| hitlers pūst zem kapota: Hammurapi #102 |
[Apr. 12th, 2011|06:06 am] |
Paraphrasing this law for the sake of clarity, we are to understand, “If a moneylender lends money to a trader without interest, and the trader’s enterprise runs into a loss, the trader need only return the principal because there are no profits to share.”
The interesting thing about this law is the term qaqqad-, which means “principal, capital” invested for profit, dividends, or a stipulated rate of interest. Literally, qaqqad- means “head”; the spread of the institution of investing capital for dividends or interest from Mesopotamia, via the merchants of Babylonia and Assyria abroad, has left its mark on the capitalist terminology of the West. In West Semitic, Demotic, and Greek, the word for “capital” is derived from a word meaning “head”. Latin too reflects the same terminology, for caput means not only “head” but also “principal, capital”. Indeed, our words for “capital” and “capitalism” are derived from caput. The simplest and most basic definition of capitalism is “an economic system which encourages the investment of capital for dividends or interest.” The seeds of this system were planted and spread by Sumero-Akkadian businessmen. This is instructive because it illustrates that our culture as a whole reflects its Near East origins; our indebtedness is not limited to a few specialized areas such as religion, the alphabet, and literature.
[Cyrus H. Gordon. Forgotten Scripts: Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherement] |
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