The Department of Middle East Studies welcomes Susanne Paulus, associate professor of Assyriology and curator of the tablet collection at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) at the University of Chicago, who will present the 2026 David Noel Freedman Lecture. Her lecture, "One Goat, Two Piglets, and Heaps of Grain: Banking with Barley in Late Bronze Age Babylonia," will be held on Monday, October 26, 4–6 pm, at the Vandenberg Room (2nd Floor) in the Michigan League on central campus.
Writing history is telling stories. The stories we tell about ancient economies, including that of Late Bronze Age Babylonia, are often shaped by preconceptions about commodities, credit, and debt. Drawing on tablets excavated in cities such as Babylon, Nippur, and Ur in modern Iraq, this lecture follows barley through a series of transactions involving taxes, loans, investments, and even two piglets. Barley was both a major food source and an economic staple, but the documents reveal much more than subsistence. They offer alternative ways of understanding credit, debt, and investment in Late Bronze Age Babylonia.
This lecture is free and open to the public.
