more akin to that of ambassador than peddler, and in the sources the words
for“envoy”and“merchant’are often used interchangeably. In one Mesopotamian
hymn, the high god Enlil is referred to as“merchant of the wide earth.”At the
other end of the scale, petty merchants involved in retail trade were not
middle class either; they were solidly embedded in the lower ranks of society.
As duty-minded as the agent of a king or temple may have been, at some
point agents also started trading privately, when the opportunity presented
itself, for their own benefit. Merchants employed by the palace who accu-
mulated capital on the side were in a position to survive the collapse of a
dynasty or with some luck perhaps even a state. Others with capital,
including members of ruling families, were not above joining in the pursuit
of private gain through investment. Some merchants began operating inde-
pendently of palace and temple, which the state does not seem to have
opposed so long as it reserved the right to monopolize the trade in certain
strategic commodities and the entrepreneurs paid their usually high tariffs.
In fact, given the nature of the goods traded, the state and temples and the
elites who controlled these institutions constituted the customer base for
profit-driven trade. At times the palace and temple even encouraged private
trade by lending money for a share of the profits or commissioning private
traders to represent them in various commercial transactions. However, it
should be noted that the development of early Sumerian cities was not uni-
form; different cities evolved in different ways, including how they carried
on their long-distance trade, so merchants in various places at various times
operated under different conditions. But during some times in some places,
something like a true commodity market based on supply and demand,
fueled by profit seeking, and made possible by capital accumulation and
investment, did operate.
The Sumerian city states werefinally unified by an outside force, their
northern neighbors, the Akkadians, under Sargon. The creation of thefirst
empire in history was due in part to Sargon’s desire to control the trade in
raw materials for the benefit of Akkad. Once the Sumerians were subdued,
Sargon moved north into what is referred to in the texts as the“Silver
Mountains”(Anatolia) and west to the“Cedar Forest”(Lebanon), assuming
control over trade routes and commercial cities such as Elba and Mari. By his
time, Mesopotamia was the hub of a system that stretched from India and
Central Asia on one side to northeast Africa and the borderlands of Europe
on the other, that is, far beyond Sargon’s empire. Sargon’sofficial policy was
to support and encourage trade. When a colony of Akkadian merchants came
under threat in the Anatolian city of Burushanda, he rescued it. But when
the old city of Elba, a long-time axis for trade between Mesopotamia and
Syria, appeared to be thwarting Akkadian interests, Sargon’s grandson,
Naran-Sin, destroyed it. During the Akkadian period (2350– 2160 BCE), both
state and private enterprise was evident with the state controlling certain
commodities such as bulk metals and precious gems.
28 Thefirst link