In this two-part article, the author presents an overview of what various ancient textual artifacts “remember” about the earliest loan closings known to history and their participants, exploring the commercial lending practices of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, a region often designated by scholars as the “Ancient Near East.” In the first part, published in the February 2026 issue of The Banking Law Journal, the author introduced the topic. Here, the author explores ancient loan documents in depth.[1]
II. ANCIENT LOAN DOCUMENTS
A. Loan Documentation Materials
I first became interested in ancient loan transactions while visiting the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. On display among their collections are cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, including fragments of a cuneiform tablet loan contract for silver, written in front of three witnesses and authenticated by each party by rolled impressions from cylinder seals, circa 1800 BCE, the clay tablet itself measuring about 1 x 1.5 x .5 inches. Figure 1 is a picture of this clay tablet in three pieces, the first and the third constituting the outer envelope and the second the interior document.
Figure 1
Cuneiform Tablet and Envelope with Old Babylonian Contract for Loan of Silver. Mesopotamia. Babylonian. Old Babylonian Period, 2000-1600 BCE. Clay. Object no. 2012.44.101A-C. Gift of James E. and Elizabeth J. Ferrell. Photo by the author. By permission of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.
In a nearby gallery is a display of cylinder seals similar to those used on this loan agreement tablet. These seals, reminiscent in size and shape of wine bottle corks, when rolled over clay, created a miniature bas-relief of people, animals, plants and gods, and their activities. Figure 2 is such a cylinder seal (and its impressions in clay and an enlarged photograph) from the Carlos Museum.
Figure 2
Cylinder Seal with Presentation Scene. Mesopotamia. Babylonian. Old Babylonian Period, 1925-1825 BCE. Hematite. Object no. 2008.31.260. Gift of the Estate of Michael J. Shubin. Photo by the author. By permission of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University. Many of these cuneiform legal documents were produced using a peculiar convention of duplicate documentation where the lawyer-scribe wrote the agreement on a clay tablet, copied that same agreement on a separate clay tablet twice the size of the first tablet, and then inserted the first tablet into the second tablet which was folded over it and thus acted like an envelope. The parties then “sealed” the second tablet document “envelope” shut with wet clay on which they impressed their cylinder seals, thereby authenticating the contracts, leaving the first document secured from alteration inside the second identical document (a form of cylinder-security), the second, outside document being available for reference, as demonstrated by the Carlos Museum’s loan contract for silver pictured in Figure 1.24[2] In Egypt, to authenticate an agreement and to secure the contents of such document from alteration, a papyrus document was typically rolled up and tied, with a lump of clay stamped with a seal (usually in the form of a ring) over the knotted twine used to seal the document. The lump of clay displaying the seal impression is called a “bulla,” and many of these, separated from their long-disintegrated documents, have been recovered in archaeological excavations. Following Egypt – its neighbor to the south – Canaan/Israel also tied papyrus legal documents in a roll with a similar seal (bulla) impressed upon it.
B. Loan Documentation Contents
1. Debt Obligations
The earliest documentary reference to a loan in Mesopotamia is not found in any loan contract written on a clay tablet or in any code of laws governing loans, but instead is found in narrative form in a royal inscription regarding a lengthy border war, circa 2400 BCE, between Lagash and Umma, two cities located in southern Mesopotamia. In what appears to have originally been a land lease by Lagash, as landlord, to Umma, as tenant, Umma apparently defaulted in its payment of rent for over 40 years. Lagash made several demands for payment. Lagash’s king, Enmetena, eventually recharacterized the arrangement as a barley loan and calculated the (apparently compound) interest payable on the past due amounts to be equal to a half trillion liters of that grain, an amount significant enough to justify going to war with Umma (or at least that was Enmetena’s excuse for starting it). Two years later, Enmetena was the victor.[3]
In another historic first, Enmetena also made an official public declaration forgiving consumer debts in Lagash, resulting in the release of many of its citizens from the misery of debt servitude. Debt bondage was an especially heinous legal remedy available to creditors in antiquity that was not only socially unjust, but also a hindrance to the growth of his city’s economy, no doubt so recognized by Enmetena. “[Enmetena] established the liberation of [Lagash], he let the child return to the mother, he let the mother return to the child. He established the liberation of barley debts. . . .”[4]
Promissory oaths made in front of witnesses, a kind of a “self-curse invoking a god or the king, by which a person imposes a strict obligation upon himself,”[5] appear to have predated written contracts and were used throughout the ANE, including for loans. The reader might ask how we could surmise the existence of such unwritten, oral agreements when researching written history? It is not a mystery: such oaths were conveniently included in the text of many early contracts in the form of a recitation, followed by somewhat duplicative text setting forth the obligation as a written agreement – apparently an early form of belt-and-suspenders. Oral promissory oaths continued to be used and enforced after legal documentation became widely available, possibly due to convenience and the expense of scribal fees, with the documentary record suggesting a gradual decrease in the inclusion of the oath in written contracts, although both or either option may have been used.[6]
2. Principal
Loans were usually made in commodities, most often grain and silver. The making of such loans as an ongoing business venture seemingly originated among Mesopotamian priests as a result of surplus items on hand in temple treasuries. Deities were often associated with the making of such loans, even serving as (unsigned, of course) witnesses to the clay tablets evidencing the loan contract,[7] echoing the making of a promissory oath.
3. Interest
Loans documents expressly included terms that the principal was to bear interest, although some documentation was silent as to interest. Interest rates usually reflected what was set forth in contemporary legal codes. Contracts that did not include interest suggest to some commentators that the pledge of collateral for such loans possibly constituted the interest payable upon the forfeiture of that collateral when the loan became due or if the collateral itself literally produced income (more on this below), which was then kept by the creditor as interest (an antichretic pledge), or that the standard interest rates applied absent an express declaration that no interest applied[8]. Still others have even suggested that some of the cuneiform loan contracts which were silent as to interest were in fact made via a form of original issuance discount, where an amount less than the face amount of the loan contact was advanced, with payment in full of the entire face amount at maturity, thereby including an inherent interest rate.[9] In any event, upon payment of the loan at maturity, the creditor was obligated to return the original sealed tablet to the debtor.[10]
Scholars often speculate on the origins of interest, which first appeared in Mesopotamia. Was it invented, or discovered? One thing is certain: “Mesopotamians charged interest on loans before they discovered how to put wheels on carts.”[11] Convincing linguistic evidence from ANE and other languages points toward the term for “offspring” being adapted and used as “interest,” suggesting it arose directly from loans of livestock or seeds, with nature itself providing a source of income to be paid along with the principal at maturity after harvest or after borrowed animals gave birth.[12] As summarized by Edward Chancellor:
[The] word for interest, mas, signifies a kid goat (or lamb) in ancient Mesopotamia. The ancient Egyptian equivalent ms means to give birth. In ancient Greek interest is tokos, a calf. Among the several Hebrew words for interest are marbit and tarbit, meaning to increase and multiply. The Latin for interest, foenus, connotes fertility, and for money, pecunia, is derived from pecus, a flock. Our word capital comes from caput, a head of cattle.[13]
4. Collateral
ANE loans could also be secured by collateral and guaranteed. Personal and real property could be pledged as security. As noted above, ANE law also supported the vile practice of pledging individual family members of debtors, and debtors themselves, as collateral security.
5. Remedies
Upon default, collateral could be kept or sold and individual debtors could be forced into debt enslavement, subject to possible redemption. Judicial demands made on the loan agreement against debtors and guarantors were also available to creditors. Just as we have collections of cuneiform tablets memorializing contracts, we are also fortunate to have numerous trial records from ancient Mesopotamia as well. These documents, consisting of scribal summaries of testimony and the judicial findings in preliminary hearings and actual trials, were kept by the prevailing parties in lawsuits as proof of property ownership in disputed title cases, or otherwise as evidence of rights obtained in such cases, all to be retained in order to avoid future litigation over the same circumstances. One such noteworthy creditors’ rights case brought during the Neo-Babylonian Period in Mesopotamia (circa 543 BCE) also revealed potential malpractice and liability claims faced by lawyer-scribes hired to draft loan documentation for unworthy clients.[14]
C. The Old Babylonian “Classic” Period (2000-1600 BCE) of Loan Documents
While loan documents appear in earlier periods of Mesopotamian history, we will focus on loan contracts from the Old Babylonian Period, a period that has yielded to archaeology the richest documentation of cuneiform tablets from the ANE, with such documents deriving mostly from the private sector, as opposed to the primarily institution-related documentation unearthed for earlier peri[1]ods, a circumstance leading some to see a reflection of changes in Mesopotamian society and economy toward a privatization of formally central institu[1]tional services, with certain individuals acting more and more “as intermediaries between institutions and the citizenry.”[15]
1. Old Babylonian Loan Terms
As for interest on loans during the Old Babylonian Period, the contemporary legal codes of Eshnunna and Hammurabi each provide virtually identical provisions, with 20% charged on silver loans and 33.33% charged on grain loans.[16] In the legal tablets, interest was typically stated as “an interest rate of 16 shekels per 60 shekels is to be added”[17] suggesting, legal codes notwithstanding, there was a wide variety of interest rates charged, with interest sometimes being charged only if a default in payment occurs.[18]
Repayment for grain loans could be set at a fixed date or the next harvest when the individual could repay the grain loan in kind.[19] The Laws of Hammurabi also recognized “an act of god” defense to repayment if the debtor’s harvest fails, attributing it to the storm-god Adad.[20] Debt contracts as well as the Laws of Eshnunna even permitted repayment in commodities different from those originally loaned to the debtor, with a standard conversion rate.[21]
In addition to acting against pledged collateral, the creditor could exercise certain limited remedies of distraint against the debtor, the debtor’s family members and livestock. While rights of redemption allowed debtors to pay loans to release property and persons from creditor’s remedies, there is evidence from this period that courts sometimes exercised equitable judicial rights to annul otherwise valid contract provisions for the pledge or sale of collateral. Individuals enslaved into debt bondage could also be released after a period of time when the individuals were deemed to have paid off the debt with their services.[22]
Similarly, guarantees were also common in the Old Babylonian Period, with the obligation to pay at maturity, or provide another person to pay. Once the guarantor had paid the debt, the guarantor could pursue a reimbursement claim against the original debtor.[23]
2. Old Babylonian Loan Agreement Provisions
Loan contracts had evolved and grown substantially by this period in both length and complexity, but with more standardization of the typical provisions as noted by Aaron Skaist in the following compiled list of “standard” provisions (although not all of the following components are present in all loan contracts in the period):[24]
- Goods loaned and amount;
- Type of loan;
- Interest;
- Contracting parties and a “taking” or “receipt” clause;
- Repayment of loan;
- Pledge or other security for the loan;
- Joint responsibility of debtors if more than one;
- Late payment penalty;
- Promissory oath; and
- Witnesses and date.
3. Old Babylonian Model Loan Document Forms
In addition to numerous actual loan documents recovered from personal and institutional archives of the Old Babylonian Period, we are fortunate to also have model loan documents from this period at our disposal, templates written in compilation documents or anthologies rather than in separate tablets, usually stripped of details such as dates and a list of witnesses, and found in sites known to be scribal school locations. As noted above, we also have texts that describe the scribal curriculum for this period, noting that model contracts and proverbs were introduced during advanced levels of instruction.[25] Our understanding of these form contracts and their use and influence remains in its initial stages, however, with several open questions demanding our attention:
Were model contracts based on functional documents, extracted from school lists, or sometimes created extemporaneously with the use of common formulas? All of these approaches may well have been employed. If functional documents served as [examples] . . . were these exemplars ever contemporary, or were they always from an earlier period? Was there any influence in the other direction, i.e., did model contracts ever have an influence on the formulation of functional documents? This would seem most likely if some scribes both prepared model contracts for students and composed functional contracts for clients.[26]
A publication by Walter Bodine of tablet NBC 7800 from the Babylonian Collection at Yale University, a tablet containing 18 model contracts inscribed on it, presents us with an excellent example of a typical loan and pledge agreement, and my presentation of these texts below will rely on Dr. Bodine’s translation, as refined by his commentary.[27]
A Barley Loan Agreement: [50 bushels] of barley, as a [loan made by Ur-Suen, the XX, to Ur-Ningal, the smith, with] interest to be added from Ur-Ningal, the smith. . . . By the [third] month . . . the barley he is to measure out [(and) will (then) measure out its interest]. If by the [third] month . . . he does not measure out the barley, 1/2 mina of silver he shall pay [as a penalty]. He will not contest [this debt]. In the name of the king he swore [a promissory oath].
This form describes a barley loan that bears interest at the going rate for grain, which was 33.33%. The name of the borrower in this form is the actual name of a smith known from the Ur III Period, and is possibly derived from an actual debt contract for the named individual, Ur-Ningal, who was a smith. The profession of the lender, Ur-Suen, is missing. The barley loan is to be repaid, with interest, in kind, literally measured out, in the third month of the Mesopotamian calendar, the most common month for repayment of debts. A penalty is payable by the debtor if the loan is not paid upon maturity, in an amount equal to approximately 2.5 times the original “principal” balance, a higher than “market” late fee, compared to other debt contracts from the period. This loan agreement also contains a “no contest” provision and ends with a confirmation that the debtor also swore a promissory oath with regard to the debt, in addition to the signing of this contract regarding payment of the debt.
A Pledge Agreement: [For a loan of] [S]ix shekels of silver, [Ilam-nada, the debtor, provided], as a pledge [for such loan], Rubatum, [the] daughter of Ilam-nada, [she was] put up [by Ilam-nada as pledge]. From Nabi-Sin did Ilam-nada receive [the loan of silver]. If in the future Rubatum dies, runs away, disappears [or] stops working, [another] pledge [Ilam-nada] will [be obligated to] put up.
As noted above, debt bondage was a customary practice in the ANE, yet it was not a matter of complete indifference to the rulers of the ANE, as illustrated by the case of Enmetena mentioned above, who took official measures to periodically relieve their citizenry of the burden of debt enslavement. Through[1]out the period we are discussing, “intermittent royal decrees annulled existing [non-commercial] debts and released property [including humans] sold or pledged pursuant thereto, and [in particular, during the Old Babylonian Period,] the Laws of Hammurabi ordered the release of debt enslaved individuals after three years’ service.”[28]
Turning to the model pledge contract in particular, this form can be used with a debt note or included in it. As is the case with this model pledge contract, there is often included an undertaking by the pledgor that additional or substitute collateral will be granted if the pledged person dies, becomes sick, runs away or otherwise disappears.[29]
As for post-default remedies, most debt notes from this period do not specify the powers of the creditor over the pledged collateral, but the sources indicate that if the debtor does not pay the loan or otherwise redeem the collateral, the debtor forfeits the pledged collateral to the creditor. [30] Presumably this was understood in the case of this model form of pledge agreement as well.
D. Egyptian Loan Document Materials
Egyptian documentary material regarding loan transactions is limited before the New Kingdom (circa 1550-1070 BCE). One reason for this, no doubt, is that papyrus, used in Egypt for legal documents, is not as durable as the (often baked) clay tablets used in Mesopotamia. Another possible reason is that loans were agreed to orally, dependent on oaths and witnesses to ensure validity and enforceability of the oral contract.[31] It appears that such early promissory oaths were made in the temple, with predominantly priests acting as witnesses,[32] although there is evidence that such oaths were also undertaken in less solemn settings, in the ordinary course of day-to-day life.[33]
Deir el-Medina, a tomb worker community in the late New Kingdom, provides most of the sources for understanding loan documentation during this period and suggests that most loans were made as a part of mutual aid and reciprocity, hence the presumed lack of a profit motive and failure to charge interest.[34] It is possible that more urban environments experienced a more commercialized lending environment, but this is not in evidence until the Third Intermediate Period, circa 1000-664 BCE, when loans and credit were extended at interest and with silver as the commodity loaned.[35]
By 1000 BCE, at the emergence of the Third Intermediate Period, more information regarding Egyptian commercial loan terms and loan contracts becomes available, although the making of grain loans as acts of public assistance continues, as evidenced by a biographical text from Djedkhonsefankh, a Theban official and prophet of Amun-Re, circa 900 BCE:
When I was in charge of the loaves, my lord Amun enriched me. I was constant in lending grain to the Thebans, in nourishing the poor of my town. I did not rage at him who could not pay. I did not press him so as to seize his belongings. I did not make him sell his goods to another, so as to repay the debt he had made. I sated (him) by buying his goods and paying two or three times their worth. One cannot equal what I did in any respect.[36]
1. Egyptian Loan Terms
Unlike Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt did not appear to have standardized interest rates for loans. One loan contract from this period evidences a man’s promise to repay a precious metal loan (most likely copper, but possibly silver or gold) with 100% interest within one year.[37] Another precious metal loan contract from this period documents a 40% interest rate, while a contemporary grain loan provides for interest at 75%. Evidence for pledges or sureties is scant, although they are present in certain non-loan agreements. And, as was the case in Mesopotamia, later Greek writings indicate that circa 725 BCE, at least one pharaoh from this period granted debt relief to the citizenry,[38] suggesting that other pharaohs likely did the same on occasion.
In later periods such a tendency continued, as evidenced by the most famous inscription in Egyptian history that also competes for the award for the least read inscription in Egyptian history, namely, the Rosetta Stone. In the text on the Rosetta Stone, Pharaoh Ptolemy V (204-180 BCE) proclaimed in 196 BCE a general debt cancellation on the occasion of his accession to the throne, among other things.[39]
2. Egyptian Loan Agreement Provisions
As noted above, while some loans and other contracts involving credit prior to the New Kingdom were no doubt in writing, most appear to have been entered into orally, dependent on oaths and witnesses to ensure validity and enforceability of the oral contract, again, a reliance “characteristic of communities with a strong sense of social solidarity.”[40]
Perhaps the best example of a written loan contract appears later in the Third Intermediate Period, from the 22nd Dynasty, documenting the terms of loan of metal:[41]
Year 13, first month of summer, day 11.
There has said PN, son of PN, to the prophet of Amun, overseer of the treasury PN, son of PN:
I have received from you 5 deben of the treasury of (the god) Heryshef. It is I who will give it to you, they being 10 (deben in) year 14, first month of summer, day 11, without there being anything in the world to say with you.
Through the hand of the document scribe PN, son of PN, so he spoke. (There follow six witnesses).[42]
A “deben” was a standard measurement for precious metals, approximately 91 grams for copper.[43]
3. Egyptian Model Loan Document Forms
Although plentiful evidence exists for extensive scribal training in Egypt that equals that found in Mesopotamia, including anthologies of texts as study guides,[44] Egyptian scribes do not appear to have used anthologies of model legal documents since none of these have been found in Egyptian excavations. And while ancient Egyptian scribes no doubt had contract samples at their disposal for reference purposes, the scant legal documents we do have from the period of the Old Kingdom through the Third Intermediate Period do not indicate the same level of standardization of contract formats and contents as found in Mesopotamia. During and after the Late Period, however, more standardization of contracts appears, although this may be more attributable to the cultural stew that Egypt had then become, with legal concepts and customs imported from outside of Egypt being stirred together with formerly more isolated Egyptian practices.
E. Canaanite/Israelite Loan Document Materials
Ancient Canaan/Israel was located at the cross-roads of the ANE and often found itself in a cultural tug-of-war between the competing regions of Mesopotamia and Egypt, with Israel emerging as a regional power after 1000 BCE during the time Egypt declined and Assyria was beginning to rise in power. Because of our modern, Judeo-Christian preoccupation with the Hebrew Bible, we frequently forget that Israel was not the only polity standing between Egypt and Mesopotamia, failing to recognize that Israel was possibly more similar to its immediate neighbors in Canaan and other nearby locales than to either Egypt or Mesopotamia. Before I focus on lending law and loan documentation in Ancient Israel, I will briefly note evidence for the same from its precursors and neighbors.
Evidence from Emar, located on the Euphrates in northern Syria, echoes loan documentation formats and concepts from Mesopotamia proper, including interest-bearing loan documents, pledges and guarantees.[45] Similarly, evidence from Alalakh, north of Aleppo in Syria, reveals loan documents as well, again with formats and concepts resembling those from Mesopotamia, including interest-bearing documents, pledges and guarantees.[46] Finally, evidence south in Canaan also confirms similar loan arrangements and further illustrates the ANE cross-cultural nature of loan document forms and concepts. For instance, a certain Yanhamu, an Egyptian governor located in Canaan, once made a legal demand on Mikilu, a local ruler of Gezer, that Mikilu provide his wife and children as pledges for a debt of two thousand shekels of silver. Further, two items of correspondence between Canaan and Egypt from this period (among the so-called Amarna Letters) reflect these practices as well, with the colorful expression “like a cauldron of debt” being used to refer to the distressing situation of extensive debt pledges and debt bondage in the region.[47]
Ancient Israel exhibited similar influences from Mesopotamian practices, with the significant exception of writing materials. Most reflective of Egyptian influence was the Israelite use of papyrus, which, unfortunately, contributed to a paucity of surviving documentary evidence for loan arrangements other than those indirectly referenced in the Hebrew Bible. This situation has caused some to question our attempts at understanding Israelite loan terms and documentation solely from statements contained in the Hebrew Bible about debt and interest-bearing instruments, biblical statements that, while useful in many ways, will nevertheless continue to exist in a vacuum until actual Israelite loan agreements are excavated.[48]
1. Canaan/Israel Loan Terms
Loans in Israel were made in silver, as well as in grain, wine and oil.[49] As for interest on loans, Westbrook and Wells summarize the challenges in understanding the Hebrew Bible’s various statements about interest as follows:
The Bible is not very informative on the question of interest. The Torah’s few provisions are prohibitions on interest, which led to the complete ban on usury (which originally meant charging any interest) in some Christian teachings. Whether the ban in the Torah was as comprehensive as that, or even actionable in a human court, is less certain. The moneylender was regarded with contempt (Ps. 15:5; Prov. 28:8), and Ezekiel threatens him with divine punishment. At the same time, however, he was regarded as a part of the social order and could even be an instrument of divine punishment (Ps. 109:11-12). Exodus 22:24 enjoins Israelites not to behave like a moneylender, but to give interest-free loans to the poor, which sounds more like exhortation to charity than a legal prohibition. Leviticus 25:35-38 directly forbids interest, [except] in very special circumstances [such as for loans with antichretic pledges wherein the pledged property provides income constituting interest]. The broadest provision is Deuteronomy 23:20, which forbids interest on loans to one’s brother (i.e., an Israelite), but permits it on loans to foreigners.[50]
It is also possible that the prohibitions on interest, if legal (rather than moral) in nature, were intended solely for subsistence loans to individuals, and, therefore, with the emergence of a more specialized and stratified economy during the later Israelite monarchy, such prohibitions were ignored or under[1]stood not to apply to commercial transactions. In later periods, Israelites who had immigrated to Egypt and Babylon there engaged in lending transactions where interest was charged.[51] And, from certain Rabbinic sources, it appears that the Jerusalem Temple itself made loans at interest in later periods,[52] a situation in fact taken for granted in the Parable of the Three Servants told by Jesus.[53]
Pledges and sureties are described in the Hebrew Bible as well. Pledges were permitted, but came with certain “regulatory” restrictions. The pledge of a millstone was forbidden, presumably to protect the tools of livelihood.[54] Garments were items that could be pledged (unless owned by a widow),[55] but a pledged garment was required to be returned to its owner before sunset every day, [56]which seems to undercut the utility of such pledged collateral, unless one understands that most loans were for social welfare, and presumably in this scenario were often in the form of daily bread and repaid from the proceeds of a laborer’s daily wage.[57]
An unearthed ostracon containing a rare letter from an agricultural worker (presumably written by a lawyer-scribe engaged on his behalf) addressed to the local governor at Mesad Hashavyahu sheds some light on biblical restrictions imposed on pledged garments, suggesting that, at least in this regard, these restrictions had the force of law. In this letter, the worker appeals to the governor to intervene in what appears to be the unlawful retention of the worker’s pledged garment by a certain creditor named Hoshayahu. He asked the governor to assist in the rightful return of such garment to the worker, asserting that the worker had several witnesses to support his claims.[58]
As with Mesopotamia and Egypt, Ancient Israel also implemented periodic debt relief, including the Sabbatical Year, a release of debts every 7th year, as well as a Jubilee Year, a release of debts every 50th year, each occasion also being accompanied with the release of those in debt bondage.[59]
2. Canaan/Israel Loan Agreement Provisions
As is the case with Mesopotamia and Egypt, unwritten promissory oaths were used among the Israelites.[60] While the God of Israel was a witness to each promissory oath, additional witnesses were common and two or more witnesses were necessary to enforce an obligation judicially.[61] A guarantee obligation also apparently required the guarantor to “strike the palm” as a condition of enforceability (described as a foolish practice in Proverbs 17:18, the issuance of the guaranty, that is, rather than the giving of the high/low five).
As for written loan documents, no actual examples from ancient Israel have been discovered, although the Bible refers to a number of written legal contracts.[62] At the end of the period we are discussing, there are written loan contracts signed by Israelites dispersed to Egypt and Babylon, and it is at the Island of Elephantine in Egypt where excavations have uncovered a loan contract that likely resembles those signed by Hebrews living in the land of Israel.
In December 402 BCE, during the reign of King Artaxerxes – king of the Persian empire that included Egypt – a Jewish man named Ananiah borrowed two monthly rations from an Aramean with an Egyptian name of “Pakhnum,” which transaction they memorialized in a loan contract written on papyrus for the parties by an Aramean scribe with the Egyptian name of “Shewahram,” and which was closed at a fortress in the creditor’s home town of Syene. The document was witnessed by four well-known Jewish residents of Elephantine Island: Menahem, Haggai, Nahum and Haggai, son of Mardu.[63]
3. Canaan/Israel Model Loan Document Forms
Evidence for understanding scribal training in Israel is less robust than that for Egypt and Mesopotamia, with students of this topic being forced to tease out curricular details from indirect sources, such as comparative analysis of various uses of script, orthography, hieratic numerals, epistolary formulae and foreign languages in available inscriptions from Israel during this period. Yet it is assumed that, similar to their ANE counterparts, Israelite scribes no doubt had contract “go-bys” at their disposal for reference purposes.[64]
V. CONCLUSION
We can see that the law and legal arrangements, and in particular loan agreements, have been devised and revised by lawyer-scribes since the beginning of history until the present day within a consistent public policy framework of competing goals of:
- Providing creditors with remedies for repayment against debtors and their assets.
- Providing debtors with reasonable (with the obvious exception of permitting debt bondage) protections against creditors.
- Balancing the demands of other creditors against any debtor.
- Considering the impact of the above on the economy in general, with occasional legal intervention to support the productive capacity of individuals in society. [65]
What should also be evident is that these laws and legal arrangements – closer to our own than we’ve readily acknowledged in the past – predated ancient Rome (the typical starting point in introductory texts to what we call the “Western” legal tradition)[66] by approximately 2,000 years. Consequently, attempts to understand the “Western” legal tradition are best-served by looking to the contributions not just from Rome (which were substantial and long-lasting, admittedly), but also from a number of other traditions, past and present, many of them earlier than and which informed the later Roman law tradition, such as from the ANE in ancient Asia (Mesopotamia and Canaan) and ancient Africa (Egypt).[67]
Click here to read Part I.
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[1] The author, a partner in the Atlanta office of Burr & Forman LLP, may be contacted at esnow@burr.com. Footnote numbering continues from Part I
[2] Charpin, supra note 17, at 76-78. THE BANKING LAW JOURNAL
[3] For a discussion of the Lagash-Umma conflict, see Marc Van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, 51-54 (3rd ed. 2016) and David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 214-217 (2014); for a translation of Enmetena’s edict, see Glenn Magid, Sumerian Early Dynastic Inscriptions, in The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation 14-15 (Mark W. Chavalas ed., 2006).
[4] For a discussion of Enmetena’s debt amnesty, see Marc Van de Mieroop, A History of Near Eastern Debt? in Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East 62-63 (Michael Hudson and Marc Van de Mieroop eds., 2002), and for such debt amnesty translation see Claus Wilcke, Early Dynastic and Sargonic Periods, in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 141-142 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[5] Westbrook, supra note 5, at 65.
[6] Id., at 66-67.
[7] Marc Van de Mieroop, Society and Enterprise in Old Babylonian Ur 94-95, 131-132 (1992).
[8] Bertraud Lafont, Neo-Sumerian Period (UR III), in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 213 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[9] Van de Mieroop, supra note 29, at 204-205.
[10] Lafont, supra note 30, at 214.
[11] Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real History of Interest 3 (2022).
[12] Graeber, supra note 25, at 215.
[13] Chancellor, supra note 33, at 4.
[14] As to remedies, see Lafont, supra note 30, at 215. The odd malpractice case is reported in Shalom E. Holtz, Neo-Babylonian Trial Records 114-117 (2014), and includes some comic relief when the unworthy client/litigant chewed on a cuneiform tablet during the proceeding in an apparent attempt to destroy incriminating evidence.
[15] Van de Mieroop, supra note 26, at 69.
[16] Roth, supra note 6, at 61; Aaron Skaist, The Old Babylonian Loan Contract: Its History and Geography 105-106 (1994).
[17] Van de Mieroop, supra note 29, at 205.
[18] 0 Raymond Westbrook, Old Babylonian Period, in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 404 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[19] Id., at 404.
[20] Roth, supra note 6, at 90.
[21] Westbrook, supra note 40, at 404; Roth, supra note 6, at 59.
[22] Westbrook, supra note 40, at 406-407.
[23] Id., at 407-408.
[24] Id., at 404; Skaist, supra note 17, at 26.
[25] Charpin, supra note 17, at 95-96; Gabriela Spada, Two Old Babylonian Model Contracts, in Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2, 1-2 (2014), available at http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/ 2014/cdlj2014_002.html; and Walter R. Bodine, How Mesopotamian Scribes Learned to Write Legal Documents: A Study of the Sumerian Model Contracts in the Babylonian Collection at Yale University 5-9 (2014).
[26] Bodine, supra note 47, at 181.
[27] Id., the loan agreement at 18-40; the pledge agreement at 72-136.
[28] 0 Raymond Westbrook, Conclusions, in Security for Debt in Ancient Near Eastern Law 335 (Raymond Westbrook and Richard Jasnow eds., 2001). Westbrook notes possible objectives in this practice, none being exclusive: to grant needed relief to subjects and thereby garner their support (or at least postpone rebellions), to relieve certain economic constraints that might arise from extensive bondage of subjects and finally to be able to cite such measures in proclamations of their just rule in monumental inscriptions to deity.
[29] Id., at 66-67.
[30] Id., at 70.
[31] Edward Bleiberg, Loans, Credit and Interest in Ancient Egypt, in Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East 261 (Michael Hudson and Marc Van de Mieroop eds., 2002).
[32] Richard Jasnow, Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 112, 129 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[33] Id., at 129; Richard Jasnow, New Kingdom, in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 313 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[34] Van de Mieroop, supra note 26, at 62.
[35] Bleiberg, supra note 53, at 270.
[36] Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: The Late Period 17 (1980).
[37] Richard Jasnow, Third Intermediate Period, in 2 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 807-808 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[38] Id., at 809.
[39] Carol Andrews, The Rosetta Stone (1981).
[40] Bleiberg, supra note 53, at 261.
[41] “PN” is an indication of a personal name.
[42] Georg Möller, Ein Agyptischer Schuldschein der Zweiundzwanzigsten Dynastie, Sitzung[42]sberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 298 (1921) (English translation via Google). See also Richard Jasnow, Third Intermediate Period, in 2 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 807-808 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[43] Edward Bleiberg, Prices and Payment, in 3 The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt 67 (Donald B. Redford ed., 2001).
[44] Ronald J. Williams, Scribal Training in Ancient Egypt, in 92 Journal of the American Oriental Society, no. 2, 217 (1972). THE BANKING LAW JOURNAL
[45] Raymond Westbrook, Emar and Vicinity, in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 684-686 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[46] Ignacio Marquez Rowe, Alalakh, in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 713-715 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[47] 9 Ignacio Marquez Rowe, Canaan, in 1 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 742 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[48] Van de Mieroop, supra note 26, at 62.
[49] Nehemiah 5:11.
[50] Raymond Westbrook and Bruce Wells, Everyday Law in Biblical Israel 115 (2009).
[51] Ze’ev Faulk, Hebrew Law in Biblical Times 93 (2d ed. 2001).
[52] Roland de Vaux, 1 Ancient Israel 170 (1961).
[53] Matthew 25:27 and Luke 19:23.
[54] Deuteronomy 24:6.
[55] Deuteronomy 24:17.
[56] Exodus 22:25-26 and Deuteronomy 24:12-13.
[57] Westbrook and Wells, supra note 72, at 115.
[58] William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel 101-102 (2004).
[59] Tivka Frymer-Kenski, Israel, in 2 A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law 1023-1025 (Raymond Westbrook ed., 2003).
[60] Westbrook and Wells, supra note 72, at 117-119.
[61] Deuteronomy 17:6, 19:15 and Numbers 35:30. See also Westbrook and Wells, supra note 72, at 43.
[62] See, for instance, Jeremiah 32:9-14.
[63] Bezalel Porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change 251-253 (Peter M. M. G. Akkermans et. al eds., 2d ed. 2011).
[64] Christopher A. Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel 91-102 (2010). See also William M. Schneidewind, The Finger of the Scribe: How Scribes Learned to Write the Bible (2019) a reconstruction of a Hebrew scribe’s curriculum from ancient Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions.
[65] Westbrook, supra note 50, at 325-339.
[66] 8 See, e.g., Raymond Wacks, Law: A Very Short Introduction (2016); and Frederick G. Kempin, Jr., Historical Introduction to Anglo-American Law In a Nutshell (2007).
[67] See, e.g., Fernanda Pirie, The Rule of Laws: The 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World 17-18 (2021); Raymond Westbrook, Ex Oriente Lex: Near Eastern Influences on Ancient Greek and Roman Law (Deborah Lyons and Kurt Raaflaub eds., 2015); and Pierre, G. Monateri, Black Gaius: A Quest for the Multicultural Origins of the “Western” Legal Tradition, 51 Hastings L.J. 479 (2000).
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