(FORTUNE Magazine) – We spent some time recently with a doctoral dissertation called The Nur-Sin Archive, which is more fun to read than the average thesis and also bears a more interesting message. Produced by Laurence Brian Shiff, an Assyriologist now based at the University of Toronto, it is all about business and the economy in Mesopotamia -- now known as Iraq -- in the sixth century B.C. The implicit message is that Economic Man existed for quite a while before being discovered by Adam Smith. Historians have often depicted the ancient world as weak on entrepreneurial activity, but Shiff's Babylon is populated by some of the most ferocious profit maximizers a fellow could hope to meet. A certain amount of contemporary moralizing about Wall Street could leave you thinking that greed is some kind of new phenomenon. The evidence of the archive is that they discovered it before Nebuchadnezzar -- also that it worked quite well for them. The businessman-hero of the tale is Iddin-Marduk, who ran a sizable family business for 78 years and must have been close to 100 when he died. The business was a mixture of silver loan operations (at rates typically ranging around 20%), passive investing in entrepreneurial ventures (with required returns here around 40%), and importing and exporting produce, especially garlic. The produce operation was sustained by a network of salaried business agents, who both acquired the garlic and arranged to sell it. A lot of the company's sales were made on credit, and a large fraction of the period's cuneiform tablets seem to have been promissory notes. The tablets tell us that Iddin-Marduk's family and associates thrived and prospered during his long years at the helm. If only he'd been an American, we would instantly propose him for the Business Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, we can think of quite a few less-developed countries -- beginning with Iraq -- that could use him as a role model.