Problems of Property: On the Structure of Society in the Near East before the Middle of the Second Millennium B. C. E.

Abstract

It would appear that the Soviet school of historians of the ancient East has by now accumulated a rather considerable quantity of data, making it possible to draw an integrated and sufficiently definite picture of the socioeconomic structure of society in the Near East during the first half of the Second Millennium B. C. E. The present author and several of his associates propose to publish surveys of the accumulated data, concentrating in this regard primarily on characteristics common to various Near Eastern countries, and paying less attention to differences, the importance of which, however, must not be underestimated. The first of these survey articles, the writing of which I have taken upon myself, is devoted to problems of property in the Near East in the period under investigation. (1) It is proposed subsequently to publish articles devoted to the two sectors of the economy and to the social structure of Near Eastern society, and also to the identification of the structure of these societies in the period under study, primarily in connection with the problem of the people working on the royal estates, as contrasted with free cultivators outside these estates (both with regard to individual countries and for the entire geographical region under study).