INTRODUCTION

The landscape of Mesopotamia was dominated, and indeed formed, by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. They provided highways for transport and communications and water for daily needs like drinking, cooking, and washing, and for industrial activities like dyeing and potting. In the south, their waters enabled barley, fruit, and vegetables to be grown on the alluvium they deposited, and elsewhere supplemented the rainfall on which agriculture depended. They teemed with fish and watered vegetation that supported wild and domestic animals—the versatile date palm, reeds, scrubby trees and bushes, and grassland, with forests on the hills and surrounding mountains.

The land's produce fulfilled other needs besides providing food. Herbs and spices were used for medicines and magic, hides for leather, oil in lamps and industrial activities like leather - and woodworking. Flax and wool were made into textiles, reeds and palm leaves into mats, baskets, and houses, and palm fibers into ropes. Timber from native trees and cultivated fruit trees were used to build houses, vehicles, and boats, and to make tools. Clay, also used for building, and for making pottery and tools, was universally available on the plains. Stone suitable for tools and building was plentiful in the north and in the desert to the west, and the rivers carried smaller stones into the south. Bitumen (natural asphalt), which wells up in several localities, was also used in building and for caulking boats. Salt could be gathered in Babylonia from saline lakes and marshes after the summer heat had evaporated their waters.

In preliterate times domestic necessities such as pottery, tools, clothing, and houses were generally created by family members, but well before the emergence of cities some individuals were specializing in the production of particular commodities, such as fine pottery, the acquisition of particular resources, or the provision of services, particularly intercession with the gods and the management of production. As society grew in complexity the importance of management also increased to ensure the efficient production and distribution of the resources upon which the people of the Mesopotamian cities, towns, and countryside depended.

Many essential or highly valued materials, however, were lacking. Nowhere in Mesopotamia were there metals—initially a luxury but regarded as a necessity by the later third millennium. Fine timber, volcanic rock for grindstones, attractive stones, and other materials like ivory were all absent from Mesopotamia itself, but many of these were to be found in adjacent regions, and distant lands held others of which the Mesopotamians became gradually aware, creating a demand. Trade was therefore a vital part of the economy. Some goods such as incense and lapis lazuli came only from single or restricted sources, and it was necessary to develop ways to acquire them. Others, such as copper and gold, were to be found in a number of locations: Political and economic factors determined which of these were exploited.

Royalty and temples were the major sponsors of trading expeditions, requiring materials to build and embellish palaces, temples, ziggurats, gardens, and other major works—quality building stone and timbers, gold, silver, and precious stones, and exotic plants and animals—as well as for more ephemeral luxuries. Public factories and private workshops had to procure the raw materials for their products—metal ores, timber, wool and flax, leather, and the like. And ordinary households needed to acquire basic necessities like salt. Mesopotamian trade was never either wholly state-sponsored or completely private. Even under tight state control, merchants could undertake some trading on their own behalf, while private expeditions often had some state patronage and were subject to state taxes and regulations.