Mukannišum, le destinataire de la lettre A. 1285, était, à l'époque du roi Zimri-Lim, chargé d'une multitude de tâches et de responsabilités concernant surtout la production industrielle et artisanale. C'est dans le cadre de ces activités que le roi lui transmet, par cette lettre, des instructions concernant, entre autres choses, l'approvisionnement en laine de haute qualité destinée à la fabrication d'un vêtement taddîtum. Texte et Copie, voir ci-dessous.

Le roi estime donc, d'après cette lettre, que Mukannišum doit pouvoir se passer de la laine fournie par Hammurapi de Babylone, et s'en procurer suffisamment — et d'assez bonne qualité — en triant la laine produite par “la tonte du palais”, buqûm ekallim. Sans doute faut-il prendre cette expression dans son sens le plus large, buqûmu désignant l'ensemble de la production de laine du royaume et ekallum faisant référence non pas au palais en tant qu'édifice, mais à l'institution palatiale avec ses ramifications provinciales. Il semble bien d'ailleurs que l'argumentation développée par le roi, ll. 32–34, soit fondée sur la distinction entre la laine qui se trouve effectivement, à un moment donné, au palais, et qui risque d'être insuffisante (l. 3), et la laine de “la tonte du palais”, citée explicitement l. 21 et l. 24, et implicitement ll. 33–34, parmi laquelle il est certain que Mukannišum trouvera la matière première nécessaire. D'autre part, lorsqu'à la fin de la lettre, ll. 53–54, le roi affirme qu'on fera appel, pour la fabrication de ce vêtement, aux réserves du pays tout entier, il fait sans doute encore allusion, entre autres fournitures, à la laine.

Trade being the main theme of this Rencontre, I thought it of some interest to give some reflections on the theme from a general view-point, notably on the role of trade in connection with the diffusion of civilization and on trade as a factor in the economy of ancient Mesopotamia, in short trade as a cultural and an economic factor, and a possible connection between these two. Did trade play an important role in the diffusion of features of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding countries? Can it be said that trade was an important element in the economy of that area?

The reflections are mainly based on my own observations and my own, I hope, logical reasoning, the theoretical literature being left out of consideration. I had not been able to gain access to the papers of the seminar held in Santa Fé in 1973, published under the title Ancient Civilization and Trade in 1975, before the Rencontre. Having taken cognizance of this book, it can be stated that the approach to the problems is different from that in this paper; the studies, analysing the trade itself, mainly in prehistoric and protohistoric times, have a clear theoretical character, whereas this paper only regards the two above-mentioned aspects in historical times, starting from some conspicuous facts and questions arising from them.

The archive of Iltani from Tell al Rimah in northern Iraq consists of 150 letters and fifty economic records. It almost certainly falls within the period of Cappadocian trade known as Kültepe Ib; one līmu name, Ṣabrum, is common to this archive and the texts of Kültepe Ib. This single name cannot be considered a certain link, since it has no patronymic in the records of Iltani; however, the name Kaneš occurs in two of the letters, and this gives support. The letters show that Hammurapi of Babylon was at that time the overlord of Iltani's people; Zimri-Lim's court at Mari is never mentioned, and so a date between Hammurapi's 32nd and 38th years is very probable. This is likely to be within the period of Kültepe Ib according to several scholars.

Of the forty letters between Iltani and her husband the ruler Aqba-hammu, ten are concerned with cloth, garments and workers in the local textile industry. A further eleven letters to Iltani from various different people are likewise concerned, and some mentioned textiles in fairly large amounts. Of the economic records, four concern textiles, two of them in large quantities, and the ration lists name groups of textile workers. From the letters alone one may deduce that textiles were important business at Rimah; compare the letters of Šibtu and her female contemporaries at Mari in which cloth and garments are mentioned usually as single items for personal use. Further comparison of the two groups of letters from Mari and Rimah makes it clear that the ruler and his wife were more closely concerned at Rimah than at Mari with making cloth and garments, and distributing them.

In den uns bekannten Sprachen des Alten Orients findet sich kein Ausdruck, der etwa “Kaufmanns-” oder “Handelssprache” bedeutet. Zwar werden in der sumerisch-akkadischen Tradition Sondersprachen wie die “Sprache der nešakku-Priester”, die “Sprache der Reinigungspriester” oder die “Sprache der Salbpriester” erwähnt, auch Berufssprachen wie die “Sprache der Silberschmiede” oder die “Sprache der Steinschneider” oder die wohl als “Jargon” aufzufassenden “Sprachen” der “Rindertreiber”, der “Rinderhirten” und der “Schiffer”. Doch ist auch hier die Bezeichnung für eine besondere “Sprache der Kaufleute”, etwa eme dam + gàra(k) oder eme ga + raša(k) bzw. lišān tamkārī, nicht überliefert.

Dieser Befund ist indessen nicht als negatives Indiz gegen das Bewußtsein von einer besonderen “Sprache des Handels” im Alten Orient anzusehen, sondern wohl eher als ein zufälliges Ergebnis der Überlieferung. Denn gerade für den Handel und seine Organisation hatte sich seit der Frühdynastischen Zeit ein besonderer Berufsstand herausgebildet, der altsumerisch durch das Abstraktum nam.ga + raš “Kaufmannschaft” bezeichnet wird. Nicht so aussagekräftig ist das entsprechende akkadische Abstraktum tamkārūtum, da Abstrakta von Berufsbezeichnungen im Akkadischen sehr produktiv sind; doch ist churritisch damqarašši “Kaufmannschaft” wiederum ein deutliches Kriterium für eine Sonderstellung der Funktionäre des Handelswesens. Die hethitischen Gesetze berücksichtigen eigens den “Kaufmann” (unattallsš), wenn auch nicht in demselben Maße wie etwa der Codex Hammurabi. Und im Ugaritischen sind immerhin zwei verschiedene Bezeichnungen für “Kaufmann” (bidalu und *makkaru) bekannt.

Le vin est une marchandise importée dans le royaume de Mari. La vigne était cultivée autrefois, comme elle l'est encore aujourd'hui, à l'Ouest (Alep-Homs) ou au Nord (Nizip-Gaziantep). Les grossistes en vin sont tantôt les producteurs eux-mêmes, tantôt des marchands ou des spéculateurs établis dans le royaume de Mari. C'est un produit dont le Palais est grand consommateur; il arrive même que le roi s'occupe de sa réexportation.

Le vin est acheminé le plus souvent par la voie fluviale, sur des bateaux spécialement aménagés pour ce transport. Il est toujours compté en quantité de “jarres” qui sont donc certainement de capacité constante. L'examen attentif des textes amène à la conclusion très probable que cette capacité était de 10 qa et que la jarre de vin valait 6/10e de sicle d'argent.

Wenn im folgenden die Beteiligung nomadischer Gruppen an Handel und Handelsverkehr skizziert werden soll, so muß zugleich auf Umstände hingewiesen werden, die eine entsprechende Aussage erschweren oder relativieren. So ist es bereits problematisch, inwieweit wir aus der Bezeichnung von Menschengruppen mit einem Stammesnamen bzw. dem Namen einer Untereinheit eines Stammes auf eine nomadisierende oder wenigstens teilweise nomadisierende Lebensweise dieser Gruppen schließen dürfen. Selbst Anzeichen für eine auf Nomadismus deutende Wirtschaftsführung oder Verhaltensweise sowie der Aufenthalt in einem Gebiet, das nur eine periodische Weidenutzung gestattet, können nicht als beweiskräftige Argumente für eine Zuweisung dieser Gruppen zu den Nomaden gelten. Zweitens ist die bekannte Tatsache in Erinnerung zu bringen, daß uns von den Nomaden selbst eine inschriftliche Überlieferung so gut wie völlig fehlt. Das impliziert eine Quellensicht, die sich am Urteil der Seßhaften, und zwar primär der Stadtbewohner, orientiert. Die Folge sind sowohl ein Desinteresse an allen stammesinternen Angelegenheiten, die nicht im politischen oder ökonomischen Blickfeld der Seßhaften erscheinen, als auch eine Dominanz des negativen Aspekts bei der Darstellung der Kontakte zu nomadischen Gruppen. Das Besondere, vor allem das Störende und Feindliche, tritt in der inschriftlichen Überlieferung stärker hervor als das Normale, Gewohnte. So ist für die nachfolgende Skizze die Einschränkung zu machen, daß die Verwertbare inschriftliche Überlieferung nicht nur dürftig und einseitig ist, sondern oft auch nicht entscheiden läßt, inwieweit wir überhaupt berechtigt sind, eine Quellenaussage hier mit heranzuziehen.

The text which forms the subject of this article is housed in the Free Library of Philadelphia. I found it there last year as a boxful of fragments which had to be put laboriously together, and I groaned when I saw them, thinking “Oh, here's another Lagaš tablet”. Indeed, it is a Lagaš tablet, but it is certainly not of any ordinary kind. I have never seen anything like it. It will be immediately apparent that the text is a list of fish offerings which the wife of Urukagina brought in Nippur to a number of deities. These deities include Inanna, perhaps Ninlil, and Šara.

Šara, the city god of Umma, has for all I know nothing to do in Nippur. He had no sanctuary there. So, even though the offerings were brought in Nippur, at least those in Šara's name must have been meant for Umma.

This is so unusual in a Lagaš text that rather far-reaching explanations may be warranted. I would suggest the following synthesis of the facts:

In his third year in office, Urukagina had sensed the threatening danger, the thunderclouds that were gathering in Umma. He tried to stave off the impending catastrophe by diplomacy. He and his wife embarked on a goodwill mission by donating sacrifices to the principal gods of Umma and Nippur. The offerings were made in Nippur because Enlil, the chief god of that city, held the key to the kingship of all Sumer and had bestowed it on Lugalzagesi, the ambitious ensi of Umma. The offerings may even have been brought on the occasion of Lugalzagesi's coronation in Nippur.

The theory that the Sumerian economy was controlled by the state or temple has until recently been a premise generally accepted by those who have attempted to deal with economic activity in the third millennium B.C. This theory has necessarily had a profound effect upon the interpretation of the role of the merchant in this period of Mesopotamian history. Since our evidence is by no means sufficient to reconstruct merchant activity in detail, our view of this aspect of Mesopotamian economic life is decisively conditioned by our theory of the total economy. For this reason, I have sketched out in what follows the theoretical basis which underlies the position taken in the present paper, as well as my understanding of the theoretical position to which it stands opposed.

During the 1920's, Anton Deimel reconstructed, on the basis of surviving tablets available to him, the basic structure of the archive of Bau in Girsu during the administrations of Lugalanda and Uru'inimgina (UruKAgina). Operating with the evidence assembled by Deimel, and taking his rather tentative deductions to what seemed at the time to be the logical conclusion, Anna Schneider and others arrived at a view of Sumerian society in which the temple functioned as the heart and brain of the whole. In the context of such a view, which for many years has affected both Assyriological and popular literature on the subject, the merchant can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as an employee of that central controlling agency. Thus, the economy of the third millennium tended to be categorized under such rubrics as “theocracy” and “statism”. The economy of this era was contrasted with the “capitalism” of the Old Babylonian period, and the differences between the economy reflected in the documents of the two eras were often assigned to the influx of new Semitic peoples, a classic case of explaining unknowns by another unknown or, perhaps, of the uncritical generalization of some specific Semitic stereotype such as the Carthaginian in Plautus' Poenulus.

An investigation of the social position of the merchant at Nuzi, of his rôle in the spheres of trade and credit, and of the commercial procedures most commonly in use may be regarded as a useful contribution for a better understanding of the Nuzian economy. An analysis of this kind has not yet been undertaken, in spite of the wealth of textual material—in fact the trend of Nuzian studies has been mostly towards an elucidation of “juridical” problems, with the result that the field of exchange and trade has been disregarded. Significantly enough, all that we can recall are the two pages on the merchant, written by A. L. Oppenheim in 1939 and the essay of D. Cross, whose main concern was to establish a list of commodities and calculate their prices.

With the present investigation I intend to focus on the position of the merchant in the context of Nuzian society and economy, and to analyse the procedures in use for carrying out trade enterprises. Other aspects connected with the subject of trade, e.g. commodities, prices, provenience and destination of goods, etc., will be dealt with in forthcoming articles.

Pour le commerce, comme pour l'ensemble des relations internationales, une très grande homogénété de structure semble s'être établie peu après le milieu du IIe millénaire avant notre ère dans le Proche-Orient. En vertu de la documentation actuellement disponible, la période la plus riche en renseignements est centrée sur le XIVe siècle avant notre ère; elle déborde légèrement sur la fin du XVe siècle et sur la première moitié du XIIIe siècle. Les sources utiles proviennent des archives de Boĝazköy, d'El-Amarna et surtout de Ras-Shamra.

Records of commercial activity from Sargonic Mesopotamia offer a wealth of evidence to the student of ancient trade and business. In view of the richness of the documentation and the dearth of studies dealing with it, a broad survey of the problems and evidence seems called for in preference to a detailed study of a particular issue or group of texts. Questions that such a survey confronts are the nature and purpose of commerce in Sargonic Mesopotamia; who the people were who engaged in it and why; what the sources of their capital were; what commodities they dealt in, where and why; how their business was conducted, and what sort of records they kept. Documents and letters from various sites provide answers to some of these questions, even if they raise other problems of their own. This essay considers each of these questions in turn and the evidence the texts provide that helps to answer them.

Commerce in the Sargonic period is best defined by recourse to contemporaneous terminology: šám, that is, buying and selling of commodities. The purpose of this commerce was two-fold: to make a profit and to acquire goods not available locally in Mesopotamia. Most of the available documents are records of business transactions of a profitable sort. Of these two possible motives for commerce: personal or institutional profit and the necessity of importing foreign commodities, the profit motive was probably the more important in the Sargonic period. Evidence for this hypothesis will be offered below.

Archaeological evidence from Ugarit shows that a lot of goods were imported to this kingdom from Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Cyprus, the Aegean, the Syrian coast and inland, Egypt and other countries, but only the written sources can give us a clear picture of the amounts of goods, the trade-routes, methods of transportation, the structure of prices etc.

We shall not enter here into a discussion concerning all the goods and their prices known to us from the alphabetic-Ugaritic and Akkadian texts from Ugarit; we shall deal here with only one of the principal goods, the metals, and study the question of transportation of commercial goods in this kingdom in the XIV–XIII centuries B.C. Unfortunately we do not yet know the prices of grain in Ugarit, and therefore this basic product is not included in the study of prices.

The attention of Assyriologists has long been focused on persons bearing the title of merchant in the various periods of Mesopotamian history. But it has been difficult to reconstruct the activities of merchants for any one period. Recent efforts to collect silver balanced accounts have made it possible to analyse in some detail the activities of a small group of merchants in the city of Umma during the Ur III period (2112–2004 B.C.).

There are many aspects of their activities that we do not yet understand, but in broad outlines the Umma silver balanced account system in which some merchants worked is clear to us, and its functions and purposes can be surveyed. Although in the course of investigation several texts came to light which were previously neglected or unpublished, these texts did not markedly alter the general view of the system.

Seven Amarna letters (EA 33–39) are addressed to Egypt by the king of Alašiya, whose name is not given, and one by his chief minister to the minister of Egypt (EA 40). The letters contain references to an exchange of gifts, which were delivered by sea (EA 39 and 40). This exchange amounted to the maintenance of commercial relations and one letter even mentions, in a broken context, Egyptian tradesmen (EA 34). This is what the king of Alašiya writes to the king of Egypt:

38 [. .uš-ši-ir] ki-ma ar-hi-iš39 [a-nakurA-]la-ši-ialútám-kà-ri-ia40 [ù 2] o1[ú-meštám-] kà-ru-ka ù41[1 m]e-i-it [x-x-]GA-GI it-ti-šu-nu,

“[let go] quickly [to A]lašiya my tradesman [and] your [twen] ty [tra]desmen and [one h]undred2 …… with them”.

All these Amarna letters date most likely from the reign of Amenophis IV (1379–1362), alias Akhenaten.

A somewhat earlier reference to Egyptian trade with Alašiya is to be found in an Ugaritic letter uncovered in room 77 of the main palace of Ugarit3 and addressed to Nimmuria, viz. Amenophis III Nebmare (1417–1379)4, by an official whose name is omitted.

La documentation qui nous a été laissée par l'administration sumérienne d'Ur III a mis à la disposition des chercheurs des monceaux de renseignements sur toute la vie économique du temps. On a déjà extrait de ces archives de nombreuses indications sur les prix des métaux, des parfums et d'autres marchandises, ou sur l'activité des dam.gàr. D'autre part, on connaît en gros les problèmes essentiels de l'économie sumérienne: manque de bois de construction, de pierres, de métaux et, en regard, abondance de céréales et prospérité de l'élevage.

Il est donc inutile de revenir sur ces questions.

Mon propos est de vérifier, pour une période déterminée, les généralités communément admises, de voir si elles reflètent la réalité et de rectifier peut-être certaines perspectives.

En particulier seront examinés deux aspects qui, nous le verrons, sont connexes: 1) la différenciation entre marchandises de première nécessité, marchandises utiles et marchandises de luxe, d'une part, et 2) le volume du commerce et son éthique, d'autre part.

That Sumerian literary compositions, despite the rarefied, etherial, unworldly nature of much of their content, could prove to be significant source material for such practical, mundane, workaday matters as trade and commerce, has been known a long time, ever since the text of the hymns inscribed on the Gudea Cylinders was edited and published some seventy years ago. When therefore the theme of this Rencontre was announced, it occurred to me that it might be useful to search through all, or at least most, of the available Sumerian literary documents with an eye for those passages that have some relevance for trade and commerce, for barter and exchange. This paper will present the rather meagre results of this search.

Beginning with the myths, I found that there were four which contained passages relating to commerce and trade: (1) the Ur version of the Dilmun myth “Enki and Ninhursag”; (2) the myth commonly known as “Enki and the World Order”; (3) the poem celebrating the journey of Nanna-Suen to Nippur; (4) the myth revolving about the transfer of the me from Eridu to Erech, in which the deities Inanna and Enki are the main protagonists.

In her Fauna of Ancient Mesopotamia, Mrs. van Buren pointed out that if elephants in the Middle East did not become extinct till about 800 B.C., then it was strange that there are not more representations of them. There is a lapis amulet from Kish which is rather indistinct, a miniature vase of sandstone and quartz decorated with a row of three elephants which was bought in Mosul, two cylinder seals which are related to seals of the Indus Valley type, and a Hittite seal found at Beth Shan which has been dated to the fourteenth century B.C. A terracotta from Diqdiqqeh near Ur shows an elephant being ridden and should probably be dated to the late third millennium B.C. An elephant-shaped cult stand and an elephant-shaped vessel come respectively from fourteenth century Beth Shan and from Hilani I at Zincirli where it can be dated to the time of Esarhaddon, Finally, an elephant is depicted together with monkeys and Bactrian camels on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III in the ninth century.

The earliest accounts of actual live elephants are found in Egyptian records of the middle of the second millennium B.C. under Thutmoses I (1525–1495) and of the middle of the fifteenth century B.C. when Thutmoses III killed a herd of 120 elephants “near the water-hole of Niy” or, according to an alternative reading, “for the sake of their tusks.” The water-hole at Niy is probably the Lake of Apamaea.

Als gegen Ende des Monats Hibur in einem uns leider nicht ganz genau festlegbaren Jahre während der Regierungszeit Aššur-bel-kala's (līmu: Ili-iddina) die Prinzessin [x]-iššite erkrankte, wurde der mašmāšu Aššur-išmanni beigezogen. Er verordnete offenbar eine Salbe, für die 14 Drogenbestandteile erforderlich waren. Wir besitzen die Quittung über den zweckgebundenen Empfang dieser teils pflanzliehen, teils tierischen Substanzen in der Tafel VAT 18057, die H. Freydank demnächst in seiner Sammlung mA Texte der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin veröffentlichen wird. Ich danke Herrn Freydank sehr herzlich für seine Erlaubnis, den Text hier bereits verwenden zu dürfen.

Knapp zwei Monate später wird wieder ein Kind im Königshaus krank — diesmal ein Prinz namens Ulalu (übrigens kein sehr schmeichelhafter Name, wenn nicht gar “Schwächling” hier appellativisch für ein noch unbenanntes Kleinkind gemeint ist; einen Prinzen Ulalu kennen wir sonst nicht, wissen allerdings auch nicht, ob er vielleicht die zur Debatte stehende Krankheit und Behandlung gar nicht überstanden hat). Wieder verschreibt Aššur-išmanni eine Salbe, diesmal noch etwas komplizierterer Zusammensetzung — ich zähle 20 Drogenbestandteile — und auch dieses Mal hat uns der Zufall die Quittung erhalten in dem von F. Köcher als BAM 263 veröffentlichten Text VAT 10044. Eine beträchtlich verbesserte Kopie des in BAM noch missverstandenen und fehldatierten Textes wird wiederum H. Freydank vorlegen, mit dem ich gemeinsam in Berlin beide Texte nebeneinander gründlich kollationieren konnte.

In diesem Vortrag möchte ich einige Gedanken zur wirtschaftsgeschichtlichen Deutung eines Abschnitts im sumerischen Epos “Enki und Ninhursag” kurz andeuten. Wie bekannt, ist diese Dichtung in drei, mehr oder weniger voneinander abweichenden Fassungen überliefert. Die Passage über den Tilmunhandel kommt aber nur in einer der beiden am Textanfang nahezu vollständigen Varianten vor, nämlich in der Rezension von Ur. Seitdem C. J. Gadd und S. N. Kramer den Text der einst von L. Woolley ausgegrabenen Tafel 1963 veröffentlicht hatten, haben Viele zumindest kurze Bemerkungen zur Interpretation des Textes beigesteuert, darunter sind in erster Linie S. N. Kramer selbst, und dann A. Falkenstein, D. O. Edzard, J. Krecher, ferner W. F. Leemans, G. Bibby, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, G. Pettinato u.a. zu nennen. Der Text ist durch die erneuten Diskussionen um Tilmun gewissermassen populär geworden. Die Passage wird allgemein für eine Beschreibung der weitreichenden Handelsbeziehungen Tilmuns, d.h. der Insel Bahrein im Persischen Golf, gehalten. Diese Auffassung trifft in grossen Zügen zu. Es bleibt übrig, sie zu präzisieren, und dadurch zwei Fragen zu beantworten: Auf welche Zeit bezieht sich die im Text gegebene Beschreibung?, und: Warum ist der Tilmunhandel für den mesopotamischen Dichter so wichtig?