land and landloard

May be written land leases for the sales of fields become available dating from the third millennium. The most important participants in the land market were the temple, the royal palace, officials and merchants. Women participated as both sellers and buyers of land. Land property could be sold and owned by private individuals or groups. Deeds of landed estates were deposited with creditors to secure loans. Lands of agricultural use owned by private individuals or groups or families or tribes could be sold. Houses were sold and bought as well. The royal palace or temple could have played a role in registering land transfers. Transfer documents can bear the imprint of the dynastic seal. 

Practice of lending started in  the third millennium. Texts show loans of silver for partnership and some loans of silver to individuals. In the second millennium appear numerous lending contracts from private individuals for commercial nature and trading venture and shipment by sea. These credits could be interest bearing. The liability of a debt investor is limited to his investment. The commercial loans were tied to surety or third-party guarantee of repayment. A merchant who dealt in a variety of commodities had many different credit accounts such as credit sales of oil, wool, grain or metal. It is possible that payments might be done by the use of check or letter of credit using as guarantee mortgaging or pledging. In the fourteenth century BCE deed-tablets were bought and sold on the market. Some commercial firms functioned as a bank.

 The trading networks of the late second millennium were produced by centuries of individual and corporate entrepreneurship. During this period private traders and private firms were involved in buying ,  selling or transporting goods. Private ownership of ships is also attested. In late second millennium a value for a wrecked ship and its cargo amounts to at least 12.000 shekels of silver enough capital to buy hundreds of cattle or food for a city for a whole year. A maritime merchant could have inherited his wealth. A wealthy merchant or firm can be granted franchise by the king. Some merchants received land grants or like being associate with the royal palace and could be exempted from tax on foreign trade. Merchants accumulated big capital, some appear to have had something like a monopoly on some commodity trade and they became like an oligarchy and controlled lot of commodities in the realm of the kingdom. Merchants were sometimes protected by law and merchant individual climbed to the highest non-dynastic post in the land. The local seafaring entrepreneurs acted as middlemen between local and extra-local cities. One may reconstruct the upper entrepreneurial sphere being the terrestrial and maritime shippers, donkey owners, land owners. 

In the Bronze Age new dynamics of trade had begun in the extended distribution of the copper ingots from Cyprus. Metal by weight was the worldwide expression of payment in varied forms from standardized oxhide ingots to small scraps of metal stored in bags or jars. Big oxhide ingots were found in the Uluburun shipwreck. The ingots could be easily broken into pieces. The ingots could be rectangular-shaped or oval-shaped, they can be also rings or coils or twisted bars or bar-shaped or small flat slabs. Ingots could be silver, gold, copper, lead or tin. Found also miniature oxhide ingots inscribed with hieroglyphs. Prices would be expressed in weights in shekel or for the Egyptians in deben. During the 14th and 13th centuries BCE the price of one shekel of gold was three to four shekels of silver. Small amounts of scrap metal were carried by merchants almost certainly to be used as a means of exchange. The Amarna letters indicate that foreign ships and merchants paid taxes in silver and scrap metals and bronze weapons. Copper and silver ingots were frequently broken up into small pieces and packed into sealed bags. Wenamun left by sea to buy lumber in Byblos for the ceremonial barge of the god and paid in the form of gold and silver stored in jars and sacks. Wenamun’s 5 deben of gold were the equivalent of 600 deben of copper while his 31 deben of silver were worth 1860 deben of copper.