form of overland routes radiating outward in various directions. Trade routes
and trading partners depended on changing circumstances, especially poli-
tical factors such as the rise of new states or the collapse of old ones, creating
new opportunities or ending old ties. But if the merchants of a particular
city could exercise control over a trade route, they could ensure not only
their own access to particular commodities but also assume some measure of
control over other peoples’economies.
As early as the late fourth millenniumBCE, the need for certain imports
led to the creation of trading posts, enclaves, and colonies outside of Sumer.
The best known of these was at Habuba Kabira on the upper Euphrates
River in modern Syria, which was established under the auspices of the
temple at Uruk. Habuba Kabira was located at a strategic position for con-
trolling east to west trade running from Iran across northern Mesopotamia to
the Mediterranean coast and could serve as a jumping off point to Anatolia
as well. The inhabitants of Habuba Kabira, who may have numbered 6,000–
8,000, did not produce their own food: the place was purely an entrepot. It
lasted for about a century and a half, after which it disappeared.
The nature of early Sumerian trade is still a point of debate with two
alternative models. One begins with the assumption that trade was initially
conducted between societies, then institutions, and only later individuals. In
a Sumerian city state, the government or temple engaged in gift exchange
and held a monopoly over long-distance trade through its agents. Prices were
set so that a guaranteed return could be expected on the safe delivery of a
consignment. The other model has independent merchants,financed by their
own or other private capital, calculating the difference in gains they would
realize by bringing a particular commodity to a particular destination, reck-
oning risks, cost of transportation, and time spent. In other words, this
model assumes the existence of a market economy. How far this went in
becoming a truly self-regulating market based on supply and demand is
questionable since in the ancient world the tie between production and price
was a tenuous one. Over the long history of ancient Mesopotamia, both
models are apparent, with the institutional agent prominent in the earlier
period and the entrepreneur becoming more common later. Just how much
later is the central point of the debate. When did the entrepreneurfirst
appear and, more importantly, when was the change significant enough to
matter? Although signs of entrepreneurial activity may be visible as early as
the late fourth millenniumBCE,the third and second millennia are seen as
the crucial periods.
The earliest Sumerian traders did not constitute a middle class. In fact,
they didn’t constitute a separate class at all. The agents who represented
kings and temples were part of the governing class, important men on a level
with military commanders and high civil officials sometimes linked to the
royal family by blood or marriage. Their livelihood was not dependent on
market mechanisms but rather on their position at court. Their role was
26 Thefirst link