The invention of banking preceded that of coinage. Banking originated something like 4000 years ago in Ancient Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq, where the royal palaces and temples provided secure places for the save-keeping of grain and other commodities. Receipts came to be used for transfers not only to the original depositors but also to third parties. Eventually private houses in Mesopotamia also got involved in these banking operations, and laws regulating them were included in the code of Hamurabi, the legal code developed not long afterwards.In Ancient Egypt too, the centralisation of harvests in state warehouses led to the developement of a system of banking. Written orders for the withdrawal of separate lots of grain by owners whose crops had been deposited there for safety and convenience, or which had been compulsorily deposited to the credit of the king, soon became used as a more general method of payment of debts to other people, including tax gatherers, priests and traders. Even after the introduction of coinage, these Egyptian grain banks served to reduce the need for precious mentals, which tended to be reserved for foreign purchases, particularly in connection with military activities.
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