Economic systems in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome

Economics in Ancient Civilization

It is said that "Rome was not built in a day." Indeed, the Roman Empire was the last of a series of civilizations to emerge in the Mediterranean by the First Millennium, B.C. Precursors to the culture most identified as the seat of Western political economy, the Ancient Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Syrians, Carthaginians and Phoenicians all had contact with the Romans, and eventually were incorporated through territorial expansion of the Empire in Asia Minor, Cyrenaica, Europe, and North Africa. Prior to the Roman period, Europe was primarily occupied by Barbarian tribes; societies where no written language, legal system or alternative mechanism of governance was in place. When we discuss the advancement of Ancient civilizations, then, it is through the transmission of law, literacy and polity that we find source to retrospect on early economic forms. In Feinman and Nicholas (2004), Perspectives on Political Economies, the difficulties of studying Ancient economy are addressed in that,

"The economy, and all the institutions, activities, and relationships we are accustomed to thinking of as composing it, was from prehistoric times onward for a millennium or more a fairly amorphous category conforming only poorly to any modern abstractions of what an economy ought to be. In other words, it was deeply intertwined with other cultural patterns whose articulations we can seldom do more than dimly surmise" (Feinman and Nicholas, 43).

Where state institutions are concerned, the primacy of archaeological and artistic record as a resource to rendering an accurate historiography of the Ancient world is discussed extensively in Angus Maddison (2007) Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History. As Maddison confirms, the study of ancient economics is an exercise in exploratory patience, and one which requires great attention to oft competitive analysis where research conducted at different stages in modern history since the nineteenth century is so sparse in terms of number of investigations that details to accessible and legible official records such as an urban population census are worth their weight in gold.

Although documentation of laws scripted in stone or in scroll provide perhaps the best insight into the ancient historical record, comparative study of transcription in sculpture with a broader range of artifacts from the various period sheds more light on the economic activities of everyday life, than those afforded through legal proscription (Smith). Finally, theoretical impetus to the study of ancient economy is benefited by Walter Benjamin's mid-twentieth century musings on the role of archaeological artifacts as 'Ur' elements to social forms (Buck Norss, and Eiland & McLaughlin). If Benjamin's query is presumptive of later economic forces in market capitalization, the episteme is classical in the last instance: recapitulated into the present from the Mesopotamian valley of Ur.

MESOPOTAMIA

In what is now contemporary Iraq, commencement of the Neolithic Revolution (12,000 -- 8,000 BC) marked the shift from the hunting and gather societies of the Paleolithic cultures. The beginnings of pastoral and agricultural society are evidenced in the Near Eastern record prior to other parts of the Mediterranean region and the appearance of cities along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers shortly after the appearance of the Copper Age 3500 BC in Mesopotamia also affecting Egypt during the same period (de la Croix and Tansey). Collective recognition of the city-state formation is known as Sumer, with representation of Sumerian cultural developments, including protoliterate writings called cuneiform. Political organization of the Sumerian city-state was first administered under the leadership of a 'divine' ruler, and theocratic socialist system (Maddison).

In Yofee (1995), the political economy of the earliest states in ancient Mesopotamia is explored in an investigation to appraise the network of the region's great manorial estates, comprised of temples and palaces. Evidence to the study shows that local systems of power and authority coexisted with, and at times resisted the centralized governments of the Indus Valley. The nascent organization of the city-state afforded permeable social institutions to the point that individuals were conscripted to serve multiple and varied roles as economic actors; hence leading to the reduction of risks, and increased cooperation in competitive benefit as political leadership transformed over time. Of considerable importance is the noted interaction of the autonomous city-states within Mesopotamia, and the development of a cultural sphere supportive of proto-capitalist style value abstraction linked to the circulation of goods through production, trade, and consumption, from c. 3200-1600 B.C.

Interestingly, work on the ancient cultures of Southern Arabia is increasingly informative to the major a role a lesser discussed Bronze Age, Sabaean culture dating to the end of the second millennium BC played in the distribution of wealth from trade along the Incense Road (Pietcsch). While the backbone of the Sabaen economy was irrigated agriculture, the derivatives found in the Holocene soil in this area surrounding the Ma'rib Oasis have revealed the source so the ores and alabasters found in cultural objects definitive to the greater Mesopotamian archaeological record, illustrated by the map in Image 1.

Image 1. Location of Ma'rib and investigation area.

Source: Pietsch, D. Holocene soils and sediments around Ma'rib Oasis, Yemen: Further Sabaean treasures?. Holocene, 20.5 (2010), 786).

Rich in phosphate, organic material and volcanic ashes, the Ma'rib offers select demonstration of cultivation before the Great Dam of Ma'rib was constructed in the first millennium BC and is proving an important record or archive of land use.

Aside from archaeological and architectural remains, knowledge of the Mesopotamian culture and its predominantly agricultural trade economy is discussed in the Epic of Gilgamesh; a Sumerian text survived more fully in Akkadian, the language of ascension used by the Assyrian king Assurbanipal in Nineveh in the Bronze Age, (c. 2340 -- 2180 BC), just prior to the transformation to the Iron Age cultures of Babylon (c. 1792 -- 1750 BC), Assyria (c. 1000- 612 BC), Neo-Babylonia (c. 612 -- 539 BC) and Persia (c. 559 -- 331 BC) (de la Croix and Tansey).

With exception of the short lived Neo-Babylonian period, the three main latter periods in Mesopotamian economic history are representative in: 1) the Babylonian dynasty of Hammurabi (c. 1792-1750 BC) whose legal code of 282 laws pertaining to commercial and property matters as well as domestic problems are inscribed on the lower portion of the Stele of Hammurabi; 2) Assyria the first military state; and 3) Persia the successor to the lineage of Mesopotamian kings. Less is known about Mesopotamia's final chapter, Sassania (c. 331 BC -- 651 AD), yet presence of cultural tenets are found in a canon of Roman art which would come to have a great effect on the symbolic and stylistic aesthetics seen in the circulation of objects in Christian Middle Ages and Islamic world.

ANCIENT GREECE

In 323 BC, Egypt was conquered by Greek military leader, Alexander the Great, followed by the establishment of Greece's North African Capital, Alexandria, where the name is still retained by the Northern port city. Remains of currency are found everywhere in the region, verifying the existence of the circulation of Drachma coinage as abstract value during Alexander's campaign, as illustrated in Image 4.

Image 4. Alexander the Great with Amun Horns, Drachma.

Within the history of the Ancients, Classical Greek culture and economy is prefaced much prior to this by the seafaring developments of the island of Crete. Crossroads to the trade and cultural transmission with other civilizations of antiquity including Ancient Egypt, it is in the Aegean cultures, and particularly Minoan civilization that we find the first precepts to classical Greece. Comparatively speaking, the maritime trade of the Minoans was miniscule to what was to become the much larger and robust economy of Ancient Greece. Still, the widespread exchange of a variety of small pottery goods, metals, religious artifacts, local olive oil and wine seen in concise review of the surrounding grounds where a stock of resources at the Palace of Minos, in the Cretan record, is also replicated in the ostensible artifacts of Greek trade throughout the archipelago as illustrated in image 5 (Brun, 1143).

Image 5. Resource provision, Crete.

Source: Knossos, west magazine V with pithoi (c. 16th -- 13th century BC) and floor cists (c. 1700 BC); photo © Allan T. Kohl/AICT

Where Ancient Greece advanced the Minoan and also Egyptian prototypes to cultural forms found in trade from the mid seventh century BC forward, is seen in the evolution of craftsmanship from the stoicism of royal commission to the employment of highly trained classical artists and architects in the construction of urban planning of the democratic state of Greece. Post the fifth century BC, signatory to work delineates the development of polity to the benefit of citizenry beyond the parameters of distributive equity bestowed by Kings. By the Hellenistic period (c. 325-first century BC), the consolidation of Western philosophical roots in the works of recognized statesmen such as Aristotle and Socrates is also reflected in the energy is reflected in recorded political activities at the Parthenon and the rest of the Acropolis; and with it a legacy of knowledge in artistic representation, law and literature illustrated in Image 6.

Image 6. Acropolis, Athens, Greece.

In Morality, institutions and the wealth of nations: Some lessons from ancient Greece, Bitros and Karayiannis (2010) argue that "the character and the morality of citizens are important for prosperity" as it is resultant from the engagement of citizens with "institutions of private property, democracy, and free markets." Examination of the city-states of Athens and Sparta during the period 490 -- 338 BC leads to support of the idea that institutions must fit the space of political economy from which they stem, as policies linked to alleviation of poverty so well defined within Greek bureaucratic administration may not have worked elsewhere as infrastructure was not supported by the core "value" an educated citizenry. And so it is, how the landscape of citizen beneficiaries within Western Civilization came to be constituted through a nexus of sovereign relationships dependent upon Greek configurations of participatory democracy and formal institutions. As Ober (2008) maintains, the Greeks laid the foundation for something called "policy" and the exercise of free trade through the development of an entire history of civic identity, culture, economics, political values, religion, rhetorical criticism and war. In his review of the canon of political economy, the classical Greek experience has more to tell us about the origins and definition of democracy, than perhaps any other society in throughout history; where education was first proscriptive to support of political society and policy formation.

ROMAN EMPIRE

Urban planning records within the Roman archeological record are extensive. Well evidenced at Pompeii were the preservation of volcanic eruption reinforces what Italian's refer to in Latin as the Parcus Professio, or dialogue between economics and art, the apex of citizenship and wealth in Ancient economy is in continuum with Greek precursors. As in Ancient Greece, luxury was common to Roman citizenry during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD in Image 7.

Image 7: Atrium Mosaics. Pompeii, Italy.

Source: de la Croix, H. And Tansey, R.G. (1980). Gardner's: Art Through the Ages. New York. NY: Harcourt and Brace.

The economy of everyday life is further edified at the very foundations of a Roman villa in Pompeii, where consumption of the various nutritional elements gives insight into the alimentary intake and love of a culture of table practices amongst the Empire's citizens in Image 8.

Image 8. Mosaic floor of a Pompeiian Villa.

Roman Imperial expansion, extended the Republic's vast economic holdings by way of trade and intellectual force through domestic incorporations of a 'culture of wealth;' as a common expectation in the everyday lives of Roman citizens throughout its Empire.

Rome's territorial domain extending from the Near East to the British Isles is sovereign to the last of the Ancient Mediterranean civilizations to emerge in the First Millennium BC (c. 753 BC). The Ancient Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Syrians, Carthaginians and Phoenicians all had trade contact with the Romans, which eventually resulted by sword or by negotiation in incorporation to its Empire (Maddison). Until 27 B.C., Rome was a constitutional republic led by an organized propertied oligarchy. Rome's government was divided amongst the magistrates (two counsels, praetors and the censors). Elites occupied the 300 senatorial seats, expanding to 600 hundred under Sulla. Senate magistrate held authority over matters of domestic and foreign policy, justice, finance, and religion and toward determination of war, peace and nomination of military commanders.

The depth of the Rome's governance under Pax Romana extended to infrastructural oversight. The result is a standing record of Roman urban infrastructure throughout the Empire, with parallel built environments for central administration, and intricate aquifer viaduct and transport systems, many of which are still used in Italy today (de la Croix and Tansey, 1980). In Wilson (2002), he describes the design and use of mechanical technology in support of the substantial infrastructure of Rome points to the evolution in innovation and the impetus of political patronage and investment in consideration of economic return. Water-lifting devices and water-powered grain mills were also abundant in private use, with wide commercial interest in water-power in mining by the first century A.D. (Wilson, 1).

Originally a small settlement on the Tiber River, and by 395 B.C. The Capital of Rome was established with the capture of Veii, a city of Etruria -- a culture ultimately assimilated as the Peninsula was conquered (Maddison). A half century after the reign of Julius Caesar Augustus (c. 37 BC -- 14 AD) the economy, population and urbanization of the Roman Empire had reached its peak. Imperial gross domestic product (GDP) encouraged lavish public spending on infrastructure and colonial trade channels, such as the construction of Caligula's 1300 ton ship for transport of the Egyptian Obelisk to St. Peter's in Rome. Cadastral survey of Roman property enforced land allotments to citizens by way of "centuriation" or equitable distribution. Private villa construction was also expanding rapidly during this period, and promoted the culture of legal culture already underway as a mechanism of taxation where citizenry and private landowners were concerned.

Tax or 'tribute' was subject to a process of alternative numeraires or transfer of value between resources where items like wheat and gold both served as measurements in the assessment of payment and worth. The monetization of the Roman economy proposed the single most impactful introduction to the imperial territories outside of war, with distribution of a universal currency that would greatly enhance the evolution of international trade through systemization of abstract value. According to Maddison, the flow of coinage proved to be the most effective method of substantiating allegiance to the sovereignty of the Republic over such a broad region. Coins also provided one of the first templates for generating common semiotic association between citizenry in far off locations, through the recognition of image association. Portable portraiture and other depictions such as mythological iconography (i.e. Medusa) in Roman culture are one of the most common artifacts found by contemporary archaeologist in all corners of the Empire.

Demographer estimates of the population of the Roman Empire vary, but estimates of the population of the Italian Peninsula are figured at about 4.9 million, and with the Capital of Rome, at approximately 800,000 residents in 14A.D. Average life expectancy rates of Romans stands at between 23 and 30 years of age. Despite complications to childbirth and war, Rome was a culture of highly industrious young adults, with significant nutritional access which afforded exceptional intellectual productivity; conducive to a high standard of living, literacy and bureaucratic training at an early age. The average size of the Roman city on record is 10,000 citizens. Alternative figures indicate up to 7 million on the Peninsula where nearly 10% of those calculations is slave population (Maddison).

In Morley's (1998) Political Economy and Classical Antiquity an archaeology of knowledge extrapolated from late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century discussions on luxury, population, and slavery is examined through the lens of early modern political economists. Ancient economics appears in their writings as classical evidence to Enlightenment philosophic episteme. Mill, for instance says Morley, based his concept of "unproductive labour" on anecdotal renditions of Greek mercenaries and Roman philosophers. Classical Athens, Tyre, Marseilles, Venice, and the Baltic cities all served in support of his theory that a maritime situation promoted national prosperity. Mill's substantive arguments about the effects of freedom and despotism on the economy of states found his ideal in the cities of ancient Greece and medieval Italy; and argued that at its most extreme, the Roman Empire is the most supreme example of tyranny. Morley's work goes on to assert that Mill's contemporary's like de Quincey also found truisms in this notion, where slavery elucidates "two modes of exchange value" in the political economies of Rome and the Ottoman Empire, where 'price' of human chattel is reflected in perception of usury (i.e. tax).

Use of slavery as a sign of a non-market economy, however, argues Temin (2004) is denoted by the presence of a labor market in which the services of labor can be bought and sold. According to Temin, the flexibility of "slavery" should be subject to distinct classification to that of the modern era, and is perhaps more proximate to the indentured servant labor of the Mediaeval period, or in that seen in the context of the Chinese-American experience where male labor was put to unpaid labor in payment for forthcoming freedoms in response to tyranny elsewhere. Still, there is much evidence that indicates that Rome had a functioning labor market and a unified labor force, and at different points, slavery is more pronounced dependent upon political rule, and especially pertinent to the effects of the Roman Empire's military campaigns.

In 391 AD, Emporer Theodosius banned paganism, and Christianity became the sole religion of the empire. Followed by the leadership of Emporer Justinian, the Roman Empire saw its final insurgence as a sovereign influence the Mediterranean, with the move of the Capital to Byzantium or Constantinople, currently modern day Istanbul, Turkey. Justinian's contribution to the future of political economy lay not in trade, but in the strictures of law. Statutory reference to late Roman legal writing informs Leoni's (1961) twentieth century insight into the political economy of law. Of particular interest is the concept of 'legal certainty' where applied to economic transactions. Citing the Roman Emperor, Justinian's Corpus Juris, Leoni points out that contract law is "written law" an artifact to enforcement; itself an object of 'value' akin to inconvertible legal tender currency. The persistence of law, without a doubt, is the lasting legacy of Rome's final reign. Militaristic circumstances surrounding the Byzantine transition brought the Empire to a conclusion. Outside of the living historiography contained in law, the sheer magnitude of the Republican Empire is survived in the tenets of Western Civilization. Public art commissions of the Early Christian Roman era reveal the extenuating measurements of Rome's Imperial dominion, as in the statute of a soldier's foot at the Bardo Museum, Tunis, Tunisia in Image 9.

Image 9. Early Christian Roman statute.

Source: Bardo Museum, Tunis, Tunisia.

Conclusion

Art historians and Archaeologist often engage in debates over the Ancient historical record. Economists are a distant third in terms of specialization in this realm of scholarly query, and with exception of the Mesopotamian period which is less accessible due to its location in Iraq -- a space that has been recently ravaged by the complications of war -- ample, in situ evidence to the economic evolution of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome is revealed in a dearth of artifact-ual layers, the raw components to Benjamin's concept of historical materialism. Political economists working on Ancient economics typically ask: what resources are of value where parallel measurement for articulating GDP and other economic factors are unavailable in publication?

Interdisciplinary focus in Ancient Economics is by necessity, one might argue, and proscriptive theories on the competitive benefits within the exchange mechanisms of early states once put into relation with later economies of scale, geography and governance tend to draw upon studies where governance of capital accumulation by law is the basis to proto-market organization. Indeed, the connection between economic and government institutions is seen as the soured for market-based praxis where non-contiguous territorial exchange is present. Economics discussions from mercantilism to present late-capitalism generally assume this, and typically promote investigation into the economic factors that led to formation of the various nation-states, and the political dialectic imperative to democratic expansion.

In Jones' (1981), The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, he examines the emergence of the European nation-state from pre-history to the states-systems of the current moment. Based on the hypothesis that Europe was unique in its capacity to generate capital out of natural resources present both within the region, and beyond in extra-territorial localities, it was inevitable argues Jones, that market expansion, and ultimately the extension of national-sovereignty beyond the original borders of those states took place in Ancient History.

Dissemination of 'universal' models of resource usurpation for market purposes, not to mention an adequate legal basis to promote colonialism, were the two hallmarks of European culture from Classical civilization forward. While Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt both informed what was about to come, the imperialist expansion instigated by the Greek and Roman experiences as sovereign political powers, substantiated long-term trade rules by way of the Lex Mercatoria and Jus Mercatorum regulations for traffic by sea. Retention of earlier legal writings sourced in classical statute, evidences the first sea law of Rhodes from the first century B.C., so that not only one but several significant cultural contributions to understanding the force of law within global economy is revealed.

At present, where Mesopotamian artifacts are still safely housed in museums across the globe, we witness the paradox of transnational proprietorship over the value of patrimony, where later colonial intrusions have taken place; talismans binding sovereignty to trade that elsewhere are already circumscribed into contemporary national economies as the subject of anti-pilfering lawsuits. Lawsuits over the turn of the 20th century pillage of Greek, Egyptian and Roman patrimony by the British and Getty Museums in the UK and U.S. respectively, and also by other national institutions elsewhere, has put the scope of Lex Mercatoria and Jus Mercatorum into practice once again, as courts attempt to arbitrate and ultimately demand return of property transported nearly a century ago.

In Hoffman ed. (2006) Art and cultural heritage: law, policy, and practice the International Bar Association, International Council of Museums, and International Council on Monuments and Sites are put into Socratic dialogue about the growing complexity of international laws on patrimony and the conflict of national laws, mandatory law and UNSC resolutions. Expert witnesses to this debate are archaeologists, art historians and economists, providing insights into the 'value' of Ancient cultural objects as special 'goods.' To this end, some countries have instituted financial regulations and tax incentives for the protection and preservation of Ancient cultural artifacts. Without those efforts and the compendium of evidence it provides, study of Ancient economy would be a very difficult job, indeed.