production

 Since the third millennium b.c, the Phoenicians of Byblos imported raw materials, processed them in their workshops and exported them. They established a complex production system producing in large quantities. The quantities produced were over the consumption of one city. 

In the society there was an important entrepreneurial class. The entrepreneurs were connected to producers or produced for themselves and created wealth. A noble or elite groups owned large household organizations or estates. The production and exchange was in the hand of people with large amounts of capital. It is the long distance entrepreneur who has possessed the capital and created kind of the capitalist economy. Entrepreneurs privately owned ships and land. But the economy in which decisions regarding social and commerce were made at a household level rather than at a centralized level. This is what is called a palatial economy and that created a wealthy financial system. The system was kind of a feudal model with social organization placed in the hands of the nobility and the land was either granted or bought by producers from the crown or from private individuals or can be inherited. Tax was collected on behalf of the authority. Thus the king was not the owner of all the land in the realm. The merchants acquired their own means of production either buying from the king or a citizen. The entrepreneurs could purchase productive real estate from individuals without royal involvement. The society was divided in a two-sector model a free village and dependent urban sectors and with a strict patrimonial authority. Chain of royal farms or units of the royal rural economy supplied the bulk of the kingdom. Manorial lords owned the land and the patrimonial ruler owned and controlled everyone. Under the dominance of this patrimonial regime a type of capitalism has thrived. Some studies show that the King did not want the whole administrative burden and proceeded to delegation and decentralization. International and civil law was not unsophisticated in the Lower Bronze Age especially regarding commercial matters.

The interior of the house, palace or temple was a warehouse for clothes, skins, silver,  jars, millstones, chariots, and agricultural produce. The house became a strong-box for goods awaiting shipment. A typical exchange house is where storage, taxation. diplomacy and socializing were conducted under one roof.