Partnerships in the Old Assyrian Trade

Abstract

Beginning with the publication of Garelli's book “Les assyriens en Cappadoce” in 1963, a new wave of research into the Old Assyrian political, economic, and social structures has brought about a quite detailed understanding of many central aspects of the Old Assyrian society. It is my impression that something approaching a consensus has been reached in a number of important fields, and it is readily obvious where most of the pressing new problems are to be found. Many basic commercial procedures have been adequately analysed, the technical vocabulary of the merchants is beginning to be understood, the political system of the Assyrian state and the basis for the existence of the colonies on foreign soil has been described. However, all these studies have also made it very clear that the Old Assyrian colonial system constituted a highly sophisticated commercial milieu, and many features in the socio-economic structures bear witness to the complexity with which we have to deal in our work on the texts. Obviously, there cannot be a general agreement in all areas, and such differences of opinion must be reflected in our translations and interpretations of technical terms which can be seen to refer to central concepts. A case in point is the word tamkārum, “merchant”, which is dealt with in Garelli's contribution in this volume. Garelli tends to see this term as a title which refers to an official, and my own view is that it denotes a contractually regulated capacity and thus that it is not a title. One interpretation leads to the concept of a centralized bureaucracy in Assur, the other does not necessitate such a reconstruction. At the moment we can do little more than note the difference of opinion and attempt to present a coherent theory, but I believe that it is important at the same time to realize that these different views reflect two more or less clearly defined models of the Old Assyrian society. I have the feeling that some scholars think that such conceptual models should somehow be avoided, and that they constitute a danger to a real understanding of the ancients and their world, but such a view rests on a misunderstanding; it is not true that the “real” scholar is only interested in the texts and builds his theories exclusively on them, for any analysis entails some conceptual model. In fact, the success of our efforts often depends on how well we understand the models which we are using.

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