Conclusions

The history of the Ancient Near East is also the history of the growth of institutions, and the institutions, primarily the temples and the palaces, dominated the economy from the beginnings of urban development in the prehistoric era, down to the conquest of the region by the Greeks, and beyond. These institutions controlled most of the resources ofthe Ancient Near East, and this included the labor and services ofmuch of the population. The temples and palaces served not only as rallying points for the economy, but also as sources ofcommunal identity. In turn, the institutions provided a basis for the creation and maintenance ofsocial and political hierarchies and a means of social differentiation. At the same time, the Ancient Near East was home to the noninstitutional households of individual families. The fact that members of these non-institutional households frequently held positions within the institutional households demonstrates the extent to which these units were integrated. The ability of individuals to maintain membership in more than one household demonstrates the extent to which there was frequently no direct competition between households in the institutional and non-institutional sectors.

The Ancient Near East was characterized by the presence of both institutional and non-institutional households. These households were organized as collectives, in which the resources were marshaled for the benefit of the household and not for any one of its individual constituents. The households existed in a hierarchy, and by the end of the third millennium bce the king’s household had achieved a dominant position in the hierarchy that it would not relinquish for the remainder of Ancient Near Eastern history.

What grew throughout the history of the Ancient Near East was the power of an individual household, that of the king, to dominate and regulate the economy on a greater geographic and demographic scale. At the same time, it is clear that the rights of certain urban communities to exempt themselves from that control also increased. However, whatever tension existed between royal and non-royal households cannot be directly correlated with tension between the public and private sectors. The nature of the economy of ancient Mesopotamia was such that the participants were never in a position to define their roles in the manner expected of actors in the modern economy. Therefore, while the discussion of public versus private may have great relevance to our understanding of the Ancient Near East, it had none to the people who lived at that time.