The mass of the people in Babylonia were employed in the two pursuits of commerce and agriculture.  The commerce was both foreign and domestic.  Great numbers of the Babylonians were engaged in the manufacture of those textile fabrics, particularly carpets and muslins, which Babylonia produced not only for her own use, but also for the consumption of foreign countries.  Many more must have been employed as lapidaries in the execution of those delicate engravings on hard stone, wherewith the seal, which every Babylonian carried, was as a matter of course adorned.  The ordinary trades and handicrafts practised in the East no doubt flourished in the country.  A brisk import and export trade was constantly kept up, and 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.