Salt traders of Seleucid Babylonia

Salt was one of the most valued commodities in antiquity. It was used for food preparation and preservation, as an aliment itself, and for other manufacturing activities. It was widely traded both at local and global levels, especially in the Hellenistic period, for it benefited from an extensive route network that worked more and more effectively at least from the Achaemenid period onwards. Salt traders thus became one of the most important components of city societies. The present overview deals with the possibility of addressing problems related to such a complex environment as clues for reconstructing, at least in part, the administration procedures and policymaking of Babylonian élites in the centuries that led to the turn of the Christian era.