“There is a complete lack of reference to business profits or loss in any of the cuneiform tablets that have been so far translated.”

— Julian Jaynes, book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 3, p. 210 (See also: Karl Polanyi)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Context: Such trade was not, however, a true market. There were no prices under the pressures of supply and demand, no buying and selling, and no money. It was trade in the sense of equivalences established by divine decree. There is a complete lack of reference to business profits or loss in any of the cuneiform tablets that have been so far translated.

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Julian Jaynes43

American psychologist 1920–1997

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