Osman Şenkul
Historians examine changes in the purchasing power of the Sumerians through fixed values and market prices recorded on thousands of cuneiform tablets, thereby describing the developments of that period. The most comprehensive work in this field is being carried out by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). Based in the United Kingdom, the CDLI represents the efforts of an international group comprising Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science, aiming to make the form and content of cuneiform inscriptions—dating back to around 3350 BC, when writing is thought to have begun—accessible online.
The number of these fragmentary tablets, some of which are held in public and private collections, exceeds 500,000. More than 400,000 of these have been catalogued electronically by the CDLI. By making the form and content of cuneiform texts accessible online, the CDLI is opening up new avenues to the rich historical heritage of the ancient Near East. Working in close collaboration with researchers, museums and the wider public, the project aims to reveal the extraordinary content of these artefacts, which are the oldest witnesses to our shared world heritage.
Data presented by the CDLI shows that developments regarding food and access to food in the region—particularly droughts, floods and soil salinisation—significantly reduced crop yields. During harvest failures, the purchasing power of silver plummeted; this meant that much more silver was required to purchase the same quantity of grain.
Furthermore, disruptions to land or sea trade routes also prevented the supply of raw materials and food from reaching the cities. Historical records, such as the famous Mesopotamian poem The Curse of Agade—dated to around 2000 BC—which recounts the collapse of the Akkadian Empire and King Naram-Sin’s relationship with the gods, explicitly complain of soaring market prices caused by war and drought. Long-term price data from Ancient Babylon (from the 6th to the 2nd century BC) reveals that barley prices rose sharply during periods of governmental collapse, as was the case following the death of Alexander the Great.
When price shocks and debt burdens became unbearable for the general populace, early Mesopotamian rulers such as Enmetena of Lagash, and later Babylonian kings like Hammurabi resorted to periodic debt forgiveness schemes. These royal decrees cancelled agricultural debts and reversed land confiscations; when economic inequality and inflated debt burdens became unmanageable, they effectively served as an ancient reset button.
In ancient Mesopotamia, inflation manifested itself as sudden price surges in essential commodities such as barley, dates and wool, and was typically triggered by severe droughts, wars, blockades or disruptions to trade. Although they did not have a modern Consumer Price Index, the Mesopotamians used standardised exchange rates that fluctuated according to supply and demand.
As peasants were unable to repay their loans (which were usually pegged to the high price of silver or barley) due to inflation and poor harvests, rural debt was rising rapidly. To prevent large-scale social unrest and to stop farmers from losing their land or being enslaved, Mesopotamian kings would occasionally declare a ‘clean slate’ or debt forgiveness. Rulers such as Hammurabi systematically wiped out agricultural debts to prevent the working class from rebelling, effectively resetting the economy.
Professor Peter Temin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has published an article titled “Price Behaviour in Ancient Babylon”, based on data from tablets deciphered by CDLI teams, which examines changes in agricultural production and basic food prices during the Sumerian and Babylonian periods of Ancient Mesopotamia.
In his article, Prof. Dr Temin examined the longest continuous price data from the ancient world, spanning from 500 BC to beyond 100 BC, obtained from ancient Babylon. Prof. Temin’s analysis reveals that agricultural commodity prices in the region rose sharply following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, before exhibiting a more gradual increase towards the end of the period:
“The structure of ancient economies has been a subject of debate for decades. The scarcity of economic data from the ancient period has fuelled disagreements and debates on this subject. Consequently, Alice Louise Slotsky’s¹ announcement of the existence of the longest surviving ancient price series was received as a major surprise. This article analyses these presumed price series using time-series methods designed to examine prices, with the aim of understanding the nature of prices and revealing what they indicate about the ancient Babylonian economy.”
Alice Louise Slotsky was an American historian of mathematics and Assyriologist, known for her work on Babylonian mathematics and accounting, and for her popular lectures on the Akkadian language at Brown University.
In the conclusion of his article, Prof. Dr. Peter Temin states: “When I bring all these observations together, I arrive at two conclusions. Firstly, a careful examination of these prices using time-series techniques confirms Slotsky’s claim that these prices were market prices. The prices have fluctuated largely at random and have shown variability over time. These agricultural prices have behaved like the random walk of modern prices and have changed in a coordinated manner in response to weather conditions affecting all crops,” he notes, adding:
“These changes are clearly understandable within a market framework; they are impossible to understand within an administrative framework. “I therefore conclude that the scribes recorded prices determined by functioning markets. Secondly, the course of prices provides us with information about economic conditions in Babylon before the Common Era. Prices exhibited significant fluctuations. Alexander’s return and subsequent death caused a major shock to the money supply and consequently to prices, and this shock persisted for a generation or longer.”
It follows from this that ‘gradual inflation’ did not cause as much hardship for ordinary people as the sudden price rises experienced in the years prior to 300 BC. According to scholars, the fundamental measure of prices was the ‘price of wheat’, considered the staple of the diet. For this reason, wheat prices were documented regularly over the centuries in a manner comparable to Babylonian prices. In other words, like Babylonian prices, they were the prices of agricultural products derived from a primarily agrarian economy; although determined under free-market conditions, throughout history, significant increases in food prices—particularly wheat—were not permitted; for this reason, as seen throughout the ancient period, the agricultural sector in particular was supported, and farmers’ debts were written off when deemed necessary.
All of this took place in the lands of Ancient Mesopotamia, home to the Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian and Hittite states at the time, and where Turkey—currently heading towards the “World Food Inflation Championship”—is situated today. Centuries later, in a Turkey where the number of farmers has fallen from 3 million to 2 million and their debts have exceeded 1.3 trillion lira, it is clear that the need for widespread agricultural support to bring down food prices is becoming increasingly pressing.