Copper and iron seem to have been yielded by the hills of Palestine.

Silver was perhaps a product of the Anti-Lebanon.
It may be doubted whether any gems were really found in Babylonia itself, which, being purely alluvial, possesses no stone of any kind.
Most likely the sorts known as Babylonian came from the neighboring Susiana, whose unexplored mountains may possess many rich treasures.
According to Dionysius, the bed of the Choaspes produced numerous agates, and it may well be that from the same quarter came that "beryl more precious than gold," and those "highly reputed sard," which Babylon seems to have exported to other countries.

The western provinces may, however, very probably have furnished the gems which are ascribed to them, as amethysts, which are said to have been found in the neighborhood of Petra, alabaster, which came from near Damascus, and the cyanus, a kind of lapis-lazuli, which was a production of Phoenicia.

No doubt the Babylonian love of gems caused the provinces to be carefully searched for stones; and it is not improbable that they yielded besides the varieties already named, and the other unknown kinds mentioned by Pliny, many, if not most, of the materials which we find to have been used for seals by the ancient people.

These are, cornelian, rock-crystal, chalcedony, onyx, jasper, quartz, serpentine, sienite, haematite, green felspar, pyrites, loadstone, and amazon-stone.
Stone for building was absent from Babylonia Proper and the alluvial tracts of Susiana, but in the other provinces it abounded.