It has become commonplace to consider economic thought as an almost entirely Anglo-American affair, with only cursory references to economic thinking before Adam Smith. However each of the civilizations that flourished in the Mediterranean basin, long before the rise of the Atlantic economies, left a legacy of thinking on economic affairs. This tradition is rooted in politics, ethics and religion and is acknowledged to be a more complete view than ours. This volume surveys the development of the Mediterranean tradition over four millenia. It considers the economic content of the scriptures of the Mesopotamian civilizations, Pharaonic Egypt, the Biblical peoples, and the contributions of the Greeks and Romans and their influence on Islamic civilization and on the Medieval scholastics.