Body and Soul

I don’t want to do anything important today, so I will waste some Time on this article. The simple economic aspects of the Subject state that the stele ( 3'x2') was quarried by two Workers off original stock for probably $200 in Today’s Prices. The Shaping and Inscription on the stele was probably done by one skilled Worker over a probable 4 Workdays with an estimated Cost of about $700 in Today’s money. This was not the Price paid, though, which was likely to be around $7-8000 to the Purchaser at the time in Today’s reevaluation; the area being within a highly-developed Trade route; things have not changed all that much! Excavation of the stele can be expected to have required a Team of Eight some three Weeks, and probably cost somewhere around at least $70,000; all depending on how many good artifacts will be found on-Site, and the method chosen to redistribute the Costs. One can define that it is an expensive Piece of Stone, and some museum will be estimated to fork over a quarter-million Dollars to display the Stone. It is good to know We are still in business.

We can now turn to the Inscription, since I have established the economic context. The Site resides inside the old Hittite Empire, was an independent kingdom, and later a part of the Assyrian Empire, and was abandoned in the 7th Century. The importance of the City in which the stele was found was it’s position upon one of the Trade routes; it’s abandonment was probably caused by abandonment of the Trade route, due to climatic changes which altered the desirability of the route itself, probably a Water shortage. The City probably made less than $10 million per year from the Trade route in Today’s prices even in it’s heyday, and likely was abandoned when that Profit dropped below $2 million per year; especially if Agricultural products for Food had to be imported. Readers should realize these are only loose Estimates, having little to do with Reality in the scope of modern economic modeling.

The Meaning behind the Exercise states that the Student of Economics should always keep an Overview of the Subject under discussion, simply as a Countercheck of economic models where mistakes on inputs or resolution can lead to wide errors. It is like unto the separation of body and Soul under the Indo-European tradition to which I subscribe: the Soul basically being a Template which cannot be altered or destroyed; Conception of the body simply drawing the Imitation of the Soul into the physical world. One has to have some belief in the shape of what you search for, before you can even begin to accomplish that which you desire. Economics, like the Soul, crosses all boundaries–political, religious, and even Time. lgl