Commodities in Babylonia were valued mostly in silver or gold but payed with other commodities like barley, fabrics or cattle, and Kassite Babylonia was no exception. Every commodity used as “money” was converted into its equivalence in metal, and this is our main source for establishing “prices”. Equivalences, however, are oriented on standard rates as “1 kor barley = 1 shekel silver”, independently from the actual market rate of the commodity, so that it is necessary to discriminate the total “price” in silver or gold of the commodity sold and the “value” attributed to the specific commodities actually used as “money”; in other words, the same cow could have been differently valued as object of a transaction and as “money” payed. In this contribution are presented in tabular form the prices attested in published texts of Middle Babylonian times, but the tables must be read in the light of the general price and rate setting in antiquity.
La formazione dei prezzi delle derrate in età cassita
DEL MONTE, GIUSEPPE
2009-01-01
Abstract
Commodities in Babylonia were valued mostly in silver or gold but payed with other commodities like barley, fabrics or cattle, and Kassite Babylonia was no exception. Every commodity used as “money” was converted into its equivalence in metal, and this is our main source for establishing “prices”. Equivalences, however, are oriented on standard rates as “1 kor barley = 1 shekel silver”, independently from the actual market rate of the commodity, so that it is necessary to discriminate the total “price” in silver or gold of the commodity sold and the “value” attributed to the specific commodities actually used as “money”; in other words, the same cow could have been differently valued as object of a transaction and as “money” payed. In this contribution are presented in tabular form the prices attested in published texts of Middle Babylonian times, but the tables must be read in the light of the general price and rate setting in antiquity.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
