Mesopotamia, in a predominantly planned economy, encompassing the whole empire
of the Third Dynasty of Ur. In this ‘global’ economy, Van De Mieroop ( 1992 ) named
three different sectors: palace, temple and private. However, the economic role of
private property and private landholdings or that of the merchants is still disputed
(see Renger 1995 , van Driel 1995 , 1998 and compare Steinkeller 2002 : 115 ). Partially
this is certainly due to the laconic nature of our sources; they do not explain what
appeared obvious to the contemporaries. However, the concept had existed already
for a longer period. In passing we mention the outstanding role of the Old Assyrian
entrepreneurs in the overland trade to Anatolia at the turn from the third to the
second millennium who apparently enjoyed a greater autonomy than their Old
Babylonian counterparts (cf. Goddeeris in this volume).
In the second half of the third millennium, the planned economy of the big
institutions followed the principle of redistribution (see Charvát in this volume). A
larger part of the population depended on a big institution for their subsistence,
usually a temple. The majority must be considered as a kind of temple-slaves. They
were the property of these institutions, temples or palaces. They were sometimes
bought in exchange for goods, or came into the cities as prisoners of war. They worked
the fields or found their occupation in a variety of professions. The documents make
a clear distinction between this mass of workers and the so-called house-born slaves,
e.g. those people with lesser rights depending on the master of a specific house, the
patron of an extended family. Higher in the social ranking stood a group that partly
depended on fiefs: during part of the year they sustained themselves by their own
harvest, but in return for the use of land they had to fulfil certain obligations towards
the institutions and the state. They were drafted for military and other public work,
especially for building activities. It is this group of people the ruler addresses when
he orders the ‘freedom of obligations’, mentioned so often in the royal inscriptions
from Early Dynastic to Old Babylonian times. Administrative and state officials in
temples and palace certainly formed the upper stratum of the society, although threat-
ened in their precarious position by the increasing and continuing accumulation of
property in private hands.
ECONOMY, SOCIAL GROUPS AND SOCIAL
ORDER IN BABYLONIAThe general framework of this type of social organisation, characteristic for the third
millennium, was still the basis of the social order in Old Babylonian times. However,
the private sector of economy had drastically grown by then, and temples and palace
had to cope with the power resulting from a sizeable portion of the economic resources
in private hands. By this time prebends were still connected to certain official duties
or payments, now chiefly under the control of the palace, but they had become
hereditary, and, as a part of the ‘house of the father’, they were passed on from the
father to the son(s) (see Goddeeris in this volume). The land of the paternal estate
must not be sold to others, albeit this was not formally forbidden (Stol 2004 : 698 ).
Attached to these family estates were a relatively small number of slaves who were
occasionally sold. An average family possessed one to four slaves, very rich ones up
to ten. Slaves were physically marked, but they were not under the absolute authority
of their master – as compared to classical antiquity – and not without any rights.
— Gebhard J. Selz —