(5) As the power of the Babylonian rulers spread out beyond the original areas of good husbandry into grazing regions and less fertile districts, a class of _herdsmen_ came into existence. In the case of Babylonia these were nomadic Semites, the Bedouin, like the Bedouin of to-day. They probably grazed their flocks over great areas much as the sheep ranchers of California do.[151] They were paid and esteemed much more highly than the husbandmen. (6) The first _merchants_ in the world were shipowners, like the people of Tyre and Cnossos, or nomads who carried and traded goods as they wandered between one area of primitive civilization and another. In the Babylonian and Assyrian world the traders were predominantly the Semitic Arameans, the ancestors of the modern Syrians. They became a distinct factor in the life of the community; they formed great households of their own. Usury developed largely in the last thousand years B.C. Traders needed accommodation; cultivators wished to anticipate their crops. Sayce (_op. cit._) gives an account of the Babylonian banking-house of Egibi, which lasted through several generations and outlived the Chaldean Empire. (7) A class of _small retailers_, one must suppose, came into existence with the complication of society during the later days of the first empires, but it was not probably of any great importance. It is difficult to understand how there could be much active retailing without small change, and there is little evidence of small change to be found either in Egypt or Mesopotamia.[152] Shekels and half-shekels of silver, weighing something between a quarter and half an ounce, are the lightest weights of stamped metal of which we find mention. (8) A growing class of _independent property owners_. (9) As the amenities of life increased, there grew up in the court, temples, and prosperous private houses a class of _domestic servants_, slaves or freed slaves, or young peasants taken into the household. (10) _Gang workers._--These were prisoners of war or debt slaves, or impressed or deported men. (11) _Mercenary soldiers._--These also were often captives or impressed men. Sometimes they were enlisted from friendly foreign populations in which the military spirit still prevailed. (12) _Seamen._