- Share
The official site of Italy's central bank
"3 1/3 silver sigloi, at interest of 1/6 sigloi and 6 grains per sigloi, has Amurritum, servant of Ikun-pi-Istar, received on loan from Ilum-nasir. In the third month she shall pay the silver (owed).
Witnesses: Salsalum, son of Uqa, Sissu-I, Nur-Ea, Daserum, su-Belitum, the scribe."
This loan of silver, dated 1800 BC, comes from an unknown city, probably to the south of Baghdad. Interest is calculated in the following manner: 1sigloi (=8.3 grams) contains 180 grains; 1/6 sigloi therefore equals 30 grains; a further 6 grains are added to this, giving 36 grains, or 20 per cent of 1 sigloi. In the contract, the silver is borrowed by a woman, Amurritum, which is exceptionally unusual. Perhaps, as Ikun-pi-Istar's servant, she borrowed it for him. The loan is for a period of three months.
The first urban civilization appeared at the end of the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, present day Iraq. There the first city (Uruk) arose and writing was developed. The Sumerians wrote on clay tablets, at first using pictograms but later progressing to cuneiform signs. Excavations over the last 150 years have brought to light hundreds of thousands of these tablets from around 3000 BC, containing accounts, administrative records, despatch notes, and contracts of sale of land, slaves and other goods. Close study of the tablets has revealed that silver and barley (and sometimes gold as well) were used as medium of exchange, standard of value and store of wealth. The peoples of Mesopotamia granted loans of silver and barley, at rates of interest fixed by law (the series ana ittisu dated 3000 BC and the code of Esnunna and code of Hammurabi, both dated 1800 BC) to avoid usury. As a rule the yearly interest on loans of silver was 20 per cent and that on loans of barley 33.3 per cent. We can deduce from this that loans of barley carried more risk, as barley was a necessity of life that was loaned to poor people, while silver was the usual means of payment of merchants. From the third millennium we find measures to combat usury by cancelling the debts and freeing those who became slaves because unable to repay their debts.
service