Banking and credit
Banca y crédito (trapezitas y casas de Egibi/Murashu)
- Date
- c. 500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Babylon and Athens (Piraeus), Iraq / Greece
- Credited to
- The Egibi house (Babylon); Athenian trapezitai such as Pasion
- Field
- Communication
What it is
Money-changers who accept deposits, lend at interest, exchange currency and transfer funds in writing between locations. It institutionalises credit and separates capital from its physical owner.
The Egibi archives (7th-5th centuries BCE) show banking operations before struck coinage in Babylon.
What it led to
- Financing of risk-bearing maritime trade (bottomry loans) and of fleets
- Circulation of capital without transporting metal: drafts and letters of credit
- The birth of bank accounting and the regulation of interest
- The basis of the Roman argentarii and medieval banking
Built on
- Coinage (Lydian electrum coins)c. 620 BCE
- Cuneiform accounting tablets
- Interest-bearing loans in Mesopotamian temples
Made possible
- Written contract with witnessesc. 450 BCE
- Bill of exchangec. 1250
- Written commercial contract
- Society of publicani