The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— The Babylonian economy in the first millennium BC —
Agricultural management and the trade in agricultural staples was probably the
most important occupation of Babylonian entrepreneurs. Gardeners or farmers renting
land from city-based property owners on share-cropping or other terms cannot be
considered to fall within this category. But there was a wide range of entrepreneurial
activities going on just one level above that of the actual cultivators, and extending
far up the social scale, up to the important rent farmers to whom the management
of institutional land and canals was contracted out. Frequently, for instance, entrepreneurs
would rent land and sublease it either to dependants or to free tenants,
whom they would supply with the means necessary for their work. The profit would
be shared, and only a comparatively small part of the rent would go to the land
owner. Especially institutional land was often managed by a hierarchy of such businessmen
who leased land from, and subleased land to, yet other entrepreneurs. Another
area where private businessmen and institutions frequently interacted was animal
husbandry: the temples’ and king’s flocks were often managed by entrepreneurs who
took a share in the proceeds.
An involvement in the trade in wool, staples, and beer brewed from dates was a
natural consequence of entrepreneurial activities in the areas of agriculture and animal
husbandry. The available evidence is comparatively scarce, since even important cash
transactions did not have to be recorded in writing. We are, on the other hand, well
informed about the wider background of this trade, since businessmen frequently had
to form partnerships with colleagues to acquire the necessary capital for such ventures.
Partnership contracts attest a wide range of different arrangements: joint ventures of
partners equally sharing work, risk and profit are just as frequent as one-sided contracts
with sleeping partners or ‘capitalists’ (not infrequently royal officials) who invested
in the business of other (often younger) men. Such partnerships could exist for decades,
only to be dissolved at the death of one of the partners; they could even be handed
down to the heirs of their founders.
The volume of domestic trade in primary goods cannot be quantified reliably, but
it must have been significant. This is borne out by individual texts documenting
very important transactions, by the evidence for large-scale cash crop agriculture, and
by the fact that, in all likelihood, a numerically significant part of the urban population
seems to have been dependent on a food-market for their livelihood (see below).
International long-distance trade is even more difficult to get to grips with. The bestattested
imported goods are slaves, iron, copper, wine, wood, alum and dyes (for the
Babylonian textile industry) and prestige goods such as aromatics, scarabs and glass.
Most of these came from the west. Babylonia exported slaves, barley, dates, wool and
garments. It is likely that textiles were the most important export product, but this
cannot be verified on the basis of the available sources. 16 The obvious monetisation
of economic exchange in Babylonia means that much silver was coming into the
country. The two main sources were trade and tribute, as well as booty taken by the
Neo-Babylonian kings from the west, but it is impossible to tell which may have
been more important. Under Achaemenid rule, taxes payable in silver caused much
money to be withdrawn from circulation within Babylonia but, by and large, no clear
deflationary tendencies are noticeable. This suggests that money was still flowing into
the country; and in this period this must have been primarily a result of trade, government
spending being of less importance under foreign rule.
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