Abstracts
Anna Margherita
JASINK
Mycenaean Fiscal
Vocabulary: Oral or Written Tradition?
Un problema tuttora aperto riguarda
l’esistenza o meno in età micenea di un patrimonio scritto a noi non
pervenuto, sia documenti pratici di riferimento per i funzionari addetti
alla redazione delle tavolette che testi di più ampio respiro. Tale
problema verrà esaminato in questa relazione in riferimento alle
pratiche fiscali, per verificare se il vocabolario fiscale miceneo
fornisca indizi diretti o indiretti sulla questione. L’esistenza di una
“ legislatura “ costituita sia da un patrimonio di leggi a livello
istituzionale che da regole pratiche non implica che a monte vi sia un
codice scritto astratto cui fare riferimento. L’esame dei “contratti di
vendita di schiavi” , delle tavolette del “ possesso della terra “,
della funzione dei noduli e delle iscrizioni sulle anfore a staffa,
sembra fornire indizi sulla mancanza di riferimenti scritti o comunque
mostrare una consistenza con procedimenti basati su una tradizione
orale. A questo fatto si può attribuire anche la variabilità degli
schemi adottati dai funzionari micenei. Si ritiene pertanto che allo
stato attuale delle nostre conoscenze si debba essere molto cauti sulla
possibilità dell’esistenza di un patrimonio scritto miceneo; è possibile
che la scrittura fosse utilizzata esclusivamente come mezzo pratico e
contingente.
Artemis KARNAVA
Indications of Minoan Fiscal
Registrations
Certain
Cretan Hieroglyphic 4-sided bars (CHIC: #065-067, #118) appear to be
homogeneous in that they bear registrations of different products (by
way of logograms), and their quantities (in integers and fractions).
They date to the beginning of the Neopalatial period (or the end of the
Protopalatial, at the earliest), and were found both in the Malia palace
deposit and the Knossos Hieroglyphic deposit. Nothing that resembles a
total of any kind is attested, which means that the cataloguing of each
product and the registration of its respective quantity was only of
interest. These bars stand out from the rest of the Cretan Hieroglyphic
bars because they bear logograms (all other bars bear lists of
sign-groups, which are always counted in integer numbers), fractions (unique
among Cretan Hieroglyphic documents), and they do not have a suspension
hole (the rest of the non-fragmentary bars have suspension holes).
No suggestion has
been put forth so far as to the purpose of these documents. Because the
number of documents involved is very small, internal evidence is scanty.
One way to go about the problem is to try and see what the Linear B
record has to say, if anything, about the problem. Based therefore on
the format of registrations, two tablet series can be compared: the
Pylian Ma and the Un series tablets. They both concern lists of
different products in varying quantities, lists that are never added up
(not on the same tablet as the individual entries anyway).
The Ma series seem
not to be directly comparable: the main obstacle is that they record
within the same tablet assessment entries (products in quantities
expected to be received), followed by the same products in quantities
either due or exempt. In the aforementioned Hieroglyphic bars there
seems to be no intention of predicted and true quantities of products.
The Un series
registrations on the other hand stand a better chance. They are simple
lists of commodities that are counted separately, and their number
(11-17 different products) is directly comparable to the number of
products attested on Hieroglyphic bars (11 products). The nature of the
products involved is also comparable: agricultural products (figs,
grain), one animal, maybe even processed products (wine, oil). The Un
series tablets are quite famous in Linear B scholarship because they
have been interpreted as lists of offerings for ritual banquets.
Regardless of whether they had this particular purpose or not, one must
not forget that these so-called “offerings” were some kind of tribute:
these commodities had to be supplied from somewhere, and it was the
administrative center’s duty to see that the “offerings” were properly
registered. It is this type of registration that we seem to have before
us in these Hieroglyphic bars, too, and it stands witness to some kind
of tribute system already in function from the beginning of the
Neopalatial period.
The discussion will
focus on the following points:
1. 1) Traits
and characteristics of the 4-sided Cretan Hieroglyphic bars with
logograms, numerals and fractions without a suspension hole.
2. 2)
The comparison between Hieroglyphic documents and the Linear B data
(series Ma, Un), and the degree to which formal analogy can be used for
anything other than an indication of the function of documents of the
former script.
3. 3)
The
implications of the existence of a tribute system in the beginning of
the Minoan Neopalatial period.
Susan LUPACK
Deities and Religious
Personnel as Collectors
On several sheep
tablets in the D series from Knossos, the names of two deities (Hermes
on D 411 and Potnia in its adjectival form: po-ti-ni-ja-we-jo on
e.g. Dl 930.A and Dp 997) appear in the position that is usually held by
the name of an individual. The secular individuals on these tablets are
traditionally called “collectors.” Bennet (Mykenaïka 1992:
65-101) has proposed that these collectors were actually the owners of
the sheep listed on the tablets. If this was the case, then the gods
Hermes and Potnia were also considered to be the owners of the sheep
listed with them on their tablets. Most likely the people who actually
owned and benefited from the sheep would have been the religious
personnel working in the name of those gods.
Killen has proposed
that collectors also appear on the Theban Of tablets (Coll. Myc.
1979:151-179) and in the Pylian Jn series (Aegaeum 12 1995:
213-226), which deal respectively with textile manufacture and the
bronze-working industry. In a way similar to the sheep tablets,
deities’ names also appear within these series in a position parallel to
that held by the secular collectors (e.g., on Of 36 and Jn 431). It
seems then that the religiously affiliated workshops were working under
the ta-ra-si-ja system just as the secular workshops were, which
indicates that the religious collectors interacted with the palace in
the same way that the secular collectors did. Therefore, those who
managed the religious workshops must have held a position in the
Mycenaean economy that was commensurate with that held by the individual
collectors.
It seems likely that
the collectors, whether they were involved in animal husbandry, textile
manufacture or the bronze-working industry, would have found various
ways of benefiting from their enterprises. The bronze smiths for
instance probably served not only the palace but also the needs of those
who lived in the vicinity of their bronze-working shops. As Halstead (Proc.
Cambridge Phil. Soc. 38 1992: 57-86) has said, “a wide range of
agricultural and craft production took place outside palatial control.”
The collectors may even have derived the bulk of their livelihoods from
the work they did within the non-palatial sector.
I propose that the
religious collectors , like the secular collectors, traded their goods
and services within local exchange networks in addition to the work they
did for the palace. At the most basic level the religious personnel
would have been able to support themselves through their economic
endeavors. But it is also possible, as seems to have been the case for
several of the collectors, that they would have been able to acquire
some real material wealth.
This
wealth would have served to enhance the prestige that was already
attached to the religious personnel because of their cultic knowledge,
and would have provided them with a more concrete base for their
influence within society.
Diederik MEIJER
Polanyi, Markets and
Ancient Mesopotamia
Trade and other
economic exchange (of which taxation forms part) may be
regulated by political
organization, but they are social contracts. My paper
will deal with the
terminology and ideas used by Polanyi to "explain" the
ancient economy (i.c.
in Syria/Mesopotamia); although nearly everyone agrees
that one of his main
tenets (regarding the market) was wrong, his ideas have
remained in the
background of many modern analysts. Archaeology may offer
insights not
immediately rendered by textual sources.
Clelia MORA
Riscossione dei tributi e accumulo dei
beni nell’Impero ittita
Conosciamo alcuni aspetti del sistema
fiscale ittita, così come ci sono noti alcuni funzionari che operavano
in questo settore dell’amministrazione e alcune istituzioni che
gestivano e controllavano il flusso dei beni. Per la scarsità di
documentazione specifica, tuttavia, il funzionamento di questo
importante apparato amministrativo non può ancora essere ricostruito nel
dettaglio.
Rimandando a studi precedenti, in
particolare di A. Archi, J. Siegelová e S. Košak, per quanto riguarda le
strutture di base del sistema, questo contributo si concentra sul tema
dell’accaparramento e dell’accumulo dei beni nell’ultima fase
dell’Impero ittita, soffermandosi in particolare su:
- occasioni e procedure di acquisizione
(con distinzione - ma anche confusione - tra tributo e dono); tipologie
dei beni, immagazzinamento, modalità di registrazione;
- ruolo e attività di alcuni alti
funzionari;
- aspetti della redistribuzione;
- utilizzo dei beni nell’ambito della
famiglia reale.
Paola NEGRI SCAFA
Modelli e forme di fiscalità nel Vicino
Oriente del II millennio a.C.
La conoscenza della Mesopotamia e della
sua periferia nel II millennio a.C., al di là delle lacune della
documentazione e delle incertezze che concernono alcuni settori, è in
buona sostanza sufficientemente approfondita, come pure approfondita è
la discussione su differenti aspetti culturali, politici, sociali ed
economici relativi alle diverse realtà politiche che si sono sviluppate
nell’arco di tempo che va dal XX al XIII secolo.
Particolare attenzione ha ricevuto un
settore quale quello dell’economia, vista sia sotto un profilo
strettamente tecnico sia nelle sue interazioni con il resto della realtà
sociale: le grandi amministrazioni statali e templari, lo sviluppo di
vasti patrimoni immobiliari privati, i problemi legati all’indebitamento
di alcuni gruppi e le alterazioni dei patrimoni familiari, hanno
costituito e costituiscono tuttora oggetto di complesse ed approfondite
analisi.
È pertanto
possibile cercare di analizzare gli aspetti relativi alla fiscalità
nell’ambito di questo periodo storico, tenendo anche conto delle diverse
realtà politiche di riferimento, differenziate non solo
cronologicamente, ma anche sotto il profilo della tipologia e delle
dimensioni, che possono andare da quella delle realtà cantonali a quella
di agglomerati più complessi e vasti, senza dimenticare un altro aspetto
di particolare interesse, e cioè quello che oppone, per così dire, il
centro alla periferia.
I punti salienti della ricerca, che
inoltre non può prescindere da una discussione sul concetto di
fiscalità, si fondano su alcuni aspetti essenziali:
-
la fiscalità legata alla
terra, e le tipologie di possesso terriero nel periodo
-
fiscalità a livello locale e
a livello statale
-
le esenzioni
-
la fiscalità legata
all’economia di scambio (tributi, tasse e pedaggi legati al movimento di
beni (sia esso commercio o meno)
-
gli aspetti connessi ai
rapporti internazionali
L’attenzione sarà rivolta in particolare a
mettere in luce quegli elementi che possano consentire, attraverso
l’evidenziazione di paralleli, somiglianze e differenze, la
ricostruzione di modelli, su cui basare un confronto, da fare con le
dovute cautele e con spirito critico, con caratteristiche comuni che il
mondo miceneo presenta, con l’intento di contribuire a chiarire aspetti
e problemi connessi ai rapporti fra ‘centro’ e realtà locali e
decentrate.
Jean-Pierre OLIVIER
De « l’empire
mycénien » et de sa nécessaire fiscalité
1. Par « fiscalité », j’entends
« imposition », « prélèvement ». Et quand j’ai parlé, il y a trente ans,
de « loi fiscale mycénienne »,
je n’ai pas voulu dire autre chose que « méthode de
prélèvement obéissant à une règle stricte ». Ce qui me semblait
important c’est que cette méthode eût été appliquée de la même façon (à
l’aide de tables de calcul identiques ?) en Crète et sur le continent.
2. La notion « d’empire » n’a
jamais été très en vogue dans l’historiographie mycénienne. Ni la
taille, ni une continuité dynastique connue de nous, ne paraissent
justifier un terme qui, au deuxième millénaire, s’applique aux ensembles
hittite,
assyrien ou égyptien.
3. Mais à l’unité culturelle
mycénienne qui n’est mise en doute par personne, correspondait-il une
unité politique ? Cette dernière me semble apparaître dans les tablettes
des différents sites, au travers de l’unité de la langue, de l’écriture
et de la pratique administrative ainsi que, peut-être, de la pratique
institutionnelle.
4. Pratique administrative
incluant nécessairement pratique fiscale, je me propose de réexaminer la
« loi fiscale » (appliquée de la même manière, mais à des produits
différents à Knossos et à Pylos), d’un point de vue purement technique,
arithmétique.
5. Des traits communs dans la
fiscalité, voire des règles appliquées identiquement, suffisent-ils à
étayer la notion « d’empire » ? À eux seuls, probablement pas. Mais
venant s’ajouter aux autres arguments qui ont été développés ces
derniers temps,
sans doute.
6. Il aurait mieux valu
intituler ceci « De la fiscalité mycénienne et de son nécessaire
empire »…
J.-P. Olivier, « Une loi fiscale mycénienne », BCH 98
(1974), pp. 23-35.
Les documents hittites mettent « la puissance mycénienne » (A··ijawa)
sur le même plan que celle de leurs rois.
Toutefois, au cours des âges et au hasard des continents, on a
parlé « d’empire des steppes », « d’empire angevin » (Channel
State), ainsi que d’une dizaine « d’empires » dans l’Afrique
pré-coloniale (en y comprenant, « l’empire du Monomotapa »),
sans oublier « l’empire de Trébizonde » et, bien entendu,
« l’empire des sens ».
Entre autres par J. N. Postgate, dans J.-P. Olivier, « Les
"collecteurs": leur distribution spatiale et temporelle »,
Economy and Politics in the Mycenaean Palace States,
Cambridge 2001 ; S. Voutsaki & J. T. Killen, éds.), p. 160 [« If
we are indeed looking at 200 years and five or more generations,
this (‘‘bureaucratique’’) conservatism must have been
surprisingly strongly motivated, suggesting that importance must
have been attached to the formulation of these documents. As for
space, insofar as this uniformity is maintained between
different centres, the obvious explanation is that they were all
controlled by a single authority. If in the Near East a number
of contemporary administrative archives displaying such
similarities were excavated in different cities, the obvious
assumption would be that they fell under the same government,
the uniformity of scribal practice resulting from, and tacitly
proclaiming, the strength of central control » ] et par G.
Mariotta, Struttura politica e fisco nello “stato” miceneo.
Aspetti e
problemi della storia greca delle origini
(Padoue, 2003).
Massimo PERNA
Réflexions sur les séries Ma et Na de
Pylos
(Resumé en anglais)
This paper will examine the two series of
documents Ma and Na from Pylos.
From the time of the decipherment to date
it has been believed that the two series contained fiscal registrations.
In particular for the Ma series the
ratio between the figures for the six commodities registered has led the
majority of the scholars who have dealt with them, to try and
reconstruct a fiscal model starting from the figures of this ratio, with
different results and not universally accepted. In reality the models
proposed contradict each other.
In this paper we will try to demonstrate
that there is no secure evidence that the Na tablets are fiscal
documents; on the contrary, the only useful evidences seem to suggest
that the linen registered in this series represents a payment in
exchange for land, which the Palace offered for rent to certain
professional categories or to individuals.
On the other hand, in our opinion, the
Ma documents can be considered fiscal documents, even though we have
to ask ourselves whether it is appropriate to automatically extend
possible regulations in the payment of these products (to the Palace) to
all other goods for which fiscal registrations are absent, like wheat,
oil, wine, cattle etc..
We will also offer an alternative
explanation for the ratio between the figures of series Ma. The
six products could represent a payment in exchange for land, situated in
the various districts of the kingdom of Pylos and belonging to certain
categories of individuals; these payments could be proportionate to the
size of the land owned.
This explanation will enable us to provide
an explanation for the figures which are not exactly in proportion,
which represents the weak point of many previous hypotheses.
Enrico
SCAFA
L’economia palaziale micenea fra
accumulazione e bancarotta
Grazie alla centralizzazione il potere
politico il sistema di tipo palatino può imporre alle diverse entità
locali lo sforzo economico necessario per accumulare una quantità
sufficiente di beni per potersi approvvigionare di materie prime e di
beni non riperibili in situ presso fonti esterne.
Oltre a ciò il Palazzo si trova a dover
gestire una complessa rete di redistribuzione di beni (d'origine sia
esterna, sia interna, a mo' di scambio 'intercantonale') anche ai fini
della gratificazione dei produttori e dei collaboratori (i quali vanno
dai prestatori d'opera – artigiani, marinai, funzionari, etc. – sino
alle divinità o, meglio, ai loro rappresentanti umani).
In questo modo il Palazzo viene a
configurarsi come una sorta di "controparte" nei confronti delle diverse
realtà locali e dei differenti ceti sociali, tanto più che – bisogna pur
tenerne conto – una quota più o meno ampia della ricchezza così
procurata è destinata a rimanere depositata presso i magazzini
del Palazzo, sia a disposizione delle esigenze personali del sovrano,
sia come scorta per eventuali e future necessità. L'economia dei Palazzi
micenei era tributaria del commercio estero soprattutto per quanto
riguarda i metalli (in primo luogo il bronzo), senza tuttavia escludere
altri beni di origine esotica (avorio, etc.). L'amministrazione palatina
era, tra l'altro, interessata alla produzione dei beni da esportare (cfr
i tessuti ke-se-nu-wi-ja ...), come pure alla gestione della
flotta (cfr, ad es., l'espressione o-pe-ro-ta e-re-e).
Per quanto riguarda, in linea generale, il
processo d'accumulazione, il Palazzo – come ci informano i testi degli
archivi – esigeva tributi di materie prime, di prestazioni lavorative e
di prodotti lavorati (per cui, nello stesso tempo, veniva effettuata, a
fini puramente produttivi, anche distribuzione di materie prime ad
artigiani specializzati).
A fronte di siffatte contribuzioni, le
gratificazioni consistevano, essenzialmente, in "benefici" di tipo
fondiario oltre a distribuzione di bestiame, razioni alimentari, etc.
È quanto mai opportuno analizzare i
diversi aspetti e le differenti fasi dell'economia micenea, sopra
succintamente ricordati (per meglio chiarire i quali sarà utile, come
vedremo, anche un confronto con i dati omerici, laddove un'operazione
del genere appaia plausibile), poiché esistono indicazioni che
mostrerebbero come l'economia dei Palazzi micenei non riuscisse ad
assicurare un "corretto" equilibrio tra le entrate e le uscite
(per cui i sovrani micenei dovevano, più o meno frequentemente,
ricorrere – oltre che a un intenso commercio – all'estremo rimedio della
razzia e della guerra allo scopo di rimpinguare gli esausti magazzini
del Palazzo).
Ne consegue che, innanzi tutto, l'intero
sistema fiscale miceneo, per quanto consentito dalla documentazione in
nostro possesso, debba essere sottoposto ad un'accurata indagine
(soprattutto per ciò che riguarda il rapporto tra esazioni – perdite /
esenzioni – accumulazioni), anche ai fini di accertare se possa essere
valida l'ipotesi di una eventuale crisi economica dovuta all'imminente
crollo del Palazzo – come è noto abbiamo documentata solo la parte
finale dell'esistenza dei Palazzi – per il quale va preso in
considerazione, come molto probabile, una causa di tipo "esterno"
rispetto al "normale" funzionamento dei meccanismi sociali ed economici
dei regni micenei.
In quest'ottica per l'appunto si andranno
ad esaminare le testimonianze relative alla fiscalità micenea.
Cristina SIMONETTI
Terre e tassazione in età
paleo-babilonese
In the Old Babylonian
Period the palaces and the temples needed of goods for their surviving.
These goods came from fields directly worked by palace- or
temple-dependents, or from taxes. Taxes were, in this meaning, non only
agricoltural products (emmer, grain, ecc., animals like sheeps, cows and
similars), but also work (corvées). The people who lived in a distrect,
or in a city-state, could give some products to the palace (or temple),
and also could work directly for the palace or the temple some days in
the year. Sources about these forms of taxation are the law-codes and
the letters, and they are more during the Hammurapi reign. Taxes were
the ilku, the biltu, the tupšikkum and other ones.
Carlos VARIAS
Significant
Presences and Absences in the Mycenaean Fiscal Vocabulary
The terms which form
the Mycenaean fiscal vocabulary have been discussed in the framework of
the plentiful studies on taxation in the Mycenaean society, as it
appears from the documents written in linear B: see the works by
Shelmerdine, Olivier, De Fidio, Killen and Perna, among other authors.
The first systematic analysis of this lexicon, with a linguistic
approach, is the third part of the book by Duhoux: Aspects du
vocabulaire économique mycénien, Amsterdam 1976, where the author
deals with the meaning of the fiscal terms attested in the Mycenaean
documentation.
After the publication
of numerous studies on Mycenaean taxation and new editions of Linear B
texts in the past 30 years, it seems timely to re-examine the whole of
the Mycenaean fiscal lexicon. This paper – of provisional nature, of
course – is inserted inside a series of lexicographical studies on
Mycenaean Greek begun by Aura Jorro and Bernabé more than ten years ago
(on the lexical fields of chariots, wheels, arms, etc.). Particularly
significant is to see the continuity or not of the Mycenaean fiscal
terms, which are also compared to Near Eastern parallels, in Greek of
the First Millennium BC.
Duhoux already fixed
the main part of the Mycenaean fiscal vocabulary, which can be grouped
in three lexical stems: 1) that of di-do-si (either in a simple
form or in a compound one: a-pu-do-si, with prefix), 2) that of
e-re-u-te-ro, and 3) that of o-pe-ro. Besides the lexical
re-examination of these groups, other terms with possible fiscal
connotations, like a-ke or a-na-ke-e, are also
discussed.
David A. WARBURTON
The Egyptian Example
and the Macroeconomic Implications
The discussion of the
fiscal policy of ancient Egypt will focus on (a)
the terminology and
documentation and (b) the implications for
employment, production
and consumption. This will be followed by a
discourse on the
general features of the market economy of the ancient
Near East and
Mediterranean, leading into a discussion of prices and
price formation. On
this basis, it will be argued that the prices had a
direct impact on both
employment and production, and that the states of
the ancient world were
acting as agents in an international market
economy. This basis
opens the way for the interpretation of the givens
on the basis of
Keynes's General Theory.
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