Economic Structures of Antiquity.

• Author: Foster, Benjamin R.

Silver's latest study carries forward his earlier inquiries, "Karl Polanyi and Markets in the Ancient Near East: The Challenge of the Evidence," Journal of Economic History 53 (1983): 795-829, and Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1986). It expands the latter by reworking the Mesopotamian material and adding evidence from Egypt and the Mediterranean, so is in effect a revised and . enlarged edition of the 1986 monograph.

Silver analyzes a variety of ancient Near Eastern social institutions and ideologies from the perspective of how they served to reduce transaction costs, that is, resources used up in transferring ownership or in communications, transport, and enforcement of agreements. This leads him in interesting directions. Whereas many students of the ancient world may consider religious institutions expensive ideological burdens absorbing valuable resources in unproductive display, Silver suggests ways in which "the gods" were economically useful in reducing transaction costs, for example, by endowing commerce and industry with sacral, even monopolistic values, thus, according to him, encouraging innovation and profit through a process he compares to modern patenting. For Silver, syncretism can serve to establish common economic ground and trust. He discusses as well the economic role of oaths, the importance of temples as centers, guarantors, banks, repositories of valuables, and information, and cultic practices as economic opportunities. Focusing on trade in particular, Silver discusses divine sanctions and commercial codes, symbolic and religious gestures in commerce, sacrifices and gift trade, and the use of family ties, marriage, and household slavery to reduce costs and enhance the possibilities for a market economy. This leads him to consider the who, why, and wherefore of ancient market practices, transport, storage, and diffusion of technology. In short, there are proposals of interest to nearly any student of ancient economy.

Having shown market mechanisms and possibilities, Silver demolishes (pp. 95ff.) the thesis of Karl Polanyi that the ancient Near East had no markets as such. This notion enjoyed a brief vogue in Assyriology but at least among philologists has long been discredited or ignored (see D.C. Snell, "Marketless Trading in Our Time," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 34 [1991]: 129-41).

Finally (pp. 179ff.), Silver notes some specific responses...