promoted a healthful activity throughout the
entire body politic. Babylonia is called "a land of traffic" by
Ezekiel, and Babylon "a city of merchants." Isaiah says "theory of the
Chaldaeans" was "in their ships." The monuments show that from very
early times the people of the low country on the borders of the Persian
Gulf were addicted to maritime pursuits, and navigated the gulf freely,
if they did not even venture on the open ocean. And AEschylus is a
witness that the nautical character still attached to the people after
their conquest by the Persians; for he calls the Babylonians in the army
of Xerxes "navigators of ships."

The Babylonian import trade, so far as it was carried on by themselves,
seems to have been chiefly with Arabia, with the islands in the Persian
Gulf, and directly or indirectly with India. From Arabia they must have
imported the frankincense which they used largely in their religious
ceremonies; from the Persian Gulf they appear to have derived pearls,
cotton, and wood for walking sticks from India they obtained dogs and
several kinds of gems. If we may believe Strabo, they had a colony
called Gerrha, most favorably situated on the Arabian coast of the gulf,
which was a great emporium, and conducted not only the trade between
Babylonia and the regions to the south, but also that which passed
through Babylonia into the more nothern districts. The products of the
various countries of Western Asia flowed into Babylonia down the courses
of the rivers. From Armenia, or rather Upper Mesopotamia, came wine,
gems, emery, and perhaps stone for building; from Phoenicia, by way
of Palmyra and Thapsacus, came tin, perhaps copper, probably musical
instruments, and other objects of luxury; from Media and the countries
towards the east came fine wool, lapis-lazuli, perhaps silk, and
probably gold and ivory. But these imports seem to have been brought to
Babylonia by foreign merchants rather than imported by the exertions of
native traders. The Armenians, the Phoenicians, and perhaps the Greeks,
used for the conveyance of their goods the route of the Euphrates. The
Assyrians, the Paretaceni, and the Medes probably floated theirs down
the Tigris and its tributaries.

A large-probably the largest-portion of the people must have been
engaged in the occupations of agriculture. Babylonia was, before all
things, a grain-producing country--noted for a fertility unexampled
elsewhere, and to moderns almost incredible.