Even more common than money loans are the corn loans. Here the loans were generally for a short time just before harvest, when the repayment was expected. The period is usually short, five days,[655] or a month.[656] Interest is sometimes demanded, at the rate of one hundred ḲA per GUR, or one-third, that is, thirty-three and a third per cent. This was probably the rate per mensem, four hundred per cent. per annum. But in one case the interest is one hundred ḲA per GUR per annum,[657] once it is expressly said to be nothing,[658] usually it is not referred to at all. Sometimes a loan was partly in money, partly in corn.[659]
Other loans of produce
Other things were lent, as sesame, skins, bricks, and the like, but these loans exhibit no peculiarity. They are merely letting the borrower have goods on credit, to be paid for, or returned, after a time.
We may take, as an example of this kind of transaction, a rather more complicated case:[660]
Record of a loan
Two and seven-thirtieths of a GUR of corn, Shamash standard measure, which Ilu-kasha, son of Sharru-Shamash, gave to Belshunu, Ilushu-abushu, and Ikash-Ninsaḫ. Ilu-kasha brought the corn and returned one GUR and one-tenth and took for himself two hundred [pg 254] and twenty ḲA. Later he paid one-tenth of a GUR to Ilushu-bânî, Ikash-Ninsaḫ, and Shumma-Shamash, and they remitted in all three GUR, the former and later debt.
In the second case only one of the former debtors is left. The loan was partly repaid, a fresh loan contracted, and then partly repaid. It is not clear whether the arrears were remitted or extracted by distraint. Nor is it clear whether Ilukasha was debtor or creditor. As a rule such points are clear. It is only the conciseness of the formula which here causes the obscurity.
Loans or allowances in series
Another fairly common type of document contains a number of sections, each containing the record of one sum. But it is not clear that these were loans. They may be allowances for food or salary. Thus in B1 247 we have so much corn for the women weavers, so much more for the votaries, so much for other officials, from the first of one month to the thirtieth, so much for the Sutî who was watching the field, so much for a boatman, and so on. These are perhaps a temple steward's accounts. Their interest lies only in the incidental notices. We also note that here a month had thirty days. It is interesting to find that the celebrated Sutî nomads who later gave so much trouble, were already in the country and were employed to watch the fields. Was this watching done on the principle of “setting a thief to catch a thief”? Perhaps it was necessary to employ a Sutî as custodian, of course at a salary, if one was to preserve the crop from the depredations of his fellow-tribesmen.
Some of these tablets expressly state the amount of corn loaned, giving the date for repayment.[661] Hence we see what a narrow margin divides the proper bond from the mere receipt, or even the memorandum of the loan.