The 60 years between the fall of the Assyrian cities and the arrival of Cyrus in Babylon constituted a period of economic growth. This growth did not affect the empire as a whole, but was limited to two areas. The main area was naturally Lower Mesopotamia. The end of the wars and destructions, which over the centuries had become a sort of routine, led to a growth in production and population. The latter was naturally modest in the short Neo-Babylonian phase, but would continue under the Achaemenids. Since Babylonia was the centre of the empire, resources gathered from tributes and war booties flowed from the periphery to Lower Mesopotamia. As mentioned above, these resources, combined with the increased availability of labour, were destined for the construction of the kings’ cultic and defensive building programmes. Commercial activities were also concentrated in the political capital of the empire, Babylon.
Another area of development was that of the autonomous Phoenician and Philistine cities on the Mediterranean coast. These centres took advantage of their intermediary role between the empire and the rising Mediterranean world, their contacts with Egypt and their role as major access points to the sea for the caravans coming from Arabia. If Babylonia was mainly an agricultural, political and redistributive centre, the west of the empire was predominantly a commercial one. With the Persians, the west would experience an urban development in terms of fortifications, administration and religion. The areas located between these two centres (Central Syria and the Levant, Upper Mesopotamia and Assyria) became virtually deserted. This is due to the fact that both the surviving local population and the deportees struggled to develop economically and culturally.
Babylonia experienced a visible growth (Figure 31.1). The land was overcoming a long phase of decline and de-population. This decline had reached its lowest levels between the tenth and seventh century bc. With the end of the seventh century bc and the beginning of the sixth century bc, Babylonia was on the path of recovery. Population levels grew, but did not reach the density of the time of Hammurabi, or the levels of the Ur III and Isin-Larsa periods. Admittedly, it is difficult to separate (through archaeological surveys) the growth that took place in the 60 years of the Chaldean dynasty from the following growth under the Achaemenids. This is due to the fact that their ceramic index fossils are difficult to distinguish. In terms of settlements, the growth mainly affected the cities, which were the main focus of the kings’ building programmes. The farming population remained modest in size (thus its percentage declined). After all, some aspects of decline were irreversible at this stage. The increasing waterlogging of Lower Mesopotamia, which was a result of the collapse of the network of irrigation canals, the silting of the Gulfs coast and the advance of the desert in the west towards the Euphrates, were all factors weighing on the Babylonian cities and cultivations, which therefore became a sort of ‘island’ of agricultural productivity surrounded by
Figure 31.1 The revival of agriculture and construction. Left: Lower Mesopotamian settlements in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid period; Right: Plan of Babylon.
Desolated areas, from sandy dunes in the west, to the marshes in the south, the political border in the east and the war-related de-population in the north.
In these conditions, apart from the thriving building activity, agriculture experienced a decent growth. However, the Babylonian landscape was far from the one attested in its golden age. Small private properties had virtually disappeared and even the large properties belonging to royal functionaries ceased to be an important element of the agricultural landscape of Babylonia. Instead, the large temple and palace estates dominated the area and were the main employers of the farming population. Alongside slaves and paid farmers, there were deportees (from the ones brought by the Assyrians to more recent ones), debt slaves and the new class of unfree serfs bound to the temple (sirku). All these people worked on lands that they did not own and were ruled by a class of temple and palace ‘administrators’ (satammu and other lower categories), who did not own the land either, but managed it on behalf of the temple and the palace.
In this network of large public farming estates, administrators constantly tried to gather some income for themselves. Overall, land management was based on pre-fixed parameters, such as the productivity of the land, fixed rates of taxation and fixed percentages for the administrators and farmers (Figure 31.2). Therefore, agriculture became an essentially financial endeavour. There were calculations of profits over several years and the evaluation of the benefits of drainage interventions, of introducing a new cultivation and so on. However, this calculation of the division of shares between workers and public institutions led to a visible clash between the temple and the palace over each other’s percentages. It is possible that many disagreements in the cities, including the clash between Nabonidus and Marduk’s priesthood, derived from issues of this kind.
Nabonidus and his son Bel-shar-usur issued an edict meant to define the shares due to each individual and the palace. This edict must have caused disdain in the temple administration. It was followed by local rebellions and the departure of the king to Tayma. However, we know, at least for the area of Uruk, that the public farming estates entrusted by the king to functionaries/entrepreneurs were moderately successful, cultivating fields that had been long abandoned, and managing agricultural productivity. This structure, based on large farming estates managed by a single administrator, did not have too much of an impact on a practical level. Of the two main crops cultivated at the time, grain and palm-trees, the latter required the division of the land into smaller plots. The unification of land management, then, was mainly a financial matter. Land management was placed in the hands of fewer individuals, in an attempt to deal with the serious problem of supplying the Babylonian cities. This situation was characterised by a marked difference between the amount of food produced in the countryside and the food consumed by the citizens, who were able to access supplies in the markets or through participation in public activities, but not as a direct retribution for their specialised labour.
Craftsmanship and production also experienced considerable socio-economic changes in this period. The groups of specialist workers divided by specialisation, organised into a hierarchical order and working for the palace, were now structured into a kind of free ‘corporations’, which united specialists of the same area, possibly following an internal hierarchical order. However, these ‘corporations’ were not part of the palace administration anymore and thus needed commissioners. Naturally, the palace and the temple remained the main commissioners, but now there were also private individuals. Nonetheless, even in the case of public commissions, they were established via some sort of contract defining the economic remuneration of the service. The palace and temple administrations, the former being a larger unity and the latter being smaller and divided among all the Babylonian cities, continued to employ only three types of professionals: scribes, administrators and priests.
In the commercial sector, the importance of financial issues over purely commercial ones, far from being a deformation of the documentation, seems to be a reflection of the time. The great commercial networks of the time did not pass through Babylonia. The route moving from the south to the north departed from Yemen, crossed the Hejaz and reached the Syro-Levantine coast or the Nile Delta. Similarly, the route moving from the east to the west crossed the highlands in the north, gathering the flux of resources from
A contract recording the king’s provision of fields to private individuals in return for a regular payment to the Eanna of Uruk
“Shum-ukin, son of Bil-zeri, a descendant of Basiya, and Kalba, son of Iqisha, have prayed Nabonidiis, king of Babylon, the king their lord, with these words: 'May the king our lord give us 6,000 kur of seed field, and land for dafe-farming, 400 workmen, 400 oxen, 100 adult eows forof the 400 oxen. We will give back on a yearly basis, in the season of the high waters, to the Divine Lady of Uruk, the sum Of 25,000 kur of barley and the 10,000 kur of dates.’ Nabonidus, the king their lord, favourably accepted their request and gave Shum-ukin, son of Bel-zeri, a descendant of Basiya, and Kalba, son of Iqisha, 6,000 kur of seed field, including fallow land - of which half needs to be left each year 400 workmen, 400 oxen, 100 adult cows for... of the 400 oxen. The oxen and adult cows should not perish. They (i. e. Shum-ukin and Kalba) will show the king’s representative the increase, what will be born, of the adult cows; and he will mark them with the iron star of the Divine Lady of Uruk and will return them to Shum-ukin and KalbS They will take on (the responsibility o)f fixing fhe deteriorating ploughs. Each year, during the season of high waters, Shum-ukin and Kalba will give the Divine Lady of Uruk the sum of 25,000 kur of barley and the sum of 10,000 kur of dates, in total 35,000 kur of barley and dates according to the unit of the Divine Lady of Uruk. Only once, in the first year, will be given to them from the Eanna temple 3,000 kur of barley to be sown and 10 talents of iron (for the ploughs).... Shum-ukin and Kalba are responsible for each other in everything they will do. (Witnesses,..). (Agreed in Larsa), month of Nisan, 28th day, first year of Nabonidus, king of Babylon (== 555 BC).”
Figure 31.2 Neo-Babylonian agriculture. Above: The ‘general farms’ of the Eanna of Uruk; Below: Field plans of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods.
India and Central Asia in Persis and Susiana. These goods were then brought to Lydia and the Aegean. Babylonia therefore ran the risk of being cut off, staying in a rich and important niche of land, but isolated by the marshes separating it from the Gulf (which was mainly accessed through Susiana, rather than the Sealand) and by the post-war desolation of the Middle Euphrates and Middle Tigris regions.
If Babylonia managed to avoid being entirely cut off, it was mainly because it was the final destination of the resources gathered through trade. It therefore acted as a first-class ‘market’ (one of the main ones of the time) and political centre. Commercial activities were mainly in the hands of the Phoenicians (one of them, a certain Hanunu, was the chief of the royal merchants under Nebuchadnezzar), the Arabs and the Iranian populations. Even in terms of financial activities, Babylon delegated them to foreigners and ex-deportees (Jewish groups in particular), such as in the case of the famous ‘houses’ of the Egibi and then the Murashu in the Achaemenid period. These were more financial, rather than purely commercial, institutions, which gathered a large share of their profits through moneylending and the management of agricultural production.
Neo-Babylonian cities had therefore become complex socio-economic realities. They were ruled by the temple, or the palace in the case of Babylon, namely, by a public institution. The latter’s praxis, strategies and interests, were however private. Alongside these institutions there were corporations of specialist workers, commercial and financial ‘houses’ and public administrators. These were all professions formerly belonging to the category of the ‘servants of the king’, who once formed the public sector, but now worked as ‘private’ individuals (mar-banuti). Therefore, the cities’ economic and legal administration was entrusted to the temple and the city council, which represented the ‘corporations’ and the ‘houses’. The former category of ‘free’ private landowners had long become a class of employed workmen, insolvent debtors, unfree serfs (or oblates), deportees and slaves. The progressive enslavement of the farming population, combined with the formal status of specialists and administrators, mirrors that ‘mass slavery’ described by the Greeks about the Persian empire. This impression is only partly acceptable. It has to be pointed out that the development of a private economic sector outside the palace and the temple was an innovation of this phase both in terms of organisation and structure.
World History
