The code of Hammurabi also contains detailed regulations concerning the duties of debtors and creditors, and it throws an interesting light on the commercial life of the Babylonians at this early period.  For instance, it reveals the method by which a wealthy man, or a merchant, extended his business and obtained large profits by trading with other towns.  This he did by employing agents who were under certain fixed obligations to him, but acted independently so far as their trading was concerned.  From the merchant these agents would receive money or grain or wool or oil or any sort of goods wherewith to trade, and in return they paid a fixed share of their profits, retaining the remainder as the recompense for their own services.  They were thus the earliest of commercial travellers.  In order to prevent fraud between the merchant and the agent special regulations were framed for the dealings they had with one another.  Thus, when the agent received from the merchant the money or goods to trade with, it was enacted that he should at the time of the transaction give a properly executed receipt for the amount he had received.  Similarly, if the agent gave the merchant money in return for the goods he had received and in token of his good faith, the merchant had to give a receipt to the agent, and in reckoning their accounts after the agent’s return from his journey, only such amounts as were specified in the receipts were to be regarded as legal obligations.  If the agent forgot to obtain his proper receipt he did so at his own risk.

[Illustration:  280.jpg CLAY CONTRACT TABLET AND ITS OUTER CASE]

     Dating from the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon.

Travelling at this period was attended with some risk, as it is in the East at the present day, and the caravan with which an agent travelled was liable to attack from brigands, or it might be captured by enemies of the country from which it set out.  It was right that loss from this cause should not be borne by the agent, who by trading with the goods was risking his own life, but should fall upon the merchant who had merely advanced the goods and was safe in his own city.  It is plain, however, that disputes frequently arose in consequence of the loss of goods through a caravan being attacked and robbed, for the code states clearly the responsibility of the merchant in the matter.  If in the course of his journey an enemy had forced the agent to give up some of the goods he was carrying, on his return the agent had to specify the amount on oath, and he was then acquitted of all responsibility in the matter.  If he attempted to cheat his employer by misappropriating the money or goods advanced to him, on being convicted of the offence before the elders of the city, he was obliged to repay the merchant three times the amount he had taken.  On the other hand, if the merchant attempted to defraud his agent by denying that the due amount had been returned to him, he was obliged on conviction to pay the agent six times the amount as compensation.  It will thus be seen that the law sought to protect the agent from the risk of being robbed by his more powerful employer.