Following the non-money trail

Studying inscriptions and inconsistencies in the most detailed accounts of temple offerings and listings of the workforce, the authors show how the "temple economy", where "deities come first" and offerings were a way for the social elites to manifest their wealth, co-existed along the "general economy", in which barter exchanges were dominant.

This is a fascinating approach of the apparent paradox that still puzzle us nowadays: a complex social organization -- and even an imperial one --, with computation mastery and sustained commercial exchanges with neighboring kingdoms which had developed their own currencies, remained a "non-money" system during centuries.