Records unearthed in the ruins of ancient Babylon show that business transactions exploiting the unfortunate circumstances of fellow humans were very much in vogue back there.

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Ancient cuneiform records of business transactions

The book Ancient Near Eastern Texts, edited by James B. Pritchard, lists almost 300 laws compiled by Hammurabi in Babylonian times. These show that it was necessary to proscribe the blatant dishonesty that apparently pervaded the commercial world in those days. To take one example: “If a seignior has purchased or he received for safe-keeping either silver or gold or a male slave or a female slave or an ox or a sheep or an ass or any sort of thing from the hand of a seignior’s son or a seignior’s slave without witnesses and contracts, since that seignior is a thief, he shall be put to death.”