Kleber, Kristin & Reinhard Pirngruber (eds.). 2016. Silver, Money and Credit. A Tribute to Robartus J. van der Spek on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday on 18th September 2014. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten.
“Silver, Money and Credit” gathers a collection of contributions by leading specialists on the role of silver in Ancient Mesopotamia. The volume is a tribute to Robartus J. van der Spek, professor emeritus at the VU University Amsterdam.
The thematic core area is the documentation concerning silver in cuneiform sources from first millennium BC Babylonia, and how this vast body of primary sources can be employed in order to shed light on aspects of the economy. It thus coincides with the honouree’s main area of research. The volume is rounded off by comparative material mainly from other periods in Mesopotamian history, rendering justice to his broad range of interest. The scope of the volume thus extends from the first written records on the use of silver in Uruk to the Neo-Babylonian Empire’s apogee in the sixth century BC and further to insights to be gained from comparisons with early modern economies.
Table of Contents
Kristin Kleber and Reinhard Pirngruber
Editor’s Foreword (VII)
Jaap-Jan Flinterman
Toespraak bij het afscheid van Bert van der Spek als hoogleraar Oudheidkunde (IX-XII)
Amelie Kuhrt
‘Bert’ and the History and Historiography of the Seleucid Empire (XIII-XVIII)
Bibliography of Robartus J. van der Spek (XIX-XXVII)
Tabula Gratulatoria (XXIX)
Mesopotamia
Theo J.H. Krispijn
Early Silver: Thoughts about the Sign KU3 in the Earliest Documents from Uruk (1-10)
Jan Gerrit Dercksen
Kaspam lašqul “Let Me Weigh Out the Silver”: Mesopotamian and Anatolian Weights during the Old Assyrian Colony Period (11-22)
Marten Stol
The Old Babylonian ‘I Owe You’ (23-37)
Kristin Kleber
The Kassite Gold and the Post-Kassite Silver Standards Revisited (39-60)
Michael Jursa
Silver and Other Forms of Elite Wealth in Seventh Century BC Babylonia (61-71)
Caroline Waerzeggers
The Silver has gone… Temple Theft and a Divided Community in Achaemenid Babylonia (73-85)
Johannes Hackl
New Additions to the Raḫimesu Archive: Parthian Texts from the British Museum and the World Museum Liverpool (87-106)
Reinhard Pirngruber
The Value of Silver: Wages as Guides to the Standard of Living in First Millennium BC Babylonia (107-118)
China and the Persian Empire
Bas van Leeuwen and Xuyi
Silverization of China during the Ming-Qing Transition (ca. 1550-1700) and the Consequences for Research into the Babylonian Economy (119-132)
Wouter F.M. Henkelman and Margaretha L. Folmer
Your Tally is Full! On Wooden Credit Records in and after the Achaemenid Empire (133-239)
Mark Tamerus
Elusive Silver in the Achaemenid Heartland:Thoughts on the Presence and Use of Silver According to the Persepolis Fortification and Treasure Archives (241-294)
The Levant and Greece
Willemijn J.I. Waal
Silver in Search of his Father: A Comparative Folkloristic Approach to an Episode of the Song of Silver (295-307)
Jorrit M. Kelder
Mycenae, Rich in Silver (309-319)
Caroline van der Brugge
The Silver Krater of King Phaedimus: A Small Piece of Tyrian History in the Odyssey (321-334)
Diana E. Kretschmann
‘A Bad Penny always Turns up’: Silver Coins and Citizenship Ideology in Classical Athens (335-350)