Banking, history in Mesopotamia

Banking, history in Mesopotamia
Banking is thought with some certainty, to have begun during the period of the the third to second millenia B.C. in Mesopotamia. During Assyrian and Babylon kingdoms, there are records of loans dating back to the 2nd millennium BC that were made by temple priests/monks to merchants.

Both the palaces and temple are known to have provided lending and issuing from the wealth from which was held by these establishments, although the palaces to a lesser extent. In reality such loans amounted to affect the issuing of seed-grain to which re-payment was to be made when the harvest allowed. Still these basic social agreements were never-the-less documented in tablets of clay,  together with an agreement of the accruing of interest.  A very early writing on clay tablet called the Code of Hammurabi, refers to the regulation of a banking activity of sorts within the civilization, during the era, dating to ca. 1700 BCE, banking was well enough developed to justify laws governing banking operations.Later during the Achaemenid Empire, further evidence is found of banking practices in the Mesopotamia region.