Abstract
This study argues that the creditors of Presargonic loan notes granted credits privately from their personal capital. According to their occupations, private Presargonic creditors were not specialized in administrating the primary loaned material, barley. Often, they were active in an occupation that already encompassed entrepreneurship. They operated their credit business as one pillar of their overall asset management, like their Ur III counterparts. Private Presargonic creditors also granted metal loans in silver or copper as debt-financed investment capital, the opposite of short-term institutional barley loans, which were utilized to ease their workers’ economic distress. Generally, private creditors of the third millennium invested in various assets, were wealthy, and were accustomed to managing materials, intangible liabilities, and staff through daily practice.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Walther Sallaberger and Nick Kraus for discussing and remarking on earlier versions of this article.
Abbreviations
TCBI 1 Pomponio (ed.) 2006
TCBI 2 Pomponio F./D’Agostino/O. Bulgarelli (ed.) 2006
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- More on the Lexicon and Grammar of the Ebla Chancery Texts
- A Song in Ištanuwa Luwian
- Hieroglyphic Inscriptions on Hittite Pottery from Late Bronze Kinet Höyük (Hatay, Turkey)
- Creditors and Private Loans in Presargonic Sumer
- To Sneer, Scoff, Scorn, and Cluck: An Onomatopoetic Verbal Complex in R1-n-ṣ?
- Kaskean: A New Recorded Language in the Archives of Ḫattuša?
- Reevaluating the So-called “Reforms of Urukagina” (2)
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- More on the Lexicon and Grammar of the Ebla Chancery Texts
- A Song in Ištanuwa Luwian
- Hieroglyphic Inscriptions on Hittite Pottery from Late Bronze Kinet Höyük (Hatay, Turkey)
- Creditors and Private Loans in Presargonic Sumer
- To Sneer, Scoff, Scorn, and Cluck: An Onomatopoetic Verbal Complex in R1-n-ṣ?
- Kaskean: A New Recorded Language in the Archives of Ḫattuša?
- Reevaluating the So-called “Reforms of Urukagina” (2)