aside everything obsolete and outdated. It is this discarded corpus, carefully buried
in jars, that has survived the millennia.
THE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONSTransactions involving commodities (essential goods such as barley, dates, onions and
wool), from their purchase in the rural area around Babylon to their transport, storage
and sale, formed the mainstay of the Egibi enterprise, with little change in the forms
of organization throughout the decades. Numerous smaller private archives, as well
as information about other entrepreneurs in the Egibi documents demonstrate that
a great number of urban, upper-middle-class people were engaged in similar activities,
playing a mediating role between producers and consumers. Although they had various
professional contacts to royal officials or temple personnel they did not operate in a
capacity of representing an institution, but as private entrepreneurs. Business with
commodities must have been lucrative, not least because of Babylon’s growing
population, who, attracted by the large-scale building projects under Nebuchadrezzar
and Nabonidus, were not engaged in agriculture and did not have their own plots
to cultivate.
Sˇulaja and his son began by working with other partners in so-called h
̆
arra ̄nu-
companies (h
̆
arra ̄ nu means ‘street, caravan’), the equivalent of the long-lasting commenda
enterprises known from Italy and the Hanseatic. Usually, one of the partners provided
the start-up capital while the other did the work in the countryside. The farmers
were given seed corn and draught animals on credit which they had to pay back in
kind at harvest time. Just before the harvest, buyers would move around the fields
to secure part of the harvest in advance. Barley, dates and onions had to be gathered
up, the farmers then moved them to depots along the canal from whence they were
loaded onto boats and taken to Babylon or other depots lining the canal. This entailed
negotiations with the palace administration about canal charges, the hiring of boats
and storage space, the brewing of beer from barley – all these different procedures
are well documented, only the sale transactions to the final consumer are not. The
provider of the capital and his active partner shared the profit (Akkadian utru‘surplus’)
equally, and the former also shared the risk. The acting partner was often not allowed
to work for others on the side or to enter into business deals with others, he had to
work full-time. This made the crucial difference to business transactions on the basis
of normal loans where the interest was 20 per cent per year and secured by a deposit.
H
̆
arra ̄nu-companies were, therefore, suitable for ambitious businessmen, without their
own capital as well as for the wealthy, prepared to take a risk for above average profit
margins. There is no doubt that the economic situation at the time of the Neo-
Babylonian empire was favourable for such enterprise and some families became
seriously rich quite quickly. However, there is also documentation of families who
were forced to sell substantial property (houses, gardens, slaves) in one go in order
to pay their creditors – not all entrepreneurs were as successful as the Egibi.
While Sˇulaja began by acting as managing associate with his partners’ capital,
Nabû-ah
̆
h
̆e ̄-iddin soon had enough funds of his own to let others work for him. He
married his eldest son to the daughter of another very successful businessman, Iddin-
Marduk, of the Nu ̄ r-Sîn family. This resulted not only in a dowry of 24 minas which
— Cornelia Wunsch —