Debt in The Ancient Mediterranean and Near East Credit Money and Social Obligation John Weisweiler Full Chapter
Debt in The Ancient Mediterranean and Near East Credit Money and Social Obligation John Weisweiler Full Chapter
Debt in The Ancient Mediterranean and Near East Credit Money and Social Obligation John Weisweiler Full Chapter
Debt in the
Ancient
Mediterranean and
Near East
Credit, Money, and
Social Obligation
z
Edited by
JOHN WEISWEILER
iv
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197647172.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Contents
Preface ix
List of Contributors xi
viii Contents
Notes 189
Bibliography 223
Index 265
ix
Preface
In 2014 and 2016, I taught two undergraduate seminars on Greek and Roman
debt at the Seminar für Alte Geschichte of the University of Tübingen. This book
is inspired by the students who participated in these courses. The lively discus-
sions in the Zeitschriftenzimmer of the top floor of the Hegelbau, taking place
just as the Greek debt crisis reached its denouement, were a powerful reminder
of what is at stake in thinking about the interplay between credit and coercion in
world history.
Most of the chapters included in this volume were first presented at a work-
shop held in Schloss Hohentübingen in summer 2016. The stately surroundings
of the Fürstenzimmer provided an appropriate backdrop for discussing the roles
played by religion, state violence, and metal currencies in premodern Eurasia.
Although Michael Hudson, Michael Jursa, and Reinhard Wolters did not par-
ticipate in the project until the end, their observations and insights were crucial
in moving it forward. So was the learning and good humor of Cliff Ando, who
moderated the discussion. Finally, the manuscript greatly benefited from the
comments of two anonymous reviewers. I would like to thank all of them for
their contributions to this project.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Fritz-
Thyssen-Stiftung for the workshop from which this book originates. The unbu-
reaucratic way in which this foundation awards and manages grant money is a
model for institutions of its kind—the opposite of the “box tickers” and “task
masters” who, according to David Graeber’s apposite characterization, dominate
so many organizations of higher education.
The delight about the appearance of this book is mixed with incalculable
sadness. Two key contributors to this project did not live to see its conclu-
sion. Michael Bonner’s acumen and generosity greatly enlivened the Tübingen
x
x Preface
workshop. His contribution to this volume will be among the last publications
of a scholar whose work has reconfigured our understanding of the early Islamic
economy. David Graeber’s learning and anarchic humor were a glorious spectacle
to behold. It is still difficult to grasp that his youthful mind is no longer with us.
This book is dedicated to his memory.
xi
List of Contributors
The Currency–Slavery–Warfare
Complex
David Graeber and the History of
Value in Antiquity
John Weisweiler
In his Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), David Graeber develops a new grand
narrative of world history. Graeber argues that the roots of the current socio-
economic order are located not in early-modern Europe but in antiquity. From
the late Bronze Age onward, all across Eurasia, relationships of social obligation
were transformed into quantifiable and legally enforceable debts. Graeber sug-
gests that this transformation made possible new economic institutions, such as
IOUs, coinage, and debt-slavery. At the same time, it also led to the emergence of
new modes of thought, which have shaped Eurasian philosophical and religious
traditions ever since.
This volume explores the implications of Graeber’s work for the history of
the ancient Mediterranean and Near East (roughly 700 Bce to 700 CE). This
era, which Graeber dubs (following Karl Jaspers) the “Axial Age,” plays a central
role in his narrative.1 He suggests that the territorial states of this period had a
distinct political economy, marked by metal currencies, taxation, chattel slav-
ery, and impersonal markets. All across Eurasia, old credit systems began to be
replaced by new forms of coinage, and states and landowning elites accumulated
unprecedented amounts of wealth. New cosmologies and philosophical practices
enabled individuals to maintain a sense of autonomy and self-determination in
these dynamic market societies. At the same time, inequality soared. Warfare led
to the spread of chattel slavery, and debt enmeshed rural populations in webs of
John Weisweiler, The Currency–Slavery–Warfare Complex In: Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean
and Near East. Edited by: John Weisweiler, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197647172.003.0001
2
which he outlined the main contours of the argument that would later be elabo-
rated in his book.6 On closer inspection, it is also not clear whether Debt was
quite so obviously predestined to become a publishing success as it would later
appear. The book puts forward a complex and challenging argument. Although it
is written in accessible style, it is deeply versed in anthropological theory. Entire
chapters are taken up by technical arguments around the nature of money, defini-
tions of modes of exchange, or explorations of credit systems in remote societ-
ies or distant periods of history. In this sense, one may suspect that the popular
success of the book was more of a mirage than a reality. Like that other surprise
bestseller, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014), Graeber’s
Debt was probably more often cited than read from cover to cover. But for schol-
ars interested in the shape of premodern economies, the book repays attention. It
offers at least three insights that ancient historians may usefully incorporate into
their work.
First, Graeber challenges the narrative (prevalent since at least Adam Smith
and accepted as common sense in many quarters until today) according to which
world economic history can be written in terms of a development to ever more
efficient modes of exchange, from barter (allegedly prevalent in pre-monetized
societies) through coinage (developed in classical antiquity) to the complex
credit instruments employed in modern finance. Graeber shows that this story
is empirically wrong. In the opening chapter of the book, he demonstrates that
in reality the circulation of goods in most pre-monetized societies was deter-
mined by relationships of mutual obligation, not by exchanging fixed amounts
of one commodity against fixed amounts of another.7 The refutation of the myth
of barter was probably the most influential section of Debt. Though it was long
known among anthropologists that barter cannot have been the original form of
exchange, it was only in the wake of Graeber’s book that this conclusion began to
be widely accepted outside of specialist scholarship.8
Second, Graeber shows that exchanges based on reciprocity are not as natu-
ral or ubiquitous as common sense might lead us to believe and as social scien-
tists of different political persuasions since the nineteenth century have tended
to think. He observes that cash purchases, credit contracts, and barter resemble
each other in important ways. They are all based on an expectation that one party
will give something in return for what the other party has given, and will do so
in a precisely quantifiable way. Once the transaction is concluded, the relation-
ship between the two parties ends. Graeber distinguishes this reciprocal logic
from non-reciprocal forms of interaction. The latter fall into two subgroups. The
first (which he calls “baseline communism”) denotes interactions which operate
without an expectation of reciprocity, such as giving somebody a lighter, lend-
ing somebody a tool, or giving somebody directions. The second (which Graeber
4
After Neo-Institutionalism
In seeking to understand ancient systems of exchange from the vantage point
of Graeber’s anthropological theory, this book departs from the now dominant
approach in economic history. Since the early 2000s, an outpouring of sophis-
ticated new work has applied the toolkit of new institutional economics (NIE)
to the societies of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The most influen-
tial exponent of this theory was the US economist Douglass North, who in 1995
received the prize in economic sciences of the Swedish Riksbank (often referred
to as the Nobel Prize in Economics). North ascribes differences in economic
performance of different societies to the efficacy of the institutions—a term that
encompasses both legal rules and informal understandings—that govern them. If
institutions are well designed, they facilitate the free exchange of information and
goods among economic actors. A positive feedback loop ensues; as trust among
market participants increases, production and exchange intensify. By contrast,
if institutions are inefficient, they create information and power asymmetries
between buyers and sellers. Market participants are forced to expend resources
to ascertain the quality of traded goods and to ensure the enforcement of con-
tracts; these “transactions costs” hinder exchange and economic growth.13 In the
view of North and his followers, these dynamics explain the divergent trajectory
of the economies of western Europe and North America since the Industrial
Revolution.14
As more recent scholarship has pointed out, there are problems with this
simple model of the relationship between institutions and economic growth.
By seeing markets and private property rights as the most efficient mechanisms
6
for allocating resources, North naturalizes the institutions of the liberal capital-
ist nation-states of his own time. Effectively, the economic order prevalent in
post–Cold War North America and western Europe becomes the transhistorical
measuring stick by which other economic systems are assessed. Such a teleologi-
cal view prevents understanding other periods and places on their own terms.15
NIE also does not provide much help for understanding the more recent evolu-
tion of the world economy. For instance, the recent rise of East Asia and espe-
cially China, where markets are more tightly regulated and public institutions
control a much larger share of national wealth than in contemporary Europe
and North America, sheds doubt on the view that low transaction costs and the
uncompromising defense of property rights play quite the central role in facilitat-
ing economic growth, as neo-institutional theory suggests.16 In retrospect, neo-
institutional economics is all too visibly the product of the triumphalist high
point of neoliberal globalization in the 1990s.17
It might thus be expected that the application of neo-institutional economics
to ancient history had unambiguously deleterious effects. However, this would be
a mistaken assessment. In a discipline concerned with the interpretation of source
materials that were produced in cultures that radically differ from our own, the
universalizing claims made by North and his followers were always unlikely to
be adopted in full. On the contrary, by providing a simple framework to make
sense of the relationship between institutions and economic performance in dif-
ferent societies, NIE had some beneficial effects on ancient economic history.
Two developments were especially welcome. First, neo-institutional economics
motivated ancient historians to enter into a dialogue with specialists in related
disciplines. Most importantly, Mediterranean and Near Eastern historians
began to collaborate more closely with each other. In a landmark collection, The
Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models, Joe Manning and Ian Morris exposed the
ways in which cooperation between specialist in Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and
Mesopotamian history might reconfigure each of those fields.18 More recently,
Michael Jursa has systematically applied the methods of quantitative history
honed in the Mediterranean to the much more densely documented regions of
ancient Mesopotamia.19
Second, the engagement with neo-institutional economics inspired a turn
toward quantification. It motivated ancient historians to harvest the wealth
of evidence provided by landscape surveys and archaeological excavations, in
order to trace rhythms of intensification and abatement in ancient economies.
The publications of the Oxford Roman Economy project have made an array of
new data sets available, which greatly refined our understanding of the ancient
economy.20 Walter Scheidel in various publications revealed the use of models
derived from other premodern societies for understanding the dynamics and
7
shaken the faith in the market as the most efficient resource allocation mecha-
nism. At the same time, the rise of China has demonstrated that the institutions
of liberal capitalism do not provide the only road to prosperity. These develop-
ments create a demand for theories that are better suited to describe the diversity
of ways in which human systems of exchange have been organized in the past.
By reconsidering the structure of ancient systems of exchange from the vantage
point of Graeber’s theory, this book hopes to contribute to such a renovation
of the field of premodern economic history. There are at least three areas of
research that would benefit from renewed attention in such a reimagining of the
discipline.
The first is the problem of ancient economic thought. By focusing on per-
formance, neo-institutionalists managed to sidestep the difficult question of the
relationship between ancient conceptions of the economy and ancient economic
practice. As Neville Morley points out in his contribution to this volume, the
expansion of markets was made possible not only by technological or political
change but also by the emergence of new ideas of a just economic order: “we need
to pay as much attention to the complex processes whereby certain ideas are made
thinkable, the world is represented and hence perceived in new ways, and as a
result new possibilities for action and change are created.”27 Graeber’s insistence
on the fundamental importance of Axial-Age thought for understanding ancient
systems of exchange is a useful counterpoint to the tendency of neo-institutional
theory to naturalize market mentalities. Here he follows a long-standing tradi-
tion in classical scholarship; not coincidentally, his account of the “Axial Age”
is inspired by the work of Leslie Kurke, Sitta von Reden, and above all Richard
Seaford.28
Second, since neo-institutional theory sees the emergence of markets as natu-
ral, it does not give sufficient attention to the historical processes by which mar-
kets are created and sustained. By subsuming limitations on the free purchase and
sale of goods under the catch-all heading of “transaction costs,” the theory does
not fully capture the purpose and logic of such limitations. Here, too, Graeber
offers a useful counterweight. His broader theory of exchange encourages us to
reconsider the relationship of market exchange to non-reciprocal forms of inter-
action. Ancient historians have already begun to approach this question from
new vantage points. Nicholas Purcell, in an important chapter, has sketched the
boundary of what could and could not be sold in different ancient societies.29
Brent Shaw, in various studies, has made a strong case that conventional models
of economic history (all of which ultimately derive from forms of social theory
developed in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Europe) are not well
suited to describe the distinctive ways in which ancient systems of exchange func-
tioned and evolved.30 Astrid Van Oyen has used thing theory to develop a more
9
nuanced understanding of the role played by strictly economic logics in the cir-
culation of goods in the Roman world.31
Finally, the transformative role of money is undertheorized in neo-
institutional economics. Since commodity exchange is taken as natural, the
theory does not properly bring into focus the ways in which the introduction
of a new medium of exchange such as metal coinage reconfigures social relations
more broadly. Graeber’s examination of the effects of metal coinage and virtual
currencies offers an interesting new perspective on this question. Recent work
on silverization in the Near East, the monetization of the Roman Republic, and
the currency system of the Roman Empire reveals the potential of an anthropo-
logical approach to the history of coinage in antiquity.32 Overall, by offering new
perspectives on the problem of ancient economic thought, the nature of ancient
markets, and the problem of monetization, Graeber invites us to reconsider some
of the most important questions in ancient economic history.
within tightly knit rural communities: “these texts attest to a rather harsh atti-
tude toward those in need, shaped by expectations of equivalence (i.e., full and
immediate repayment) and profit orientation (flexible interest).”35 Pirngruber
reveals the extent to which economic logics had colonized Babylonian society.
In the same period monetization also reshaped social relations and modes of
thought in the Aegean and in India. In his contribution to this volume, Richard
Seaford compares the impact of this invention in both regions. He shows that in
Greek city-states the structure of the cosmologies created by philosophers such
as Herakleitos, Anaximander, Parmenides, and Plato parallels the structure of
the monetary system. The same can be shown for India. The relationship of the
individual to the cosmos is conceptualized in terms of an eternal debt, to be paid
off by sacrifices carried out through Brahmin priests. The accumulation of merit
(istapurta) between different reincarnations is conceived of in economic terms,
and karma (although conceptualized in ethical terms) functions as metaphysi-
cal money. In this sense, like early Greek philosophers, so also Indian thinkers
conceptualize the cosmos on the analogy of a cycle of monetized obligation.
But there are important differences. In India escape from the cycle of monetized
obligation is achieved through the radical renunciation of all action (or at least
of monetary exchange), while in Greece it is through an inner withdrawal from
emotions and corporeal desire that can be reconciled with active engagement in
public affairs. Seaford’s chapter exposes the ways in which the invention of metal
currency shapes modes of thought in different cultures. In particular, the ways
in which coinage was embedded in city-state institutions left a lasting imprint
on the ways in which exchange was conceptualized in Greek culture and its off-
shoots. It created a distinct form of subjectivity which linked individualism and
membership in a wider political community: “In Greece the state had greater sta-
bility, power, and loyalty than it did in India; and the popular need for ultimate
justice was eventually met not by ethicized money but by a cosmic tribunal. This
fundamental difference between India and the West is still with us.”36
With the next chapter, we move from the later seventh and sixth centuries
Bce, when coins gradually became the main medium of exchange in the Aegean
world, to the fifth and fourth centuries Bce, when nearly all Greek city-states
had come to be monetized and deeply integrated into inter-regional commod-
ity markets. Moritz Hinsch points out that debt crises were surprisingly rare in
this period and largely occurred in remote and economically underdeveloped
regions. By contrast, in the core of the Greek world, high levels of urbanization
and more division of labor gave less well-off citizens an escape route from the
cycle of peasant indebtedness. These observations lead Hinsch to reject Graeber’s
view that strong legal protections for creditors inevitably promote social con-
flict. On the contrary, in the context of a highly commercialized urban economy
1
such as Athens, the legal enforceability of debt gave non-citizen artisans and
merchants access to much needed capital and protected them from attempts by
politically connected debtors to avoid repayment: “The same rulers and notables
who coined the term ‘debt of honor’ when dealing with peers would intimidate,
attack, or imprison their less powerful creditors to avoid repayment.”37 Hinsch’s
chapter exposes an empty space in Graeber’s theory of a Eurasian Axial Age.
While his idea of a link between coinage, state formation, and impersonal mar-
kets works well for large territorial states and empires, it is not clear whether it
is equally applicable to the city-states of classical Greece. Outside of Athens, the
small size of local economies ensured that debt remained embedded in a broader
network of social relations. An ideology of equality may have alleviated the most
disruptive effects of monetization, at least for freeborn male citizens.
At first sight, it might be expected in the more hierarchical society of the
Roman Republic that no such limits on the free play of market forces existed.
After all, in the period from the third to the first centuries Bce, the conquest
by Roman armies of the Mediterranean world led to the enslavement mil-
lions of human beings, large transfers of wealth to Italy, and an unprecedented
accumulation of capital among elite families. Yet, as Lisa Eberle shows in her
contribution, some of the same ambiguities that characterized Greek under-
standings of debt recur in Rome. There is a surprising contrast between the
harsh treatment of the debtor in Roman law, who in case of bankruptcy would
suffer infamia and an immediate loss of all properties, and the fact that at sev-
eral historical junctures creditors were strictly prohibited from lending at inter-
est. Eberle shows that Roman authors distinguished between two spheres: one
based on self-interested market exchange, the other on disinterested relations
of friendship, in which (as the Romano-Syrian mime Publilius put it) “remem-
bering a loan would be sufficient interest.”38 But the reason for the regulation
of the credit market was different than in Greece. Whereas in Greek city-states
citizen solidarity often prevented debt crises to spin out of control, in Rome
patron–client relationships played a more important role in securing political
stability. The fact that the Roman elite was both wealthier and more powerful
than its Greek counterparts made it less concerned about the ways in which
monetary exchange might undermine long-standing hierarchies of honor: “the
biggest threat that such exchange posed for them and their social positions—
potentially depending on others—did not in fact concern them; by contrast,
everyone else was always dependent on them.”39 As a result, the Roman elite
managed to subsume monetary debt as one part of a larger economy of gift-
giving. The ideal Roman male would be involved in relationships of reciprocity
with others but only on his own terms, in such ways as to prevent any dangerous
loss of independence.
12
Very similar developments took place in Sasanian Iran, which Richard Payne
examines in his chapter. Politically, Zoroastrianism underwrote a highly unequal
social order, in which a small group of families—the Iranian ethno-class—domi-
nated a wide range of dependents (with the same deleterious consequences on
human well-being as in Rome).41 This relationship of exploitation was legiti-
mized through an ideology of hierarchical exchange: Rural populations gave up
a share of their surplus in return for military protection and daily food rations
(attested in newly discovered leather documents from Qom). Economically,
this polity was the culmination of earlier Mediterranean and Near Eastern
empires: A silver currency of unprecedented purity promoted monetization of
unmatched depth. Credit relations played a crucial role in sustaining elite domi-
nance. Interest-bearing credit seems to have been widespread in Iranian society,
and debts to fire temples were eternal and could never be forgiven. Ideologically,
Zoroastrian religion encapsulated the dual face of Axial-Age religion, based on
an artificial dichotomy between body and spirit. Next to warfare, debt bondage
was probably the most important source of new slaves. Zoroastrianism also illus-
trates Graeber’s contention that Axial-Age economies create the terms for radical
oppositional movements. The objective of the Mazdakite revolt, led by a group of
priest-scholars in the 520s, was the introduction of what has been called “Iranian
communism,” a new social order based on communal ownership of property and
the abolition of marriage. And Islam’s rejection of luxury garments, alcohol, and
interest-taking in favor of an egalitarian community of believers might be seen as
a response to an exposure to the social hierarchies and stark materialism which
were the hallmarks of the Iranian social order: “In imagining the egalitarian con-
vening of the Muslim community in shared submission to a single god, dressed in
simple linen or cotton, undivided by patrilineage or patrimony, we should recall
what was implicitly rejected: one particular solution to the contradictions of the
Iron Age, in favor of a radical alternative.”42
Accordingly, the next two chapters turn to the early Islamic economy. The
view, outlined in Debt, of Islam as the dynamic center of the global economy
in the early medieval period fits well with recent research which has decisively
proven that the first centuries of Muslim rule witnessed a remarkable economic
boom. Michael Bonner explores the contribution Islam’s Arabian environment
made to that success. Some modern neo-institutional economists argue that
Islam inhibited economic growth because it did not feature familiar features of
Western capitalism, such as interest-bearing loans and firms enjoying legal per-
sonhood. Others have made the case that religion made a significant contribu-
tion to the Islamic economic miracle. Yet ultimately, it is not clear to what extent
the commercial zest of early Arabs can be ascribed to religious factors. Bonner
emphasizes the continuity between the forms of non-monetized generosity
14
praised in pre-Islamic poetry and the ethos of Islamic traders. By contrast, it is not
clear whether the outlawing of debt bondage had pre-Islamic precedents. It is well
possible that debt servitude was widespread in the world in which Muhammad
grew up, though the fragmentary nature of our sources makes it difficult to be
sure: “So while the early Islamic world featured bustling markets and trade,
including large-scale traffic in persons, it also set clear limits on the commodifica-
tion of persons.”43
Arietta Papaconstantinou deals with the impact of Islamic conquest on the
province of Egypt through the prism of papyri. She too emphasizes the continu-
ity between the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods; in Graeber’s terminology, the
caliphate was an Axial-Age polity, a state run by a military elite whose wealth was
based on the extraction of gold taxes. At the same time, there was a flourishing
system of microcredit which tied together men and women and a broad range
of social classes and professions. Enforcement of debts was backed up by com-
plex webs of family relations and patronage, which were especially important in
periods of state weakness. But the important role played by personal relations
in negotiating credit did not mean that the end result was any less oppressive.
As Papaconstantinou observes, face-to-face communities can be as exploit-
ative as the impersonal institutions of the state: “They did not, at least in the
period treated here, offer a safe haven against an oppressive state: where indi-
viduals and their debts were concerned they often even represented the oppo-
site.”44 Strikingly, Egyptian villagers perceived the representatives of the distant
imperial administration often as protectors against encroachments by neighbors,
relatives, and other local strongmen. Drawing on the work of Miranda Joseph,45
Papaconstantinou suggests that Graeber’s emphasis on the ways in which per-
sonal relations alleviate oppression may underplay structural violence in small-
scale communities.
This raises the question of how the history of debt continued in post-Roman
Europe, the one area in western Eurasia in which the coercive ability of state
institutions was severely weakened and the availability of metal currency sharply
declined at the end of antiquity. This question is tackled by Alice Rio in her chap-
ter. She shows that, in line with Graeber’s model, in the early Middle Ages interest-
bearing credit contracts no longer were as ubiquitous as in the Roman Empire.
It also seems that fewer coins were produced and virtual currencies became more
important; overall, the force of the non-commercial webs of exchange which
Graeber calls “human economies” strengthened. Yet it is not clear whether this
led to a decline in the intensity of exploitation, at least in areas for which written
sources survive; the “social currencies” employed by these new “human econo-
mies” remained convertible into cash, and the lack of coinage frequently forced
those who did not have access to metal currency to take out loans from those who
15
had. Nor did the fact that relationships of debt were more deeply embedded into
local social networks make it impossible to turn human beings into commodities.
On the contrary, the end of Roman state institutions also ended legal protections
against the enslavement of free persons. It seems that the heritage of Axial-Age
institutions influenced the character of the post-Roman world more decisively
than a superficial reader of Graeber’s book might expect. Elites were able to make
surprisingly effective use of the tools for domination developed by the Roman
Empire centuries after that empire had ceased to exist: “The early medieval exam-
ple shows that the mere memory of a strong state could sometimes give elites the
ability to make some of its tools and instruments of domination survive, even in
spite of a near-total absence of strong institutional backing.”46
Beyond Debt
Markets and Morality in First-M illennium
bce Babylonia
Reinhard Pirngruber
Reinhard Pirngruber, Beyond Debt In: Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Edited by: John Weisweiler,
Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197647172.003.0002
19
Beyond Debt 19
Beyond Debt 21
“Communism” as a moral principle is “reciprocal only in the sense that both sides
are equally disposed to help one another; there is no feeling that accounts ought
to balance out at any given moment—in part, because there’s no assumption that
such relations will ever end.”9 “Hierarchy” governs unequal relationships; rather
than reciprocity, the defining logic is that of precedent (although the relation-
ship may be represented on the ideological plane as reciprocal, a case in point is
spiritual guidance provided by priests or the protection granted by armed lords
in exchange for a share in the harvest).10 Finally, three key elements character-
ize “exchange”: an assumption of a fundamental equality between the partners
involved, the acceptance that the relationship is temporary and can be canceled at
will, and, most importantly, equivalence as an underlying moral principle, imply-
ing a constant concern for quantification and valuation. A fourth element is the
potential for competitive behavior that is inherent in exchange, which threatens
to undermine the autonomous status of each partner. Market exchange is thus
just one manifestation of the principle of exchange, “a certain form of immedi-
ate, balanced, impersonal, self-interested transactions that we call ‘commercial
exchange.’ ”11 In his account of the origins of debt, the expansion of the logics
of exchange during the Axial Age, which furthered trends such as commodifica-
tion and rational calculation (including profit orientation) and was predicated
on warfare on an imperial scale, plays a key role.
Graeber’s paradigm shift has important consequences. When one starts con-
ceiving of exchange as a “constant process of interaction tending toward equiva-
lence,” a whole new set of research perspectives emerges.12 First, such an approach
invites us to gauge the relevance of (market) exchange not merely by looking at
the way business was conducted according to legal records or, conversely, accord-
ing to their absence. A frequent “argument” for the restricted domain of (market)
exchange in this regard is an alleged lack of monetization on the countryside—as
if only specie were proper money as opposed to undoubtedly more frequent and
sometimes informal credit arrangements.13 Rather, one expects that if exchange
indeed played a large role in everyday life, then its constituting morality—the
expectations of equivalence, interaction characterized by competition, etc.—will
find expression in a diverse array of textual sources, including letters and literary
works. Second, Graeber’s conceptualization of communism, exchange, and hier-
archy as modes of social interaction, rather than successive stages of economic
relations, each governed by its own moral rationale, allows for a fine-grained anal-
ysis of different logics exhibited by the same persons in varying social contexts.
In particular, this is relevant in moments of crisis, when large-scale indebtedness
brought about shifts in the mode of social interaction between debtors and credi-
tors. Hence, while debt fundamentally has its roots in the logics of exchange,
as an arrangement between persons of (at least in theory) equal standing, while
2
the debt is outstanding, the relationship between debtor and creditor gravitates
toward a relationship marked by hierarchy.14
Beyond Debt 23
Interesting for our purposes is the description of the fox as a cunning rap-
scallion. In addition to expected adjectives like sarru (“false,” “dishonest”) and
emqu (“clever”), there is a curious passage on a fragment from the Nineveh library
(c. seventh century Bce), which reads ištēn šiqil tumtaṭṭi ebirka ana [x], “you
demand (payment of ) even one shekel from your friend for/to [x].”19 The con-
text of this phrase is a negative characterization (likely) of the fox by (likely) the
wolf, who in the preceding lines is accused as a slanderer and trickster. The line
under discussion is a complaint about his miserliness toward friends (ebru). The
underlying ethical rationale is evident: One was expected to be generous with
one’s immediate social peers, to exhibit the behavior Graeber characterized as
(baseline) communism. The fox, conversely, keeps a record of every favor granted,
of every loan extended no matter how petty the sum. Worse, he conceives of his
favors in terms of debt and insists on repayment; he expects interactions even
with friends to cancel out. This passage thus depicts thinking in terms of equiva-
lences as inappropriate in the context of amicable relationships, yet it must have
been current enough for the author to expect the audience to recognize the fox’s
violation of the social code.
A second passage on a tablet from the city of Babylon and dating to the
Hellenistic period provides further food for thought.20 The best-preserved sec-
tion of the tablet contains an inner monologue of the fox; the setting is a narrow
escape from the claws of the dog, who beleaguers the escapees in their hid-
ing place:
In lines 17 and 18, the fox, happy to have come away with his life, prays to Enlil,
the supreme deity of the Mesopotamian pantheon during the Old Babylonian
period and vows to renounce prosperity in exchange for his life. The terminol-
ogy employed is revealing, as is the entire set-up of the prayer. The fox identifies
different sources of wealth. In line 18, zittu and kurummatu are named; these
terms are not synonymous but describe the types of gain to be made beyond the
confines of one’s hearth (see the reference to the fox regretting having left his den
in line 14). The latter designates income accruing to dependents of institutional
households and usually takes the form of food allowances, mostly barley or flour
24
and/or dates; additionally, sesame oil and clothing could be issued under this
designation.21 Zittu, on the other hand, literally translates as “share” (e.g., in
an inheritance) and in this passage more likely refers to shares in profits from
a business venture. It is in this sense that the word also regularly appears in
another genre of literary texts, namely omen treatises. CT 40 48: 4–5 reads,
for example, “If a man embarks on a business journey and a falcon passes from
the man’s left to the right and then turns back: wherever he goes, this man will
make [lit.: eat] profit, the heart will be happy.”22 The word used in the preced-
ing line, mašrû, is confined to literature and omen texts—contrary to zittu and
kurummatu, which occur regularly in legal and administrative records—and
is sometimes juxtaposed with dumqu (“good luck”; the absence of wealth is
conversely marked by lumnu, “bad luck,” “sadness”). Mašrû is often said to be
bestowed upon someone by a god. The expression refers thus less to wealth that
is earned by one’s business proficiency or hard work and more to wealth that is
gained by divine favor; it is the wealth that is allotted as one’s fate and, as such,
is distinct from zittu and kurummatu, rather than an umbrella term of sorts
that is then defined more closely by these terms.23 Summing up, the author of
the fable was aware of different ways to make a living that each pertained to a
different sphere of the social fabric. With a pinch of scholarly license, one may
state that the terms employed in this story, mašrû, zittu, and kurummatu, are
located in Graeber’s categories of (baseline) communism, exchange, and hier-
archy, respectively.
A second piece of wisdom literature, the “Dialogue of Pessimism”24 between a
master and his slave is, in spite of its satirical content, equally revealing as regards
the reach of the logics of exchange. The text, which likely was composed in the
late second or early first millennium Bce, shows a master considering several
undertakings, each of which is encouraged by his slave. However, after each reso-
lution, the master changes his mind and suggests engaging in an opposite venture,
for which he likewise receives the slave’s approval. The piece ends with a som-
ber statement on life’s futility. At one point in the dialogue, the master suggests
engaging in credit lending:
Beyond Debt 25
The passage contains one of the earliest instances of the literary motive of the
urban usurer exploiting the hardship of peasants by making consumption loans at
interest. This reading is confirmed by an alternative version of these lines, accord-
ing to which the master loans explicitly “food allowances to the country” (ipru
ana māti) at interest.
Above all, the passage illustrates the intrusion of profit-oriented thinking
into small-scale agricultural economies of rural communities. The pernicious
impact of this development is best exemplified by the famous debt remissions
(andurārum) decreed by several Mesopotamian kings, in particular during the
Old Babylonian period (c. first half of the second millennium Bce) but with
forerunners in the Sumerian world already during the mid-third millennium
Bce.25 In the following section, I will discuss in more detail the ramifications of
this trend under the changed circumstances prevailing in the first millennium
Bce, namely increased monetization and concomitant greater reliance on market
mechanisms as well as rule by a foreign dynasty, dispensing with these alleviations
for the indebted peasantry.
For now, let us return to the role of the master and his mentality and con-
sider the socioeconomic background of the text. It is significant that the one
economic activity that comes to the mind of this urban notable is that of a mon-
eylender/creditor to indebted farmers. During the economically vibrant “long
sixth century Bce,” moneylending was an ancillary activity only; according to
one authority, “money-lending was [not] a ubiquitous economic phenomenon;
in fact, evidence for money-lending as truly independent business, rather than an
occasional activity is not very frequent.”26
A couple of centuries earlier, on the other hand, at the turn of the second to
the first millennium Bce—the approximate date of composition of the “Dialogue
of Pessimism”—Babylonia had tumbled into an extended period of crisis, possi-
bly as a consequence of worsening climatic conditions. Politically, the country
was under the sway of its more powerful northern neighbor, Assyria, and had to
cope with inner tensions between towns and countryside (i.e., semi-nomadic pas-
toralists). Economically, the period was marked by harvest failures and famines;
an additional problem, and a grave one, seems to have been the shifting courses of
important canals. All of these factors worked together to bring about a process of
significant demographic decline and de-urbanization.27 It comes as no surprise,
then, that the master in the dialogue chose a rather conservative outlet for his sur-
plus, rather than engaging in more risky operations such as long-distance trade,
strategic cash crop production, or large-scale commercialization of agricultural
goods.28
There is one reference to the world of trade in this dialogue, which confirms
the impression of a stagnant economy at the time of its composition. When
26
discussing with his slave the matter of whether or not to show reverence to the
gods, the slave suggests that a devout man has “a happy heart, he will make loan
upon loan” (qīpta eli qīpti ippuš). The word employed denotes a “commercial
interest-bearing loan”; however, we are dealing with an anachronism here, as
the qīptu (ŠU.LÁ) was prominent in particular in business records of the Old
Babylonian and Old Assyrian periods.29 Rather than describing actual economic
practice, these lines refer to physical integrity, happiness, and prosperity in general
terms.30 Yet, the underlying sentiment shows the deep inroads commercial think-
ing had made into society already during the later Bronze Age: Proper behavior,
in the sense of religious piety, came with the prospect of financial rewards.
What this reading of the dialogue thus implies is that, contrary to a recur-
rent assumption in particular in Marxist-inspired scholarship, times of weak
states do not necessarily entail greater freedom for the rural population.31 On the
contrary, the dependence on wealthy urbanites whose power was no longer cur-
tailed by a state authority—in the form of the above-mentioned andurārum-debt
releases and similar others—may have rather exacerbated their economic plight.
Rather than benign doux commerce, times of precarious external (economic as
well as political) circumstances acted as catalysts in the process of the expansion
of the logics of exchange. Incidentally, this also potentially bears on Graeber’s
chronological framework, in particular with regard to his all too neat distinction
between the Axial Age, characterized by the preponderance of large predatory
empires, and the ensuing Middle Ages, when the collapse of these empires “could
only be seen as an extraordinary improvement over the terrors of the Axial Age”
for most of the world’s population.32 This point is further elaborated in the contri-
butions to this volume by Arietta Papaconstantinou (Chapter 10) and Alice Rio
(Chapter 11), with the former (following the critical review of Debt by Miranda
Joseph) taking issue with Graeber’s overtly benign notion of “community” in her
discussion of debt relations according to early medieval papyri from Egypt and
the latter emphasizing the potentially grave risks of indebtedness in the absence
of a regulatory state authority in medieval Europe.
As the third and final text, or rather text genre, I would like to discuss some
of the current proverbs and popular sayings. Such texts rank among the most
ancient examples of literary activity but enjoyed widespread popularity well into
the first millennium Bce—cue the biblical book of Proverbs. The examples dis-
cussed below are found on cuneiform tablets recovered from the remnants of the
famous library of the Neo-Assyrian king Assurbanipal (seventh century Bce) in
Nineveh. The proverbs of this collection were recorded in both Sumerian and
Assyrian,33 and one important aspect they deal with is proper social behavior.
Central values held in high esteem are modesty (“The wise man is girded with
a loin-cloth. The fool is clad in a scarlet cloth”), piety (“Be you small or great,
27
Beyond Debt 27
it is [your] god who is your support”), and loyalty (“Seeing you have done evil
to your friend, what will you do to your enemy?”). The last aspect is of particu-
lar relevance, and some sayings betray a sense of Graeberian baseline commu-
nism: “When you are humiliated, let (your) friend act” is a reminder of one’s
embeddedness in a social web and of the importance of being able to rely on the
latter in times of need.
Yet, also in these collections, profit-oriented thinking rears its head, attesting
to the complex interplay of the different modes of social interaction. One saying
from this collection resumes the juxtaposition of financial reward and religious
piety: “When you have seen the profit of reverencing (your) god, you will praise
(your) god and salute the king.” The word translated as “profit,” nēmelu, in its most
frequent usage denotes specifically gains from business ventures. A proverb adopt-
ing the view of a woman puts the importance of affluence more bluntly: “Who
is wealthy? Who is rich? For whom shall I reserve my vulva?”34 And another say-
ing uses a metaphor from the commercial world to caution against unnecessary
expenses: “Do you pay out money [for] a pig’s squeak?”35 At the end of the day,
however, adherence to society’s mores trumps opulence: “It is not wealth that is
your support. It is (your) god.” Finally, also elements of hierarchy are present in
this text, and the compilers leave no doubt that kingship is a desirable institu-
tion: “A people without a king (is like) sheep without a shepherd”; and obedience
is owed to authorities: “Recognize the overlord; recognize the king; respect the
vizier.” To sum up, these sayings embody a worldview according to which wealth
is desirable, yet the honoring of social conventions—both vis-à-vis government
and in one’s immediate social environment—is the indispensable glue that keeps
society together.
Not addressed so far has been the question of chronology, to wit: Are there
palpable differences between the proverb collections from the Neo-Assyrian
period and their forerunners from the Middle Bronze Age, most prominently
the Old Babylonian era? While an in-depth inquiry of the matter is beyond the
scope of the present essay, a first glance at the source material at our disposal
(Alster 1997) is promising and points indeed to an even stronger appreciation of
“(baseline) communism,” paired with reluctance toward the ethics of exchange
for the earlier period. More than material riches, it is the family that emerges
as the ultimate font of one’s fortune: “He who does not support a wife, he who
does not support a child, is not raised to prosperity.”36 The world of commerce
is depicted in unanimously negative terms. Merchants are not only accused of
greed for both produce and silver (“How the merchant carried the silver away,
and how he carried the barley away”) but, more strikingly, considered unsuit-
able for striking social relationships: “A man should not take a merchant for his
friend.”37 Interesting from the perspective of cultural history is also Alster (1997,
28
19, no. 174), attesting to the primacy of producers over those engaged in distri-
bution of basic necessities: “Things are traded in the city but (it was) the fisher-
men (that) caught the food supply.” Conversely, greed in the face of friendship is
frowned upon: “ ‘Let my bread be left over, let me eat your bread!’ Will this endear
a man to the household of his friend?”38 Another important saying acknowledges
the impossibility of full equivalency and the dependence on one’s social circle
in times of need: “You don’t return borrowed bread.” The opposition between
social value and purely economic costs is also inherent in another proverb: “He
who destroy houses destroys silver. He who destroy a house destroys gold.”39 In
my interpretation, the plural in the first sentence refers to houses as economically
valuable objects, while the singular refers to the household as the center of one’s
identity, the destruction of which has graver consequences than mere financial
loss—expressed as the difference between silver and gold, the latter “a medium
capable of signalling qualities of purity and the sacred, highly valued in ancient
Mesopotamia” (Winter 2012, 161). A final example of this dichotomy I would
like to discuss reads “May you hold a kid [i.e., a young goat] in your right arm
and may you hold a bribe in your left arm.” The proverb plays with the opposi-
tion between the positively connoted right side and the left side carrying negative
associations: While the former carries a ritually pure sacrificial animal, the latter
brings a profane payment, likely to the temple staff.40
Hence, as a conclusion to this exploratory investigation, one might suggest
that both the early second millennium and first millennium Bce proverb col-
lections share a worldview that holds piety toward the divine and care for one’s
immediate social surroundings in highest esteem. However, the earlier texts dis-
play a hostility toward the world of commerce that is absent from the later col-
lections, where it is replaced by a tentative integration into society’s social and
ethical framework. Tablets from the period in between, the Late Bronze Age,
show a similar tension between (baseline) communism and exchange. While
they do not outright condemn business activity, the few extant examples are still
rather suspicious in tone. A tablet from the Hittite capital Hattuša (Boghazköy),
for example, contrasts the stability of a life in one’s oikos led in modesty (“My
well does not tire [of giving water]; my thirst is not excessive”) with the perils
of trade (“I have gone shares in business; loss is unending”).41 To close this sec-
tion, I would like to discuss a saying that is found in both the Old Babylonian
and the Neo-Assyrian corpora: “Friendship lasts only one day, but collegiality
is everlasting.”42 Rather than a celebration of an ethos based on purely rational
calculation—with morality replaced by impersonal arithmetic, in Graeberian
(2011, 14) terms—this proverb is an expression of a society in which social mobil-
ity is difficult to achieve: One’s peer group is unlikely to change during one’s
lifetime.
29
Beyond Debt 29
discussed: The writer, Nidintu, informs one Kidinnu concerning his designs as
to a house in Babylon. To facilitate some unspecified upcoming proceedings,
he offers the sukkallu, a high-ranking legal official, a “rich gift” (šugarrû rabû)
and is assured in exchange of the latter’s assistance. He then requests Kidinnu to
appear in person before him with the conspicuous sum of twenty minas of silver.
Anticipating resistance on the part of Kidinnu, he continues: “If you say: ‘Why
should I bow to your wish?’—I will hold your favour up to the heavens.” Hence,
the writer assumes, or rather makes explicit, that his correspondent will act first
and foremost in expectation of his own benefits, rather than out of solidarity with
a social peer (he is addressed as ahu, “brother,” in the letter’s introductory greet-
ing formula). In the present instance, this advantage takes the form of increased
reputation, hence social capital—the highest good in a society where social pres-
tige and honor (and its opposite, shame) were the key determinants of one’s social
identity.49
I would like to conclude this contribution with a few remarks on the topic
of rural indebtedness and the complex interplay between ethics of exchange,
debts, and hierarchization. The archive of the Murašû family from the town of
Nippur dating to the late Achaemenid period—roughly the last quarter of the
fifth century Bce, hence the reigns of Artaxerxes I and Darius II—is our most
informative witness in this regard.50 The Murašûs, represented by Enlil-šum-iddin
and his nephew Rēmūt-Ninurta, were a family of entrepreneurs with two dis-
tinct emphases in their business portfolio: first, the advancement of credit mainly
for the purpose of tax payments to small-scale holders of agricultural “fiefs” and,
second, the subletting of lands at their disposal, often pledges by insolvent debt-
ors. A handful of documents explicitly sheds light on the highly commercialized
ethics prevailing also in the rural economy. According to the promissory note
BE 10 121, for example, a rather small quantity of barley (three kurrus and three
qa, i.e., 543 liters) was given as a loan via middlemen to one Marduka, son of
Rībat. The document further stipulates that the loan was to be squared according
to the “tariff of the land” (nishu ša māti), very likely a standardized but poten-
tially variable interest rate.51 The dates recorded in the document are telling: The
debt was contracted in month I in the seventh year of Darius II (c. April 417
Bce), that is, in the immediate pre-harvest period. Repayment was to take place
not even a month later, in month II of the same year (i.e., May 417 Bce) and
thus during the harvest period. This chronological pattern is shared by related
documents (PBS 2/1 108, 110, 127 and 204; likely also Stolper 1985, no. 84), all
of which are short-term (consumption) loans stipulating repayment according
to the nishu ša māti in month II—the month of the barley harvest.52 Also, the
social locus of these texts is telling as in one instance (PBS 2/1 108) the credi-
tor is Rībat, a slave-agent of the Murašûs. Hence, these loans also took place at
31
Beyond Debt 31
the fringes of the Murašûs’ activities, both socially—several steps further down
the social ladder—and geographically. Far from solidarity within rural commu-
nities based on principles such as “From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs” (see Graeber 2011, 94), these texts attest to a rather harsh
attitude toward those in need, shaped by expectations of equivalence (i.e., full
and immediate repayment) and profit orientation (flexible interest). As I have
dealt with the pertinent phenomena—forced labor of insolvent debtors in the
bīt kīli (workhouse-prison), submission of debtors to a patron–client relation-
ship in exchange for protection against exaggerated claims (pirku)—elsewhere
in more detail (Pirngruber 2017, 59–66), suffice it here to point out that they
fully vindicate Graeber’s key point that such market relations predicated upon
an assumption of (at least notional) equality have the potential to transform eco-
nomic power into social power, thereby establishing relationships of hierarchy.53
Coda
It goes without saying that the present contribution is just a first step toward a
more comprehensive approach to the influence of different modes of social inter-
action on economic mentalities, on society’s social (and legal) framework, and
on the creation and development of economic institutions. Yet I hope to have
shown the potential inherent in an analysis of social norms and values and their
manifestations in the spheres of production and distribution based on those texts
that at first glance touch upon pertinent matters in only an ancillary manner. As
one authority reminded us in a recent essay, the potential of approaching a liter-
ary text as a “true reflection of the social matrix . . . has not so far been used in a
really focused manner.”54
32
Richard Seaford, Cosmic Debt in Greece and India In: Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
Edited by: John Weisweiler, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197647172.003.0003
Another random document with
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courant très variable, mais souvent très fort, portant à l’ouest, aux
environs des caps Saint-Martin et Saint-Antoine.
A huit heures, on est venu nous prévenir que la messe serait dite
à neuf heures. Nous y sommes tous allés ; les uns par conviction,
les autres… peut-être par curiosité.
La dunette de la Junon était complètement dégagée et tout
entourée de pavillons de diverses couleurs étendus comme des
rideaux. Au fond, à l’arrière, ces pavillons formaient comme une
petite chapelle improvisée, aussi peu ornée que les plus simples
autels de village. Des chaises de chaque côté, un passage au milieu
comme dans nos églises ; au lieu des arceaux gothiques des
cathédrales, une tente en forme de toit très plat, bien raidie et se
rejoignant avec les pavillons qui nous entouraient.
A l’heure dite, le commandant, accompagné des officiers non de
service, prit place au premier rang, en invitant l’un de nous, M. R. de
L…, à se mettre à sa droite. Bientôt M. l’abbé Mac, aumônier de
l’expédition, parut et l’office commença. On n’entendit plus alors
d’autre bruit que celui des mots sacrés prononcés à demi-voix et le
battement régulier de l’hélice, dont chaque coup mettait plus de
distance entre nous et les nôtres.
Pour ma part, tout en m’abandonnant quelque peu à un
sentiment de rêverie qui me ramenait auprès des miens, j’éprouvais,
je l’avoue, un indéfinissable plaisir à suivre le sillage du navire et à
me sentir entraîné d’un mouvement doux, mais rapide, vers ces
pays nouveaux où j’avais tant hâte d’aborder.
6 août.
8 août.
10 août.
14 août.
Monsieur le commandant,
Le gouverneur civil,
Alfonso de Castro.