialized skills were required. Long-distance trade was always more profitable than local, but with greater risks. Overland trade was always threatened by bandits, and some argue that long-distance trade without state protection was unthinkable. More would argue that trade has usually gone before the flag in world history, that is, that trade has tended to precede government intervention. The Old Assyrian karum system was especially lucrative, bringing profits as high as 200 percent to the traders, though this rosy picture does not accurately account for expenses. The prices and profit in this trade were largely a function of distance. Assur was relatively close to the eastern tin supply and could charge two or three times in Kanesh or other Anatolian colonies what the tin cost in Assur. Tin and textiles constituted the bulk of the cargo, all borne by donkey caravans, which was traded for silver and gold in Anatolia. Not all of the profits came back to Assyria. Many traders lived double lives, with a family in Anatolia and one in Assur, while others lived mostly abroad, directing familial matters through correspondence.
The maritime trader seems to have been a specialized job, but one documented spottily in Mesopotamian history. Some of the better sources come from the Old Babylonian cities of Ur and Larsa, which had trading relationships with the Persian Gulf and Indus Valley civilization, called Meluhha. We know precious little about the ships that sailed the Gulf, though texts do allude to a maximum size of about 20 tons. Tablets also mention sailors. Some traders were specifically referred to as ‘‘one going to Dilmun,’’ a phrase alluding to the important intermediate trade center that was probably in the island of Bahrain. Oman, ancient Magan, was important to Mesopotamian towns for its production of copper. In Neo-Assyrian and Persian times the Phoenicians carried much of the trade for their overlords and became famous as maritime explorers in the process. Archaeological and textual evidence for ships and seafarers in the eastern Mediterranean include shipwrecks from Turkey, Cyprus, and Israel, excavated harbor towns, and texts from Late Bronze Age Ugarit and later sources (Bass 1995; Wachsmann 1998).
Some traders involved in only domestic trade still had to be experts in river transportation. Much of this business, which involved pilots, towers, loaders, and payments of dues, was organized by karums and groups of merchants. Most of what is known about donkey caravanning, probably the commonest means of overland hauling, is known from the Old Assyrian Kanesh tablets.
World History
