Comparative Prices in Later Babylonia (625-400 B. C.)

Abstract

struction of ancient history, especially that history concerned with the cultures of Mesopotamia and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, is so vast and varied that its proper evaluation is difficult. Students in related fields of ancient history are working feverishly to give their material the adequate publication and treatment that it deserves. But written sources for Babylonian and Assyrian history have appeared in such quantity that the energy and time of scholars have been absorbed almost entirely in a mere presentation of narrative history with but brief recognition of cultural features. Hence the greater part of this material has not been adequately interpreted and correlated. One of the largest groups of published cuneiform texts-more than ten thousand-dates from the Chaldean and Persian periods. The majority of these texts, commonly called "contracts," are in reality archives of a much greater variety than the term applied to them would seem to indicate. Aside from over six hundred letters, they include actual contracts, receipts, various types of lists, temple documents of many kinds, judicial records, and most valuable administrative material. Many of these collections were published twenty or thirty years ago; some of the more valuable have appeared recently. For some scholars the major value of these documents lay in the date formulas, the basis of our chronology; for others these texts have been hunting-grounds in legal terminology. A few attempts have been made to study the documents for their content, but then usually only a select group and from a special point of view with a definite objective.