Journal of Near Eastern Studies;Jul 2001, Vol. 60, Issue 3, p208, 2pLife in the Ancient Near East, 3100-332 B.C.E. Daniel C. SnellReviewed by Chavalas, Mark W.University of Wisconsin La CrosseSnell describes his new work on aspects of the social history of the ancient Near East as a "tentative synthesis written to access a broad public." This work fills a gap for those who have struggled to find an acceptable text for students on this topic.Though Snell's book is a social history that is not entirely subordinate to political history, he still frames it roughly in terms of Mesopotamian politics. He speculates that inter-regional trade may be a key to future periodization.Most chapters begin with an imaginative recreation of real life situations of people, from a foundling named Pada, who did the king's business abroad, to the sale of the old slave woman Kidin-Ninurta. Though these descriptions are written like the opening lines of a historical novel, they are of invaluable help to the beginning student of ancient history. Afterward, a number of topics are discussed, including population distribution, social groups, the family, women, labor, agriculture, animal management, crafts, trade, money and prices, and the government and economy.Snell addresses many of the questions plaguing scholars of social history. He discusses the difficulties in understanding the reasons for plant and animal domestication (since there was enough wild wheat accessible),[1] the economic reasons for the origins of writing (to check and control pilfering and decay, not profit and loss, based on a classical analogy),[2] ancient ethnicity, and the relative lack of importance of foreign trade. Snell advocates the idea of private land holding in the third and second millennia, similar to Gelb.[3]He also argues for a comparatively high rate of agricultural productivity in Mesopotamia, although he maintains that foreign trade was not of great importance to the functioning of the Mesopotamian economy.Snell observes that we do not know why rich slaves did not buy their freedom, and, echoing Oppenheim,[4] asks why free peasants are relatively undocumented. He maintains that technological change was not a major force for economic and social change in Mesopotamia (there were no incentives to make inventions known). He also reasons that there was no deterioration of the status of women over time.[5]Decline in Mesopotamia, according to Snell, was partly due to governmental taxation of temples in the first millennium.Snell understandably concentrates on Mesopotamia and only briefly discusses the social history of Egypt and Israel, while making occasional statements about contemporary trends in the remainder of the Old World. Moreover, there are no easy transition markers in the text to alert the student that another region is being discussed. Thus, this work is a veritable "life in Ancient Mesopotamia," enhanced by numerous examples from other regions.In an appendix, Snell discusses various theories about ancient economies and societies, giving insightful critiques on the ideas of Marx, Wallerstein, Wittfogel, Weber, and Polanyi. Moreover, he presents a basic model for understanding ancient economies in which he argues that there were two somewhat mutually exclusive centers of production in the ancient Near East, the household (both a social and production unit) and the market (a system of information about the availability, price, and location of items for purchase). He sums up that economies are best understood as:"collections of individual households in which members are sustained socially and economically with little regard to their abilities to produce. The way those households interact are markets, networks of knowledge about what is available and at what cost" (p. 158).
Snell does omit a few items, such as a discussion of the social structure of Emariote society.[6] A. Parpola now claims to have made inroads into deciphering the Indus Script.[7] One might have expected more information derived from the Hittite laws.[8]
This delightful book, which also contains a very useful and detailed forty-page bibliography, is a perfect supplemental text for a course on ancient West Asian history.
Notes:1 - Cf. F. Hole in G. Stein and M. Rothman, eds., Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East (Madison, Wisconsin, 1994), pp. 21-51.
2 - See G. de Ste. Croix, in A. Littleton et al., eds., Studies in the History of Accounting (Homewood, Illinois, 1956), pp. 14-74.
3 - See I. J. Gelb "On the Alleged Temple and State Economies in Ancient Mesopotamia," in Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra, 6 vols. (Milan, 1971), pp. 137-54.
4 - JESHO 10 (1967): 1-16.
5 - Contrary to Gerda Lerner; see The Creation of Patriarchy (New York, 1986).
6 - See G. Beckman, in M. Chavalas, ed., Emar: The History, Religion, and Culture of a Syrian Town in the Late Bronze Age (Bethesda, Maryland, 1996), pp. 5779.
7 - Deciphering the Indus Script (New York, 1994).
8 - Note the recent edition by Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition (Leiden and New York, 1997).
Life in the Ancient Near East: 3100-332 B.C.E.By Daniel C. SnellReviewed by David Levy,Vice President and Director of Public AffairsFederal Reserve Bank of MinneapolisIf you could still find an economic history text, its first chapter would likely tell the story of classical Greece and Italy. Not much if anything would be said about what preceded those cultures in socioeconomic terms, except possibly some speculation on how similar or dissimilar earlier societies may have been to life in Athens or Rome.
Usually, our Western economic historians begin their reasoning from primary materials of the classical tradition and work forward in time to the present. So today, nearly the 21st century, we suffer from a gap in our understanding.
Daniel Snell, in his newest book, Life in the Ancient Near East, armed with a great deal of new information culled from an ever-expanding body of ancient literature in a variety of languages, steps into that gap, writing a comprehensive history on the social and economic conditions of the Near East.
His formal account starts in pre-history and carries forward to Alexander the Great's conquest of the region in the fourth century B.C.E. Since most of Snell's sources are textual, his
de facto starting point comes with Sumerian writing and concludes when the Greeks, as political overlords, chose to write on parchment rather than clay tablets. We still have the cuneiform etched tablets, while the papyri have rotted to Middle Eastern dust.
By Ancient Near East, Snell means the areas of the modern countries of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt. Today's newspaper accounts would call it the Middle East; the terms Near East and Middle East derive from a Eurocentric compass. West Asia would be proper, if only anyone thought of it that way.
Mostly, Snell concentrates on Mesopotamia (the area of modern Iraq and Eastern Syria between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), no doubt because the material is so abundant, rich and "economic" in nature.
A thoroughly accessible book for the nonscholar,
Life in the Ancient Near East is thought provoking. Virtually every page draws a scene for the reader that then begs for comparison with the present. For instance, Snell, a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, tells us,
"There is the kernel of an economic theory produced under the Ur kings but concerning the fall of Akkad. The supposed impiety of Naram-Sin was felt to have led to high prices, and consequently piety in general was felt to lead to low prices ... one could say righteous policies led to low prices."
These days, most economists think of inflation as a monetary phenomenon.
Today we debate the government's role in the economy. Evidently, that debate has traveled a very long path. In the period 2000-1600 B.C.E., according to Snell,
"There were several efforts by various governments to regulate the economy. Most of the efforts failed and most of them may have been inspired not by analysis of economic social life but by a need to be seen doing something about the economic crisis."
Early attempts at "spin" no doubt.
As we travel throughout the Ninth Federal Reserve District we are often asked what can be done about the disappearance of the family farm. Our response is to point out that demographers tell us this is a trend that has been occurring for decades. It's not new.
Turning to Life in the Ancient Near East, it seems that trend is older yet and not unique to any one place: "It appears that many times rich people bought up the land held by the poor and destroyed the old agrarian order, replacing it with their own farms," says Snell. "Social critics in Israel protested against what they saw as a depersonalization and a rejection of old values inherent in establishing new farms at the expense of old ones."
Snell discusses prices in each of his period chapters. He notes that at some time before 1600 B.C.E. "... field prices everywhere seem low, only three or four times the cost of grain produced in a year on the field." Surprisingly, 4,000 years later that ratio roughly holds true on Midwest farmland—on average.
Perhaps I've seen too many Charleton Heston movies to ever accept Snell's myth-busting notion that, "It is much more likely that the pyramids were part of government make-work projects that used idle peasants in the off-season from agriculture in forced labor." A trip up the Nile as a tour of Ancient New Deal projects?
The appendix is aptly titled: "Theories of Ancient Economies." Here Snell explores the ideas and their importance of theorists including (and among others) Karl Marx, Max Weber and the late Hungarian-American economist Karl Polanyi. We get a brief glimpse of Snell's own philosophical compass as his colleague
Marc Van De Mieroop of Columbia University notes:
"Snell focuses primarily on trade rather than production or consumption. His emphasis on economic exchange places him within the group of scholars who consider it possible to study ancient economies with the tools neo-classical economic theories use to study modern capitalist societies."
Each chapter of Life in the Ancient Near East is introduced by a Michneresque vignette designed to humanize the otherwise nonfiction tomb. It works, helping the reader to understand some aspect of life for the real people who inhabited places like Babylon or Ur. It will no doubt draw disapproving eyebrow gestures from the enforcers of academic conventions.
Not to worry, says Van De Mieroop, professor of Ancient Near Eastern history, "Part of the fun of this scholarly discipline is that we can use our imagination to make men and women long dead familiar to us." No words could possibly resonate more perfectly with the editorial philosophy of The Region magazine.
