Estates and Offerings
In the earlier third-millennium cities, substantial estates were owned and administered by temple authorities and kings. Economic texts mainly record the official receipt, storage, and distribution of agricultural produce, the management of state-controlled craft production, particularly of textiles, and details of officially sponsored trade. Land was also privately owned, and as the millennium unwound, kings came increasingly to control land and the bureaucracy as "shepherds of the people," answerable to the tutelary god for the well-being of city and state. The most detailed and comprehensive administrative records come from the reign of the Ur III king Shulgi (2094-2047 b. c.e.), when the state had almost total control over the economy. In succeeding centuries, private enterprise grew in importance. Merchants' private archives give an insight into the organization of production and the flow of goods and materials.
Several mechanisms ensured the movement of goods and services between producer and state or employer: taxation or tribute; rent and the repayment of investments; and waged or compulsory employment. More haphazardly, booty from warfare also filled the state coffers and licensed looting the baggage of private soldiers and army officers.
The early city-states were regarded as the personal estate of the city's patron deity, whose temple was supported by offerings of agricultural produce and other commodities. A late fourth millennium alabaster jar (the "Warka Vase"; see p. 69) from Uruk vividly depicts a donative ceremony where people in procession bring baskets and jars of grain and fruit, animals and artifacts, which the priest presents to the deity. Making such gifts symbolized the individual's membership of and participation in the community. At a higher level, the Sumerian city-states recognized Nippur, seat of the chief deity Enlil, as their religious and symbolic center and all contributed to the upkeep of Enlil's temple, the Ekur, by making offerings on a rotating basis. A parallel institution may have united the city-states of the middle and upper Euphrates around the temple of Dagan at Tuttul, and Subartu (later Assyria) may also have had such a confederacy.
Despite later shifts in the balance of power toward kings, these offerings to local and national temples continued as a major source of state revenue. Under Shulgi, the provinces, which largely corresponded to the traditional city-states, took turns to contribute to the upkeep of Enlil's shrine, in proportion to their wealth. Enormous numbers of animals and quantities of grain and other produce were centrally accumulated and distributed as necessary to maintain the personnel of the temple, bureaucracy, and state industries—these offerings (taxes) were known as bala. Although other ideologies also operated later, this view of the population of the city and of larger political units (kingdoms and empires) as the community of a god continued throughout Mesopotamian history and had a major influence in structuring the economy.
Raising Revenue
This was not the only means by which the state exacted revenue. The Ur III Empire controlled not only the core region of city-states but also a periphery of conquered lands along its eastern and northern edge. From these revenue came in the form of rent (gun mada tax) paid by their military governors for the lands that they held, and from which they in turn extracted revenue in kind. A similar arrangement had operated under the earlier Akkadian Empire, where large areas of confiscated land were granted to Akkadian military colonists. In later times, defeated states were left under puppet native rulers or placed under Mesopotamian governors who paid tribute or taxes to the state, collecting these from their own subjects.
A variety of private activities could attract taxes. For example, the merchant houses that conducted trade between Assur and Anatolia in the nineteenth century b. c.e. (see pages 136-137) paid export taxes on their goods when they started out from Assur and import duties to the Anatolian authorities.
Considerable state and private revenue came from rents, investment, and landownership. Both temples and kings were major landowners, and in the case of conquered territory, the state might claim ownership of all the new land or confiscate large tracts from defeated leaders. These lands were granted to members of the royal household, powerful nobles, military or civil administrators, and temple dignitaries, and smaller holdings to lesser officials and state or temple employees in return for military or various forms of civil service. The lands could be farmed directly by these people and their households, managed for them by local officials or smaller landowners, or rented out to peasants. Areas of state land might also be rented by private entrepreneurs, particularly in later times. Land could also change hands privately—the price of a field in Sumerian times was equivalent to a year's anticipated yield, although typically its rent was between a quarter and half of the projected or actual yield, assessed annually. Similarly, contracts were negotiated between pastoralists and the owners of herds and flocks (see page 127). More complicated agreements were made where a return was not expected within a single year. For example, according to Hammurabi's law code, when land was rented to create an orchard, no rent was payable for five years, at the end of which the land, with its fruit trees, was divided, half going back to the landowner and half to the tenant, with the proviso that the latter include in his share any part of the plot that he had failed to plant with trees.
Both state and private investors participated in financing trading expeditions, putting up capital or making loans against interest from the eventual profits. Surplus goods, materials, or foodstuffs accumulated by the temple or palace from their taxes and tithes and from their lands and industrial activities could be sold to merchants, often as "futures" not yet received by the authorities, introducing legal complications if their tenant or employee failed to produce the goods to which title had been transferred.
Workers
Many people worked wholly or in part for the temple, the palace, or private establishments. Military service and corvee labor on major projects, such as constructing canals, temples, and palaces, were regularly required of the population. Large industrial establishments were maintained, in particular manufacturing textiles (where the employees were mainly women and children)— one at Lagash in the Ur III period employed 6,000 people. Palace and temple also ran smaller workshops, and their households included many specialist workers. The palace at Mari employed carpenters, leatherworkers, reed workers making baskets, mats, and fencing, millers, textile workers, gardeners, drawers of water, wood carriers, doorkeepers, barbers, potters, oil refiners and makers of perfumes, musicians, jugglers, and wrestlers, as well as male and female scribes, workshop managers, and other officials. Other employees included farmers, shepherds and herdsmen, fishermen, fowlers, and others whose duties took them far afield, including military personnel. Specific reference is made to the employment of blind people: At Mari they undertook a range of occupations, including gardening. The Creation story states that those blind from birth were destined to be musicians. Male prisoners of war were often blinded to discourage them from escaping (see photo p. 169) and were entrusted with monotonous tasks like raising water for irrigation.
Workers were paid largely in rations, particularly food and textiles, derived from temple offerings and tithes or state taxes. In Ur III texts the rate of pay for a male employee is given as 60 liters of barley per month, along with an annual allowance of 2 kilograms of wool. A worker hired on a daily basis generally earned a higher rate. Rations were usually dates, oil, and bread, along with beer in the south and wine in the north, and certain individuals received meat. In the first millennium, wages in silver often replaced rations: one to three shekels per month, sufficient to purchase 180 liters of grain or dates. The amount paid depended on status and responsibility.
Recipients of rations included full-time workers—such as slaves, deportees, household employees and dependents, tied workers in state factories, and farm laborers—as well as military conscripts, people undertaking corvee labor, and citizens, such as craftsmen, working freelance and hired on a daily basis or commissioned to produce particular items or render certain services. Conditions of service varied, but workers were generally entitled to some time off, particularly for the frequent religious festivals, for which they might also be issued extra rations of wool or textiles.
Measurement and Commerce
The smooth operation of the economy required the regulation of quantities and rates of exchange. It is therefore not surprising that both the Akkadian and the Ur III rulers standardized weights and measures, which previously had varied between cities and between commodities. The system established by the late third millennium was to endure for more than fifteen hundred years
A set of standardized Mesopotamian stone weights in the shape of ducks, dating from ca. eleventh-eighth century B. C.E. (Zev Radovan/Land of the Bible Picture Archive)
[see table 10.1, Weights and Measures]. Units of length were inscribed on graduated wooden, stone, or metal measuring bars, the earliest known from around 2200 b. c.e. at Nippur and Lagash. Stone or metal weights were often in the shape of ducks. Graduated vessels measured capacity. Standardization of the calendar also facilitated the control of production and labor.
Accounting and the buying, selling, and exchange of goods required some means of comparing value between different commodities. The Mesopotamians did not use coinage (invented in Asia Minor in the seventh century B. C.E.) but employed various commodities as media of exchange and measures of value: occasionally gold, copper, and tin, but most commonly silver and grain. The value of goods entrusted to merchants was reckoned in weights of silver or volumes of barley, as was that of the commodities that the merchants brought back from their expeditions. Silver rings, coils of silver wire that could easily be cut into pieces, and other small units (often of 5 shekels weight) were regularly used in transactions, the requisite quantity of silver being weighed out to make a purchase or pay for a service. Prices were often fixed by the authorities and are mentioned in law codes. Whether there were shops or regular markets is unclear, although there is little evidence for their existence: Purchases might have been made directly from the workshop or from traveling salesmen, and transactions may also have occurred in the open areas within cities or by their gateways (rebitu).
World History
