[Anotheroneagain]

I suppose the translations may have a strong modern bias. Even the languages were only learned indirectly. First Old Persian in an unknown script had to be deciphered, then phonetic values for that script had to be used to decipher Akkadian, based in its similarity to other known languages. Sumerian was deciphered based on some education materials in Akkadian, and its translations seem like it's little more than a delusion that anything is unserstood at all.

There is simply nothing among the finds that could be money, and contracts seem to be in the form of I gave you 18 measures of wheat for three fat sheep. You gave me 7 jugs of oil, and I will make you 8 pairs of sandals" (all numbers and everything made up right now)

[snakeyjake]

I do not understand Akkadian so I must defer to the work of Adolf Leo Oppenheim, the editor of The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago for over 20 years and the translator of that tablet.

He asserts multiple times the existence of banks, money lenders, and multiple written records of persons demanding payment of money in his book Letters from Mesopotamia, Official, Business, and Private Letters on Clay Tablets from Two Millennia: https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared...

Do you have an alternate translation?