Female Financial Firsts 2: Sumerian Shekels

Long before Jane Hoare’s Valentine’s Day stock transaction (see my earlier piece here), women were making and establishing “firsts” in finance. Female firsts were not the exclusive domain of European women. Women from America, Asia, and Africa also led financial innovations. This post, while brief, will be the second in the series but the first chronologically in my series.

The Great Ziggurat at Ur

Babylonian Bankers

Historians often trace the beginnings of Western Civilization to a place firmly in Asia: Babylonia in the 25^th century BC. Since Babylonia is thus considered the cradle of Western Civilization it may not be surprising that women were active in financial transactions there and at that time.[i] In fact, Columbia University Professor of Ancient and Near East History Marc Van De Mieroop, a scholar of the period, broadly asserts that “loans with interest are thus first attested [to] in Babylonia.”[ii]

Four thousand years before the present, women were at the forefront in this, the very first series of financial transactions. The few records that have survived to the present hint at modern-sounding banking functions such as accepting deposits, making loans, and transferring credit between merchants.

Dr. Van De Mierop demonstrates that the earliest examples of interest bearing loans were found in ancient Sumer – the ancient kingdom from which Babylonia emerged. Sumerians, “men, and some women, with access to disposable wealth handed out small loans, made advances for people who could not pay their rental fees, and in various other ways became creditors.”[iii]

More importantly, these provisions included explicit recognition of women’s rights. As financial historians Sydney Homer and Dick Sylla put it: “The wife’s signature was often required in a loan contract. Women’s property rights were protected by the Code.”[iv]

Mesopotamian-area temples, both Babylonian and Assyrian, were at the apex of these developments – in part because they became extremely wealthy as tithes of grain and coin poured. In fact it appears that temples dominated finance.[v] 

An ancient Ziggurat in Iraq from a 2005 photo

Of these a significant number were dedicated to goddesses.[vi]

In what may be the earliest reference to a woman borrowing – and repaying – money, scholar Rivkah Harris at the University of Chicago offered this (undated) detail:

“Amatum, a woman, had borrowed a relatively large sum of money from [the temple of] Isarpadda, an otherwise unknown god. She [repaid] the money to Isarpadda and his agent Irra-gaser….It was probably Irragaser along with Isarpadda who gave the original loan to Amatum.”[vii]

Not all loans were of coins – barley appears to be the borrowed item as well.[viii] Interest was sometimes stated and sometimes not. Payment could often be made in kind.[ix] One woman was required to sacrifice two rams in lieu of interest payments.[x]

However, borrowing goods and repaying via sacrifice sounds quite different from a modern loan. It is refreshing then to learn that financial borrowing did occur in ancient times and the earliest examples extant includes one where a woman acts as lender. 

Sumerian Shekel

Professors Homer and Sylla show that among the very first recorded loans was a temple priestess lending to a local man in about the year 2000 B.C.:

“’Two shekels of silver have been borrowed by Mas-Schamach, the son of A., from the sun-priestess Amat-Schamach, daughter of W. He will pay the Sun-God’s interest [20-25%?]. At the time of harvest he will pay back the sum and the interest upon it.’”[xi]

As far as is known, this is one of the earliest recorded financial transactions in history.

If one can get past terms like ‘priestesses’ and ‘shekels’, the above transaction – perhaps the very first known to humans involving women – has all the elements of a modern loan (interest, parties, term, etc.). Over time this transaction and others like it evolved into proto-banking activities.

Commerce is dependent on good governance. Sumeria was fortunate in this regard. Well before the onset of a modern legal system, Hammurabi’s Code – the first known codified legal system – made provisions for financial agreements.[xii]

Like the spread of Hamurabi’s Code, mirror banking practices were likely adopted by neighboring societies because of the logical necessity. Within years of the priestess’ 2 shekel deal, loans like it could be found nearly everywhere in the Mideast – except for, curiously enough, Egypt.[xiii]

Babylonian tablets such as these captured the terms of their loans

My next post will discuss Greek contributions to Female Financial Firsts. 


Copyright 2013 by David Baeckelandt. All rights reserved. No reproduction in any form without my express, written consent.

Endnotes

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[i] Just before press time I became aware of Aaron Jacob Skaist’s The Old Babylonian Loan Contract: Its History and Geography , (Tel Aviv: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1994) http://www.amazon.com/The-old-Babylonian-loan-contract/dp/9652261610 . There may in fact be other important references but I will have to add more at another time.

[ii] Marc Van De Mieroop, “The Invention of Interest: Sumerian Loans,” p. 30, in Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital Markets, William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, Eds., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

[iii] Marc Van De Mieroop, “The Invention of Interest: Sumerian Loans,” p. 20, in Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital Markets, William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, Eds., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

[iv] Sydney Homer and Richard Sylla, A History of Interest Rates, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), p.27

[v] Rivkah Harris, “Old Babylonian Temple Loans”, pp. 126-137 in Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 14 (1960), p.127

[vi]“Goddesses, too, are mentioned in temple loans: Inanna Kititum and Istar in Neribtum (Ish 134, 144 and A 7728 respectively), Gula along with Ninlil in Ur (UET 5 311), Ninegal and Inanna of Zabalam in Larsa (the former BIN 7 160, the latter BIN 7 164 and 165). In one Sippar temple loan the goddess Aja appears alongside her consort Samas (VAS 8 128).” Rivkah Harris, “Old Babylonian Temple Loans”, pp. 126-137 in Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 14 (1960), p.128

[vii] Rivkah Harris, “Old Babylonian Temple Loans”, pp. 126-137 in Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 14 (1960), p.130

[viii] Rivkah Harris, “Old Babylonian Temple Loans”, pp. 126-137 in Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 14 (1960), p.130

[ix] Rivkah Harris, “Old Babylonian Temple Loans”, pp. 126-137 in Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 14 (1960), p.132

[x] Rivkah Harris, “Old Babylonian Temple Loans”, pp. 126-137 in Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 14 (1960), p.132

[xi] Sydney Homer and Richard Sylla, A History of Interest Rates, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), p.29

[xii]  See the well-written blog post on lending and Hamurabi’s involvement here; http://blog.prosper.com/2008/06/30/history-of-peer-to-peer-lending/  Accessed May 11, 2013

[xiii] Marc Van De Mieroop, “The Invention of Interest: Sumerian Loans,” p. 30, in Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital Markets, William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, Eds., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).