The Babylonian Empire, located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, was part of the larger Mesopotamia River Valley civilization. The river valley civilizations were agricultural societies that relied heavily on trading surplus goods for their survival. Babylonia traded surplus wheat, millet, barley, peas, and other crops that grew in the fertile crescent, an area of the Middle East between the Nile River, Mediterranean Sea, Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and Persian Gulf. Surplus crops could be used to trade for goods not available in Mesopotamia, like Indian spices and Egyptian cotton.

We know that Babylonians traded with the Indus Valley peoples on the Indus River in today's Pakistan because we have found stone seals with Indus pictographs in Mesopotamian dig sites. We also know that the Mesopotamians traded with Egyptians.

One benefit to the Babylonian location was that its many city-states were either on rivers or bordering the Persian Gulf. The city-state of Ur, located on the Persian Gulf, allowed Babylonians to trade on the river or on the sea.

Other than agricultural work, the Babylonians smelted copper and bronze, were carpenters, worked with leather and wove baskets. These products would have been traded locally in city-state marketplaces and also likely traded with other civilizations.

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