The Origins of Money, evidence from the ancient Near East and Egypt

The Origins of Money, evidence from the ancient Near East and Egypt Joe Cribb, Keeper of Coins and Medals, British Museum, London And Money, that most pure imagination, Gleams only through the dawn of its creation. (Byron, Don Juan, Canto 12, II) Money fits so tightly into the pattern of everyday life that it is hard to imagine an organised human society without it. The use of money is a natural part of social life and seems as though it must have evolved as part of man's social development as a subconscious expression of human nature itself. This is not the case; a search through the history of the human race will in fact provide examples of societies which were totally unaware of money or of the need for it. Some societies, like the native people of Australia before colonisation, lacked money because their economic development had not risen above a very low level, while others, as in the case of the Incas who ruled Peru and Bolivia before the Spanish conquest, appear to have developed their economy under a powerful central authority in such a way that money was unnecessary. These are of course exceptions. For the most part the human societies which are chronicled in history were already aware of the practical advantages of money before they came to be noticed. If they were ever like those few recorded moneyless societies, it must have been long before history began. At some time in prehistory they all discovered money, either for themselves or from one of their neighbours who had already made the discovery. This makes it difficult to examine money's origins, as the discoveries mostly took place in a period from which little or no evidence of money survives. Even though our knowledge of human society in prehistoric times is continually expanding, money at that period remains obscured. This is because of the nature of money. Archaeologists cannot identify the objects they find as money, because money is not a particular distinctive object, but any object to which a particular idea has been applied. It is the evidence of that idea which is lacking in prehistory. So an alternative to looking for the actual discovery of money has to be sought in order to attempt an understanding of money's origins. The question of when and where money began have to be abandoned in favour of asking how and why. The search must be for actual reports of the use of money, and those closest in time or their nature to prehistory ought to give the most accurate explanation. The accounts of money nearest in time to its origins are those contained in the earliest written records and oral traditions of man's activities; those nearest in their nature are more recent reports of the economic life of tribal societies, who live in conditions similar to those endured by prehistoric man. It was precisely by examining such evidence that Aristotle, the Greek philosopher (384-322 BC), formed the first scientific account of the origins of money. He explained the discovery of money by imagining a scene in which traders, unable to cope with the difficulties of exchanging goods by barter, invented money as a means of solving their problems. In his Politics he looked at the role of money in the organisation of the state, asking himself the question why had the concept of money arisen in society: … barter introduced the use of money … for a convenient place from whence to import what you wanted or to export what you had a surplus of being often at a distance, money necessarily made its way into commerce … (traders) invented something to exchange with each other, which they should mutually give and take, that, being really valuable itself, should have the additional advantage of being easy of conveyance for the purpose of life. … Money thus being established as the necessary medium of exchange … Aristotle also addressed the question of what money means in his Ethics where he examined its social and legal aspects, once again in the context of its origins: … all products that are exchanged must be in some way comparable. It is this that has led to the introduction of money, which serves as a sort of mean, since it is a measure of everything, and so a measure of the excess and deficiency of value informing us for example how many shoes are equivalent to … so much food. Apart from this formula there can be no exchange … and the formula cannot be applied unless the products are somehow equated. This view of Aristotle explaining money in terms of its origin is persuasively simple. Aristotle's personal experiences of money were in the form of coins, but he had a knowledge of money before the invention of coinage from Greek literature and from information on contemporary trade with tribal areas on the edge of the Greek world where coins were not yet known. He was aware that the coins he used were a relatively recent invention. He would have learnt from the 5th century BC historian Herodotus how trade without money was still carried out beyond the Greek world. Herodotus himself would have learnt about it from the people who conducted it, The Carthaginians also tell us that they trade with a race of men who live in a part of Libya beyond the Pillars of Heracles [i.e. West Africa]. On reaching this country, they unload their goods, arrange them tidily along the beach and then, returning to their boats, raise a smoke. Seeing the smoke, the natives come down to the beach, place on the ground a certain quantity of gold in exchange for the goods, and go off again to a distance. The Carthaginians then come ashore and take a look at the gold; and if they think it represents a fair price for their wares, they collect it and go away; if, on the other hand, it seems too little they go back aboard and wait, and the natives come and add to the gold until they are satisfied. (Histories VI 196) Aristotle also knew from the poet Homer that the Greeks of an earlier age were unfamiliar with coins, but traded among themselves by exchanging gifts, the value of which they estimated in terms of cattle. He was able to quote from Homer's Iliad the story of an exchange of armour between the Lycian prince Glaucus and Diomedes king of Argos, in which Glaucus got a bad deal, Gold arms for bronze, a hundred oxen's price for price of nine (Ethics V 9, Iliad VI 234-6) Unfortunately, Aristotle's sources of information on the subject were very limited and he interpreted the little that he knew in the light of his own theory that money's primary function was in trade. His explanation of how money was discovered is therefore predictably narrow. Today a better informed view of money before coinage than Aristotle's can be formed. The information now available not only from modern scholarship, but also from our own diverse experiences, is very much more than what was accessible in Greece in the fourth century BC. We can now call upon the written records of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Mycenaean Greece and China as well as the oral traditions of biblical Palestine, Homeric Greece and Vedic India. Access to the detailed accounts of the economies of tribal societies reported by travellers and by ethnographers has also broadened our insight of what money might have been like before the dawn of civilisation. Archaeologists and collectors have also enlarged this understanding by making available the objects described as money in both ancient and tribal societies. The most ancient objects which can now be identified as money are from archaeological excavations in the area of Iraq known as Mesopotamia which straddles the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. From the ruins of the ancient cities of Mesopotamia archaeologists have recovered both written documents describing monetary payments and examples of the objects with which those payments were made. These objects are pieces of silver in the form of rings, ingots and scraps. The documents used to identify them as money are contracts, business accounts and legal codes written cuneiform characters on baked clay tablets or stone monuments. Money is one of the first details of every day life to be mentioned once man had discovered the ability to describe his action in writing. By the mid third millennium B.C. (i.e. about four and a half thousand years ago) the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia were recording in writing details of monetary payments. Typical examples of documents describing money in use at this time have been discovered in the temple archives of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Lagash, where clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform list the charges made to inhabitants of the city for the lease of temple land for agricultural use. Among the surviving tablets is the record made of the details of a lease agreement made in the twenty fourth century BC in the reign of Urukagina, king of Lagash. The lease gave the tenant farmer of one particular parcel of land the use of it to grow barley and to graze his goats on condition that he made three separate payments to the temple treasury: 1 a number of basketfuls of barley, representing a proportion of the grain harvested from the land, to be paid as rent; 2 a weighed amount of silver to pay for his right to graze goats on the land; 3 a specified number of goats paid to cover the costs the temple had incurred in irrigating the land. Such documents clearly recorded the making of payments in a context where we would now expect to use money. Rent, pasturage fees and local authority rates would all today be paid with money in pounds either in the form of bank notes or through a bank account. Should the barley, silver and goats paid for them in Ancient Mesopotamia also be considered in the same light? Could it be said that these objects were selected for making payments because the Mesopotamians had conventions which guaranteed their value and their reuse in other payments, i.e. because they used them as money? The temple accepted payments in barley because it was the staple food of the region. The employees of the temple were fed with the barley gathered from the land it owned either directly from land farmed by those employees or indirectly from rent paid, as in this instance, by its tenants. The temple was also obliged to hold a store of grain as a precaution against times of bad harvests and famines. The goats were received in the same way, for use both as food and as other animal products such as hides. The silver, however, was acceptable to the temple for quite different reasons. It appears that the temple was willing to receive payments of silver because it could use it to make other payments itself. Documents of the same period as the land lease records have survived which report silver being paid out by temple employees during the reign of Urukagina king of Lagash. These documents also tell how Urukagina laid down two aspects of the convention within which these payments were made. He indicated that certain obligations of the temple officials, such as the compulsory purchase of houses and animals, had to be settled by payments of silver, and he also fixed the official weight standard by which it was to be measured in all payments. (The official weights of ancient Mesopotamia were as follows: The mina (about half a kilo) which was divided into 60 shekels; each shekel (about 8.3 grams) was divided into 180 grains; each grain (about 0.046 grams) represented the average weight of a grain of barley.) These texts describing Urukagina's actions imply that he set up the regulations to safeguard the common people who were involved in these transactions. The situation described in these records of ancient Lagash fit precisely a definition of money which describes its role today: Money is any object (or record of that object) which is regularly used to make payments according to a law (or convention) which guarantees its value and ensures its acceptability (J. Cribb Money from Cowrie Shells to Credit Cards, London, 1986, p. 12). One of the payments made according to the terms of the lease was made using an object, i.e. silver, within a law, i.e. the regulations set up by Urukagina, which not only ensured the circumstances of its acceptability, but also guaranteed its value in future regular use in payments. As some of the lease documents in the Lagash archive were drawn up before the reign of Urukagina, it is evident that money was not brought into being as a consequence of the regulations he laid down. It can be assumed that money only came into being in the circumstances the cuneiform documents describe because in ancient Mesopotamian society at that time it was expected that certain things would be paid for. In the four centuries from the time of Urukagina down to the end of the 3rd millennium BC there is much evidence of payments of many kinds being made with money in the cities of Mesopotamia. The fullest record is of the kingdom of Ur during its 3rd dynasty. In excavation at Ur and Nippur clay tablets have been discovered containing about 20 laws from a legal code drawn up by the founder of this dynasty king Ur-Nammu (c. 2112-2095 B.C.). The code shows how he fixed the standard weight for silver and the standard measure for barley: Then did Ur-Nammu, the mighty warrior, King of Ur, King of Sumer and Akkad … establish equity in the land … He fashioned the bronze sila measure [a capacity measure for barley], He standardised the one mina weight and standardised the stone weight of a shekel of silver in relation to the one mina... It also shows how he set the amounts due in certain payments, as compensation: law 5. If a man proceeded by force and deflowered the virgin slave woman of another man, that man must pay five shekels of silver. law 17. If someone severed the nose of another man with a copper knife he must pay two thirds of a mina of silver. as a fine: law 25. If a man appeared as a witness in a lawsuit and was shown to be perjured he must pay 15 shekels. as a reward: law 8. If a slave woman . . . crossed beyond the territory of the city and another man brought her back, the owner of the slave shall pay to the one who brought her back two shekels of silver. Although the payments described in Ur-Nammu's code mostly represent, as one would expect, legal payments, there are other clay tablets surviving from the same period which describe commercial, social and fiscal payments. The most revealing of these are 21st century B.C. documents from Ur containing the balanced accounts of merchants who were using silver and barley to pay for a wide variety of wares, mostly food, but also cloth, metals and luxury goods. Each item in the accounts was given a price in silver by weight, even though payments were not necessarily made with it. It is clear, therefore, from the written records of Ur in the late 3rd millennium B.C. that silver was in use as money. It could be paid and received in the knowledge that it could be reused to make further payments. Royal edicts also ensured its value by fixing the means of measuring it. From another legal code written at the end of the 3rd millennium B.C. by a king of the Northern city of Eshnunna the extent can be seen to which the use of silver as money had developed. The Eshnunnan code is more complete than Ur-Nammu's and among its 59 surviving laws the whole range of payments in silver can be seen. Law 1 of the code is an official price list giving the silver value of nine commodities. 1 kor of barley 3 qa of best oil 1 seah 2 qa of sesame oil 1 seah 5 qa of lard 4 seah of river oil 6 mina of wool 2 kor of salt 3 mina of copper 2 mina of refined copper } } } } } each priced at } 1 shekel of silver } } } Other laws described payments like those in Ur-Nammu's code. For example: law 42: If a man bites the nose of another man and severs it, he shall pay 1 mina of silver, for an eye he shall pay 1 mina of silver; for a tooth a 1/2 mina; for an ear a 1/2 mina; and for a slap in the face 10 shekels of silver. The Eshnunna code also includes silver being paid which cannot nowadays be thought of as other than money. Law 21 describes a loan with interest If a man gives silver as a loan at face value he shall receive the silver and its interest, one sixth of shekel and 6 grains per shekel. and law 7 the payment of wages: The wages of a harvester are 2 seah of barley; if they are paid in silver, his wages are 12 grains. Apart from telling us that the price of noses had risen by a 1/3 mina since the time of Ur-Nammu, the Eshnunna code provides a very significant clue as to how money developed in Ancient Mesopotamia. The last law of the code quoted above describes wages as being paid in silver instead of grain. The use of grain to make payments was not unusual in Ancient Mesapotamia. An example in the code of Ur-Nammu, shows it being paid as compensation: Law 28: If a man flooded the field of another man with water, he shall measure out for him 3 kor of barley per iku [c. 0.33 hectare] of land. and the earliest document quoted above, a land lease agreement from the time of Urukagina, records it being paid as rent. Grain was used to make such payments because they all involved either land or labour and therefore either the production or the consumption of grain. It was simple to measure the amount of grain to be paid for the use of a piece of land, or to compensate for its damage, by making the payment a proportion of the potential harvest yielded by the land. A man's labour could also be priced in grain by the amount he and his dependents would consume during the period of work done. The quantity and value of the grain to be paid could be precisely reckoned because official measurements of grain were laid down by Royal edicts such as the Code of Ur-Nammu shows. Does this evidence suggest that grain was also used as money? Where the consumption of the grain paid followed immediately after its receipt, the transaction has to be described as a payment in kind. It can be certain that this normally happened, as barley was the staple food of Mesopotamia. However, some documents suggest that once paid it could be reused in further payments. After it had been laid down the silver price of commodities the Code of Eshnunna, quoted above, added the prices of three of these commodities in terms of barley: Law 2: 1 qa of sesame oil, its value in barley is 3 seah. 1 qa of lard, its value in barley is 2 seah 5 qa. 1 qa of river oil, its value in barley is 8 qa. The same code also describes the payment of barley for the return of a loan and its interest substituting it for the silver in terms of which the loan was negotiated. law 20: If a man gives a loan expressing the value of the silver loaned in barley, he shall at harvest time receive the barley and its interest 1 massiktum 4 seah per kor. The use of grain in these contexts and in those mentioned before show grain being used as money within the terms of the definition used above. When used in payments both social custom and Royal edict provided grain with a convention within which it could be paid out again at a value determined by official measures of volume. In those circumstances it was used in exactly the same manner as silver and the two were often interchangeable as the means of payment, except that silver prices were assessed by weight and grain by volume. Grain's role as money was nevertheless more restricted than that of silver. It was not so easily used for payments outside the context of land and labour. In the price lists of the code of Eshunna grain is only used to set the value of foodstuff, whereas silver is also used to rate wool, salt, and copper. It only substitutes for silver in circumstances where it would normally be expected, i.e. in payments related to the production or consumption of food. In every context the use of grain as money can be explained as a natural expansion of its role in Mesopotamian society as the most important food stuff. Grain was suited to use as money because it was the natural means of assessing the level of payments in these contexts and because the importance of its role as food ensured its acceptability. It is not difficult to see that once Mesopotamian society had developed a broad enough range of situations in which a payment was necessary, the object most widely used to settle such payments was in a position to develop into a form of money. The development of silver into money in Mesopotamia cannot be explained in the same way. It was not a necessity of life and payments relating to its production or consumption rarely arose. Even so by the end of the 3rd millennium B.C. its use as money was broader in range than that of grain even to the extent that payments naturally made in grain could also now be made in silver. An insight into how silver came to be used as money can only be gained by looking at the type of payments in which it was used. The small selection from the vast array of contemporary records of daily life in Ancient Mesopotamia made above show silver being used in many circumstances with examples of it being paid as compensation, rewards, fines, loans, rent, wages, and for the purchase of goods. Starting from use in the payment of compensation an explanation emerges of how silver came to have such a general use as a means of payment. In many non-urban societies it was normal for a person who has caused someone else damage to compensate that person by having the same damage inflicted upon themselves. The biblical "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" (Exodus, 21, 24) is a clear example of this. The Ancient Mesopotamians were aware of this principle and in an exact parallel can be seen in the later Code of Hammurabi king of Babylon (c. 1782-1686 B.C.): Law 196: If a man has destroyed the eye of a member of the aristocracy, they shall destroy his eye. This sort of natural justice could be applied in most situations where one person had an obligation to another. Some of the payments of grain described above can be explained in such a way. Grain was paid as compensation for the damage of land, according to law 28 of Ur Namma's Code because the injury suffered by the land owner was the loss of the grain he would have derived from it if it had not been damaged. The introduction of silver as a means of compensating personal cases of injury can be explained as a humane alternative to exacting payment in kind. It must also have been a more practical solution, as the injured party received his compensation in a form which was of more long term benefit to him than the sense of justice which was all he could have got out of inflicting a similar injury. This was particularly so when it was his property and not his person that was damaged. There were also circumstances in which the injury committed could not be done in return, such as rape or divorce. Both of these offences demanded retribution, but no obvious remedy emerges in either case. The Mesopotamians' solution of using silver greatly simplified such problems. By fixing in their codes of law the rates at which injuries could be settled, the rulers of Mesopotamia not only established (in the words of Ur Nammu's code) "equity in the land", but also provided the simplest possible means of maintaining it. There were various factors which influenced the choice of silver as the means by which payments of not only compensation, but any other obligation, could be settled. The choice had to be of something which was suited by its availability, and its acceptability to function in this way. If payments were to be made in a particular commodity there needed to be enough of it to serve the needs of all the situations where its payment was called for. It also had to be something which the recipients of the payment would have no hesitation in accepting. Silver was precisely the one commodity that fitted such criteria. Silver is not naturally found in quantity in Mesopotamia from earliest times. It was a major import into the area. Together with its natural attributes of beauty and durability, the fact that sources of this metal were limited gave the inhabitants of Mesopotamia a desire to acquire it to adorn their temples, for use as jewellery and as a symbol. This desire led them to import more and more silver into the area, paying for it with the excess natural wealth of Mesopotamia, in particular from its production of food and textiles. Its high value also ensured that only relatively small amounts of the stock of silver were needed to settle any particular obligation. These factors ensured that there was enough of this metal in the Mesopotamian economy for it to fulfill its acquired role as money. Another factor was the ease with which the quantity of silver to be paid could be precisely measured. The Mesopotamians had discovered the use of balances to assess the weight of objects. The weights which had been officially standardised by Urukagina, Ur Nammu and other Mesopotamian rulers, were made to sit on the pan on one side of a balance to estimate the quantity of silver placed in the other pan. Official inscribed weights from before the time of Urukagina have survived. By the use of these weights and balances amounts of silver were measured out from the mina (about 0.5 kilogram) to pay for a nose down to the twelve grains (about 0.5 gram) for a day's work. The mina consisted of 60 shekels and each shekel (about 8.1 gram) of 180 grains. The texts describing payments do not tell us much about the actual appearance of the silver being used. The silver is normally described as being weighed out to make the payment and the amount weighed is specified. Occasionally the silver being paid is referred to as "sibirtum" measuring cut up or broken. One can presume that it was a convenient way to measure out a particular weight of silver by adjusting the amount in the balance by adding or subtracting small bits of silver. This implies that some of the silver used must have originally been in larger pieces so that it could be cut up into smaller bits. To discover what these fragments of silver, and the larger pieces from which they were cut, looked like it is possible to examine a hoard of silver found by American archaeologists at the site (near Baghdad in modern Iraq) of Eshnunna (the city from which the legal code discussed above came). This hoard was found in the remains of a domestic building of about the same period as the code. It contained a large slab shaped ingot of silver, some bent wire and various scraps cut from ingots or wire, also from broken vessels or jewellery. It is impossible to say for certain that this hoard of silver was money, as one could imagine several other reasons why its owner gathered together these bits of silver. He might have been a silversmith preparing to make them back into jewellery or vessels or a thief who had just stolen them from the silversmith. Nevertheless the contemporary documents do show that the objects in this hoard could also have been used as money. The use of scraps has been explained above, what they were derived from was of little importance to the user. Ingots would have been used as this is the form into which silver is normally processed when it has first been refined. The use of wire, however, suggests something more purposeful. Two of these pieces of wire in the hoard are ring shaped and in excavations on ancient Mesopotamian sites a large number of rings like these have been found sometimes in hoards. It has been suggested that these coiled rings of silver wire were made specifically for use as money. There are many cuneiform documents which talk about rings like these being manufactured to weigh so many shekels each and a mathematical text discusses the means of calculating fractions in terms of cutting pieces off rings of silver. In some records of payments on cuneiform tablets from the early second millennium BC the silver used is specified as “ring silver”. It is clear that they do offer a very satisfactory means of using silver as money and as we shall see many other cultures have in fact used metal rings in that way. Their usefulness as money is manifold:- it is reasonably effortless to break a piece off a ring of wire simply by bending it repeatedly or to cut it off by hitting it with a sharp blade, and if the wire is of a known weight and of even thickness it is equally easy to calculate where to break it in order to obtain a required fraction of it. Moreover because the coiled wire can be threaded onto a string or linked together with other rings to make a chain, it is by far the most convenient way of carrying the metal around. The fact that many of the plain wire were metal rings found in Mesopotamia show signs of having had an end cut off again points to their use as money. By the early 2nd millennium B.C. money was such an integral part of Mesopotamian society that the temple treasures had developed into bank like institutions. An eighteenth century B.C. cuneiform tablet documenting a loan from the temple of the sun god Shamash in the city of Sippar illustrates how like modern banks they had become. 5 shekels of pure silver, at the Shamash rate, Idin Rammay, son of Shamash-Mutabli, and his wife Huntani have borrowed from the god Shamash and from Idin-Jatum. When they see the notice on the wall (of the city?) they shall weigh out the silver and its interest to the bearer of this document. (Signed by) 3 witnesses. Date: the month of Elul (mid summer) 35th year of the King's (Hammurabi) rule (i.e. about 1758 B.C.). This loan agreement not only points to the temple treasury investing its capital in order to earn interest, but also suggests that the loan could be transferred to elsewhere to be collected, as it is payable on demand not to the temple, but to the current owner, i.e. bearer of the document. The opening phrase "5 shekels . . . at the Shamash rate" also indicates that the temple controlled the use of money to the extent of providing its own standard weights for the measurement of the silver loaned. All this suggests a very sophisticated appreciation of the intricacies of banking practice on the part of the temple and its officials. It is not difficult for us now to recognise from this and the other cuneiform documents quoted above the degree to which the Mesopotamians had developed the concept of money and its uses by the early 2nd millennium B.C. The extent of their achievement is confirmed by the readiness of nations coming into contact with them, such as the Hittites and Assyrians, to adopt these discoveries. A vivid example of their assimilation by one of the Mesopotamia's neighbours is to be found in the oral traditions of ancient Palestine, preserved in the Bible. The familiarity of the stories in the Bible gives us a ready access into how the ancient peoples of Palestine put into practice the experiences of money they derived from Mesopotamia. By examining some of the episodes in the Bible a literary dimension can be added to the legalistic accounts of the use of money documented in cuneiform on Mesopotamian clay tablets. When Abraham the father of the Jewish race set out in the second millennium B.C. from Ur to seek the new home promised him by his god he took along with him the concepts of money which were then prevalent in his old home. The Bible describes payments made by him after his arrival in Palestine which precisely fits those Mesopotamian practices. When Sarah his wife died Abraham set about acquiring some land in which to bury her. He approached the local people and their leader Ephron agreed to sell him a piece of land for the purpose. Abraham rose and bowed to the ground before the people of the land, the sons of Heth, and spoke to them ‘If you are willing …. Intercede with Ephron Zohar's son to give me the cave he owns at Machpelah, which is on the edge of his land. Let him make it over to me in your presence at its full price, for me to own as a burial plot’ ... Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the sons of Heth(?) and of all the citizens of the town ‘My Lord … I give you the land and I give you the cave on it; I make this gift in the sight of the sons of my people. Bury your dead.’ Abraham ... spoke to Ephron ... ‘I will pay the price of the land; accept it from me’ ... Ephron answered Abraham ‘My Lord listen to me. A property worth 400 shekels of silver, what is a little thing like that between me and you’ ... Abraham agreed to Ephron's terms, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver he had stipulated, in the hearing of the sons of Heth, namely 400 shekels of silver, according to the current commercial rate. (Genesis 17.13) This passage gives a graphic account of the use of money, made credible by the detail preserved in its telling. Removed from Ur, Abraham could no longer rely on the laws of that city to guarantee the receipt of the metal he offers, nor could royal standard weights be used to fix the price. The conventions now controlling his payment of silver were no longer legal but were purely those of social custom. Abraham had to call upon the people present to witness his agreement to make the payment and Ephron's to accept it, and the weights in every day use in trade were those which have to be used to set on price. As in Mesopotamia the silver used was "weighed out". It is significant that the first use of money described in detail in the Biblical tradition was not this sale but a payment of compensation, like those listed in the Mesopotamian legal codes, to Abraham by Abimelech, the local king of Gerar (in southern Palestine). Abimelech deceived into thinking that Sarah was Abraham's sister and therefore free to marry, had taken her as a wife. He was threatened as a consequence with divine retribution and to escape it he handed Sarah back to Abraham saying to her Look I am giving 1,000 pieces of silver to your brother. For you this will be compensation in the eyes of all those with you. (Genesis 20.16) This passage also reveals another aspect of the customary use of silver as a means of payment. The words "1,000 pieces of silver" represent a misinterpretation by the translator, as the original text says "1,000 silver". The ancient Jews were so used to making payments with silver by weight, that the actual weight unit could be left understood. The amount paid by Abimlech should therefore be understood as 1,000 shekels of silver. Similarly, the twenty pieces of silver for which Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery should in fact be 20 shekels of silver (Genesis 37.28). By the time of the Exodus (the late second millennium B.C.) the Jews can be seen from Biblical tradition to have developed the use of silver and money in much the same way as their neighbours in Mesopotamia. The details of the laws by which the Jews lived contain examples of legal compensation virtually identical to those in the Code of Ur Nammu and Eshnunna. If a man meets a virgin, who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her and is caught in the act the man who has lain with her must give the girl's father 50 shekels. (Deuteronomy 22.28-29) If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner must pay over to their master a sum of money -30 shekels and the ox must be stoned. (Exodus 21,32) The laws also insisted on the use of fair standards for the weighing of the silver used in payments. Your measures - length, weight and capacity - must all be just, your scales and weights must be just (Leviticus 19.35) and warned against breaches of the convention: You are not to keep two different weights in your bag, one heavy, one light . . . you must keep the weights full and accurate. For anyone who does things of this kind and acts dishonestly is detestable to Yahweh our God. (Deuteronomy 25.13) At a later date (8th century B.C.) Yahweh himself added his own voice, via the prophet Micah, to uphold the conventions within which money was used. Must I hold the man honest who measures with false scales and a bag of faked weights (Micah 6.11) To guard against such malpractice the Temple set its own weight standards and 13th century legal texts contained in the Bible stipulated that the Temple standard alone should be used in monetary transactions All valuations must be made in sanctuary shekels. (Leviticus 27.25) Evidence in the Bible about the form in which silver was used is very meagre, but gives concrete evidence of the payment of both scrap silver and gold rings. Influence from Mesopotamia suggests that the same scraps, ingots and rings were in use and a hoard found in Northern Palestine at the ancient site of Megiddo confirms it. This hoard is datable on archaeological grounds to the same period as the laws quoted above. It contains a large quantity of scraps, cut from vessels, jewellery, ingots and wire rings. Some biblical references to the use of silver as money of a slightly later date can also be interpreted to correspond with the use of scraps like these. The Hebrew word agorot translated as piece in the following 11th century B.C. text implies a twentieth part of a shekel. And all that survive of your house will come and beg him on their knees for a silver piece or a loaf of bread. (I Samuel 2.36) The implication here is that the silver being sought is a tiny amount, of a value comparable to a loaf. Another text of the same period talks of a similar, but slightly larger piece of silver And the servant answered Saul. 'Look' he said 'I have a quarter of a shekel here; I will give it to the man of God and he shall tell us our road' (I Samuel 9.8) The wide use of silver in this form is further illustrated by a 9th century B.C. account of the Temple's income and expenditure which describes the acceptance of small pieces of silver as offerings from the faithful. Jehoiada the priest procured a chest, bored a hole in the lid of it, and placed it beside the pillar, to the right as you enter the Temple of Jahweh; in it the priests who guarded the threshold put all the money that was given to the Temple of Yahweh. Whenever they saw there was a lot of money in the chest, the king's secretary would come and they would melt down and reckon the money there in the Temple of Yahweh. (2 Kings 12 5-16) In only two instances does the Bible mention precious metal rings specifically as being given in payment, and they are rings of gold not silver. At the end of the story of Job his relations and friends restore to him his wealth each giving him a piece of silver and a gold ring. There is no mention of the value of the rings here, but in the other reference to rings their weight is specified. This is in Genesis where the story is told of Abraham's sending out his servant to look for a suitable wife for his son Isaac. When the servant found Rebekah he bestowed on her gifts from Abraham The man took a gold ring weighing half a shekel, and put it through her nostrils, and put on her arms two bracelets weighing ten gold shekels …" (Genesis 24.22) However without further details it is difficult to conclude that in either of these payments were the rings paid as money, even though in the second case the value of the rings is indicated. There is, however, much more concrete evidence from the neighbouring land of Egypt that precious metal rings were used as money in the ancient Middle East. Most of this evidence comes from Ancient Egyptian monumental inscriptions of the period of Pharaoh Thutmosis III (1504-1450 B.C.) of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The official chronicle of the reign of this Pharaoh, inscribed in hieroglyphics on the temple of Amon at Karnak, describes the capture of a huge treasure of gold and silver from cities to the north of Palestine. List of that which was afterwards taken by the king, of the household goods of that foe who was in Yenoan, Nug and Herenkeru [in modern Lebanon] … Besides flat dishes of costly stone and gold … amounting to 784 deben. Gold in rings, found in the hands of the artificers, and silver in many rings, 966 deben and 1 kidet. The deben and kidet mentioned in this text are measurements of weight. The deben is generally thought to weigh about 95 grams and the kidet (kite) is its tenth weighing about 9.5 grams. The word deben is written with a hieroglyph in the form of a coiled ring, possibly to indicate that this unit was used to weigh metal in that form. Another monument of the period of Thutmosis III provides illustrations of both the payment and the weighing of rings of gold and silver in ancient Egypt. The walls of the tomb of Reck-mi-re Vizier of the Pharaoh Thutmosis III are adorned with a written and pictorial record of his duties as a principle officer of the state. Reck-mi-re is shown there conducting the affairs of state accepting tribute from the foreign vassals and taxes from the subjects of the Pharaoh. Missions from Syria, Crete and from Libya are pictured in procession bringing offerings of native produce to the Pharaoh including precious metals, both gold and silver in rings and bars as well as ingots of copper. Another procession is depicted showing local officials and their attendants bringing tax payments to the Vizier. The inscriptions record the title of the official responsible for paying in tax and the amounts due. The Mayor of Nekken 4 deben of gold 3 deben of silver 1 ox 1 two year old (cow) The Rural Councillor of Nekken 3 deben of gold 1 gold necklace 2 oxen 4 chest of mt linen 1 chest of d'w linen The town ruler of Esneh 12 deben of gold 8 deben of silver 2 oxen 3 chests of cloth grain gum matting The paintings show the described items being delivered. The precious metals are painted in the form of rings. The numbers of rings shown does not correspond with the number of debens, nor does the colour always match that of the metal described. The town ruler of Esneh's contribution is pictured as 5 gold rings and 3 silver, that of the Rural Counsellor of Nekken as 3 gold rings and of its Mayor as 6 gold rings. The painting also shows the Vizier supervising the receipt of these payments into the treasury where the gold and silver rings are shown being weighed on a balance. The text of the inscriptions refers to the gold and silver being measured according to "the tribute weight" suggesting that, as in Mesopotamia and Palestine, the state dictated a particular weight standard to be used in the measurement of metal for payment. The metals paid here have all the attributes of money except that it is not clear whether they were to be used in future payments. The only use of the metal shown in the tomb is for the manufacture of vessels. However, from the tomb of another servant of Thutmosis III there is a glimpse of the way in which the Pharoah might have paid out the previous metal once again. On the walls of the tomb of Thutmosis III's general Amenemhab it is recorded that I fought hand to hand before the king (in the battle of Senzas). He gave me the gold of honour; list thereof ... 2 silver rings ... (and after the capture of Kadess) He gave me gold, because of bravery, before the whole people ... of the finest gold a lion, 2 necklaces, 2 flies (?) 4 arm rings. A hoard of gold and silver buried in Egypt at this period survives as an illustration of the sort of gold and silver objects with which payments could be made. The hoard was found by archaeologists in a pot on the site of the ancient city founded by the Pharaoh Akenaten (c. 1370-1360 B.C.). Because of this a precise date for the hoard can be fixed at this city was abandoned shortly after this Pharaoh's death. Its contents were remarkably like those of the hoards of silver from Mesopotamia and Palestine described above, except that it contains gold as well as silver. The gold in the pot was in the form of bar shaped ingots. Several of the ingots were complete but many were cut fragments from larger ingots. The ingots were not cast to an accurate weight standard, but all the more complete ones seem to weigh about 3 deben, as six of them are concentrated around that weight (c. 280 grams, within a range 265-286 grams). Two of the fragments are rough halves of this, i.e. 1 deben 5 kite (c. 140 gr.) and six are approximate thirds, i.e. 1 deben (c. 95 gr.). The original bars and the cut-up fractions are not very precise in their weights, but they seem to have been intended to represent given amounts of metal. Some of the silver is in the form of ingots like the gold weighing approximately 3 and 5 deben or their fractions and some consist of scraps of broken vessels and jewellery, but the rest is in the shape of wire rings about 40 in number. A few of the rings seem, from ornamentation on them, to be pieces of jewellery, but the majority are the same coil-shaped pieces of thick plain wire seen in the hoards from Mesopotamia and Palestine. Most of the rings have had their ends cut off, but several still represent approximate weights - 5 kite, 3 1/2 kite, 3 kite, 1 kite, 1/2 kite, etc. From this hoard and from the texts and wall paintings mentioned above, it is therefore clear that in the 18th dynasty the ancient Egyptians had all that was necessary to run a monetary system like that of Ancient Mesopotamia or Biblical Palestine. The limited nature of documents of the 18th dynasty period restricts our present day view of the extent to which the metals were then paid as money. Information from the 19th and 20th dynasties fills that gap and shows clearly the range and the nature of the every day use of weighed amounts of metal as a means of making payments. A papyrus document (the Papyrus Harris) of this period has preserved the official report of offerings made by the 20th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramases III (about 11981166 B.C.) to Amun, Ptah and the other gods of the Egyptian pantheon. It records that the gold, silver and copper paid over to the temple of each god by the pharaoh, stating the amount of each metal by weight in deben and the form in which it was given, as either vessels, rings or scraps. But even more significant is a papyrus in the British Museum, datable to the 20th Dynasty, containing several references to the payment of silver and gold which can only be described as monetary payments in terms of the definition described above. This papyrus is a lengthy account of the court proceedings in two cases of tomb robbery. The defendants in both cases were accused of removing gold, silver and other precious materials from ancient tombs. Part of the cross-examination of the witnesses was to prove that they had recently been overspending and therefore must have been in possession of amounts of gold and silver beyond normal expectations. One witness Irinufer, the wife of Peinehesi one of the robbers, is questioned about the purchase of a slave with some of the silver from the tomb. They said to her ‘What have you to say about this silver which your husband Peinehesi brought away (from the great tombs).’ She said ‘I did not see it’. The Vizier said to her ‘How did you buy the servants along with him?’ She said ‘I did not see any silver: he bought them when he was about that business on which he was engaged’. The court said to her, ‘What is this story of the silver which Peinehesi worked for Sebkemsaf?’ She said ‘I got it in exchange for barley in the year of the hyenas when there was a famine’ (11.5-8) In spite of her denials it is clear that the court thought it normal that she and her husband should have paid out the stolen silver to buy the slave they have recently required. They are also suspected of having passed on another amount of silver. Her claim that she had obtained that silver by selling barley for it also indicates that such practice was normal. Elsewhere in this papyrus there is further evidence that such payments were considered routine. Another defendant was accused of using silver to buy a slave and the slave was called as witness and testifies "he gave 2 deben of silver for one". Bukhaaf the ring leader of one gang of robbers admitted to his crime and lists how he disposed of the loot: The whereabouts of the herdsman Bukhaaf's share of the silver: (to) The overseer of the field of the temple of Amun Akhenmenu: 1 deben of silver and 5 kite of gold in exchange for land. (to) The scribe Amenhotpe called Seret of the temple of Amun: 2 deben in exchange for land, for 40 deben of copper and for 10 khar of barley. (to) The servant Shedbeg in payment for the slave Begay: 2 deben of silver and 60 deben of copper and 30 khar of spelt [i.e. grain] which I had procured in exchange for silver …" Another witness describes the spending of some of the silver on what sounds like a party to celebrate the success of the robbery He said the thief, the young slave Amenkhan, son of Mutemhab, gave 5 kite of silver to Oshefitemwes the scribe of the steward of Amun in exchange for a [illegible word for amount] of wine: we took it to the house of the overseer of peasants and we put two hin of honey to it and we drank it. According to another witness the honey was also bought with the stolen silver. The thief Amenkhan gave 1 deben 5 kite of silver to the incense roaster Penementenakht in exchange for 1 mezekt of honey. This by no means exhausts the incidents of payments made with silver and gold in the text. From this document a general impression emerges that, although the amount of silver and gold being spent drew attention to the robbers, there was no question of the court thinking it unusual that metal was used in payments or that it should be measured in those payments by its weight. The silver and gold used in the circumstances described here can, therefore, be described as money. The range and nature of payments both in this papyrus and in the monumental inscriptions discussed above show that the Ancient Egyptians had developed the conventions necessary for creating money and were capable of using them. From other records dated to the early 19th Dynasty it can be seen that the official used silver and gold for payments strengthened the conventions which gave rise to money. A monument of this period of the Pharaoh Seti I records the use of precious metal to pay for the costs of work at a stone quarry at Silsileh: The overseer Thutmosis ... gave silver and gold ... to prosecute his work ... to cut out very much stone. Inspite of their knowledge of money as shown in records, the Ancient Egyptians encountered a major problem in its practical application. This was a general shortage of the commodities chosen to be used as money. Egypt had few natural sources of gold, silver or copper, and most of those metals had to be imported. What little there was tended to be drawn into the official treasury, as the tomb paintings of Rekhmire so clearly show. Once in the hands of the Pharaoh and his officials it was mostly used to make jewellery, vessels, etc., to enrich their gods, their court, and particularly their tombs. Gold and silver in the hands of the common people, was unusual and as in the case of the tomb robbers, was immediately noticed. Records of the 19-20th Dynasties (c. 1320-1085 B.C.) survive which show us how the common people coped with this situation. Money was used by them, but only as an idea. Most payments made among the populace were in kind. They were paid their wages from the state in the form of their staple diet, grain -emmer a form of wheat to make bread and barley to make beer, and occasionally they would receive luxury goods as rewards for outstanding service. In order to acquire anything else they either had to produce it on small holdings or obtain it through trade. Trade was conducted by barter, but their knowledge of money gave the barter a curious aspect. The value of the goods being bartered would be estimated in terms of money. The word they used for "money" was silver, but the valuation could be made in terms of gold, silver or copper by weight or even in terms of grain by volume. Year 5 third month of the summer season day 20. Given to Hay by the chief policeman Nebsman. 1 head of cattle makes 120 deben (of copper) Given to Nebsmen 2 pots of fat makes 60 deben 5 shirts of smooth fabric - makes 25 deben 1 dress of Upper Egypt cloth makes 20 deben 1 hide - makes 15 deben [total 120 deben] A large number of documents like this one survive from this period of the 19th and 20th Dynasties, mostly found in excavations of the homes of the workers on the Royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings at Der el Medina. They record a variety of exchanges, mostly like the one quoted, but some referring more explicitly to the valuations as monetary. The goods being exchanged would be described as the “list of the money which the buyer gave” or “the total money which the buyer gave” The word for money was silver, even when the values were expressed in copper, as in the following document which described the repayment of a loan: Amount of money [literally silver] of the workman, Penné which is with Shedemdei 76 deben of copper. (There has already) come to him (i.e. Penné) 54 deben. His remainder (still) to be given to him 22 in order to complete the amount of money [silver] of Shedemdei. She has brought to Penné in money [silver] 54 deben of copper. Her remainder to complete is 22. Although the document implies that it was copper being loaned and repaid, it is equally likely that consumable goods of one kind were loaned and of another kind paid back. The picture of daily life in Der el Medina created by these documents suggests that virtually all payments were made in kind. The workers receive their wages in the form of food and all purchases were made by barter. Occasionally the goods bartered were copper scraps, valued by their weight, but they ranked in the exchanges alongside the other goods being traded. The documents were merely a formalised record of payments in kind. Money was known to the common people but not needed in their everyday exchanges. They did however have a need to record, perhaps for legal purposes, the details of the exchanges. The scribes who recorded the payments needing to define them precisely, gave the value of the goods paid an officially recognised status, so that future disputes could be resolved fairly. The records of an ancient court case, surviving on a papyrus in the Cairo Museum, show why such valuations were necessary. In a dispute over the ownership of goods used to make the purchase of a Syrian girl slave from a merchant, the defendant, Irinofret, a townswoman, was able to describe in detail how she bought the girl and give a precise account of what she gave. The merchant Reia approached me with the Syrian slave Gemnihiamente, he said to me: ‘Bring this girl and give me a price for her.’ And I purchased the girl and gave him a price for her. I will now state in front of the authorities the price I gave for her: 1 shroud of Upper Egyptian cloth makes 5 kite of silver 1 blanket of Upper Egyptian cloth makes 3 1/3 kite of silver 1 garment of Upper Egyptian cloth makes 4 kite of silver 3 garments of fine Upper Egyptian cloth makes 5 kite of silver Bought from the woman Kafy: 1 vessel of bronze, makes [i.e. weighing] 18 deben makes [i.e. valued at] 1 2/3 kite of silver. Bought from the head of the storehouse Pyiay: 1 vessel of bronze, makes 14 deben makes 1 1/2 kite of silver. Bought from the priest Huy-Pinhas: 10 deben of beaten copper(?) makes 1 kite of silver. Bought from the priest Aniy: 1 vessel of bronze, makes 16 deben makes 1 1/2 kite of silver 1 vessel of honey, makes [i.e. holding] 1 kekat makes 5 kite of silver Bought from the woman Tjuiay: 1 cauldron of bronze, makes 20 deben makes 2 kite of silver Bought from the steward of the house of Amun, Teti(?) 1 vessel of bronze, makes 20 deben makes 2 kite of silver 10 shirts of fine Upper Egypt clothmakes 4 kite of silver Total 4 deben 1 kite of silver consisting of all the things. And I gave it to the merchant Rua(?) ... he gave me this girl ... Irinofret was asked to swear an oath that she had not used any property belonging to a woman called Bekmut to make the purchase. As Amun endures and the Prince endures, if witnesses establish against me that there was any property belonging to the woman Bekmut in the silver which I gave for this servant and I have concealed it I will be liable to 100 strokes after being deprived of her. The end of the papyrus is missing so we do not know who won the dispute, but a clear picture does emerge from this text of the way in which the concept of money was used to describe what was clearly an exchange by barter. The use of money as an idea in these documents of the second half of the second millennium B.C. seems to represent a very sophisticated development, however there is evidence that this practice had already been developed in Egypt a thousand years before. On a stone monument found near the pyramids at Giza there is an inscription which appears to be the earliest record of a monetary transaction from Egypt. It is an agreement made before witnesses of the sale of a house. … I have purchased this building by exchange with the scribe Tenti and I gave for it 10 "pieces":an item of furniture made of ani wood 3 "pieces" a bed made of first quality cedar 4 "pieces" an item of furniture made of sycamore wood - 3 "pieces" … … Sealed with the seal before the tribunal of the town of Khouit Khoufou and in the presence of witnesses of the tribe of Kemaponat of Tenti ... The word "piece" in this text seems to be an early version of the word sniw found in later texts meaning a measurement of metal by weight equal to 1/12 deben. The close similarity between the hieroglyph used to write this word and that used for an Egyptian word for cake suggests that this amount of silver or gold was usually thought of as a cake-shaped ingot, in the same way that the coiled ring shaped hieroglyph used in writing the word deben is a pointer to the probability that a deben of precious metal was normally thought of in the form of a ring. This inscription therefore, expects its reader to note that the goods offered for exchange by both parties to the argument were equal in value. The reader was also aware that this value could be determined in relation to money which took the form of silver (or gold) by weight. The presence at the transaction of witnesses indicates that a socially binding convention existed to guarantee the legality of the exchange. So, although the sale was not made with actual money, it does provide clear evidence that the idea of money was already known in Egypt at the time it took place. This document is not dated, but the style of its writing and language and its discovery in an Old Kingdom context at Giza has led to it being dated to the period of the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2345-2180 B.C.) or earlier. If this dating is credible it indicates that, like their neighbours in Mesopotamia the ancient Egyptians were already making use of the idea of money in the form of weighed amounts of precious metal by the second half of the 3rd millennium B.C. A remarkably full picture of money as it came to be used early in the history of human society emerges from these early documents of the ancient civilisations of the Middle East. It does not, however, do more than hint at the stages through which its development had already gone before these records. The earlier history of money can only be recreated from later evidence, by examining its role in the many societies with more primitive cultures and less developed economies, which continued to flourish alongside these great civilisations, some even surviving into modern times. Travellers' reports of these societies, together with their own literary traditions, provide plenty of evidence on which to build a view of money's origins. Some of the evidence, such as the oral literatures of the Greeks takes the story back into the 2nd millennium B.C. to a period close in time to the stages of money's development reflected in the early written documents. Recent evidence, even when it is from societies still flourishing today, can however, be of equal importance in achieving an understanding of the early history and origins of money. This is particularly the case when it has been collected by scholars who have a special interest in the study of primitive economies. This evidence can be put together to create an understanding of how money might have begun and how it was brought to the stage it had reached when the ancient peoples of the Middle East first came to record their own experiences of money. Joe Cribb Published in La Banca Premonetale, editor Guido Crapanzano, Milan 2004 (www.artvalley.it), pp. 79–122 (Italian translation: pp. 35–78)