The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— D. T. Potts —
as such must have been relatively abundant. During the Kassite period, silver seems
to have functioned as a standard in private transactions, often dealing with smaller
amounts of commodities, in contrast to gold which seems to have been the precious
metal used as an official standard (Müller 1982: 270). Everything from fish and wine
to copper, wool, barley, dates and oil had a ‘price’ in silver shekels (Renger 1984:
Table 1). At Eshnunna (Tell Asmar) in the Diyala river valley, east of modern Baghdad,
it was the jeweller’s (kutimmum) job to weigh out the silver purchase price in land
and house sales (Bjorkman 1993: 4, n. 12). In addition to silver jewellery and vessels
(e.g. in some of the royal graves at Ur), a number of hoards of scrap silver have been
excavated (Tell Asmar, Tell Agrab, Khafajah, Tell Brak, Tell Chura, Tell Taya – all
Early Dynastic in date; Larsa – Old Babylonian; Nippur, Assur – Neo-Assyrian).
Rather than representing, as sometimes assumed, ancient silversmiths’ hoards, these
probably represent the ‘cash’ of a person or family in a pre-monetary economy when
value, in silver, was determined simply by weight without the need for minted coinage
(Moorey 1994: 238; Bjorkman 1993).
Stones
Semi-precious (lapis, carnelian, haematite, agate, onyx)
Semi-precious stones were powerful status symbols in Babylonia, particularly when
used in jewellery, inlays and in the manufacture of elite cylinder seals (Gorelick and
Gwinnett 1990). For the most part, the exotic semi-precious stones most favoured
in Babylonia came from the East.
In spite of the fact that lapis lazuli is found in many parts of the world (von Rosen
1988), Badakshan in northern Afghanistan remains the only source known to have
been accessed by the peoples of the Ancient Near East (von Rosen 1990; Casanova
1999; Michel 2001). Much has been written about the ways and means by which
lapis travelled from its source area to the consumers of the West and this undoubtedly
varied from period to period. It is unlikely that, in any period, trading expeditions
set out from Mesopotamia to make the trek all the way to Badakshan, but whether
by peddlers, caravans or trading families, it is undoubtedly the case that lapis did
reach the elite of Mesopotamia, as witnessed by the many rich grave offerings made
of lapis which appear in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. The fact that many of the objects
made of lapis are purely Mesopotamian in style, however, strongly suggests that the
raw material arrived unworked (though no doubt trimmed) in Mesopotamian
workshops, where it was then fashioned into typically Mesopotamian beads, amulets
(e.g. in the shape of frogs and flies), figurines, eyes for anthropomorphic statues of
deities and vessels.
Lapis was also an important stone for cylinder seals. Interestingly, 35 of the Royal
graves at Ur which contained gold objects also contained lapis seals (Rathje 1977:
27). On the other hand, lapis seals were also present in some of the poorer graves
(Gorelick and Gwinnett 1990: 53), and lapis beads are attested in graves of many
periods at Uruk (Limper 1988). That individuals of comparatively lower status could
acquire such a rare commodity is interesting for a number of reasons, suggesting both
that there was more in circulation than one might think (perhaps some of it in the
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