Mesopotamia: Writing, Accounts and Interest

How the world's first writing began as record-keeping for goods and debts in Mesopotamia, and how early laws regulated loans and interest.

In ancient Mesopotamia, in today’s Iraq, some of the world’s first cities emerged. So did some of the first writing, and it was largely about economics.

Writing began with accounts

Around 3200 BCE, scribes in cities such as Uruk pressed marks into clay tablets to record quantities of grain, livestock, beer and labour. This writing, later called cuneiform, began as a tool for accounting in temples and palaces.

Temples and palaces

Temples and palaces were central economic institutions: they owned land, stored grain, employed workers and distributed rations.

Loans and interest

Mesopotamians lent silver and barley at interest. Records show interest rates of around 20 percent a year for silver loans and higher for barley loans.

The Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi, from around 1750 BCE, set rules on:

Maximum interest rates.
Contracts and wages.
Liability: for example, builders responsible for houses that collapsed.

Debt relief

Rulers sometimes declared debt cancellations, freeing people from debts and debt slavery, to restore social order. Some historians see these as early responses to debt crises.

Legacy

Mesopotamia shows that record-keeping, contracts, credit and law developed early, alongside cities and states.

The barley loan

A farmer borrows barley from a temple before planting and promises to repay more after harvest. A scribe records the loan on a clay tablet, which serves as a contract both sides can point to.

Thinking interest and loans are modern inventions

Loans with interest were recorded in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

Key takeaways

Early writing in Mesopotamia began as accounts around 3200 BCE.
Temples and palaces managed land, grain and labour.
Loans with interest were common, and the Code of Hammurabi regulated them.
Rulers sometimes cancelled debts to restore order.