I decided that the culture of Babylon would center around its businesses and traders and so I wrote a short story about trade and business amongst the Babylon in an attempt to share their early culture with everyone.
The Business of Babylon is Business:
Capital Venture and Risk Management in Antiquity
Nabur was a pragmatic man. Cool-headed, logical, and ambitious. Most of all he was not what some would call a ‘risk-taker’. And yet, here he was planning to throw his entire family fortune that had taken three generations to amass into one trade venture that could just as easily wipe him out as it could make him rich.
Nabur studied the oar-boats he had commissioned, the crates and crates of wheat grain, dry rice, cinnamon root and even small ingots of tin. They were worth his entire fortune. Even the rowers themselves were slaves he had purchased at market. Nabur smiled; he liked the idea of transporting slaves. You could buy them cheap, and then make them carry other goods, thereby saving costs on transport. Finally you could then sell them, as well as their burden, at an inflated price at the destination. Nabur was nothing if not a practical-minded merchant.
As he looked over his crates as they were being loaded, he thought again of the risk. Surely there was a way to defray some of the financial exposure he was undertaking. Nabur frowned and uttered a half-hearted prayer to the spirits of the Tigris, his patron spirit for this venture and was surprised to suddenly be struck with inspiration.
Had not the Tigris brought bountiful and healthy soil to the farmers this year? Had the farmers not promised to bring in more crop then any other previous year? Surely they would be willing to invest some of that additional grain in exchange for the opportunity to take part in Nabur’s trade mission.
And so, over the course of several weeks, Nabur visited all the major land-owners and offered them a deal. He would trade them a share in his trading venture for a share in their crop. They had a chance to lose their investment but they also had a chance to win back much more. Meanwhile Nabur was able to defray some of the risk involved in his expedition by knowing he had a secure source of grain income waiting for him when he returned to Ur- although the pay-off would not be quite as high if he succeeded because he would now have to share it.
The visits to the land-owners proved much more fruitful then he had anticipated. Many were expecting a sizeable return on their harvest and felt they had much to gain from Nabur’s expedition. In this way Nabur was able to add to his own capital the capital of several other rich and prominent families of the capital.
Basra would be greater then any Babylon had ever seen- the result of investment by wide-ranging spectrum of well-to-do Ur families and businesses. It was the birth of venture capitalism and the first implementation of business risk management and it would change the face of Babylon trade forever.