The second volume in our series is dedicated to the memory of Péter Vargyas. His friends, colleagues and students contributed to this book with their studies.
„Three research topics stood out from the diverse fields that Péter Vargyas’s work touched upon. These were the society and economy of Ugarit, the history of Babylonian prices, and the monetary history of the Ancient Near East. When we first contemplated producing a memorial volume in honour of his scholarly work, these were the areas that came to mind, so we asked the authors to choose their essay topics, if possible, within the broader area of Ancient Near Eastern economic and social history. We hope we have succeeded in assembling a volume that reflects adequately on Péter Vargyas’ scholarly career.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
László Török: In memory of Péter Vargyas (1950-2009)
Publications of Péter Vargyas
Abbreviations

Part One
Third and Second Millennium B.C.

Dominique Charpin: Le prix de rachat des captifs d’après les archives paléo-babyloniennes
Jean-Marie Durand: Les problèmes économiques d’un sheich
Zsombor Földi: On Old Babylonian Palastgeschäft in Larsa. The meaning of sūtum and the ‘circulation’ of silver in state/private business
Szilvia Jáka-Sövegjártó: The Sumerian verb hug
Gábor Kalla: Große „private“ Haushalte in der altbabylonischen Zeit in der Mittlerrolle zwischen Königtum und Untertanen
Jacob Klein: From Agade to Samaria: The Inflationary Price of Barley in Situations of Famine
Bertrand Lafont: Les clauses en tukum-bi dans les textes de prêt de l’époque d’Ur III
Bernadette Menu: Le rôle économique des dattes dans l’Égypte du Nouvel Empire
Zoltán Pálfi: Some questions of prices, metals and money in „Old Assyriology”
Denise Schmandt-Besserat: From Counting to Writing: The Quest for Abstraction
Gebhard J. Selz: Aspekte einer Sozialgeschichte der spätfrühdynastischen Zeit. Das Beispiel Lagas, oder: „The inhabited ghosts of our intellectual ancestors”
Marcel Sigrist – Uri Gabbay: Eighteen Cuneiform Inscriptions from the Ur III and Old-Babylonian Periods
Itamar Singer – Graciela Gestoso Singer: Alašian products in Hittite sources
Béla Stipich: Zulapi – eine Grossmacht im spätbronzezeitlichen Syrien?
Bálint Tanos: The semantics of verbal plurality in Sumerian
Klaas R. Veenhof: Silver in Old Assyrian Trade. Shapes, Qualities and Purification
David A. Warburton: Understanding Economic Growth: The Importance of Money in Economic History and Theory

Part Two
First Millennium B.C.

Tamás K. Árvai: Jenseits der assyrischen Grenze. Das Bild des Feindes in den neuassyrischen Königsinschriften
András Bácskay: Interpretation of a medical commentary text BAM 401
Attila Buhály: Elements of the Royal Ideology in Urartian Texts
François De Callataÿ: Did Seleucid kings impose payments made only in fresh coins of their own coinages? Units of account, not real coins
Henrietta Cseke: The Economic Determination of the Changing Interests. A Survey Based on the Loan Documents of the Neo-Babylonian Sîn-uballit Archive
Muhammad A. Dandamaev: Documentary Evidence on Wine from the Eanna Temple Archives in Uruk
Ida Fröhlich: Babyloniaca from Qumran – Mesopotamian lore in Qumran Aramaic texts
Laetitia Graslin-Thomé: Les marchands mésopotamiens et la théorie des jeux
Tibor Grüll: Expositio totius mundi et gentium. A peculiar work on the commerce of Roman Empire from the mid-fourth century – compiled by a Syrian textile dealer?
Alessandro Hirata: Die datio in solutum in neubabylonischer Zeit
Hermann Hunger: A Late Babylonian Astrological Tablet
Bojana Janković – Michaela Weszeli: Neues zur Verwendung von mahir im Eanna-Archiv eine Anomalie?
Joachim Oelsner: Spätbabylonische Sklavenpreise
Miklós Sárközy: A Sasanian taxation list or an Early Islamic booty? A Medieval Persian source and the Sasanian taxation system
Zsolt Simon: Remarks on the Anatolian Background of the Tel Rehov Bees and the Historical Geography of the Luwian States in the 10th c. BC
László Vilmos: Greeks on Phoenicians. Can we rely on what the Greeks have said?
Cornelia Wunsch: Double Family Names in Neo-Babylonian Records: The Case of the Ētiru and Tābihu Families and Their Butchers’ Prebends
Ádám Vér: Neo-Assyrian kārus in the Zagros
Zoltán Csabai: Chronologische Aspekte der babylonischen Zinsen in der frühneubabylonischen und neubabylonischen Zeit
Bezalel Porten: Databasing the Commodity Chits of the Idumean Ostraca