Trade and Transport in Ancient Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia was low on natural resources and they needed to trade for many of their day-to-day items. Some of the things they traded were Grain, Oils, and textiles, and return, they got timber, wine, and precious metals and stones. Some merchants worked locally and just strapped their goods on their back or carried them in a sack, They wood often trade small amounts of grain, meat, fish, and precious stones. Others traveled from some parts of Mesopotamia to completely different regions such as Babylonia, Assyria, and Sumeria. They also had different means of transport for different types of goods. For example, they would carry precious stones on foot or by donkey, and they shipped larger loads of items such as grain by ship.

Trading by Water

The Mesopotamians more often traded by sea then by land. Some of their sea-ways of transport were rafts, coracles, river boats, and gulf boats. Rafts were just wooden platforms with inflated animal skins below them. They were meant to travel downstream. Coracles were little boats made of animals skins covered in Bitumen, a natural tar-like substance. This made these round boats waterproof. River boats also carried goods downstream. They were made of reeds lashed together with rope and covered with Bitumen. They mostly carried Grain, logs, bricks, wool, beer, wine, and reeds. Gulf boats were meant to transport goods from southern Mesopotamia to the gulf. These boats were stronger and tougher than river boats. They carried barley, stone, wood, pearls, carnelian, copper, ivory, textiles, and reeds.

Trading By Land

By land, there were only a few possibilities: On foot, by donkey, or by Cart. On foot, you could transport small amounts of just about anything if it was in small quantities (except extremely bulky items such as bricks and long pieces of timber). By donkey was the most common form of transportation. You could trade goods such as textiles, precious metals, wine, grain, Lapiz Lazuli, and other valuable stones. Finally, Cart is the last method I am going to write about. They were made of local timber and held together by bronze or maybe copper nails. They carried metal, fish, textiles, oils, bricks, and grain.

Conclusion

Trade was an extremely important part of daily life for Meopotamians and there is much more to say about it than just what I have here. Transportation was obviously a necessity to Mesopotamians and was vital to traders of all kinds, except traders that moved on by foot, of course. So Mesopotamia was an interesting place, and Trade and transport is just one of the many topics to learn about that had to do with this important era in Human History.