Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/411

Commerce. 373 capital. It is even asserted that they made use of the bill of exchange or of something strongly resembling it. 1 It was only at its southern extremity that Mesopotamia had a sea-board, and we have very little information as to its maritime commerce. There seems to be no doubt, however, that it held communication with India by sea. Ur, the oldest of the successive capitals of Chaldaea, was near the Persian Gulf, and its ships are often mentioned in the inscriptions. 2 As civilization advanced those vessels must have increased in number. Isaiah speaks of the ships of the Chaldseans. 3 The regular winds of the Indian Ocean enabled a sea traffic to be carried on without danger ; ships could proceed to the mouths of the Indus and return to the Persian Gulf almost to the day. That communication of some kind existed between the two countries can be proved. The zebu, or humped ox, is often represented on the Mesopotamian monuments ; and that animal is indigenous in India, where its domestication dates back to the remotest antiquity. Among the half decomposed beams that have been disinterred from the ruins in Lower Chaldaea, some of teak have been recognized. 4 Now the home of that tree is in India ; it is to be found neither in Chaldaea nor in any other part of Western Asia. Finally a large proportion of the ivory consumed by the artificers of Babylon and Nineveh must have come from India. The same ships may have brought African ivory from the land of the Somalis, and, as they coasted along Arabia they may have increased their cargoes with myrrh, incense, and other aromatic spices from that country. 5 But it was in the main by land that Mesopotamia imported her raw material and exported her manufactures. There must have been continual intercourse by caravan between Assyria and the 1 See on this subject, François Lenormant's La Monnaie dans l'Antiquité, vol. i. Prolégomènes, cap. iii. and especially pp. 1 13-122. 2 Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 108. Menant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées, p. 128. 3 " • * * the Chaldeans whose cry is in the ships," Isaiah xliii. 14. 4 Taylor, Notes on the Puins of Mugeyer {Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv. p. 264). 5 Strabo speaks of a Chaldsean settlement on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf ; he calls it Gerrha (xvi. iii. 3). All the products of Arabia, he says, were there brought together. Thence they were transported to Chaldaea by sea, and carried up the Euphrates as far as Thapsacus.