write short note on import and export of Mesopotamia?
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Agricultural products such as grains and cooking oils were also exported as were dates and flax. Mesopotamian cities established trade all up and down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and into Anatolia, today's Turkey. Other overland trade routes went east over the Zagros Mountains into present-day Iran and Afghanistan.
Import and Export of Business operation of Mesopotamia
Even before the dawn of civilization, trade was important to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia. In the southern part, where the first cities were built, the only natural resource of importance was dirt. With proper care and irrigation, the dirt could produce what was, for its time, an impressive crop yield. The results of this were twofold. First, people had time to devote to pursuits other than that of obtaining food. Second, the agricultural sur-plus gave the people something to trade to neighbors.
Lapis lazuli for decoration was procured from Afganistan. Timber was brought from as far away as Lebanon. The first large city to develop was Sumer and from its beginnings, it was tied by trade to most of the then known world.the expansion of trade. As people in Asia Minor discovered sources of metal and developed the ability to refine, alloy, to work.naturally occurring and with the exception of the extreme northern part, Mesopotamia had none of them. Metals could therefore only
be acquired by trade. By 3500 B.C., metals commonly brought to
the area included copper and tin (and their alloy, bronze) as well
as silver and gold. Later, iron was also imported. By the middle
of the second millennium B.C., silver was commonly used as money,
even though coinage was not to exist for another thousand years.
It was accounted for by a system of weights, the smallest unit of
which was the se. Three hundred and sixty se were equal to one
shekel, 60 shekels were equal to one mina (a mina is equal to ap-
proximately 1.1 pound), and 60 minas were equal to one talent. 1
As one may gather from the weight relationships, the numbering
system employed used a base of 60. The large base had the advan-
tage of being divisible by a sufficiently large number of whole
numbers as to make easier the use of fractions. This was of con-
siderable benefit in computing and recording rates of exchange for
various commodities.
Possibly the greatest advance of the time was the development
of writing. The ability to record and transmit (without likelihood
of change) is of obvious benefit to a trading operation. Forms of
organization can be larger and more flexible if all those involved
in ownership and management can record partnership agreements, in-
struction, loans, and transactions. A probable result of this was a nasty knave.
the development of large-scale, continuing businesses involved in
import-export trade. Originally developing in southern Mesopotamia,
this trade was later carried on by the Babylonians of central were rascal
Mesopotamia. It reached its peak under the Assyrians in the North
during the latter part of the second millennium and the first part
of the first millennium B.C. The traders made considerable use of
the writing system available and it is from these records and
other archeological finds that this paper is drawn.
The records are in the form of clay tablets written upon with
a wedge-shaped stylus which produced the writing known as cuneiform.
Such tablets have survived and been recovered in large numbers and
translators continue to develop knowledge of the languages involved
While persons from such fields as medicine, law, mathematics, and
astronomy have worked with translators to learn more of the early
history of their subjects, relatively little interest has been
shown by accountants and business and economic historians. Thus,
while a majority of the available records are economic in nature,
less is known of the economic and business systems than is known
of some other areas of interest.
TRADE ROUTES AND TRADE GOODS
The trade routes linking Mesopotamia with the surrounding
world were primarily land routes and for the most part were
travelled by donkey caravans. Some use of water transportation was
made within Mesopotamia, primarily on the Euphrates River and some
irrigation canals large enough to carry barge traffic. There was
also some trade on the Mediterranean Sea which in later years be-
came fairly extensive under the Phoenicians. Since most of the
cities supplying products to Mesopotamia were inland, overland
trade accounted for the majority of transport. Camels were not
domesticated until approximately 900 B.C. and even after that, ex-
cept in the Syrian desert, donkeys were the primary beast of bur-
den used by the caravans [3, p. 15].
The apparent limits of the trade routes were Egypt in the
West and the Black Sea in the North [1, p. 64]. To the East routes