Doing Business in the Ancient World

From at least 2000 BC, Mesopotamians used silver coils as an early form of money, which allowed them to clip off a piece of a certain weight to make an exchange. By 650 BC, the first coins were developed in Lydia, Western Turkey. One of these early Lydian coin-makers was King Croesus - hence the phrase "rich as Croesus."

From around 330 BC, Alexander the Great and his successors, the Ptolemies, faced a problem after they conquered Egypt. They did business with coins, but Egyptians made exchanges using weighed lumps of silver, grain, and other goods. The Ptolemies incentivized coin use by paying state employees in coins and by requiring each man and woman to pay an annual “salt tax” in coins. Once the tax was paid, a scribe issued a receipt.

Minting coins wasn’t cheap. In Egypt around 250–200 BC, the economy was based on silver, which was extremely scarce locally. To deal with the shortage, Ptolemaic rulers minted large bronze (copper alloy) coins which were cheaper and easier to produce. Later, the Romans ran a massive economy based on coins but found it costly to mint them. Around 300 AD, they began to condone the making of counterfeit coins using molds. Counterfeiters cheated the currency system but also helped maintain it by increasing the number of coins.

A cylinder seal allowed the rolling out of a “signature” onto a soft clay tablet or tag. Once the clay dried, it was tamper-proof. Seals identified individuals or a particular office. They also came in the form of stamps or rings. Contracts were written on clay tablets like the one displayed here, and included dates and signatures. Along its edges are seal impressions of witnesses.

Balance scales and small standardized stone balance weights (later glass and metal) were perfect tools for keeping track of valuable materials, especially precious metals.

Nearly four thousand years ago, Assyrian merchants from Iraq established a trading community at Kültepe in central Turkey. They carried out the earliest known market-based private trade and arbitrage — the simultaneous buying and selling of goods for profit. They imported and sold tin and textiles to the local population, in exchange for silver, gold, and other goods, often at great profit. This letter discusses the purchase of animals and a business dispute with a third party.