A rational god: rationality and religion in an Old Babylonian temple’s business management

Thibaud Nicolas ()
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Thibaud Nicolas: ANHIMA - Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - EPHE - École Pratique des Hautes Études - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité

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Abstract: Could a god act as a rational economic actor? In this paper, we shall try to answer this seemingly odd question. In Ancient Mesopotamia, gods and goddesses were acting as individuals: that is the reason why this paper will try to explain how Šamaš, the Mesopotamian Sungod, was acting in the economic and financial fields. We will focus on the Ebabbar temple, built in Sippar in the first half of the second millennium BCE, in order to answer a simple and yet complex question: how rational could religion-based decisions be? There is evidence that ancient Mesopotamians had their own economic fictions, as we have ours. If they probably did not believe in a rational homo oeconomicus, this paper intends to show that the Sungod and his paredra Aya were often acting in a logical and rational way as they were lending silver, bargaining, and supplying the needy. This paper will also try to demonstrate that behind this economically active god we can find a social network of priests, notables and other individuals interacting in order to uphold the wealth and power of the Sungod. We will try to understand how rational their choices were. Finally, we will sketch the portray of a debt-based economy with its own coherence and rationality.

Keywords: Temples; Debt; Maximization; Charity; Sippar; Old-Babylonian period; Assyriology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04816677v1
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Published in Sven Günther; Roland Oetjen. Modern Economics and the Ancient World: Were the Ancients Rational Actors?, 2, Zaphon, pp.59-86., 2023, Muziris, 978-3-96327-256-1

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