Tower and Town, May 2022 (view the full edition)Êigibi and Muraŝǚ: First Bankers and Business Managers Firms in the WorldThe flourishing civilization of New Babylonia was located in lower Mesopotamia in the 6th century before Christ. The Babylonians had already climbed an ascending ladder of development throughout the earlier fourteen centuries since the decline of the Sumerian city states which had dug complex networks of irrigation canals and established the first comprehensive agricultural farming system in the world.  Hard working and intelligent Babylonians managed to maintain this heritage with diligence and added to it. As a result, Babylon enjoyed an accumulating wealth and prosperity: its influence spread all over the near east to the west as well as the Indus valley to the east through trading activities and commerce. The thriving economy had to have legal and commercial frameworks to support it and make it work. This involved collecting taxes and duties levied on the use of irrigation canals, crop yields, imports and exports. Moreover, commercial transactions such as selling and purchasing, renting of lands and execution of contracts needed to be regulated. Add to all this the major activity of aranging and recovering loans. To do these not simple tasks, two families seem to have excelled in these works. They were the 'House of &Êigibi' and the 'House of Muraŝǚ', the first two banking and business managers in the history of the world. The work of these families extended over almost five hundred years, making them early prototypes of the "House of Rothschild" and the Notary Public of our day. The story of the 'Êigibi Family' was revealed to us by sheer luck when the secret archive of a family which has been called 'The Banking House of Êigibi' was discovered in 1874. It was found on examination that they were documents recording all sorts of commercial and pecuniary transactions, and bearing the names of the contracting parties and of witnesses. Among these names, either as principal or witness, more often the former, always figured the name of some son, or grandson, or descendant of a certain Êigibi, evidently the founder of a firm possessed of immense wealth and influence, and which, through many generations, indeed several centuries, transacted money affairs of every sort and magnitude, from the loan of a few manehs to that of many talents, from witnessing a private will or a contract of sale or partnership between modest citizens of Babylon or some neighboring city, to the collecting of taxes from whole provinces farmed out to the house by the government. As these documents, which come under the class known as "contract tablets", are carefully dated, giving the day and month and the year of the reigning king, it has been found possible to make out a genealogical table of the firm, the head of which, it appears, generally took his sons into partnership in his own lifetime. This table shows that the founder, Êigibi, was probably at the head of the house in the reign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, about 685 B.C. Studies of some of the tablets concluded that the name Êigibi is the equivalent to the Hebrew YakÛb (Jacob), from which it has been inferred that the great banker must have been a Jew, probably one of those carried into captivity by the Assyrian king Sargon II (705- 721B.C.) out of Samaria. Many of the tablets had unmistakably Jewish names inscribed on them. If this point is established, it would be curious to note at how early a date the blessing uttered on the race in Deuteronomy (28. 12): "Thou shalt lend unto many nations and thou shalt not borrow" began to take effect. Whatever is the case, the finds revealed that "Êigibi and Sons " had reached its climax of wealth and power under the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC ), a century after its foundation, having weathered the storms of the two Assyrian sieges, under Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal, as they were to pass unscathed through several more similar political crises, protected by their exceptional position, which made them too useful, indeed too necessary, to be injured. But the family "Êigibi and Sons" were not the only family in Babylonia which had practised banking and business management. Historical evidence, based on the archeological findings dating to1893 from the ruins of Nippur, revealed the existence of another family like the "House of Êigibi", which was practising similar work during the 5th century B.C. The texts were identified as late Babylonian records of a business house which was dubbed "Muraŝǚ Sons of Nippur", after the ancestor of the firm's chief members. This was the "House of Muraŝǚ" family, Jewish descendants of the Babylonian Exile and captivity, but which was one of the many Jewish families who opted to stay in Babylonia after the capture of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 539 B.C, and allowed to help finance the return of Jews to Judea with the Edict of Cyrus in 538 BC. A large proportion of the archaeological evidence on the family was salvaged from a house in Nippur, found within the remains of a twenty by ten foot room of the building and it consisted of about 800 clay tablets comprising the "Muraŝǚ Archives". The fact that the banking house "Muraŝǚ & Sons" conducted business with many clients including Jews who decided to remain in Nippur rather than return to Judea suggests that life in Persian controlled Nippur was at least somewhat tolerable for Jews. The family was identified as bankers, brokers, real estate operators who conducted prosperous business, and were engaged in money lending and trading operations in southern and central Babylonia for a period of 50 years from the end of the 5th century B.C. Being a care taking and responsible house, they had the tablets which recorded their operations made of especially pure clay, neatly inscribed in cuneiform characters, and stored for future reference. The chief members of the firm were descendants of the Archive's eponym, Muraŝǚ, and the texts documented four generations of his family. The legal documentation of the archives included matters concerning the less wealthy of Nippur living in the outer areas of the city, and also related to the interests of the Royal Palace, that consisted of renting of agricultural lands and collection of various taxes, in addition to those officials associated with the government, and the aristocracy within their estates. The firm, at first, father and sons and later the sons alone, were very shrewd and their clients were Persians, Greeks, Medes, Judeans Sabeans, Edomites and other individuals who in all represented the cosmopolitan character of Babylonia at that time. The business was as miscellaneous as the crowd. A jewelry firm guarantees that an emerald they have set in a gold ring for a gentleman will not fall out for twenty years. A brick maker agrees to deliver 25,240 bricks within a given time. Three brothers hire some oxen for three years and agree to become severally liable for the debt. A lessee agrees to pay 25 loads of dates, 60 bags of flour, a lamb, and a jar of the best date wine for the rent of a field and stable. In conclusion, Babylonia was the centre of the civilized world, enjoying the most advanced economic and commercial status. Secondly, the economy and commerce during the golden times of Babylonia were run by families such as the "Êigibi" and the "Muraŝǚ" clans, who worked efficiently for generations. Thirdly, the uncovering of the archives of those two families does not preclude the possibility of discovering many other families who are similar to them. Nasrat Adamo is the former Director General of Dams and Reservoir Organization in Iraq. Based in Sweden, he has authored several volumes on Mesopotamian irrigation and dam safety. Nasrat Adamo |