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ABSTRACT
Traders from the ancient Sumerian city of Ur traveled by donkey caravan, river barges, and sea- going ships to all parts of the Fertile Crescent, Persia, Tilmun, Magan, and Melukka. They imported copper, precious stones and woods, and ivory and exported woolen clothing and cloth, barley, and locally grown foodstuffs. These Sumerian damkara traded for the palace, temple, other merchants, and on their own account. The activities performed by the Ur traders established a model that spread throughout the civilized world and on into modern times.
INTRODUCTION
The southernmost city in ancient Mesopotamia was Ur, then a sea port on the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Mesopotamia extended north along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, the tributaries flowing into the two rivers, the river valleys and the western hills of the Zagros Mountains. Initially Mesopotamia consisted of two cultures: Sumerian in the south and Akkadian to the north, each with its own language. But the people of Sumer and Akkad shared a lifestyle based upon farming and the raising of sheep and goats. Kuhrt (1995) states that . . a fundamental cultural unity prevailed among the contending kingdoms' (p. 97).
Mesopotamia, the lands west to the Mediterranean Sea coast, and those areas south into Egypt and along the Nile River made up The Fertile Crescent (Schomp, 2004, p. 9). The Fertile Crescent and adjoining areas are commonly referred to as the Ancient Near East (ANE). It encompassed all or part of the modern countries of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt (Snell, 1997, p. ix).
Some information on trade in the ANE comes from such physical evidence as the remains of early dwellings, burial sites, and the unearthed artifacts of everyday living. But much data on trade is found on clay tablets covered with Cuneiform writing, broken pieces of pottery (ostraca) with writing on the surface, and carved stone stele commissioned by ancient kings. Scholars translated many of the no longer extant languages found on "letters, contracts and administrative documents (Leemans, 1968, p. 171)" into modern ones including German, French, Italian, and English (see Bertman, 2003, Chapter 5; Parsons, 2007, Chapter 1). Therefore, some of the material below derives from translations of, for example, tablets inscribed in cuneiform and translated by scholars into...