Private Business. The rich documentary sources relating to the Mesopotamian economy are inherently biased toward activities of the great institutions, the temple and the palace. By enabling administrators to record and predict activity in their various economic enterprises, the technology of writing was one of the tools that enabled large landholding institutions to achieve their high levels of productivity, and they employed large bureaucracies to maintain their financial records. Most of the surviving written sources at the economic historian's disposal come from the urban centers, which were dominated—socially, economically, and politically—by these institutions. With their monumental architecture, the physical edifices of temples and palaces also dominated the cities spatially, and the continued prominence of such structures in the archaeological remains of a city further contributes to the recovery of institutional written records. The most significant documentary sources...