This survey is organized chronologically, but it does not follow the traditional periodization of Ancient Near Eastern history. The way in which the history of the Ancient Near East has traditionally been divided along political, and particularly dynastic lines, frequently obscures our view of ancient society. The reason for this is that societal change is often assumed to accompany political change. This has been especially true when the political change is also seen as a reflection of a change in the ethnic composition of the ruling elite. Such thinking rarely does justice to the complexity of ancient systems, and it tends to support the notion that ancient economies were highly centralized. One of the characteristics of the economy of the Ancient Near East that will become clear is the long-term significance of regional and local economic power structures.
The chronological scheme that will be employed here is based on the development of integrated political and economic communities of increasing size. This process is a characteristic of the history of the Ancient Near East; however, we must use great caution in the conclusions that we draw from this ‘‘fact.’’ First, the absence of integrated political and economic units of great size in the early periods of Mesopotamian history does not mean that the relatively small communities were culturally distinct. Mesopotamia experienced a remarkable degree of cultural homogeneity throughout its history (Yoffee 1988). Second, there is a great tendency to regard the development of the larger states as a natural evolution towards increasingly complex societies. This leads to the corollary assumption that the economy became correspondingly complex. The presumption that economic systems evolve and that such progress leads to growing economic efficiency are assumptions common to modern economic analyses that may have limited value for the ancient world.
Before history
The development of institutional households in the Ancient Near East took place prior to the dawn of the historical era. The beginning of history has traditionally been
Defined by the presence of the written records on which our histories are based. The earliest appearance of writing took place in the Ancient Near East, and specifically in southern Mesopotamia during the second half of the fourth millennium bce. A detailed picture of the relationship among the various households only emerges with the advent of writing, since that is when we have the first direct historical evidence for economic transactions that can be assessed on the basis of institutional or non-institutional access to the means of production. We must recognize, however, that transactions involving the institutional and non-institutional sectors of the economy predate our written sources by a considerable length of time.
The origins of the large institutional households in the Ancient Near East lie in prehistory, and they likely emerged during the several millennia prior to writing during which the urban centers of Mesopotamia were forming. There is significant archaeological evidence for the long development of the great households. We need only look to the excavations of the cities of Uruk and Eridu. These excavations have documented long successions of monumental sacred architecture in the hearts of the cities in the fifth and fourth millennia bce. The scale and wealth of the temples make it clear that much of the resources of these early cities were organized for institutional benefit. Therefore, the development of distinct institutional and non-institutional households took place in ‘‘deep prehistory’’ (Van Driel 2000: 5).
Viewed from a European standpoint, the basis of private property is the ownership of particular and measurable plots of land. In southern Mesopotamia the ownership of individual or small plots of land was rendered impractical by the environment (Liverani 1997; Steinkeller 1999a). Once historical records appear, we can also see that the institutions dominated the ownership of arable land even in other areas of the Ancient Near East where individual families could more easily farm subsistence plots.
Mesopotamia itself was divided between the heavily irrigated south and the dryfarming north, with the margins of these two areas characterized by the steppe, which was home to pastoralists. Already in prehistory, the diversity led to different patterns of economic interaction among both institutional and non-institutional households. For example, in southern Mesopotamia, where the irrigation system required extensive centralized maintenance and control, the temples were involved much more directly in the management of farming.
From villages to cities (3200-2350 bce)
The development of cities had begun already in the late fifth millennium bce in southern Mesopotamia, but urban life started to characterize the Mesopotamian experience from the end of the fourth millennium. The written sources are scarce for the beginning of this period, but the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the years between 3200 and 2350 witnessed an explosion in both the number of cities in Mesopotamia as well as in the percentage of the population that likely lived in the cities (Adams 1981: 138). It was at this time, especially in the south, that Mesopotamia began to be dominated by a network of competing city-states, many ofwhich were quite close to each other. The city-states in Mesopotamia were defined by their urban space, enclosed by city walls, and surrounded by the network of fields, canals, and villages that provided the subsistence of the population. The dominant feature of the urban landscape was the main temple that rose in the middle of the city and was dedicated to the city god.
The rise of the city and its institutions also fueled the apparent growth of a communal spirit and identity within the urban communities during the late fourth and early third millennia BCE. The city seals from southern Mesopotamia, which survived from the earliest historical periods bearing the symbols of the various cities, show that the cities acted as distinct socio-political entities, and the use of the seals demonstrates that the cities could also act in concert (Matthews 1993; Steinkeller 2002a). The temples and their gods were standard bearers for their cities and formed the institutional basis for identification that operated in the cities of southern Mesopotamia.
Until recently, our understanding of the development of the political economy in early Mesopotamia was based upon an evolutionary model, and this is still the case in many of the textbook treatments of the Ancient Near East. According to this model, pre-Sargonic Mesopotamia (before 2350 bce) was characterized by the ‘‘Temple-city,’’ the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) and Ur III periods (2350-2000 bce) witnessed the development of the ‘‘statist’’ economy, and finally, the Old Babylonian period (2000-1595 bce) saw the rise of the private sector in cooperation with the palace (Falkenstein 1974: 6; Renger 1979: 249-50; Renger 1994: 170-3). This last phase was viewed by many as the inevitable result of a change in the ethnic composition of the political and economic elite from Sumerians to Semitic Amorites.
The ‘‘temple-state’’ theory maintains that all of the arable land in southern Mesopotamia was in the hands of the temples for much of the third millennium bce. The temples themselves were seen as households of the gods in which the senior temple administrators were perceived as acting on behalf of the gods. The whole of the city and its surroundings were seen as the actual domain of the gods. According to Falkenstein’s restatement ofthe theory, over time the crown instituted secular control over the temple estates, and this trend culminated at the end of the third millennium BCE in the Ur III state (Falkenstein 1974). Numerous studies, however, have shown that the theory rested largely on a limited body ofevidence drawn from the archive of one household in the city of Lagash, and that the temples’ control of resources was not complete (Gelb 1971; Maekawa 1973-4; Foster 1981).
In spite of the waning of the ‘‘temple-state’’ theory and the repudiation of the idea that ethnicity and culture were inseparable, the evolutionary model for the development of the ancient Mesopotamian economy still exercises a great influence. In part the attractiveness ofthis model rests on the appeal ofmodern economic theories regarding economic evolution and efficiency. However, the situation in the Ancient Near East was never so monolithic. There is little proof that the temples of the early period in Mesopotamia existed in the absence of political authority, and our data suggest that the authority of the king grew throughout the third millennium bce. Moreover, there is evidence in all periods of the presence of non-institutional households.
The expansion of trade and military contacts in the latter part of the Early Dynastic period (about 2600 bce) has been ascribed to the development of a native, and increasingly secular, elite in southern Mesopotamia (VanDe Mieroop 2002:132). This elite was closely tied to the growing visibility of the royal household. The rise of a political elite, and the accompanying secular institutional households, whether royal or in some cases gubernatorial, was significant for several reasons. First, we must recognize that just as the canal and irrigation network in southern Mesopotamia required some stable central authority for its management, so too were the temples dependent upon the maintenance of political order. This became increasingly important as the size of the state grew, because the temples were always largely local institutions (Van Driel 2000: 6). Second, these secular institutional households competed to some extent with the existing religious institutions, with the royal household eventually establishing itself at the top of a hierarchical arrangement of institutional households. Finally, the crown and its estates fostered the creation of new institutional hierarchies, such as those in the military. In turn, the prominent individuals who served the royal authority also headed their own non-institutional households. Just as the lines were blurred between the official and unofficial roles of individuals within the society of the Ancient Near East, so too were there indistinct borders between the crown and the households ofits dependents. A good example of this would be the estates granted to members of the royal family. It is not clear whether these should be considered institutional or noninstitutional households.
The invention of writing in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, and the increase in our written sources throughout this period, highlights the expansion of the institutional economy. Writing developed in order to keep track of the large institutional economy in the growing cities of southern Mesopotamia. The earliest texts are not clearly understood, but they point to the institutional control of vast economic resources (Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993). One of the initial concerns with all forms of record-keeping, and particularly with early writing, was the desire to distinguish ownership. This implies that ownership could be defined and that society was anxious to do so. However, a need to make clear distinctions regarding ownership does not imply tension between the institutional and the noninstitutional, but simply tension between different owners.
From cities to territorial states (2350-1600 bce)
The most significant factor in the development of territorial states (which we might also term regional communities) was the increase in the size of the state, and this expresses itself in an increase in the scale of both the institutional and non-institutional economies. There has been a frequent assumption that the increase in the size of the state leads to an increase in the dominance of the institutional sector. As we have seen, with the development of religious and secular authorities there was a transfer of tremendous economic power to these authorities. This transfer was largely complete at the time of the development of the city-state, and certainly by the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Institutional control of resources was well established, and it was simply the size of the institutions themselves that grew along with the size of the states. During this era the growth in the extent of the state resulted in a corresponding growth in the scale and power of the royal household.
In one respect at least, the ‘‘temple-state’’ theory is correct. By the end of the third millennium bce, the crown had acquired control over many of the institutional estates of the various temples. The administration of these institutional holdings was still dependent throughout this period on the presence of entrepreneurs and craftsmen who were the heads of individual non-institutional households. Zettler (1992: 220-6) illustrates the reliance of the Ur III temple of Inanna at Nippur on the activities of a merchant. There are numerous archives throughout the history of Mesopotamia that document the crown’s reliance on entrepreneurs for the management of its estates (Foster 1982: 52-69; Steinkeller and Postgate 1992: 8-10; Van Driel 2000; Steinkeller 2002b: 122-3; Joannes 1995; Stolper 1985).
The non-institutional archives from the Ur III period demonstrate that individuals acting in unofficial capacities played a great role in the state economy. For example, the archive of SI. A-a, a chief shepherd from this era, shows that he also advanced credit to numerous military officials who were part of the royal institutional sector (Garfinkle 2003). Moreover, the royal administration was compelled to acknowledge the local and regional hierarchies that it encountered. This can best be observed during the Ur III period in the relationship between the crown and the households of the provincial governors (Van Driel 1999/2000: 80). The governors retained control over their own considerable households, but their authority was subordinated to that of the king, and they were responsible for administering the provincial institutions for the direct benefit of the crown.
The Old Babylonian period witnessed one of the more significant developments in the interaction of the institutional and non-institutional households. During this era, the crown issued ‘‘royal edicts proclaiming the remission of debts, or freedom from dues or service obligations for the inhabitants of entire cities... ’’ (Renger 2002: 139). These edicts attest to the power of the royal authority to intervene in the lives of the people, but they also demonstrate the reliance of the state on the economic activities of non-institutional households. The crown was compelled to intercede on behalf of individuals in order to guarantee the smooth operation of the economy.
From territorial states to empires (1600-323 bce)
The appearance in the Ancient Near East of imperial communities once again brought about a change in the scale of the chief institutional household of the state, that of the king. The growth in the size of the royal household was accompanied by intensification in its reliance on the activities of non-institutional managers and entrepreneurs, and an increase in the available documentation of this interaction. The rise of empires in the Ancient Near East also fostered an expansion in the institutional role of the military. Surprisingly, the development of imperial authority did not prevent the continued shrinking of the crown’s authority over the households in the traditional urban centers of the empire. This trend had likely characterized much of Mesopotamian history, and yet the evidence is most clear during the first millennium bce, when we see the inhabitants of the cities of Neo-Assyria and Neo-Babylonia exercising enormous rights and privileges.
The international trade and diplomacy of the Late Bronze Age is well known to us from the Amarna Letters of the fourteenth century bce (Moran 1992). The correspondence found in Egypt at Amarna documents a network of inter-palatial trade and contact. The transactions in the letters provide evidence for state-directed activity, but the opportunities for non-institutional entrepreneurs must have been significant. Kings in the Amarna Letters expressed concern for the safety of caravans, many of which would have been ‘‘privately’’ funded. At the same time, the scale of the trade controlled by the crown demonstrated the significance of the resources under the control of the royal household. In addition, the Amarna Letters make clear the extent to which the various households of the institutional sector had been subsumed by the crown.
The size of the royal household reached its maximum extent, in terms of our ability to observe it in the preserved archaeological record, with the vast palaces of the NeoAssyrian kings. These palaces provide extensive testimony, in their architecture, artwork, and inscriptional evidence, to the power of the central institutional household. An important illustration of the continuing influence of non-institutional households, even in the face of the rise of imperial kingship, is the apparent reliance of the king on non-institutional sources of credit. A surviving letter details the obligation of a NeoAssyrian king, Sargon II, to repay an enormous loan that had been advanced to him by a merchant for the completion of his new capital city (Radner 1999: 103-4). The merchants were royal agents empowered by the king to trade on behalf of the state, but they were still the heads of independent non-institutional households. The continuing need for non-institutional households to manage, and often to maintain, the affairs of institutional households is particularly well documented in the NeoBabylonian and Achaemenid (Persian) periods (Beaulieu 2000a; Stolper 1985).
World History
