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October 31, 2005

What Does This Have to do With the Price of Emmer in Turkey?

I'm just about ready to post my latest effort on the texts written in the short cuneiform alphabet. There is just a little clean up and one Akkadian text to look at and I will finally be done with KTU 4.710. I've written about my problems with the price of olive oil and I want to thank those of you who took time to comment for your advice and help. Today I want to address another agricultural economics problem in the text. Unlike the price of olive oil problem, the answer to this little mystery does not speak to how the whole tablet should be understood but it sure speaks to how a single line should in interpreted.

Depending on what you think of the price of wheat at Ugarit you will either translate the end of line 5,

. . . three portions (of wheat) for a shekel.

or

. . . three portions (of wheat) for a shekel (each).

The first part of the line has its own problems but they are linguistic in nature and I won't bother you with them here. What I translate "portions" reflects a common Uragitic and Akkadian word for a standard quantity; either about 126 liters, if it is the same as is seen in many Akkadian texts from around the Middle East, or about 75.6 liters, if it equals the "portion" that is implied by an Akkadian (RS 21:10) text from Ugarit. The fact is we are not exactly sure of its capacity. Also, for now you'll just have to take my word that "(of wheat)" is the correct interpolation.

Here's the problem: one scholar, Michael Heltzer, thinks that a price of one shekel for three "portions" of wheat is just too small a price. Dietrich, Loretz and Sanmartím seemed to have this same opinion in 1975 but Dietrich and Loretz do not appear to have that opinion in their 1988 work on the text. Hertlzer cites a work by Zaccagnini on the yields of fields at Nuzi but Zaccagnini doesn't address trade prices at all. He only talks about crop and seed yields. He does have some interesting things to say. We'll get to that in a little while.

While trying to sort this out I came across a Hittite text (KUB 12:37) from about the same time period as the text I am studying with what scholars call an Akkadogram for "portion." The relevant lines read,

(the price) of three "portions" of emmer is one shekel of silver, (the price) of one "portion" of wine is a half shekel of silver

Now emmer is not wheat or at least not quite wheat and according to Zaccagnini it is often thought that wheat yields better than emmer. But not so at Nuzi, where, by Zaccagnini's estimates, on average, emmer yielded 212 liters per hectar while the yield of field of wheat was 119 liters per hectar. In other words, a wheat field produced about 56% of the emmer field of the same size. So, one would guess that the price at trade for wheat would be about twice the price at trade for emmer. If we judge this based on the Hittite text, we would guess that the price of wheat would be 2 shekels of silver for a "portion" of wheat, but not 3 shekels.

What do I make of all this? First, I will summarize and comment a little further on the evidence.

1. It is possible that the size of a "portion" at Ugarit was half of that at Boghazkoi where the Hittite text was found but it is more likely that it was the same, whatever it was. Ugarit was largely a Hittite vassal.
2. Based on what we know from Nuzi field yields, we would expect the price for a "portion" of wheat at Ugarit to be 2 shekels.
3. Ugarit, a coastal city, is about 500 west miles of Nuzi, an inland river city. But they are both on about the same latitude with Nuzi being a little to the south.
4. We have little or no idea what the normal fluctuations in the market price was but a volatility of plus or minus 50% seems in line with what one might reasonably expect.
5. There is not a single linguistic indication that one should translate "each in, ". . . for a shekel (each)."

While not evidence, a price in the neighborhood of one third of a shekel per hectar does seem very low but so does one or even two shekels per hectar. Here, I am just comparing the yield at Nuzi (119 liters) with the amount of wheat mentioned in our text (126 liters, [by one way of calculating]. The other way of calculating makes it somewhat better but not much).

All the evidence taken together makes me think that there is no justification for adding the parenthetical "each" to this line. I think three "portions" for a single shekel, even if it seems low, is within the range of the evidence and reasonable assumptions regarding the evidence. If you think otherwise let me know.

(Just for the record, I am using the Chicago Assyrians Dictionary's translation of the Hittite text. The Hittite language is a completely different world that I worked hard to avoid in graduate school and I plan to follow the path I established then now that I am in retirement.)

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at October 31, 2005 7:04 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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Tags: Ugarit | Ugaritic | Cuneiform | Hittite | Akkadian | Boghazkoi |