>>518525504
It's interesting. He paints Sumerians as quite enlightened and lovers of daily life (picrel) but fell victim to the lending trap most still can't understand. The merchant moneylender guilds had kings permissions to travel safely, and were welcomed by the high ups for their luxuries and info, and so surpassed these kings in intelligence and networking, causing wars. On that seedier side were also the women who ran the taverns providing prostitutes and the sailors, ships, and wharfs where they kept the sailors segregated from the populace. So this type of pirate culture goes long back and stretched from Britain to India even back then, though they just hugged the coast and went from port to port. The Temples operated as banks for instance you could pay a ransom to the local temple to get someone released in another city, or move money, but more than for merchants it was more the overall community and provided rations or loans to people in need.