prices in hellenistic babylonia

Prices in Hellenistic BabyloniaAuthor(s): John D. GraingerSource: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 42, No. 3 (1999), pp.303-325Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3632393 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 11:31

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

BRILL is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Economic andSocial History of the Orient.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.109 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 11:31:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bap

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3632393?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


PRICES IN HELLENISTIC BABYLONIA

BY

JOHN D. GRAINGER (Evesham, U.K.)

Abstract

A record of prices of basic commodities from Hellenistic Babylonia, even though incom- plete, provides unusually detailed information about economic conditions there. From these prices, particularly for food, it is possible to derive conclusions concerning price levels and standards of living over a period of three centuries or so. The Seleucid period is revealed as one of high prosperity, building on a previous advance, but it was followed by a fall in living standards during the first century of Parthian rule.

The Sources

The recent publication of a collection of 'Astronomical Diaries', almost entirely from Babylon, is more important than its title suggests.') Included in

many of the documents are nuggets of information on other subjects, including public events. Above all, many of the diaries also contain records of the prices paid for basic commodities, particularly food, in the Babylon market.

The diarists' main purpose was to record astronomical information, the posi- tions of stars and planets, the dates of their rising and falling, and so on; this has had the incidental advantage of allowing a precise dating to be assigned to each diary, even when the exact date does not actually appear in the record. The records were made on a daily basis, then consolidated into a monthly record, and it was this which was recorded on the clay tablets which have been

preserved, each holding a year's data. It was the consistent practice of the diarists to add a statement of prices at the time the diary was made, usually on a monthly basis, though at times a more frequent record was kept, even on occasion daily. In other cases the tablet records prices 'at the beginning of the

month', at the middle, and at the end. It is clear that detailed notes were kept of these prices for entry in the annual summary, just as notes were made of the movements of the stars and planets. These records are, that is to say, as near

1) Sachs and Hunger 1988-1989-1996; other volumes are promised, but will not apparently provide more information on prices.

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1999 JESHO 42,3



304 JOHN D. GRAINGER

to contemporary documentation as one would find in an annual report of any government department today.

Needless to say, there are gaps in the record, for there have been casualties among the tablets. The earliest tablet with prices which survives is dated to 566 BC, but there are only four tablets altogether before 382.2) From then on, however, until 60 BC, there are records of varying completeness for 162 of the years, which is approximately one year in two. However, for no single year is there a full record, and sequences of years are rare. Further, within any one year the record of the prices is intermittent, partly due to damage to the tablets. It is, therefore, not possible to construct a sequence of prices for any lengthy and continuous period of time.

The diarists recorded prices for six goods which were evidently normally on sale, and they did so, quite remarkably, for no less than five centuries; and the formula used in the earliest tablet with prices to survive, of 566, is exactly the same as that used in the latest to survive, of 60. This is a bureaucratic record which would be the envy of any civil service, considering that it is likely that the number of successive scribes making these records must have been in the region of at least fifty individuals, and perhaps more.

The six goods whose prices are listed included five foods. Barley and dates were the basic foods of the Babylonian population, and it is the prices of these which are tracked most closely, with prices several times noted at different parts of the month. Two other foods recorded were used as spices: mustard seeds and cress seeds.3) Sesame, from the seeds of which an oil was extracted and used in cooking, and in other ways, was the fifth food. The sixth commodity recorded was wool, the basis for most Babylonian clothing, sacks, sails, fabrics, and so on.

I have referred so far to 'prices', but what the diarists were actually recording was quantities: volumes for the foods and weight for the wool. In all cases the record is of the quantity of the good which could be bought by the expen- diture of one shekel of silver. Thus the price is constant, while the amount it would buy is the variable in the equation. This is, of course, the reverse of modern price indices, which list a quantity of goods and then work out the price which would be needed to pay for them. The Babylonian system is the more

2) In what follows I have ignored the three earliest tablets, dated 566, 463 and 453 BC; the earliest taken into regular consideration is 418; also the two latest, of 62 and 60 are too fragmentary for use, so the effective last in the series is of 73 BC.

3) 'Cress' is the conventional translation; it is not the watercress of modern salads, but perhaps cardamom: compare CAD, sv sahlu, and Stol 1982/1983; the exact translation is not important here, since the same commodity, whatever it was, is noted each time. It would be good to know exactly what it was, though.



PRICES IN HELLENISTIC BABYLONIA 305

logical, and provides a much clearer perception of the supply situation, which was the main problem in periods of relatively poor transport. Further, the Babylonian system provides a direct comparison across time, for there was an absolute consistency in one element of the equation. The modern system of revising the contents of the 'package' of goods on the basis of their availability and the development of new consumer goods, is a product of modern industri- alization. It is, perhaps, more sophisticated, and yet it makes proper comparisons across time impossible. It is also a product of a time when there has been a continuing inflation of the money supply, as well as rapid change in the goods available for purchase. This is a matter I shall return to in the Babylonian con- text. All in all, it seems quite clear that the Babylonian diarists knew what they were doing.

The formula employed in the diaries sometimes begins explicitly: 'The equivalent of one shekel of silver was. ..'. This is clear enough. The formula remained the same, however, until well after the introduction of coins, silver and bronze, to Babylonia, and their widespread use. That such coins were used, and that values were calculated in terms of coins, is shown by the numerous records of civil contracts, known especially from Uruk, in which prices were always quoted in cash terms.4) The long period during which the successive scribal diarists maintained their old terminology is a testimony to their tradition and to its power, but it must raise the issue of the credibility of their records.

Once raised, the issue of credibility seems immediately to be solved, merely by considering what the records consist of. The men who made the records were trained to produce observations, primarily of the movements of stars and planets-there were frequent records which indicate that the writer was also the observer-but also of prices. The whole purpose of their records was accuracy, for without precise and accurate detail the exercise was futile. The collection of data on prices was admittedly secondary to the diarists' main purpose-though only just; it was pursued consistently for all that time and was thus presumably part of the intention from the inception of the practice. That was to record the astronomical observations, and it was pursued for as long as these observations were made. The presumption is thus overwhelming that these records are accurate, within the limits of the scribal diarists' individual abilities. Further, since they were private records, there would be no advantage and little purpose for the scribes to record invented or inaccurate figures. It would be easier not to record them at all.

4) Collections of these documents are numerous. The dissertation by Doty 1977, is one of the most comprehensible. All too many of these documents are buried in the original script and language even when printed.




The other problem, which was briefly anticipated above, lies in the value of the shekel of silver. It is widely believed that the Hellenistic period,.at least in its earlier decades, was a time of inflation, produced by the sudden release of the stored wealth of the Achaimenids onto the international money market, above all by Alexander, but also by his immediate successors, and that this inflation was succeeded by a deflation which brought the value of money back to its pre-Alexander level by c. 200 BC.5) The evidence for this inflation is rather sketchy, and is largely confined to Greece, where a particular type of inflation, affecting the copper coinage, but not, apparently silver, has been detected,6) though some figures have also been collected from Egypt.7) It cannot, however, be said to have been proved that there was inflation everywhere, and in fact the prices recorded by these Babylonian priests demonstrate the opposite-but for Babylon only. Yet, in fact, the issue scarcely arises, because of the method employed by the scribes. By keeping their basic measure at a constant--one shekel of silver-they have avoided having their data affected by any inflation which may have taken place: one shekel of silver, whether in ingot form or coined, or even as a notional accounting symbol (which is perhaps what it was all along), remained a shekel.

The quantities of goods which the shekel would buy were expressed in kur, pan, sut and qa. In this system 1 kur = 5 pan, 1 pan = 6 sut and 1 sut = 6 qa. For ease of understanding and reference, I have reduced all quantities to qa (180 qa made 1 kur).8) Wool is always quoted in minas, occasionally in shekels (60 shekels = 1 mina),9) and I have left it so. No attempt has been made to con- vert these quantities into modern measures, which would be a pointless exercise, since the goods are scarcely what one would purchase now. The main purpose is, as the Babylonian diarists clearly understood, to provide comparisons with earlier times, internal comparisons, that is. Therefore a single basic reference for capacity (in qa), for weight (in minas), and for the purchasing agent (the shekel of silver), is all that is required.

Finally, it must be emphasised that, in considering the figures it is necessary to keep in mind all the time that they represent quantities, and that therefore a larger quantity shows a decrease in the price; an increase in the price is shown by a reduction in the quantity purchasable.

5) Tarn 1923. 6) Tarn 1923, pp. 115-125, referring to Glotz 1913, for his data; Reger 1994 is a more

comprehensive and recent study of Delos prices. 7) Segre 1942; Reekmans 1949 and 1951. 8) And 1 qa is approximately 0.9 litres. 9) 1 mina is about half a kilogram.




Short-Term Variations

The intermittent nature of the records makes impossible the compilation of the ideal price record, which would be a sequence of prices at monthly inter- vals over a period of years. Indeed, there is no single year for which records are complete, and there are only occasional periods in which successive years' records are preserved. However, it is possible to locate several sequences of prices over a number of months, and it is also possible to isolate a few examples of prices recorded for the same month over two or three successive or near- successive years. There are also, of course, several sequences within single months, and several occasions where daily price movements are recorded within a single month.

These sequences provide some indication of the movement of prices during the year, and of the variations between years. In combination these can provide short runs of prices, sometimes a number within a month, sometimes several over consecutive months. I will consider the six commodities in turn.

The two most important foods were barley and dates, the staples of the Baby- lonian diet. For barley, a considerable number of sequences survives, more indeed than for any other commodity, a reflection of the greater assiduity with which barley prices were collected. These sequences are scattered more or less regularly through the whole period. As a first example I quote the prices for 418:

418 Barley Month I II III IV 24 24 30 34 23 18 36 31

24

(In all tables, the prices are in qa per shekel (except wool), and successive prices in the month are listed vertically. One of the prices in Month II of 418 is unusual in that the silver price is quoted as one-and-one-eighth shekels, a method only repeated once more.)

As it happens, this particular sequence covers the period of the harvest, which in Babylonia took place in May (Months II/III). Not surprisingly the prices show a rise (that is, a fall in the quantity purchasable) in Month II, just before the harvest and a drop in price during the harvest period (Month III). And then there is a slow rise in price in June and July (Month IV). The range of the prices is similarly not surprising: the lowest price of 36 qa per shekel is half the highest pre-harvest price of 18 qa.

At the other end of the period, the sequence of barley prices for 77 BC is:




77 Barley Month III IV V VI VII 40 40 40 45.5 42 38.875

(40?) 40 54.5 40 37.875

This is the summer, June to August, and October, the period following the harvest, and the prices have a considerable fluctuation, falling from 40 qa at the start of Month III to nearly 55 in the middle of the month, and rising again to hover about 40 into Month V; the one price is Month VII is lower, but about the average for Month III.

The conclusion to be drawn from these two sets of figures is that the barley prices constantly fluctuated-not a surprising idea, of course. The price changes can be detected at all times of the year, not just at harvest. The sequence for 346-345 is:

346-345 Barley Month IX X XI XII 103 114 117 120 108+ 120 69

where there is a doubling of the price over these months. Similarly in 137-136 two sequences are preserved, at each end of the year:

137-136 Barley Month II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X 84 81 63 51 54 78 60 48 57 72 54

50+

And the best single month sequence is from 119, where twelve prices from Month I are as follows:

119 Barley Month I: 30, 27, 25.5, 24, 27, 28, 42, 45, 39, 45, 48, 66

From all these sequences--and in not less than thirty-two years sequences of at least three consecutive prices are preserved, of which the above are typical samples-two clear patterns emerge. One is that a constant price for barley for one month, or even one week, was highly unlikely, and so price instability was to the norm. The other pattern is that the one likely powerful effect in any particular direction was the May harvest.

The other staple food, dates, does not provide anything like so clear a pattern as barley. The crucial months in this case are VIII and IX (mostly October and November), when the date harvest was gathered. There are four sequences




which cover prices over this period, and all are consistent in displaying a reduction in price: in 163-162 there is a series of ten prices over the harvest period:

163-162 Dates Month VIII IX X 312 306 288 306 294 294 276 252+ 300 268

here a rise in price at the start was reversed by the end. On the other hand in 278-277, the prices were:

278-277 Dates Month VII VIII IX 180 180 120

a rise in the harvest period, while in 197-196 the price throughout Months VIII to X was steady as 36.

In other parts of the year the pattern is one of constant fluctuation. In 345, at the end of the year, the price varied:

345 Dates Month X XI XII 150 144 144

150 127 138

and in 133 the same period shows the same variety:

133 Dates Month XI XII 342 261 324+ 252 270 216 252 260

This pattern, or lack of it, is evident throughout the record. There are fewer sequences for the other products whose prices were recorded,

and diligence in collecting those prices was less. Yet the pattern of constant fluctuation is always present. The longest sequence for mustard is in 278-277:

278-277 Mustard Month IV V VI VII VIII IX 72 56 56 270 270 360

and a sequence of five prices in 346-345 is:

346-345 Mustard Month IX X XI XII 720 720 720 1080

900




For cress the longest sequence is in 77:

77 Cress Month II III IV V VI 6 6 9 7.5 6

9 5.5

Nearly three centuries earlier, in 346-345, at the other end of the year:

346-345 Cress Month IX X XI XII 36+ 42 48 60

The harvest for the type of cress which produced these seeds took place about Month VII (with sowing about six months before).10) Four sequences commence with Month VII, of which two have a level price for the three months following, 30 qa in 232 and 24 in 193, while a fall in price (after a month's gap) took place in 140, and a rise followed by a gap in 197.

Sesame was another crop harvested in Months VII and VIII, though an early planting could also produce an early crop in Months V and VI.") This regime would clearly spread the price reaction to the harvest over a considerable period. Thus this is the sequence for 278:

278 Sesame Month IV V VI VII 15 24 30 36

This pattern, or one similarly demonstrating the effect of the harvest, is seen in several other years (234, 232, 170). It may also be seen in the single month for which figures are known in 118:

118 Sesame Month VII: 7.5, 6.625, 6.5, 7,5, 9

Otherwise the same fluctuation which is discerned in the other foods was present in the sesame prices. As an example the figures for three months in 90-89 are:

90-89 Sesame Month VIII IX X 12 11.25 9

10 10 10.5 9 8.5 8

11.5

10) Stol 1982/1983. 11) Stol 1985.




By contrast with the general instability of the prices for all these foods, the prices for wool have a startling lack of movement in many year sequences. Of the fifteen sequences which can be detected (not all of them continuous) only half show any change at all, in 291/290, 234/233, 209/208, 170/169, 137, 129 and 119, and even then the change revealed is very minor and gradual; in the others the same price was being charged in all the months in any one sequence, at all times of the year: in 77, over five months, in 418/417, 346/345, 278/277, and 197/196 the price did not change at all over four months, nor in 322/321, 144 or 140 over three. The explanation would seem to lie in the nature of the commodity. The wool crop, like barley, is an annual product, but it does not need to be sent to market at any particular time of the year. Indeed, depending on how much processing the raw wool underwent before its sale, it may have been several months before the crop from any one flock was sold. So wool prices tend to be stable, and even when change appeared it was slow. These examples are all sufficiently similar to show a very slow price change within any one year.

The purpose of this somewhat tedious exercise is to emphasise that prices were never steady, nor that they moved only gradually. The conclusion to be drawn from these sequences is that prices of food fluctuated constantly within very short periods of time. To find two successive monthly prices being the same is highly unusual; and even finding a similar price from one day to the next is most unlikely. It follows that to consider any one price as representative is to be mistaken. Only when a substantial number of prices are available is it possible to draw any meaningful conclusions as to the general price level for any particular commodity.

The differences in the prices within the year are, however, as nothing com- pared with the differences between one year and the next. This demands two investigations, first to note the variation between contiguous years, and second to discover if there were any long-term trends in the prices. That second inves- tigation will follow later in this paper. I will first consider only sequences which compare the records of successive years, or nearly so. Since it is clear from the preceding section that there was a substantial variation in price within any one year, it is necessary to consider only those sequences where prices are recorded for the same month in successive years. There is no point in comparing, say, the price of barley in Month I in one year with that in Month V of the next, since it has already become clear that there will be differences, perhaps very major differences. But it might be thought that similar months would see similar prices.

There are, however, regrettably few examples of a sequence of prices for the




same item in the same month in contiguous years. By stretching this quali- fication to three years in five, the following cases can be discussed:

Barley: Month II 293 - 210 qa (April) 291 - 180+ qa

289 - 90 qa falling to 102 III 124 - 58 qa rising to 42

(May) 123 - 30 qa rising to 27.5 122 - 90 qa

IV 183 - 102 qa rising to 96 (June) 181 - 236 qa

179 - 102 qa falling to 180 XII 133 - 102 qa rising to 99 falling to 180

(Feb) 132 - 105 qa falling to 114, then to 114+ 130 - 96 qa

Dates: Month III 124 - c. 180 qa (May) 123 - 52 qa

122 - 204 qa falling to 282 IV 183 - 108 qa

(June) 181 - 468 qa rising to 405 179 - 144 qa

XII 133 - 261 qa rising to 252 falling to 261 (Feb) 132 - 330 qa

130 - c. 252 qa

These examples, though few, are sufficient to show the quite remarkable variations in price from one year to the next, a doubling or halving in the price being quite normal, and a multiple by three or even four clearly being fairly common. This is confirmed by a number of instances of two contiguous annual prices. Given the variations within years, this further evidence of great changes in

prices does not come as a surprise. As a matter of interest and perspective, over the whole period the following

are the extremes of prices:

Highest price Lowest price Barley 6 qa (in 83) 270 qa (in 278/277) Dates 16.5 qa (in 418/417) 504 qa (in 140) Mustard 56 qa (in 278/277) 1080 qa (in 246/345) Cress 5.5 qa (in 88) 108 qa (in 197/196) Sesame 5 qa (in 418/417) 60 qa (in 188/187) Wool 0.67 minas (in 124, 86 5 minas (in 346/345)

85, 83 77)




The widest variations are in barley (the highest price is 45 times the lowest) and dates (30 times) which is perhaps a reflection of their status as staples. Wool, whose price was the least variable in the short term, also showed the lowest long-term variation (only 7 times).

The search for reasons for these variations should concentrate, as with the price movements within the year, on the local factors involved in agriculture: the size of the harvest, the state of the weather, and in Babylonia, the condition of the water supply which fed the irrigation systems. Crop and animal disease is another variable to be called into the account. Of all these matters we know very little, though occasional comments by the scribes are revealing, but there is certainly not enough information to relate the movement of prices to any of them. Incidental references to locusts, diseases, and floods are not systematic or reliable enough to provide an index of such disasters.

These may be seen as the normal problems of Babylonian agriculture, but on top of them there are also the political events in the region, which may have had an effect. It is noticeable that the extremes of prices tend to occur at dis- turbed times: 278/277 is the time of the Galatian invasion and the First Syrian War in the west, the 80s were a period of Parthian civil warfare, and 346/345 saw the Persians involved in serious warfare in Syria and Egypt. In such cases some of the extremes might be attibuted to political events, but it is difficult to attribute both the lowest barley price and the highest mustard price (both in 278/ 277) to the same political problem in the same year. It is thus most likely that individual political events had only a very marginal effect, and only a short-term one at that. Exceptions must be made for more protracted crises and wars, however, and to these I shall return later.

The scribes note occasional interferences with supplies to the city: in 324 'the sale of barley and everything else was cut off in the streets of Babylon until the 5th', yet this was not a time of especially extreme prices. In 125 the scribe, a diligent fellow who noted daily prices, commented also that 'garlic, leeks and all... crops were expensive', but again this was not a year of particularly high prices.

It thus does not seem that individual political events were normally very effective in changing the pattern of supplies and prices, and so the variations in weather, availability of water, pests and diseases may perhaps be better explanations, as may the state of the market. What is clear is that, whatever the rea- son or reasons, the changes in prices from month to month and from year to year were constant. There is, therefore, no possibility of stating with any pre- tence at accuracy what was the 'normal' price of any of these goods in Baby- lonia at any time, nor of explaining the changes by any single cause.




Here I may refer to the one other attempt at a detailed consideration of Babylonian prices, in an article by W. H. Dubberstein in 1939.12) He concen- trated on the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, and noted those prices which were quoted in contracts for as many goods as he could find, and also for land prices. Dates and barley provided the best collection of prices, of which Dubberstein located 26 for dates and 25 for barley between the accession of Nebuchadnezzar and the death of Darius (i.e. 605-486)-about one in every five years for both commodities. But he did not consider the time of year of the prices, and made no serious attempt to locate any kinds of variations, even though this appears to be a normal assumption among Babylonian and Sumerian writers."3) Dubberstein's conclusion was that prices rose from the Neo-Babylonian to the Persian periods, and he provided four possible reasons for this: increasing wealth of individuals, the rise of capitalism, the monetary and military policies of Persia, and the increased supply of precious metals.'4) However, none of these supposed reasons were connected in any way with the prices he had listed, and, as explanations for prices, they are so vague as to be virtually without meaning.

The prices listed by Dubberstein, however, are so varied that his conclusion that there was a rise in prices cannot be accepted. The range of prices and the very limited number of examples are factors which ensure that any definite statement on trends is not credible, nor even possible. Certainly the highest price mentioned for dates was in Darius' reign, but the lowest was in Cyrus', and for barley both the lowest and the highest were recorded in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. But the main conclusion to be drawn from the figures in Dubberstein's article is that there are not enough of them to provide a secure foundation for any conclusions at all.

Long Term Trends

The immediate short-term fluctuations in the prices of goods were large, constant, and only minimally predictable, and this may militate against any attempt at elucidating long-term price movements. It is nevertheless the case that these

12) Dubberstein 1939; some figures for prices are also noted by Ahmed 1988, p. 48, and by Sollberger 1965.

13) For example, in the document called 'The Curse of Agade', (Cooper 1983), where cri- sis prices are assumed to be high; it follows that prices were unstable.

14) The conclusion is repeated, without discussion, by Dandamaev and Lukonin 1989. In this work, life in the old, price-controlled, Soviet Union is clearly the background. Under- standing a free, primitive, agricultural market, subject to the vagaries of weather and natural forces, is lacking. Dubberstein (note 12) discussed the practice of ancient Babylonian govern- ments of attempting to control prices, and concluded that such efforts had ended before the Neo-Babylonian period.




diaries provide a record of a large number of prices for six commonly consumed goods in one place over a period of more than three centuries. There are well over four hundred different prices for barley, for example, in the period 418 to 77, and they are not only spread over the whole of that long period, but they are also randomly scattered through the different months and seasons. Stat- istically, therefore, they are a random sample, and not one which is skewed or selected in any particular way or to any particular purpose. There are fewer prices for the other commodities, but even the least well preserved--wool--has almost two hundred instances. The random nature of the records, and their approximately even spread through the period encourages the view that they can be used for calculating a set of average prices, which can then be employed to discern some long-term trends in these prices. And if no such trend is visible then that in itself would be a useful fact.

Accordingly I have calculated the average prices for the six commodities for every quarter-century from 400 BC to 76 BC. In the first quarter-century, 400- 376, the number of prices for all the commodities is fairly low; in fact, in the case of cress only one price survives, and in three other cases only three. Nevertheless I have included them, since there are nine for barley and six for dates in that quarter-century. In most of the other sub-periods the number of prices recorded is in double figures. These numbers are not wholly satisfactory, of course, and one would like more of them, but they are well scattered, and their survival is random, not selective. It seems worth tabulating the results to see what they may show, and this is done in the Appendix, and in the accompanying graphs. (Note that, in the graphs, the higher the column, the cheaper the product; in the Appendix this applies also to the figures; it may help to think in terms of standards of living, rather than costs of living.)

A conclusion may be drawn from a general view of the figures. To take the overall trend first, it is clear that living standards rose in the late Achaimenid period and remained high to the end of the Seleucid period, but then fell under Parthian rule. Before looking at the detail, however, some limitations on possible conclusions must be noted.

The geographical location of the prices, the city of Babylon, may have had an effect on the prices; that is to say, the figures may not be typical of Babylonia as a whole.") It is necessary to consider Babylon's particular

15) Still less can any wider application be considered, and here no claim for any wider applicability of these figures will be made. It is surely clear that there was no ancient economy as a whole, but only a whole series of discrete local economies; only in a few times and in a few goods-high value exotic products, or bulk supplies of essential foods for the great cities such as Athens or Rome-were these local economies interconnected.




circumstances in the Seleucid period. The city is reported to have suffered a decline in that time,16) as a result of the foundation of the new 'royal city' at Seleukeia-on-the-Tigris, which is said to have drawn some of its population from Babylon more than once.") The city may well have declined in importance, but at the end of the period it did still exist, and it was always one of the major urban centres of the Hellenistic world. Its continuing importance made it the object of solicitude by the Seleucid kings when they came east, and of their governors, who regularly attended ceremonies and sacrifices there, and whose visits were recorded in some detail by the scribes of these 'diaries'. For it is necessary to set against the postulated decline of the city the fact that the evidence from archaeology, both from excavations and in surveys, demonstrates that Babylonia as a whole saw a great expansion of population during the Seleucid period, a growth which may have continued into the Parthian period.'") This expansion took place both in the urban areas, with at least one ancient and well-studied city, Uruk, reaching its maximum size and density of occupation in the period,"9) and in the rural areas, where the number of villages occupied at the period reached a maximum.20) The 'decline' of the city of Babylon, therefore, was not necessarily one of shrinkage, still less one of expiry, but a decline only in relative terms, and perhaps only in political terms at that. The general expansion of population in the region may well have been sufficient to maintain the city's size, and at the same time to supply the new population to the nearby rival on the Tigris.

These price trends, therefore, are tentatively acceptable as indicators of the general situation in the Babylon area. They may also be taken, with some reserve, as a fair indication of the general prosperity of the urban centres of Babylonia in the Seleucid period, a prosperity already widely accepted. There are, however, still other implications in the figures.

The general rise in prosperity had set in already in the Achaimenid period. All the graphs show a clear and steady fall in the prices--or rather a rise in the purchasing power of a shekel of silver-in four out of the six commodities in the 75 years from 400 to 326, and of the other two, dates recovered steeply

16) Van der Spek 1987, valiantly avoids saying so in so many words, but the implication of decline runs through his whole article; compare also Klengel 1962.

17) Pausanias 1.16.3 (under Seleukos I); Grayson 1965, no. 10; Sachs and Hunger 1989, '-273'. These were originally published in Smith 1924, pp. 140-159.

18) Adams 1965, and 1981; the practice of lumping the Seleucid and Parthian periods together may well obscure changes in the later of these periods.

19) Funck 1984; more recent archaeological summaries are by R. M. Boehmer 1991, and 1997.

20) See note 18.




after a rise in price in 375-351, and the first cress 'average' is a single figure and therefore unreliable. Indeed, the overall fall in prices between 350 and 326 is quite spectacular. All the more startling, therefore, is the situation in the last quarter of the fourth century, 325-301. In every case this is just about the worst period, when the highest prices were being charged for every product; only in the cases of sesame and wool were prices ever, in the period here studied, to be marginally higher. In overall terms, this is the quarter century when the Babylonians suffered their worst privation.

This is, in fact, the very period when a steep rise in prices has been detected in Greece, where it is ascribed to the release by Alexander of the Achaimenids' accumulated treasure.21) So one might explain the Babylonian price-rise in the same way. But the history of the two price-rises is different. In Greece it continued for some time after 300, and subsided thereafter until about 200, when prices had returned more or less to their pre-Alexander level. In Babylon, however, the graphs and figures show clearly that the price-rise had stopped by 300, and indeed had been reversed by then. In the monetarist explanation adopted for Greece, this may be due to the probability that most of the Achaimenid silver did not stop its movement westwards until it reached Greece, and did not affect Babylon for very long, but it is possible to note rather more direct causes of the temporary rise in prices there. For there can be no doubt that this is a result of the political conditions of the period.

Repeatedly in this quarter-century Babylonia was trampled over by the vora- cious Macedonian armies. In 331-330 Alexander's army marched through fairly quickly, but this had followed the strenuous efforts by the Achaimenid government to gather its forces for the Issus and Gaugamela campaigns; then between 325 and 321 Babylonia was the camping ground of the main Macedonian army, at first under Alexander and then under Perdikkas.22) In 318 Babylonia was invaded and occupied by the competing armies of Eumenes and Antigonos and the city was damaged in some of the fighting.23) Antigonos' army again marched through in 315, when it also included most of the survivors of Eumenes' forces.24) From 311 to 308 it was the scene of fighting, the central battleground in fact, between the great rivals Seleucus and Antigonos, who were based re- spectively in Iran and Syria; in this confict the region was not merely marched through or camped in by the armies, it was fought over, even though we know

21) See notes 5 and 6. 22) Arrian, Anabasis, book 7; Diodoros, book 18; Plutarch, Alexander, 71-77. 23) Diodoros 18.58-63, 19.12,1-5 and 19.12.2-7; Plutarch, Eumenes, 13.2-8; Grayson

1975, 10 Obverse 14-17. 24) Diodoros 19.55.2-5; Appian, Syrian Wars 53.




little of the precise details.25) Babylon itself was badly damaged in the fighting,26) and during these wars refugees fled the city as far as the coast of the Persian Gulf.27) Then in 307 Seleucia-on-the-Tigris was founded, an act of Seleucus and his army. It was an event which was seen as a direct threat to themselves and their city by the leaders of Babylon,28) for it marked the definitive political demotion of the damaged city. Henceforth the scribes referred to Seleucia as 'the royal city'.

All this is quite sufficient to account for the steep rise in prices in this quarter-century, so that the movement of the Achaimenid silver is not needed as an

explanation. The precise economic effects will have included the destruction of supplies, of crops, and even of irrigation canals; the excessive and wasteful con- sumption of the armies, which no doubt included confiscation of food, and the payment of arbitrary-that is, poor-prices; and the possible shortage of silver in civilian hands as a result of the disruption of markets and production. In total it adds up to a very bad and lean time for the people of Babylonia.

Recovery can be seen to have taken place during the succeeding quarter- century, and was maintained for the whole of the Seleucid period. Until 250 the fall in prices may be thought erratic, but for all commodities the century between 250 and 150 can be seen to be a time of low prices, and thus of a high standard of living. In the case of the price of dates this pattern is displaced for- ward in time, where the real fall in prices only came in the last quarter of the third century BC. Similarly, when the general rise in price began, after 150, the rise in the price of dates was delayed by a quarter century. All this is perhaps to be accounted for by the time taken for new date palms to grow and to fruit.

The economic growth of Babylonia which these figures show, and which is seen also in the archaeological record, had been under way since before 400. It was interrupted by the damage inflicted during the Wars of Alexander's Successors, but the resilience of the land and its people is demonstrated by the swift resumption of that expansion and its continuation throughout the Seleucid period from 300 to 150. This expansion, as is seen in the archaeological record, was partly one of a growth of population. This also resulted in the expansion of the cities of Babylonia, the foundation of new villages, the colonisation of new lands within Babylonia, and the expansion of the irrigation network.

Yet this growth of population was accompanied by a fall in the prices of

25) Grainger 1990, pp. 76-94; Billows 1990. 26) Diodoros 19.100.7; Plutarch, Demetrios 7.3; Grayson 1965, 10 Reverse 7-10 and

14-25. 27) Diodoros 19.100.5-6. 28) Appian, Syrian Wars, 45; compare Grainger 1990, pp. 100-102.




essential goods, and this is the basis for the most significant, even startling, conclusion to be drawn from these figures. That is, the production of these goods expanded at a faster rate than the population which produced and consumed them. This was, of course, one of the causes of the growth of population, since the existence of a reliable and expanding food supply was a necessary pre- liminary to the increase in the number of mouths to be fed. The enormous expansion in the mid-fourth century, as shown by the low prices for the quarter- century 350-326, will have laid the foundation for the population growth, and this expansion of supply was maintained in advance of the population growth in the next two centuries, despite the troubles of the last quarter of the fourth century. The whole process of expansion, in the absence of a capacious transport system to import food from even further afield, could only end in over-population, soil-exhaustion, and collapse.

The rise in prices which began after 150 was general across the whole range of these commodities; in most cases by the first quarter of the first century BC the prices had risen to much the same level as at the beginning of the period covered here; indeed in four cases-dates, cress, sesame, and wool-they were even higher than that level. This is clearly a much more serious matter than the time of the wars of Alexander and his successors; it was a long-term rise in price, which meant a drastic fall in the Babylonians' standard of living.

The reasons may well be in part political. The wars of the Parthians and Seleucids in the 130s were accompanied by raids by Arabs from the desert, and by invasions by 'Elamites' and by the kings of the Charakene. The Elamites in fact took advantage of the Seleucid civil wars in the 140s to raid into Baby- lonia, and several more invasions are recorded in the diaries until 124.29) Start- ing later, but going on for longer, the Arabs raided the countryside for nearly thirty years. Indeed on one occasion they even broke into the city itself, and for many years they made the nearby countryside unsafe. Their first raid is noted in 129, their last in 105.30) They were at times bought off, and at others it was impossible to get out of the city. All this will have seriously reduced the quantity of food produced, and even more so the amount which reached the city's markets. Parthian civil wars of the 80s BC were an added burden.

Yet the Babylonian economy had shown before that it was resilient and capable of recovering from damage cause by political setbacks. This continued

29) Elamite warfare is noted in the diaries in 144, 143, 140, 133, 129 and 124. 30) Arab raids are noted in 129, 125, 124 (the attack on the city), 123, 122 and 119. In

118 it was especially noted that 'the fields were without Arabs', as though this was unusual. Raids are later noted in 111, 108 and 105. For many of the intervening years there are no, or only very brief, records, so this catalogue must be regarded as minimal, and showing a very unpleasant state of affairs.




decline implies therefore that there were much deeper-seated problems involved. What these were is not apparent from these prices, but one might suggest that the invasions and wars had produced damage to the infrastructure, and their long continuation had probably produced a reduction in population, which may have made it more difficult to reconstruct the damaged areas. References to disease become more frequent in the diaries in the period of these troubles, sug- gesting a population more susceptible to infection than before.31) The clear decline in the general vitality of Babylonian culture in this and later periods may be one of the results of this economic decline.32)

On a different level, there are also implications in all this for the history of the Seleucid kingdom. The increased population of Babylonia and the high prosperity of that population meant that the tax revenue from Seleucid Babylonia was also continually buoyant. It was on this base that the dynasty was able to build its power. The loyalty of the Babylonians to Seleucus I was proved in the Successor Wars, and there is no record of any rebellion by the Babylonians during their rule, in contrast to the repeated rebellions of the Egyptians against the Ptolemies. And yet the Seleucid state disintegrated. This final political failure was thus not one of omission or commission, of oppression or neglect, with regard to its richest province, but it does emphasise that it was the loss of Babylonia, first in 141-139, and then definitively in 130-129, which, above all, brought the dynasty to its final destruction. The succeeding dynasty of the Parthians inherited a vigorous and successful economy in Babylonia, but failed to maintain it, partly perhaps by ignorance, but largely by internecine warfare and the destruction which accompanied it.

31) References to disease in the diaries are only occasional before the Parthian period, but from 143 they become more common. They are: 143, 'simm-disease, scabies and scurf'; 111, 'di'u disease... among cattle'; 107, 'disease'; 93, 'many sick and dead in the land'. It seems likely that only the most obvious epidemics-and only those in the Babylon area-achieved a place in the records.

32) It must be noted here that the diary dated 77 BC is both one of the latest to be dated and one of the most complete of the whole series, as accurate and as full as any earlier tablets. The process of recording, the education system which supported it, and the observa- tional methods it is based on, were all clearly in fully operational order at that time. Since this appears to be one of the most sophisticated elements of Babylonian society, it is rea- sonable to conclude that no serious damage had yet been done to that culture's infrastructure by that date.




BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, R. McC. 1965 Land behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 1981 Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use in the

Central Floodplain of the Euphrates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Ahmed, S. S.

1988 Southern Mesopotamia in the Time of Ashurbanipal (The Hague: Mouton). Billows, R. A.

1990 Antigonos the One-eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).

Boehmer, R. M. 1991 "Uruk 1980-1990: A Progress Report." Antiquity 248, 1981: 465-478. 1997 "Uruk-Warka." In E. M. Meyers, ed., The Oxford Encyclopaedia of

Archaeology in the Near East (Oxford: Oxford University Press), Vol. 5, pp. 294-298.

Cooper, J. S. 1983 The Curse of Agade (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University

Press). Dandamaev, M. A. and V. Lukonin

1989 The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press).

Doty, L. T. 1977 "Cuneiform Archives from Hellenistic Uruk." Ph.D. dissertation (Yale

University). Dubberstein, W. H.

1939 "Comparative Prices in Later Babylonia (625-400 BC)." American Journal of Semitic Languages 56: 20-43.

Funck, B. 1984 Uruk zur Seleukidenzeit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag).

Glotz, G. 1913 "Le prix de denr6es a Delos." Journal des Savants 11: 16-29.

Grainger, J. D. 1990 Seleukos Nikator (London: Routledge).

Grayson, A. K. 1975 Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (New York: J. J. Augustin).

Klengel, H. 1962 "Babylon zur Zeit der Perser, Greichen, und Parther." Forschungen und

Berichte 5: 40-53. Reekmans, T.

1949 "Economic and Social Repercussions of the Ptolemaic Copper Inflation." Chronique d'Egypt 48: 324-342.

1951 "The Ptolemaic Copper Inflation." Studia Hellenistica 7: 61-120. Reger, R.

1994 Regionalism and Change in the Economy of Independent Delos, 314-167 BC (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).

Sachs, A. J. and H. Hunger 1988-89-96 Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, 3 vols., Oster-

reichische Akademie du Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Denkschriften, Bd 195, 210, 247, (Vienna: Vertag der Osterreichische Akademie du Wissenschaften).

Segre, A. 1942 "The Ptolemaic Copper Inflation, c. 230-140 BC." American Journal of

Philology 63: 174-192.




Smith, S. 1924 Babylonian Historical Texts (London: Methuen).

Sollberger, E. 1965 Ur Excavation Texts, Vol. 8, Royal Inscriptions III (London: Trustees of

the British Museum and Philadelphia University Museum). Stol, M.

1982/1983 "Cress and its Mustard." Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux, 28: 24-32. 1985 "Remarks on the Cultivation of Sesame and the Extraction of its Oil."

Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture, 2: 119-126. Tarn, W. W.

1923 "The Social Question in the Third Century." In W. W. Tarn, et al., The Hellenistic Age: Aspects of Hellenistic Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 108-140.

Van der Spek, R. J. 1987 "The Babylonian City." In A. Kuhrt and S. Sherwin-White, eds., Hellenism

in the East (London: Duckworth), pp. 57-74.

APPENDIX

Average prices in Babylonia, 400-76 BC (in qa per shekel of silver, except wool which are minas per shekel; figures in parentheses are numbers of prices in the calculation).

Barley Dates Mustard Cress Sesame Wool

400 45.9 91.5 116 21 12.5 2.0 -376 (9) (6) (3) (1) (3) (2)

375 52.5 63.5 223.7 18.6 25.5 2.5 -351 (11) (12) (7) (7) (7) (4)

350 111.2 148.5 680.8 52.5 34.0 5.7 -326 (14) (15) (12) (8) (6) (7)

325 23.5 25.7 215.3 14.4 5.6 1.5 -301 (22) (19) (9) (8) (7) (11)

300 147.0 92.4 213.6 43.8 23.2 2.5 -276 (24) (20) (14) (17) (18) (13)

275 92.6 74.5 195.5 35.3 26.7 3.3 -251 (16) (20) (13) (18) (35) (16)

250 109.0 93.3 304.1 56.3 21.3 3.7 -226 (31) (19) (22) (18) (21) (17)

225 136.3 163.7 400.5 64.5 24.5 4.0 -201 (23) (14) (8) (12) (11) (12)

200 138.9 244.6 391.9 67.6 27.0 3.6 -176 (46) (36) (22) (27) (27) (18)

175 137.6 295.2 519.6 60.8 38.5 4.0 -151 (31) (23) (15) (19) (28) (17)

150 101.0 314.0 574.5 48.0 18.8 2.3 -126 (58) (40) (12) (18) (28) (25)

125 68.4 100.8 335.2 30.7 10.5 1.5 -101 (90) (72) (20) (33) (49) (20)

100 48.7 56.0 227.1 16.5 9.3 1.0 -76 (59) (33) (17) (17) (23) (23)




GRAPHS

Barley

qa

15- 12

400- 375- 350- 325- 300- 275- 250- 225- 200- 175- 150- 125- 100- 376 351 326 301 276 251 226 201 176 151 126 101 76

Dates

qa

35,

300

25C _

20C

50

01 400- 375- 350- 325- 300- 275- LZ0- 225- 200- 175- 150- 125- 100- 376 351 326 301 276 251 226 201 176 151 126 101 76




Mustard

qa

700

60

500

40C

30C

20, 100

400- 375- 350- 325- 300- 275- 250- 225- 200- 175- 150- 125- 100- 376 351 326 301 276 251 226 201 176 151 126 101 76

Cress

qa

7

6

50

40

30-

20 10

0 400- 375- 350- 325- 300- 275- 250- 225- 200- 175- 150- 125- 100- 376 351 326 301 276 251 226 201 176 151 126 101 76




Sesame

qa

40

25 20

15

400- 375- 350- 325- 300- 275- 250- 225- 200- 175- 150- 125- 100- $76 351 326 301 276 •01 6 Wl 11 S 151 126 101 76

Wool

Minas

4-

400- 375- 350- 325- 300- 275- 250- 225- 200- 175- 150- 125- 100- 376 301 326 301 276 251 226 201 116 151 126 101 76



prices in hellenistic babylonia

Documents