Babylonia was in the path of trade routes and commerce was extensive. The Babylonians used their knowledge of arithmetic and simple algebra to express lengths and weights, to exchange money and merchandise, to compute simple and compound interest, to calculate taxes, and to apportion shares of a harvest to the farmer, church, and state. The majority of the cuneiform texts involving mathematics (exclusive of the tables and problem texts) were concerned with economic problems. There is no doubt as to the influence of economics on the development of arithmetic in the older period.
