Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

NOTES 417
West. This might be the origin of the term
"Hebrew," another group that according
to their own histories had fled from bondage,
wandered with their flocks in the desert,
and eventually descended as conquerors
on urban society.
so. Herodotus 1.199, also Strabo
16.1.20.
51. Revelations 17.4-5· Revelations
seems to follow the perspective of the followers
of Peter more than those of Paul.
I observe in passing that Rastafarianism,
the main prophetic voice today that
makes use of the image of Babylon as corruption
and oppression-though it does
tend to play down the imagery of sexual
corruption-has in practice been very
much about the reassertion of patriarchal
authority among the poor.
52. 1980:249-54; r989:12J-40. The
main textual source is Driver & Miles
1935; also Cardascia 1969.
53· In Sumerian weddings, a bride's
father would cover her with a veil, and
the groom would remove it-it was by
this act that he made her his wife (Stol
1995:128). Not only does this demonstrate
the degree to which the veil was a symbol
of encompassment in some man's domestic
authority; it might also have been
the source from which the later Assyrian
practice was eventually adopted.
54· My take on Confucianism follows
Deng's (1999) somewhat unconventional
approach. See Watson 1980 on the commoditization
of women; Gates 1989 on
its relation to general decline of women's
freedoms during the Song; there seems to
have been another major setback during
the Ming dynasty-for a recent overview,
Ko, Haboush, and Piggott (2003). Testart
(2ooo, 2001:148-49, 190) emphasizes that
the case of China confirms his "general
sociological law," that societies that practice
brideprice will also allow debt slavery
(Testart, Lecrivain, Karadimas & Govoroff
2oor), since this was a place where
the government vainly tried to stop both.
Another aspect of Confucianism was that
male slavery was seen as much more
dubious than female slavery; though it
never went as far as in Korea, where after
the invasion of Hideyoshi, a law was
passed decreeing that only women could
be enslaved.
55· Tambiah (1973, 1989) was the first
to make what is now the standard critique
of Goody's argument. Goody prefers to
see these as indirect dowry payments since
they were normally passed to the family
(1990:178-97).
56. On Homeric honor: Finley
1954:u8-r9, Adkins 1972:14-16 Seaford
1994:6-7. Cattle are again the main unit
of account, and silver. Is also apparently
used As Classicists have noted, the only
actual acts of buying and selling in the
Homeric epics are with foreigners (Von
Reden 1995:58-76, Seaford 2004:26-3o,
Finley 1954=67-70). Needless to say, Homeric
society lacked the legalistic precision
of the Irish notion of "honor price"
but the principles were broadly the same,
since tfme could mean not only "honor"
but "penalty" and "compensation."
57· Tfme is not used for the "price"
of commodities in the Iliad or the Odyssey,
but then prices of commodities are
barely mentioned. It is, however, used for
"compensation," in the sense of wergeld
or honor-price (Seaford 2004:198n46). The
first attested use of time as purchase price
is in the slightly later Homeric Hymn to
Demeter (132) where, as Seaford notes, it
seems significant that in fact it refers to a
slave.
58. Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians
2.2. He is referring to the great crisis
leading to Solon's reforms, the famous
"shaking off of burdens" of c. 594 BC.
59· Greek chattel slavery was in fact
much more extreme than anything that
appears to have existed in the ancient
Near East at the time (see e.g., Westermann
1955; Finley 1974, 1981; Wiedemann
198r; Dandamaev 1984; Westbrook
1995), not only because most Near Eastern
"slaves" were not technically slaves
at all but redeemable debt pawns, who
therefore at least in theory could not be