Foreign Relations

The significance of foreign relations in the ancient near east, as we saw in King Hammurabi, seems to be more dependent on the need for extensive and far reaching trade routes. Not only are alliances made for the sake of peace, but they are clearly made in order for each country to have the ability to access the exports of distant city-states. The peaceful relations between Elam and Mesopotamia where for the sources of precious, locally rare, materials such as tin, wood and stone. Each nation provided gifts of valuables that were plentiful in their country that had a high export value, such as Elam with tin and Mesopotamia with gold and silver. Since they gave gifts of their valuable, but relatively plentiful goods it is clear that in making treaties they wanted to express the goods that they were making readily available.

It is obvious that trade represented a huge factor in the lives of ancient near eastern civilizations since not only did they present gifts of valuable trade opportunities, but the first examples of written language were ancient receipts and debts. The level of trade must have been very high for a civilization to adopt some of the first written language in order to make the trade process easier. At the time of Hammurabi and the relations between Elam and Mesopotamia, trade would have had to develop even greater since the times when it had led to the creation of a written language and must have been a dominant driver in every day ancient near eastern life.