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.
The merchant sometimes furnished the agent with goods which he was to dispose of in the best markets he could find in the cities and towns along his route, and sometimes he would give the agent money with which to purchase goods in foreign cities for sale on his return. If the venture proved successful the merchant and his agent shared the profits between them, but if the agent made bad bargains he had to refund to the merchant the value of the goods he had received; if the merchant had not agreed to risk losing any profit, the amount to be refunded to him was fixed at double the value of the goods advanced.
This last enactment gives an indication of the immense profits which were obtained by both the merchant and the agent from this system of foreign trade, for it is clear that what was regarded fair profit for the merchant was double the value of the goods disposed of. The profits of a successful journey would also include a fair return to the agent for the trouble and time involved in his undertaking. Many of the contract tablets of this early period relate to such commercial journeys, which show that various bargains were made between the different parties interested, and sometimes such contracts, or partnerships, were entered into, not for a single journey only, but for long periods. We may therefore conclude that at the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and probably for long centuries before that period, the great trade-routes of the East were crowded with traffic. With the exception that donkeys and asses were employed for beasts of burden and were not supplemented by horses and camels until a much later period, a camping-ground in the desert on one of the great trade-routes must have presented a scene similar to that of a caravan camping in the desert at the present day.
The rough tracks beaten by the feet of men and beasts are the same to-day as they were in that remote period. We can imagine a body of these early travellers approaching a walled city at dusk and hastening their pace to get there before the gates were shut. Such a picture as that of the approach to the city of Samarra, with its mediaeval walls, may be taken as having had its counterpart in many a city of the early Babylonians. The caravan route leads through the desert to the city gate, and if we substitute two massive temple towers for the domes of the mosques that rise above the wall, little else in the picture need be changed.
