main point of reference was the temple and its community. This is apparent most
clearly in marriage practices – group-specific ‘endogamy’, i.e. intermarriage between
prebendary families, is the rule – but also in residential patterns and business contacts.
Economically, the ownership of temple prebends supplied these families with a
(comparatively) secure source of income (in kind, mostly). Prebends (and shares in
prebendary income) were traded very frequently, allowing us to study patterns of
ownership and economic strategies of prebendary families. While some prebendaries
clearly tried to gain a prebend portfolio that was as variegated as possible, others
seem to have specialised in just one profession, sometimes even aiming at monopolising
the execution of one kind of prebendary service in a temple. The need to organise
the actual temple service gave rise to many different types of business arrangements
between members of this group, their dependants and slaves, and sometimes also free
craftsmen not attached to the temple establishment: especially in the area of the
preparation of the food offerings, a large part of the preparatory work incumbent on
the prebendaries was actually contracted out to third parties. In this way the prebendary
system benefited even people beyond the tight social boundaries delimiting the circle
of its primary usufructuaries.
The second pillar of the subsistence strategy of prebendary families was land
ownership. Typically, such families owned one or two date groves in the vicinity of
their cities. Depending on their financial situation, they might try to increase these
holdings by additional purchases (the second important source of additional land
being dowries of women marrying into such families), but more often they would be
content with managing and maintaining the family property. Simplifying the evidence,
one could say that their economic activities were characterised by a rentier mentality.
Numerous additional holdings in the hands of a family invariably meant a more
varied business activity, usually with perceptible ‘entrepreneurial’ traits. For instance,
several rich prebendary brewers also commercially exploited the yields of their date
gardens by brewing and selling beer of dates, the most common alcoholic drink of
this period. On the other hand, only very rarely do the business activities of prebendaries
approach the complexity and variety found among the representatives of the group
of city dwellers which is to be discussed now.
THE ENTREPRENEURSThese men – we have to do with single individuals without any known family back-
ground far more often than is the case with representatives of the prebendary class –
are less easily defined than the prebendaries.^15 The absence of tight links to temple
households is a common (but not invariable) trait. More importantly, they did not
rely on moderately sized rural holdings for their subsistence; agriculture at, or close
to, subsistence level did not belong to their repertoire of preferred economic strategies.
If they owned just a little land, its overall importance for their activities was always
limited. More extensive holdings, of course, were exploited for reasons of profit, not
subsistence.
As in the case of the prebendaries, the social range attested within this group is
remarkably wide. In the present context, only some general remarks on the types of
business attested can be made; a detailed case-study is offered in this volume by
Cornelia Wunsch.
— Michael Jursa —