Sumerian Economic Comparisons (& notes on currency

[ummia-inim-gina]

I am trying to gain a better understanding of the comparable value of different trade goods in Sumer. Here is a list* of items that equaled a shekel of silver in value during the Ur III dynasty.

1 Gur of Barley (300 liters)
3 liters best oil
1.2 liters vegetable oil
1.5 liters pig fat
40 liters bitumen
6 minas (3 kg) wool
2 Gur Salt
1 Gur potash
3 Minas Copper
2 Minas worked Copper

*All figures from "Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia" by Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat, 2002 Hendrickson Publishers.

So if a shekel of silver weighed about 8 grams, and the market value of silver in modern times was at $14.50 U.S. dollars per Oz. then a shekel of silver today would be worth about $4.14 U.S. dollars.

[ummia-inim-gina]

I found these comparisons at jameswbell.com but these are for the 27th century and the author has a religious bias so I'm not sure if its is accurate for the Ur III dynasty.

1 Shekel of Silver = 60 Shekels of Copper
1 Shekel of Gold = 12 Shekels of Silver
1 Shekel of Gold = 720 Shekels of Copper

Note this gives a different comparison for the value of copper compared to silver then my other source. Also note how cheap gold was compared to silver then. If you were to convert the comparison to modern times using the value of silver as I did earlier, an Oz. of gold would only be $49.68!
Also it gives a value of 1 shekel of silver for 12 pairs of sandals of average quality. So that would be about 34 cents per pair of sandals. A slave went for up to 80 shekels but normally only sold for 20. So that would be $82.80 in U.S. dollars for an average slave compared to silver in modern times.
I have seen lots of economic tablets that record transactions, I'm wondering if anyone out there on the web has ever compiled a large list of comparative values for Sumerian goods.

[ummia-inim-gina]

I found where it has the value of fish at a shekel for 32 quarts of "mixed" fish or 16 quarts of "good" fish. Its interesting the idea of selling fish by volume instead of weight. I guess that represents it being easier to sell it by a reed basket of a set certain size rather then having to use a scale.

[amarsin]

enlil said:

I found were it has the value of fish at a shekel for 32 quarts of "mixed" fish or 16 quarts of "good" fish. Its interesting the idea of selling fish by volume instead of weight. I guess that represents it being easier to sell it by a reed basket of a set certain size rather then having to use a scale.

Actually, in Snell's Ledgers and Prices, he has a shekel getting 333 sila₃ ("quarts") of fish.

He also gives different prices for some of the other commodities you listed above.

In any case, it's important to remember that "prices" fluctuated and different texts record different values for certain commodities.

One thing I've never been clear about-- and should eventually get to figuring out-- is just what is meant by "price" in this context. I seriously doubt that people walked around with little bits of silver to buy a liter (or so) of fine oil from the local oil merchant. And yet, we have to imagine that people did somehow acquire certain goods that they simply couldn't produce on their own.

[ummia-inim-gina]

Thats exactly what I am trying to learn about. Every where I check it is made clear that the silver shekel was only used for price comparisons and only large transactions like land purchases were actually done with silver. Never can I find it explained how small scale bartering was done with local merchants on a daily basis. If fishermen caught more then he could eat, what did he trade his fish down at the docks for? Barley? Dates?
My father was a commercial fishermen from a rural Florida community. So I have seen first hand how small scale local economies can work without currency. Everyone knows each other, and everyone has their own profession. So if he got a good catch in, he had friends of all sorts of professions he could give them to for favors later on down the road. You give one to the plummer for when your water breaks. You give one to the mechanics for when your truck breaks down. You give one to your fiend who grows pineapples for when the crops come in. This sort of model works for transactions between households but doesn't explain how transactions could have functioned on a larger scale at market places where the merchant does not know all his customers.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Running out of time at the library tonight, but I'll soon review the following article in order to do my part:

Money in Mesopotamia, by Marvin A. Powell
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (jstor)

Glancing over the first page, Appears Powell read a version of this paper fairly recently at the U. of Wien, and it indeed appears to be one of those little answered questions what is money or currency in Mesopotamia (early). Hopefully the article will be as helpful as it sounds.

cheers

[us4-he2-gal2]

Okay Ive now been able to read the whole article, that is:

Money in Mesopotamia
by Marvin A. Powell
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 1996

Powell proceeds with a somewhat cautionary tone in this article admitting fairly early on that "there are no histories of money in Mesopotamia and very few reliable studies on which such an overview could be constructed" but he explains this is not due to lack of textual of archaeological evidence for the existence of money, but due to the difficulty of putting it all together. Also within the introductory comments, Powell makes reference to a sample of literature relating to "prices" and makes a note of the Assyriologists who comment on these instances (Ive copied this note below, see note1)


An important paragraph reads:
"Mesopotamian monies are distinguished from ordinary commodities by being exchanged, sometimes for one another, more often as payment for other tangible commodities or for other less tangible goods, such as freedom from obligations of various sorts (taxes, loans with interest, fines, and so on), and at more or less stable rates. They were used as indices or standards of value and were stockpiled as storable wealth. Some of them, like barley and silver are well attested as standards of value and monies of account in documents of nearly all periods and areas. "

Powell lists the obvious substances of value, all potentially useful substances from least value to highest:

• barley
  
• lead
  
• copper
  
• bronze
  
• tin
  
• silver
  
• gold

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Although the author does include cows, sheep, asses, slaves, household utensils etc as items occasional used as money.

the form [shape] of money:

In attempting to use this article to answer what did Mesopotamians carry around so to speak, or what was used on a small scale for purchase of cheap commodities, no certain answers surface. The author for the most part, expresses the degree to which establishing such is a serious difficulty, but Ive taken some notes below when doing so seemed a productive thing:

Although the basic substances are established to some extent, Powell explains the form or physical shapes that money took "are even less understood than the qualities of the material substances that were used as money." Reasons for such obscurity include that metal monies were never thrown away to be "discovered in a trash heap", and although coins are easy to recognize, basic paradigms for Mesopotamian monies still remain to be established. The author comments that a review of all recovered Mesopotamian metal objects and compassion with cuneiform text would be called for, but such a gigantic undertaking 'unlikely to happen anytime soon.'

However Powell finally comes to a mention of "ring money" : "The one form about which there seems now to be some agreement is the so-called "ring" silver.) "Ring" is a translation of the Sumerian word [ḫar], corresponding to Akkadian semeru. Both words may have also meant ring in the sense of a continuous circular band; however, from the Ur III period through Old Babylonian (ca. 2100-1600 B.C), these terms seem to have denoted primarily bands of silver shaped into coils or spirals." Powell states that such are not common to find, but mentions observing a 'beaten off' character to them 'probably the result of hacking off a piece to "pay for something.' The author figures the price of money rings goes back to into the forth millennium B.C., and the sign for ḫar in the earliest cuneiform script may represent a stylized picture of a metal coil or spiral, and the sign may be "the ancestor" of the symbol that stands for [kug] "precious metal."

Ive included below pictures from ePSD of ḫar and kug, probably Old Babylonian however.






Other possible forms Powell briefly mentions are 'lead-cakes' , he lists Akkadian words that may or may not mean ingot, mentions two other forms in which money circulated were cups (kāsu) and jewelery (dudittu) and he arrives at a remarkable oddity:
"The Sumerian sign for "shekel" actually seems to be the stylized picture of an axe; moreover, the Sumerian word gin not only means shekel but also "axe." This can hardly be accidental. Axe hordes are ubiquitous, and it is virtually certain that these were used as money, and, indeed, axes are on rare occasions attested in cuneiform documents as a money form. [thus] The Mesopotamians may have begun -at least in part- where we have ended - in representational money."

gin appears to = [giĝ4 (gin2)]





note1: I think Amarsin has already mentioned Snell 1982. Others given are:
Dandamaev 1988; Dubberstein 1939; Farber 1978; Gelb et al. 1991: 251-298; Kupper 1982; Lambert 1963; Limet 1972; Meissner 1936; Powell 1990; Renger 1989; Schwenzner 1915; Stienkeller 1989: 121-138; Sweet 1958; Veenhof 1988; Zaccagnini 1988.
note2 - Accessible perspective on Mesopotamian Economic matters
www.museumofmoney.org/babylon/bab_page5.htm
This link may help to illustrate what almost seems like an exasperated conclusion by Powell from the above article that Mesopotamian money defies classificaiton under simple rubrics, and that deposit, credit, joint ventures, orders to pay and many other aspects of "modern" money econemy can be glimpsed here and there rubbing elbows with "primitive" or "archaic" practices.

[ummia-inim-gina]

I like the idea of people using axes as the common currency. Does this imply that an Axe was something everyone needed and knew the value for. This would parallel the American civil war when the confederate dollar lost its value and people started using shovels. Everyone knew a shovels value and with all the dead to bury they knew it would retain its demand.
So does this mean an average quality copper Axe would be worth the same value as a shekel of silver? How many axes could a pair of fishermen get for a raft full of catfish and carp? I would think at least one or two considering the labor, however the Axe took copper that had to be imported so...?

[amarsin]

I don't think that (at least in the Ur III period) people were using axes as currency, or as some bartering tool. We don't have a whole lot of reflection on private actions in Ur III, but of what we do have, there's nothing to indicate anything of the sort. So I'd take Powell's suggestion to be something going on in early or pre-literate Mesopotamia. I still have some work to do on this question, and Powell is probably going to be involved in the solution, but it will need to be after the semester before I can sit down and figure it out!

[us4-he2-gal2]

I think you would be picking a good one to investigate Amarsin, at least in my limited surface surveying of the topic of currency in Early Mesopotamia, it seems there may be more research to be done here. Ive added below some insight from J.N. Postgate's 1992 book "Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History". Im sure this adds nothing to your repertoire but serves discussion nonetheless.

On page 204 Postgate discusses currency and he mentions that anthropologists and historians describe three different and distinct uses of currency:

• As a standard of accounting
  
• As a medium of exchange
  
• as a means of payment
  

In Ur III contexts, it is explained, silver was used as a standard of accounting, this is attested by contemporary accounting sheets which would give the value of incoming goods in silver, by weight. He also believes silver could serve as a medium of exchange. However more interesting to this discussion, is Postgate's comment about silver as a means of payment which was "That at this time it also served as a means of payment - a quantity of silver being handed over as a simple payment for a good received or service performed - is demonstrated by sale documents and loans, where prices are usually specified in silver, and by administrative texts recording payments to laborers in silver. ³⁴⁰"

Note 340 reads: "There are various studies of particular aspects of the use of silver (and other metals) within the economy, but no comprehensive survey. Note the comments of Diakonoff 1982, 159; Lambert 1963; Kupper 1982. Recently, see Steinkeller 1989a, 133-8 for sale prices; for payment of hired workers, see Maekawa 1988, 65ff; Waretzoldt 1987, 118-120. See now the important article of Powell 1990."

The author continues, and touches on the subject of the silver ring currency, stating that why a long wait from coinage, its common in societies which use metal as a currency to present it in a standardized form. "In Mesopotamian texts, silver is usually weighed, but in some UrIII texts it is clear that 'rings' of silver with a uniform weight were in use by the administration (Text 10-12). Rings are mentioned in similar texts with weights ranging just 1 shekel (= 8 g) to 10 shekels, although the great majority are 5 shekels. A text from Ur lists the manufacture of 240 silver 'rings' of 5 shekels, being made from 20 minas. There is indeed some archaeological evidence for the form of such rings: they come from contexts as early as the Dynasty of Akkad, weighing in one case 1 mina (= 60 shekels), in another 1/2 mina (ffigure 10:2). Their distinctive feature is that they are coiled into a spiral, which would not have been worn as an ornament but would be easily broken up to give the precise weights required by the variety of everyday transactions. No doubt larger amounts came in solider form, such as small ingots, but few such have survived. The records of commercial transactions do not usually specify the form in which silver was handled and the spiral ring may have been more widespread than it seems at first sight.³⁴¹"

note 341 reads: Powell 1978a; Michalowski 1978; Sigrist 1979.


Text 10:12 (from the UrIII public accounts)
2 rings of silver at 8 shekels each, when the king drank beer for the (inauguration[?] of) the brewing-house of the divine $ulgi. Uta-mišaram the official. Disbursed by Puzur-Erra in Al-šarraki. 11th month, Amar-Suen Year 1.

citation- (Michalowski 1978, 55)

Figure 10:2 - A picture of Silver rings from Tell Taya during the Akkad Dynasty is included here, Ill send this around shortly.


Further Reading (Postgate's suggestions for relevant works on Mesopotamian Currency):
"No general work covers this topic as a whole, with the exception of the very general but valuable observations of Diakonoff 1982. Particularly useful are Renger 1984, and, on the menchants' role, Charpin 1982b (French) and Snell 1982. For the economic measures of the kings, Krause 1984 (German) is indispensable. See also Yoffee 1977, Veenhof 1988, and Powell 1990.

[ummia-inim-gina]

from "Handbook to life in Ancient Mesopotamia" by Stephen Bertman
2003, Oxford University Press


During the 2nd and 1st millennia the daily wages of an average worker seems to have held constant at about a quarter of a bushels of barely. In addition to his salary in grain the average worker would receive 4 1/2 pounds of bread, a little over a gallon of beer, and over the course of a year about four pounds of wool. That was enough to make a small garment.
On holidays such as the festival of the new year a worker might receive an extra allowance of barley along with meat and sesame oil.

One shekel of silver might have been traded for

1 or 2 bushels of Barley
1 or 2 bushels of dates
1/8 to 1/12 bushel of sesame seeds
6 3/4 to 27 gallons of sesame oil
1/8 jar of grape wine
a little over a jar of date wine
2 1/4 lbs. of plain wool
2 1/4 oz. of purple dyed wool
50 to 100 Bricks
600 lbs. of asphalt
25 small tools
11 copper bowls

A ram or a goat could be purchased for 2 shekels
An Ox would go for 20 to 30
a donkey for 30

A shekel of silver could rent a wagon and driver for three days
A boat for two days
and a small home or shop for a half a year

[us4-he2-gal2]

Enlil:

Excellent post and follow up. I love a member who can consistently post on the same subject throughout a long period of time, thats something I can identify with. It really does take persistence to establish something here!

Not as any discouragement as you've done exactly right in following through with your interest, but by careful with that particular book. I don't have anything to say Bertman has made any mistakes with the passage you've quoted, that seems fine from my limited view of economics. But I should mention in trying to familiarize myself with that book, I just ran in to an unfavorable review of the work by Ronald Wallenfels (JAOS 2004.)

Lets just say Wallenfels started with: "Its difficult to understand why, in this day and age, with so many highly trained and competent art historians, archaeologists, and linguists specializing in the ancient Near East, the series editor chose the author she did. Professor Bertman, a Classics professor from the University of Windsor, Ontario, perhaps well respected within his own field, does not possess the requisite command of the primary sources to accomplish the appointed task." - and then, with some deep seated and barely concealed perverse fury, Wallenfels went a little nuts on Bertman for a page or two Bet his pocket protector and fanny pack/suspenders were almost shaken loose.

So anyway just be careful with that one. Oh - Send me a mail sometime if you have a minute, Ill search my pdf collection for relevant stuff.

[saharda]

I love this conversation. I seem to have missed it last time I was on Enenuru. I'm always interested in how the economy works for various cultures. I even enjoyed most of the book of lord Shang (Got about half way through and then my life got in the way) for its glimpse into ancient Chinese culture and economics.

When analyzing an economy, I think a useful unit for comparison is a years worth of the lowest quality food. This tells you a vague estimate of minimum wage. You can then compare a unit of gold or silver to those prices to determine how rare gold and silver were.

Just a thought.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Reviewing: "Methods of Exchange and Coinage in Ancient Western Asia."

(Daniel C. Snell, CANES 3 pg 1487, 1995)

(I've made some small extracts from this article, mostly focusing just on silver rings, silver as a medium of exchange, and a silver values.)


-MONEYLIKE OBJECT

Snell: "There are objects of metal that have been suggested as precursors of coinage. They may have embodied some aspects of later coins. From the Ur III period comes a group of texts that details the disbursement of rings of silver to favorites of the king, usually on occasion of their arrival from a journey. The rings numbered from one to five and weighed between 5 and 10 shekels (between about 40 and 80 grams, or about 1.5 and 3 ounces_, We do not, however, see that these rings were used in other ways as money. Their production may have been a convenient way to distribute and keep silver (see fig. 1).
Text references from the Old Akkadian period through the Old Babylonian refer to the casting of precious metals into rings, and it is certain that such objects were used at least for storing the metals and possibly serving other functions of money. The Ur III texts about casting show that the ring did not always contain the full weight of the silver that was supposed to go into it, but such objects were weighed when they were exchanged anyway...

.. Other terms continued to be used in ways suggestive of a systematization of exchange. Some silver may have circulated as šibirtu (broken) pieces, and beginning with the Middle Babylonian period the term bitqu (a cutting, one-eighth shekel) was used. Other bits were termed nuḫḫutu (trimmed?) from a verb meaning "to trim of clip"; shaving rather than coining may be intended. Some metals were said to have a ginnu on them, perhaps a mark indicating weight or purity."



METALLIC EXCHANGES

"Silver and other metals were weighed on a scale to determine the amount and if smaller amounts were needed, the metal block or wire was broken into smaller pieces that were then weighed. Ancient texts do not describe the physical process of weighing, though it is constantly referred to, We derive some of our notion of the process from the etymology of the Akkadian word for silver, kaspum, meaning "the broken thing" ; cognate words are found in most of the other Semitic languages, including Biblical Hebrew's kesep. Other terms in Akkadian indicate the broken bits of silver were frequently used, and the process of breaking metals and weighing them is widely attested for precoinage eras in many languages. Though this process seems cumbersome to people used to dealing with coins, it continued long after coinage was introduced.....
... During the third millennium BCE, traders from Early Dynastic Shuruppak (Fara) used metals as money; Enhegal, prince of Lagash-Girsu, used copper and grain; and Uru-inimgina (Urukagina), a later ruler of Lagash-Girsu, required some taxes and fines to be paid in silver..."

(The author continues form here on the topic of grain and barley used as money.)

---

A THIRD-MILLENNIUM MERCHANT'S ACCOUNT

Snell: The merchants of Umma in the Ur III period reported their capital and their purchases, and gave the silver value's of each commodity. An excerpt from of their texts follows:

79 shekels, 97 grains of silver, balance carried forward of the sixth year of Amar-Suen
630 pounds of wool, its silver worth 63 shekels
580 pounds of wool, its silver worth 58 shekels (registered?) the first time.
300 pounds of KU0GI-wool, its silver worth 30 shekels its loss is 10 shekels
via Lu-Enlila
30 gur of dates, its silver 25 shekels
Total: 265 shekels, 88 grains of silver
It is the capital.
Expanded from with the above:
69 pounds of resin, its silver worth 6 shekels, 160 grains 29^1/3 pounds of another resin, its silver worth 2 shekels, 80 grains
...total 130 shekels, 43^1/4 grains of silver.
It is what was expanded.
Remainder 135 shekels, 44^1/2 grains.
Balanced account of Ur-Dumuzida, the merchant.


(From D.C. Snell, Ledgers and Prices: Early Mesopotamian Merchant Accounts, 1982.)

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