purple motes

Writing is much more socially complex than making art and making music.  Art and music draw on natural forms and make sense at a low level of neurological processing.  A single person could invent a form of visual art or music that might be engaging to many others without a specific investment in teaching them. Inventing writing, in contrast, requires teaching a group of persons a common code for meaning-making.[1]

At least in Mesopotamia, the emergence of writing seems to be associated with accounting for goods.  Large-scale farming and industry, stratified societies, systematized economic tributes, and relatively high-density, geographically fixed population centers all developed together.  The general model is producers who are able to produce enough extra goods to pay tribute to the ruler and his associated administrative and military apparatus that forms the nucleus of a population center.  Systematized economic tribute requires accounting.   The first writing in Mesopotamia arose from this accounting.[2]

A key innovation was the use of small, clay tokens.  A specific type of token represented a particular amount of a particular good.  For example, a spherical token might represent a small basket of barley, and three such tokens, three small baskets of barley.  Such tokens could be used to record goods collected or delivered.  The tokens thus provided a physical tool for thinking about quantities of objects.  Many such tokens have been recovered from Mesopotamian sites dating from 10000 to 5000 years before the present.

Tokens led to impressed and incised signs.  First, tokens associated with a particular person were kept in clay envelopes on which the person's seal was impressed.  To indicate the tokens that were sealed in the envelope, the tokens placed within the envelope were also pressed against the outer surface of envelope.   Those marks thus indicated with a one-to-one, geometric correspondence the tokens within the envelope.  Over time, the envelopes became writing slabs.   The marks retained their meaning without the corresponding tokens being contained within the envelope/slab.  In addition, instead of impressing the marks using tokens, the marks were incised with a stylus.  Once the mental skill of reading written signs was well-developed and institutionalized, the physical tokens were no longer needed.

By about 5000 years ago, accounting signs had evolved into a general-purpose written language.  Signs related by physical quantities of goods (a large basket of barley vs. a small basket of barley) evolved into abstract numbers (the sign for the large basket came to mean, e.g., "ten times as much").   Pictographs were associated with the sounds of items pictured, and combinations of such pictographs were probably first used to indicate the sound of personal names.  Such pictographs provide more flexible and efficient attribution than personal seals.  Demand for funereal objects that could "speak" prayers for the dead through written phrases seems to have stimulated further development of syntax and sign repertoire.

The time scale of the development of writing suggests social network effects.  The use of tokens for accounting endured for about 5000 years.  Once such accounting had led to incised signs, a general written language developed within a span of about 500 years.  Incised signs could be created, copied, and circulated relatively cheaply.  Texts thus provided a new communication network.  That network in turn supported rapid social-symbolic innovation.

Notes:

[1] Humans have been making art and music much longer than they have been writing.   Artifacts testifying to prehistoric art include ochre engraved with abstract markings (more than 70,000 years before the present [BP]), the Chauvet cave paintings (probably about 30,000 BP), a lion-headed figurine (32,000 BP), and various female figurines (about 25,000 BP).  Prehistoric musical instruments include a bone pipe from Geissenklösterle in Germany (36,000 BP).   In contrast, the earliest writing occurred only about 5,500 years ago, with various evidence from China, Egypt, Uruk (Mesopotamia), and Harappa (Indus valley).

[2] My account of the development of writing is based on the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat, as set out in her highly readable book, How Writing Came About (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).  The development of writing in China may have been driven more by political and familial-religious demands.

Tags: accounting, ancient Mesopotamia, history, tokens, writing

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Ancient Mesopotamian legal codes had broad purposes.  For example, the Code of Hammurabi, written in the city of Babylon about 1760 BGC (about 3768 years ago), declares as its purposes:

to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; ... [to] enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind. ... Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. ... [I] brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted. ... That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans, .. in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious words

The Code of Ur-Nammu, written in the city of Ur about three hundred years before the Code of Hammurabi, specifies in its preface:

Ur-Nammu ... in accordance with his principles of equity and truth ... [did] establish equity in the land; he banished malediction, violence and strife ... the orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one mina [sixty shekels].

The Code of Hammurabi, like other ancient Mesopotamian laws, represents the ruler as a father to his subjects.  Consistent with this idea, it and other ancient Mesopotamian laws recognize the vulnerability of widows and orphans, who are persons without male benefactors/protectors.[*]  Yet, in contrast to the position of the male ruler, whose power and riches the laws glorify,  the Code of Ur-Nammu specifically condemns a high-status ["one mina"] man exploiting a low-status ["one shekel"] man.  This concern for low-status men is less conceptually consistent,  more unusual, and less appreciated than the father-ruler's concern for widows and orphans.

An all-powerful king's concern for low-status men probably responds to the social obviousness of some men's extreme exploitation of other men in ancient Mesopotamia.  Ancient Mesopotamian social structure (and the law codes themselves) clearly distinguished classes of persons, including a numerous class of chattel slaves.  A free man could be made a slave as punishment for crime or debt.  One man making another man into a slave is an extreme form of exploitation.   Because exploitation of men was so extreme and so obvious, the all-powerful king declared implicitly that only he had authority to exploit other men.

Note:

[*] The epilogue to the Code of Hammurabi imagines and represents a subject figuring Hammurabi as a father: "Hammurabi is a ruler, who is as a father to his subjects, ... who has bestowed benefits for ever and ever on his subjects, and has established order in the land."

Tags: ancient Mesopotamia, fathers, law, men

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The Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1770 BGC, city of Eshnunna in ancient Mesopotamia) set prices for barley and wool in shekels of silver.  These probably were actual prices for Eshnunna's procurement of large amounts of wool and barley.  Here's a calculation of Eshnunna's  price for barley in terms of wool:

"6  mina wool for 1 shekel of silver" [price in Laws of Eshnunna]
60 shekels per mina
360 shekels of wool for 1 shekel of silver
8.33 grams per shekel
3.0 kg of wool per 1 shekel of silver

"1 gur barley for 1 shekel of silver" [price in Laws of Eshnunna] [*]
300 litres per gur
0.3 cubic meter of barley for 1 shekel of silver

Hence 3.0/0.3=10.0 kg of wool per cubic meter of barley

Babylonian astronomers recorded prices for wool and barley from 382 BGC to 72 BGC.  These were probably prices for which transactions actually occurred.  The quartiles for the price distribution of kg of wool per cubic meter of barley over that period are: q1=10.5, median=15.2, q3=18.9.

The price of barley in wool ca. 1770 BGC in Eshnunna was roughly at the 25'th percentage point in the distribution for that price in Babylon about 1500 years later. Eshnunna and Babylon are geographically close in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley.  Both were part of the Old Babylonian Empire.

It seems to me that farming (barley) would provide more propitious circumstances for innovation and capital investment than herding (wool).  Hence I expected productivity growth to be greater in barley than wool.  That would reduce the wool price of barley.   But the data indicate a small shift in the opposite direction.

Any thoughts on the long-run economics of wool and barley in ancient Mesopotamia?

Note:

[*] Roth, Martha Tobi, Harry A. Hoffner, and Piotr Michalowski (1995), Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (Altanta, Ga.: Scholars Press) provides both a transliteration and a translation of the Laws of Eshnunna.  The translation, however, gives the relevant law as declaring, "600 silas of barley (can be purchased) for 1 shekel of silver."  The transliteration and other sources indicate that this is a mistake.  The correct figure is 300 silas of barley.  The quoted phrases are my literal translation based on id.'s transliteration of the Sumerian.  A shekel in ancient Mesopotamia was a measure of weight, not a specific coin.

References on Babylonian prices:

R.J. van der Spek, Commodity Prices in Babylon 385 - 61 BC.

R.J. van der Spek, C.A. Mandemakers (2003). "Sense and nonsense in the statistical approach of Babylonian prices," Bibliotheca Orientalis 60, Leiden.

Tags: ancient Mesopotamia, barley, prices, wool

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Ancient Mesopotamian laws set prices for goods and for bad acts.  For example, the Code of Ur-Nammu, written in the city of Ur about 2100-2050 BGC (about 4000 years ago), set "temple expenses" as specific prices in barley, sheep, and butter.  The code also declared, "If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed;" and, "If a man knocks out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver."  The Code of Hammurabi, written in the city of Babylon about 1760 BGC, set prices for doctor's operations of different types and on different classes of persons (six different prices), a price for a veterinary surgeon's operation, prices for building a house, for caulking and pitching a ship, for renting a ship (including different prices for rent inclusive or exclusive of ship crew), for tending oxen and sheep, for farm laborers, for men ploughing, for ox ploughing, for threshing, etc.   It also set prices for bad acts, e.g. "If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out"; "If a freed man strike the body of another freed man, he shall pay ten shekels in money."  Other ancient Mesopotamian laws, such as the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1770 BGC, city of Eshnunna) and the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (ca. 1930 BGC, city of Isin) include a similar mix of prices for goods and bads.[1]

This expansive, written price regulation was profoundly important to its authors.  The epilogue to the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar declares:

he who does anything evil to it [the represented Laws], who damages my work, who enters the treasure room, who alters its pedestal, who effaces this inscription and writes his own name (in place of mine), or, because of this curse, induces an outsider to remove it -- that man, whether he is a king, an enu-lord, or an ensi-ruler ... [May the] primary son of the god Enlil, not approach; may the seed not enter; ... [May] the god Enlil ... revoke the gift of the lofty Ekur temple.  May the god Utu ... make his cities into heaps of ruins.[2]

These explicit, elaborate concerns for ownership of laws are conventional in epilogues to ancient Mesopotamian laws.  The epilogue to the Laws of X (written sometime between 2050 and 1800 BGC) includes similar language, as does the epilogue to the Code of Hammurabi.

The prices declared in ancient Mesopotamian laws were meant to last forever.  The Code of Hammurabi makes this goal explicit:

May any king who will appear in the land in the future, at any time, observe the pronouncements of justice that I inscribed upon my stela.  May he not alter the judgments that I rendered and the verdicts that I gave, nor remove my engraved image.  If that man has discernment, and is capable of providing just ways for his land, may he heed the pronouncements I have inscribed upon my stela, may that stela reveal for him the traditions, the proper conduct, the judgments of the land that I rendered ... If that man (a future ruler) heeds my pronouncements which I have inscribed upon my stela, and does not reject my judgments, or alter my engraved image, then may the god Shamash lengthen his reign

At least formally, Hammurabi was quite successful in projecting his authority forward in time.  The Code of Hammurabi was studied and recopied for at least fifteen hundred years.[3]

Prices for bad acts differ significantly from price for goods important in ordinary life.  In a law such as "If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed," the price for murder has a readily understood correspondence and symmetry.   Prices for ordinary goods, such as a bushel of barley, lack such correspondence and symmetry.  Not surprisingly, the price of barley 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia is much less related to current prices for food than the ancient Mesopotamian price for murder is related to current prices for murder.

Moreover, prices for bad acts are relevant only in abnormal circumstances, while prices for goods important in ordinary life enter in daily transactions.  Hence the cost of regulated prices not responding to relevant changes in circumstances is much less with respect to bad acts than with respect to common goods.   Observed prices for common goods in Babylon from 385 to 61 BGC show large variations.[4]  For example, the price of a cubic meter of barley in kilograms of wool had an interquartile range of 9.4 kg to 18.9 kg in Babylon from about 382 to 71 BGC.  Extreme variations were much wider (see graph below).  If the prices that Babylonian kings set for common goods had been practically important and enduring, they would have greatly harmed ordinary life.   That's not true for the prices that the kings set for bad acts.

(underlying price data)
Concern for common welfare and justice motivates governments to enact criminal laws.  Concern for common welfare and justice has also throughout human history have motivated governments to regulate prices for ordinary goods.  Criminal law typically has low cost and high popular support, and the effects of bad prices for crimes often are not obvious.   Price regulation for common goods typically has high cost and can rapidly lose popular support.  The implications are important but counter-intuitive: changes in government price regulation are much more likely to be consistent with common welfare and justice in the long run.  Common circumstances of human life regulate government regulation of goods' prices much better than they regulate criminal law.

Notes:

[1] English translations of these laws can be found in Roth, Martha Tobi, Harry A. Hoffner, and Piotr Michalowski (1995), Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (Altanta, Ga.: Scholars Press).  For a compilation of wages and goods prices from the Code of Hammurabi, see Godfrey Rolles Driver and John C Miles (1952), The Babylonian Laws: Ancient codes and laws of the Near East (Oxford: Clarendon Press) v. I, p. 476.

[2] This and the following quotation are from the translation in Roth, Hoffner, and Michalowski (1995). The "lofty Ekur temple" was a temple to Enlil in the sacred city of Nippur.

[3] See Babylonian Law.  About 1200 BGC, about 500 years after the Code of Hammurabi was written, an Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte took as plunder a stela displaying Hammurabi's code.   He brought the stela back to his kingdom in Khuzestan, Iran.  That stela is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

[4] For a detailed discussion of these prices, see R.J. van der Spek, Commodity Prices in Babylon 385 - 61 BC.  Mr. van der Spek has made his convenient compilation of the data freely available on the web.  I am grateful for his generous contribution to world knowledge.

Tags: ancient Mesopotamia, code of hammurabi, goods, law, prices

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Consider this law:

If a man says to his comrade, either in private or in a public quarrel, "Everyone has sex with your wife," and further, "I can prove the charges," but he is unable to prove the charges and does not prove the charges, they shall strike that man 40 blows with rods: he shall perform the king's service for one full month; they shall cut off his hair; moreover, he shall pay 3,600 shekels of lead.[*]

This written law was established in Assyria about 3100 years ago.  It's a defamation law, but it specifies a highly particular form of defamation.  Did the Assyrian have a written law covering every major type of defamation (you're a bastard, your mother's a whore, you're a clumsy oaf, etc.)?  Most likely not.  "Everyone has sex with your wife" seems to have functioned in Assyrian law as a synecdoche for defamation.

The Assyrian law differs from case law.  The parties to the action are generic "man," "comrade," and "wife."   The law occurs within a list of similarly structured, written laws that make no particular references to historical case judgments.

Particularization apparently was not a generic characteristic of ancient Mesopotamian legal texts.   Ancient Mesopotamian laws combined combined general categorizes of parties with highly particularized actions and punishments.  Whether these laws mattered in practice is a subject of considerable academic debate.  Perhaps these laws indicate that making laws and judging cases were closely connected institutionally in the Assyrian kings' administrative organs.

Note:

[*] Text from the Middle Assyrian Laws, ca. 1076 BCG, of the city of Assur.  See Roth, Martha Tobi, Harry A. Hoffner, and Piotr Michalowski. 1995. Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Writings from the ancient world, no. 6. Altanta, Ga: Scholars Press, p. 159.  The preceeding law: "If a man should say to another man, "Everyone has sex with your wife," but there are no witnesses, they shall draw up a binding agreement, they shall undergo the divine River Ordeal."  The witnesses are most plausibly relevant to uttering the statement, not having sex with the wife.    Evidently, this law concerns a situation where the defamation defendant denies making the statement.  In contrast, the law quoted above includes the defamation defendant asserting that he can prove the wholly implausible statement that "everyone" has sex with the wife.   These laws make most sense together as defining defamation at different levels of insult and injury.  A similar set of laws is organized around the statement, "Everyone sodomizes you."

Tags: administration, ancient Mesopotamia, case law, statutory law

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