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Economic Structures of Antiquity. By MORRIS SILVER. Contributions in Economics and Economic History, no. 159. Westport, Conn.: GREENWOOD PRESS, 1995. Pp. xxiv + 262. $59.95.
Silver's latest study carries forward his earlier inquiries, "Karl Polanyi and Markets in the Ancient Near East: The Challenge of the Evidence," Journal of Economic History 53 (1983): 795-829, and Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1986). It expands the latter by reworking the Mesopotamian material and adding evidence from Egypt and the Mediterranean, so is in effect a revised and enlarged edition of the 1986 monograph.
Silver analyzes a variety of ancient Near Eastern social institutions and ideologies from the perspective of how they served to reduce transaction costs, that is, resources used up in transferring ownership or in communications, transport, and enforcement of agreements. This leads him in interesting directions. Whereas many students of the ancient world may consider religious institutions expensive ideological burdens absorbing valuable resources in unproductive display, Silver suggests ways in which "the gods" were economically useful in reducing transaction costs, for example, by endowing commerce and industry with sacral, even monopolistic values, thus, according...