Over the past few decades biblical economics has developed into an important subfield of biblical studies. Through examining the economic realities that lay behind Hebrew biblical texts and archaeological findings, biblical economics has led to greater understandings of the cultures and experiences of ancient Hebrew communities, the legal and religious texts they produced, and of how those texts may or may not relate to the experiences of communities who continue to receive them, today. Economics and Empire in the Ancient Near East has brought together ten scholars of biblical economics and one economic anthropologist to create a repository of what is understood about the economic realities of Southwest Asia in the late second and first millennia BCE. In addition to furthering the research and teaching interests of biblical scholars, this volume has also been created for the benefit of economic historians, anthropologists, and sociologists.
The transition between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC was an era of deep economic changes in the ancient Near East. An increasing monetization of transactions, a broader use of silver, the management of the resources of temples through “entrepreneurs”, the development of new trade circuits and an expanding private, small-scale economy, transformed the role previously played by institutions such as temples and royal palaces. The 17 essays collected here analyze the economic transformations which affected the old dominant powers of the Late Bronze Age, their adaptation to a new economic environment, the emergence of new economic actors and the impact of these changes on very different social sectors and geographic areas, from small communities in the oases of the Egyptian Western Desert to densely populated urban areas in Mesopotamia. Egypt was not an exception. Traditionally considered as a conservative and highly hierarchical and bureaucratic society, Egypt shared nevertheless many of these characteristics and tried to adapt its economic organization to the challenges of a new era. In the end, the emergence of imperial super-powers (Assyria, Babylonia, Persia and, to a lesser extent, Kushite and Saite Egypt) can be interpreted as the answer of former palatial organizations to the economic and geopolitical conditions of the early Iron Age. A new order where competition for the control of flows of wealth and of strategic trading areas appears crucial.
In the early modern world, the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires sprawled across a vast swath of the earth, stretching from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The diverse and overlapping literate communities that flourished in these three empires left a lasting legacy on the political, religious, and cultural landscape of the Near East and India. This volume is a comprehensive sourcebook of newly translated texts that shed light on the intertwined histories and cultures of these communities, presenting a wide range of source material spanning literature, philosophy, religion, politics, mysticism, and visual art in thematically organized chapters. Scholarly essays by leading researchers provide historical context for closer analyses of a lesser-known era and a framework for further research and debate. The volume aims to provide a new model for the study and teaching of the region’s early modern history that stands in contrast to the prevailing trend of examining this interconnected past in isolation.
"The Ancient Economy holds pride of place among the handful of genuinely influential works of ancient history. This is Finley at the height of his remarkable powers and in his finest role as historical iconoclast and intellectual provocateur. It should be required reading for every student of pre-modern modes of production, exchange, and consumption."--Josiah Ober, author of Political Dissent in Democratic Athens
The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel offers a new reconstruction of the economic context of the Bible and of ancient Israel. It argues that the key to ancient economies is with those who worked on the land rather than in intermittent and relatively weak kingdoms and empires. Drawing on sophisticated economic theory (especially the Régulation School) and textual and archaeological resources, Roland Boer makes it clear that economic “crisis†was the norm and that economics is always socially determined. He examines three economic layers: the building blocks (five institutional forms), periods of relative stability (three regimes), and the overarching mode of production. Ultimately, the most resilient of all the regimes was subsistence survival, for which the regular collapse of kingdoms and empires was a blessing rather than a curse. Students will come away with a clear understanding of the dynamics of the economy of ancient Israel. Boer's volume should become a new benchmark for future studies.
The volume includes the proceedings of the 2nd Roma Sinica project conference held in Seoul in September 2019 and aims to compare some features of the ancient political thought in the Western classical tradition and in the Eastern ancient thought. The contributors, coming from Korea, Europe, USA, China, Japan, propose new patterns of interpretation of the mutual interactions and proximities between these two cultural worlds and offer also a perspective of continuity between contemporary and ancient political thought. Therefore, this book is a reference place in the context of the comparative research between Roman (and early Greek thought) and Eastern thought. Researchers interested in Cicero, Seneca, Plato, post-Platonic and post Aristotelic philosophical schools, history, ancient Roman and Chinese languages could find interesting materials in this work.
Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East (1985) is a political economy of antiquity which applies the universal conclusions of theoretical economics to the interpretation of economic life. The first part of the book shows that the analysis of transaction costs - that is, the resources used up in exchanging ownership rights including costs of communication and of designing and enforcing contracts - provides numerous insights into the structure of the ancient economy. The role of temples as centres of commerce, inculcation of professional standards by gods, elevation of technology to the status of divine gift, religious syncretism and fetishism and many more seemingly exotic practices are comprehended as elements in a strategy to cope with high transaction costs by increasing the stock of what might be called trust capital. It is shown that similar considerations lie behind the ubiquity of diversified, multinational family firms, the prominent entrepreneurial role of high-born women, the prominence within the contractual process of publicly performed conventional gestures and recitations, and the intrusion of gifts, friendship, and other manifestations of personal economics into exchange relationships. The book goes on to examine carefully, and then reject, the view of economic historian Karl Polanyi and others that the ancient Near East lacked true markets for consumer goods and productive factors. The direct evidence of market exchange (local and long distance), occupational specialisation, supply-demand determined prices, investment in material and human capital, production for the market, and other 'modern' traits is uneven with respect to place and time, but nevertheless abundant. The requisite market functions demanded by Polanyi, including a market for labour (slave and free) and elaborate credit and investment markets, can be seen plainly from very early times. Finally, the book deals with the impact on the ancient Near Eastern economy of changes in economic incentives and of changes in economic policy. It becomes evident that ancient economies were capable of making profound alterations in order to take advantage of new economic opportunities. It is also shown that the ancient Near East was not static, as is usually asserted: periods of pervasive economic regulation by the state are interspersed with lengthy periods of relatively unfettered market activity and growth.
The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean offers a comprehensive survey of ancient state formation in western Eurasia and North Africa. Eighteen experts introduce readers to a wide variety of systems spanning 4,000 years, from the earliest known states in world history to the Roman Empire and its immediate successors. They seek to understand the inner workings of these states by focusing on key issues: political and military power, the impact of ideologies, the rise and fall of individual polities, and the mechanisms of cooperation, coercion, and exploitation. This shared emphasis on critical institutions and dynamics invites comparative and cross-cultural perspectives. A detailed introductory review of contemporary approaches to the study of the state puts the rich historical case studies in context. Transcending conventional boundaries between ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean history and between ancient and early medieval history, this volume will be of interest not only to historians but also anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and political scientists. Its accessible style and up-to-date references will make it an invaluable resource for both students and scholars.
