The small tradesman or free workman, who by some accident had become involved in debt, seldom escaped this progressive impoverishment except by strenuous efforts and incessant labour.  Foreign commerce, it is true, entailed considerable risk, but the chances of acquiring wealth were so great that many individuals launched upon it in preference to more sure but less lucrative undertakings.  They would set off alone or in companies for Elam or the northern regions, for Syria, or even for so distant a country as Egypt, and they would bring back in their caravans all that was accounted precious in those lands.  Overland routes were not free from dangers; not only were nomad tribes and professional bandits constantly hovering round the traveller, and obliging him to exercise ceaseless vigilance, but the inhabitants of the villages through which he passed, the local lords and the kings of the countries which he traversed, had no scruple in levying blackmail upon him in obliging him to pay dearly for right of way through their marches or territory.** There were less risks in choosing a sea route:  the Euphrates on one side, the Tigris, the Ulai, and the Uknu on the other, ran through a country peopled with a rich industrial population, among whom Chaldaean merchandise was easily and profitably sold or exchanged for commodities which would command a good price at the end of the voyage.  The vessels generally were keleks or “kufas,” but the latter were of immense size.

* We have no information from Babylonian sources relating to the state of the roads, and the dangers which merchants encountered in foreign lands; the Egyptian documents partly supply what is here lacking.  The “instructions” contained in the Sallier Papyrus, No. ii., show what were the miseries of the traveller, and the Adventures of Sinuhit allude to the insecurity of the roads in Syria, by the very care with which the hero relates all the precautions which he took for his protection.  These two documents are of the XIIth or XIIIth dynasty—­that is to say, contemporaneous with the kings, of Uru and with Gudea.

Several individuals, as a rule, would club together to hire one of these boats and freight it with a suitable cargo.* The body of the boat was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of straw.  The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a few donkeys:  the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their return voyage.  The dangers, though apparently not so great as those by the land route, were not the less real.  The boat was liable to sink or run aground near the bank, the dwellers in the neighbourhood of the river might intercept it and pillage its contents, a war might break out between two contiguous kingdoms and suspend all commerce:  the merchants’ career continually vacillated between servitude, death, and fortune.