A New Money Economy at the Dawn of the Iron Age
June 2022 | Vol. 10.6
By Elon Heymans
Money attracts not only people, but also stories. For example, among his many digressions, the Greek historian Herodotus recounts the story of the Athenian Alkmeon. Alkmeon had assisted the Lydians upon their visit to the oracle in Delphi and, as a token of his gratitude, king Kroisos invited him to the palace in Sardis and told him to take as much gold as he could bear.
Dressed in a wide gown and wearing large boots, he immediately jumped onto a heap of gold dust (presumably that from the nearby Paktolos river) and loaded his boots and the folds of his garment with as much as he could carry, even sprinkling it over his hair and stuffing it in his mouth. Herodotus amusingly details how he stumbled out of the treasury, stuffed and swollen, ‘looking like anything but a human being’, a sight that caused Kroisos to burst out in laughter (Hdt. 6.125).
Head of Croesus on a Greek vase in the Louvre. Marco Prins Livius.org. Provided under CC 0 license.
While offered as an explanation of how the powerful Alkmeonid family (which included Kleisthenes and Perikles) acquired its wealth, the story of Alkmeon clearly also makes fun of it. Alkmeon’s greed could hardly be satisfied. Taking home a great deal of gold was not enough, he wanted to physically surround himself with, even immerse himself in it. It brings to mind Scrooge McDuck, the cartoon figure characteristically reluctant to spend any of his money, out of fear that he should no longer have enough to swim around in it.
These are not just fabulous stories. They might appear ridiculous, but in fact mock some of our more fundamental attitudes towards money and wealth: we cannot get enough of it, and we like to cover or dress ourselves with it. Think of how wealth or the suggestion of it can be incorporated in our physical appearance through certain luxury brands of handbags, fancy cars, or the type of ostentatious display of gold known as bling-bling.
In fact, objects of wealth have functioned in many cultures throughout history to adorn the body, rather than to be hoarded. Such objects, whether feathers, beads, bangles, shells or cloth – often referred to as primitive currencies – are invested with social significance and prestige, forming the basis of their value. This poses somewhat of a paradox, because if you use wealth to dress or adorn yourself, there will be a natural limit to what the human body can bear; and only once wealth is no longer displayed – effectively taking it out of circulation – can it be hoarded, allowing one to give in to the desire to have more and more of it.
Map showing location of Bronze and Iron Age silver hoards. After Tzilla Eshel, Naama Yahalom-Mack, Sariel Shalev, Ofir Tirosh, Yigal Erel and Ayelet Gilboa, Four Iron Age Silver Hoards from Southern Phoenicia: From Bundles to Hacksilber, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 379 (May 2018), Figure 1.
This paradox is visible in the emergence of silver money in the Iron Age Levant. Certainly, societies of the Ancient Near East long used precious metal, in particular silver, as a form of money. Silver is referred to as a unit of value in administrative records, and hoards containing cut and broken pieces of silver (so-called hacksilber) are known from around the middle of the third millennium BCE.
However, by the end of the Late Bronze Age evidence for the use of hacksilber in the Levant increases in the form of a series of hoards, for example from Ugarit, Tell Basta, Megiddo and Beth Shean, indicating the growing importance of silver as a form of money. Interestingly, most of the objects in these hoards are (fragments of) jewellery or vessels – manufactured objects that had functioned as prestige items in contexts of social interaction. In the Late Bronze Age political and social discourse, as we know from texts, such objects had been visible expressions of wealth that were kept in circulation, rather than being hidden and hoarded.
Silver objects from a hoard from Ugarit, dating to the time of its destruction in the early twelfth century BCE (after Schaeffer 1932, pl. 16.1, courtesy of Ifpo)
But during the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age and the ensuing Iron I period (ca. 1200–950 BCE), it appears that these prestige objects were increasingly cut and broken down for use in making payments. Especially by the end of the Iron I, the high level of fragmentation in the hoards suggests that silver was circulating intensively, being used for small-scale transactions with a high degree of accuracy. Under what circumstances did this change in the use and value of silver occur? And how did this give way to the emergence of money in the Iron Age Mediterranean – a phenomenon that would leave its mark on history?
Trade networks in the Late Bronze Age functioned so long as merchants were able to travel safely between destinations. While bandits posing a threat to the safe passage of travellers and the murder of merchants en route are topics of concern reflected already in the Amarna letters, it is clear that by the twelfth century BCE increased insecurity was affecting international trade and diplomacy. Ample evidence for this is known from Ugarit in the form of settlements of liability and compensation payments for the murder of travelling merchants. Such documents indicate that responsibility for safeguarding trade routes ultimately lay with ruling authorities, and it is therefore no surprise that the increasing pressure on central powers, due to soaring commodity prices, raids, rising social unrest, or (likely) a combination of such factors, posed a further threat to the system.
Objects from a silver hoard from Megiddo, dating to the middle of the tenth century BCE (Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
In the southern Levant, the gradually weakening rule of the Egyptians of the 20th dynasty and their retreat by the late twelfth century left important trade routes exposed. This process went hand in hand with a faltering of the supply in (luxury) goods, undermining the power basis of local elites, and thereby placing further pressure on trade networks. Where the supply of commodities through trade had previously been based on longstanding credit relations, the new circumstances made people resort to the use of silver in carrying out transactions. Precious metal had obvious advantages: being portable and easy to hoard, it became a form of insurance in the face of instable trade relations and the falling supply in key trading commodities, such as copper and grain. People thus turned to prestige objects they had in their possession, cutting them up at will for use within a new regime of value.
This provided a stimulus for the spread of money within the economy, and in the centuries to follow silver continued to function as a form of money. Interestingly, from the end of the tenth century onwards, hoards (such as those from Dor, Akko and Arad) contain less fragments of manufactured objects, but more ingots, suggesting the use of silver money had become well established and new sources of silver were now entering the system.
A silver hoard from Tel Arad, found inside a cooking pot and dated around the middle of the eighth century BCE (Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University; photo by Sasha Flit)
The historical implications of the emergence of money at the dawn of the Iron Age are far reaching, but one observation deserves to be emphasized in light of the above. Rather than the spread in the use of money being indicative of a growing and expanding economy, the opposite appears to be the case here: as the international trade networks of the Late Bronze Age world suffered disintegration, people opted to liquidate the precious metal items they had, thereby giving rise to a new money economy. While this doesn’t mean that, historically, a prestige/display economy and a money economy are mutually exclusive, it does offer an insight into the tension between these two.
Elon Heymans is a lecturer in ancient history at the University of Amsterdam and the author of The Origins of Money in the Iron Age Mediterranean World.
How to cite this article
Heymans, E. 2022. “A New Money Economy at the Dawn of the Iron Age.” The Ancient Near East Today 10.6. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/heymans-economy-iron-age/.
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