ABSTRACT
Information on the economic structure of Urartu is scarce. But even fewer facts are available on Urartian trade and commerce, business transactions and methods of payment. Where information is not to be found from native sources, it seems that (within reasonable limits) some of the known methods of trading and commercial transactions of neighbouring countries (themselves inheritors of the earliest traditions of Babylonia) might be applied to Urartu. A number of examples given below from Mesopotamia and Syria might well have had Urartian parallels, especially as the earlier commercial institutions would have developed very considerably by the time Urartu appeared on the historical scene, early in the thirteenth century BC, as a confederacy of principalities culminating in a powerful kingdom and extensive empire in the eighth century BC. Thus, they must be relevant in the Urartian context whose kings manifestly realised the economic importance of protecting the trade routes and encouraging the development of agriculture and the industry of their country. The merchants of so advanced a civilisation as Urartu must surely have acquired the trading and commercial skills of their immediate southern neighbours.
