Revelation 18:12
Revelation 18:1212cargo of gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls; of fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet; of all kinds of citron wood and every article of ivory, precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble;
Watchtower commentary takes the cargo list of symbolically — as the privileges and trappings false religion enjoyed in partnership with worldly powers. The luxury goods represent the wealth, ceremony, and status Christendom acquired through her relationships with kings. Their loss at Armageddon is the loss of religious privilege, not of literal trade.
The cargo inventory is concrete, not symbolic. Gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet, scented wood, ivory, marble — these are the imports of an imperial trading capital. Pliny the Elder catalogued the same goods flowing into Rome from across the empire. Verse 13 adds the categories the Watchtower's reading struggles most: "cattle, sheep, horses, chariots, and slaves and human lives." This is the inventory of Roman commerce, not of ecclesiastical property. Reading the chapter's economic detail seriously pushes the identification toward Rome and away from a purely religious referent.