Reconstructing the Origins of Interest-Bearing Debt

This third volume in our ISCANEE (International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economics) / ISLET (Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends) series places the phenomenon of interest-bearing debt in its historical context by tracing its dynamics from Sumer down through the neo-Babylonian epoch, and relating what is known about early Egypt, Nuzi and other neighboring regions. Our objective is to explain how commercial and agrarian debt came to be incorporated into the DNA structure of modern economies. Also examined is the logic underlying the Clean Slates that liberated bondservants and restored to cultivators the rights to the land and crops on which creditors had foreclosed. By annulling the overhang of crop debts and related personal indebtedness, these royal edicts reversed the most adverse consequences of agrarian usury. Their prototypes are found in Lagash by its rulers Enmetena c. 2400, Urukagina c. 2350 and Gudea c. 2150, but such proclamations are found above all in second-millennium Babylonia in the face of palace collectors and other creditors reducing family members to bondage and taking their lands. These "restorations of order" became quite elaborate, culminating in the Edict of Ammisaduqa in 1646. They are echoed down through the Jubilee Year of Leviticus, which took them out of the hands of kings and placed them at the center of religious law as part of the Mosaic Covenant. Kindred Egyptian policies are reflected in inscriptions as late as the Ptolemaic-era Rosetta Stone (196 BC), although rather than showing a common pattern of development, the Egyptian material shows how unique Mesopotamian practices were.