Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World.

• Author: Snell, Daniel C.
• Position: Review

Edited by MICHAEL HUDSON and BARUCH A. LEVINE. Peabody Museum Bulletin, no. 5; The International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economics, no. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND EXTNOLOGY, 1996. Pp. 308. $25 (paper).

This attractive volume is the result of a conference on Michael Hudson's idea that privatization could be an explanatory tool through much of history. He posits an early creation of a public sector which frequently has been diminished by the private appropriation of its resources. His own essays (pp. 1-72) are nuanced by the contributions of an archaeologist, several Assyriologists, and a classicist, and the result is worthy of study. But Hudson's view that the invention of writing marks an economic "Big Bang" of development (p. 10) ignores the invention's extended incubation and is also a little too convenient.

There is certainly need to research the public and private spheres and their interactions beyond the State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East volumes, edited by Edward Lipinski (Louvain: Departement Orientalistiek, 1979), and Circulation of Goods in Non-Palatial Context in the Ancient Near East, edited by Alfonso Archi (Rome: Ateneo, 1984). But the present volume does not study the Old Babylonian palace enterprises, where public projects enriched individuals; it does not establish how to discriminate between private and public documents, nor does it identify the private functions of publicly employed persons. Further, there is not much here about Greek evidence in spite of the book's title, and Egypt's long history of public and private interaction is omitted.

C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky examines the archaeological evidence for interregional commerce (pp. 73-108) and concludes that the evidence is slight. He thinks that to amass power controlling people may have been more efficient than buying land (p. 91). D. O. Edzard looks at private land ownership under Hammurapi (pp. 109-28) and finds that ilkum land, originally royal, could be inherited (p. 116). G. Buccellati argues that the public-private distinction arose only when the city evolved conditions of individual anonymity (pp. 129-51). Only with the invention of social distance was there any self-conscious effort to bridge that distance. Buccellati...