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Sumerian Merchants and the Problem of Profit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Marvin A. Powell
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Extract

The theory that the Sumerian economy was controlled by the state or temple has until recently been a premise generally accepted by those who have attempted to deal with economic activity in the third millennium B.C. This theory has necessarily had a profound effect upon the interpretation of the role of the merchant in this period of Mesopotamian history. Since our evidence is by no means sufficient to reconstruct merchant activity in detail, our view of this aspect of Mesopotamian economic life is decisively conditioned by our theory of the total economy. For this reason, I have sketched out in what follows the theoretical basis which underlies the position taken in the present paper, as well as my understanding of the theoretical position to which it stands opposed.

During the 1920's, Anton Deimel reconstructed, on the basis of surviving tablets available to him, the basic structure of the archive of Bau in Girsu during the administrations of Lugalanda and Uru'inimgina (UruKAgina). Operating with the evidence assembled by Deimel, and taking his rather tentative deductions to what seemed at the time to be the logical conclusion, Anna Schneider and others arrived at a view of Sumerian society in which the temple functioned as the heart and brain of the whole. In the context of such a view, which for many years has affected both Assyriological and popular literature on the subject, the merchant can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as an employee of that central controlling agency. Thus, the economy of the third millennium tended to be categorized under such rubrics as “theocracy” and “statism”. The economy of this era was contrasted with the “capitalism” of the Old Babylonian period, and the differences between the economy reflected in the documents of the two eras were often assigned to the influx of new Semitic peoples, a classic case of explaining unknowns by another unknown or, perhaps, of the uncritical generalization of some specific Semitic stereotype such as the Carthaginian in Plautus' Poenulus.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , Spring 1977 , pp. 23 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1977

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References

1 This paper is written as a general formulation of economic facts as they pertain to the motives underlying merchant activity. Documentation has been kept to a minimum, both to save space and because the specialist capable of dealing with the documents will not need it anyway. However, in fairness to my readers and to other scholars whose unpublished manuscripts I have read, I should state that part of the theories offered here owes its stimulus to papers by Tom B. Jones (Jacobsen Festschrift), Gordon Young and Richard Nelson (Jones Festschrift), Snell's, Daniel dissertation “Ledgers and Prices: Ur III Silver Balanced Accounts” (Yale Univ., 1975)Google Scholar, and Førde's, Nels revised monograph “The Sumerian Merchants of the Ur III Dynasty” (dated 1975)Google Scholar. I am indebted to my Northern Illinois University colleagues, Thomas Blomquist and George Spencer, for discussing with me the problems of merchants in medieval Europe and India respectively, and finally, without implying in any way that they agree with my point of view, for discussing these and related matters with me: to I. M. Diakonoff, Claus Wilcke, and Hartmut Waetzoldt.

2 Full documentation for these theories will be found in my paper “Götter, Könige und ‘Kapitalisten’ in Mesopotamien des 3. Jahrtausends v.u.Z.” (Oikumene, Budapest, c. 1977)Google Scholar.

3 Gordon, E., Sumerian Proverbs (1959), 512 f., 1.165 and no. 1.67 (pp. 74, 460, 503)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 References: Bauer, J., AWL (1967), 620, s.v. lal-aGoogle Scholar.

5 I attempted to solve this problem in my dissertation, “Sumerian Numeration and Metrology” (Univ. of Minnesota, 1971; Univ. Microfilms, 1973), 139–149Google Scholar, but the results were inconclusive.

6 Recension B 32 (MSL 13, 115; cf. 113 i 1′ and 97:36 for variants).

7 Cf. Orientalia 20 (1926), 1 ff.Google Scholar; 21 (1926), 1 ff.; 26 (1927), 1 ff.

8 Cf. Orientalia 21 (1926), 40 ffGoogle Scholar.

9 An Or 2 (1931), 92Google Scholar.

10 MAD 4 (1970), nos. 19 f., 20, 24, 27–30, 34, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 52 f., 55 f., 58 f., 61, 63, 75 f., 79, 82 f. 84, 87–89, 92–96, 98–100, 102, 106f., 109, 111, 113 f., 116, 118 f., 122 f., 127 f., 133, 135, 137–139, 141, 146–148, 156, 159Google Scholar.

11 Ancient Mesopotamia (1964), 88 fGoogle Scholar.

12 Cf. Powell, M. A., ZA 63 (1973), 102 f.Google Scholar; and esp. Bauer, J., JESHO 18 (1975), 189 ffGoogle Scholar.