Staple and wealth finance and the administration of the Hittite economy

Systematic investigation into what we usually label Hittite administrative and economic documents can only lead to significant evidence: the striking scarcity of economic or administrative texts from Hittite Anatolia compared to those from Mesopotamia and Egypt. The epigraphic sources that we generally find in contemporary Bronze Age kingdoms are either small or completely missing in Anatolia. In the centralized system of 3rd–2nd millennium Mesopotamia, staple economy prevailed over luxury and exchange economy, although the two finance systems inevitably merged at some point. From the Hittite perspective, the scenario we can reconstruct from written and archaeological sources is more problematic. The paper aims to present an overview of the issue in the light of recent studies. It will be proposed for Hittite Anatolia a complementary system: “Wealth and Staple Finance”, which has strong anthropological parallels in other complex societies and is largely motivated by environmental factors. The hypothesis of a hybrid system in Anatolia (mostly heuristic) will be examined using textual evidence, emphasising the ultimate objective of ritual and ceremonial occasions, predominantly documented in religious texts (festivals and cult inventories).