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.

[Illustration: 282.jpg A TRACK IN THE DESERT.]

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