Kültepe Cuneiforms

Cuneiform tablet: private letter  | Middle Bronze Age–Old Assyrian Trading Colony | Anatolia, probably from Kültepe (Karum Kanesh), Old Assyrian Trading Colony | Dimensions:5.3 x 5 x 2 cm (2 1/8 x 2 x 3/4 in.) 

This tablet is one of the many letters that come from Kültepe and attest to the communication of merchants across long distances. In the cuneiform text, which reads left to right, Ilabrat-bani writes to Amur-ili, a transporter from a well-known merchant family, to update him concerning textiles delivered to another trading settlement, to request garments for himself, and to offer advice for travel. Writing covers the entire surface of the tablet, including the sides. Small tablets with crammed writing are common at this time, probably because these messages – along with items for trade – had to be carried across long distances.



LINK: Archaeological Site of Kültepe-Kanesh

Kültepe-Kanesh is the longest -and the most intensely- excavated site belonging to the period of Assyrian colonies. Archaeological excavations at the site have uncovered a series of highly important monumental administrative structures as well as residential neighborhoods. Kept in such houses, the private archives of the Karum residents have yielded 23,500 clay tablets and envelopes to date. These are the first written documents that started the textual history of Anatolia. The particular settlement model of mixed cohabitation of local Anatolian and foreign Mesopotamian and Syrian merchants is not seen at any other ancient Near Eastern settlement. Thanks to the detailed architectural plans of a large number of houses (approximately 100 in number) and considerable portions of neighborhoods, the settlement patterns at the site can be studied in depth. The private archives kept in these houses make up the first private libraries of political, commercial and legal documents of ancient Anatolia, affording a uniquely rich source of information for ancient Near Eastern scholarship as a whole. 

About 300 words in use in Turkish are from these Akkadian tablets by way of arabic. Some of these words include: şemsiye, tercüman, kira, gebermek, emlak, beleş, akraba, esir, siftah, hata, hınzır, garb, erbab, haram, öşür, icar, ahize, akşam, neccar (marangoz), kabir, nadas, kese (para çantası), mevta (ölmek), müzakere, lisan, reis (baş-kafa), şakül, vekil, zikir, zürriyet, mahrem, ispat, mazbata.

Mavi Boncuk |

When the merchants from Ashur in Assyria came to Anatolia early in the second millennium B.C., they brought with them the writing techniques invented in Mesopotamia: the script known as cuneiform ("wedge-shaped") and the medium of clay tablets encased in clay envelopes. The merchants also brought their art in the form of cylinder seals, which marked the traded goods, storerooms, and written records. The Assyrian merchants wrote in the Assyrian language, but tablets and cuneiform were later adopted in Anatolia by the Hittites, who wrote their own language with the imported techniques.

The records of the Assyrian trading colonies, of which Kültepe (ancient Karum Kanesh) was one, provide detailed information about one part of a lively international trade in the early second millennium B.C. that extended from Egypt to the Caucasus to Central Asia and the Indus Valley. The Assyrian tablets describe the exchange of tin and textiles from Ashur for silver from Anatolia as well as detail the specifics of contracts and lawsuits, and about bandits and other misfortunes.

Clay tablets unearthed during excavations at the Kültepe Kaneş/Karum mound in the province of Kayseri in central Turkey reveal that Anatolian women played an active part in administration and trade up to 4,000 years ago.
Systematic excavations first started in the region in 1948 and so far 23,500 cuneiform clay tablets have been unearthed, said the head of the Kültepe excavations, Ankara University Professor Fikri Kulakoğlu.

The clay tablet collection unearthed in the excavations entered the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2014, Kulakoğlu noted, adding that the most important feature of the tablets is their “commercial and economic content.”

“Everything of value was recorded in that era, so it is possible to get information about both daily life and social life from the tablets. For example, many events we know about today were recorded in tablets. It is possible to read information about many things related to social life such as marriage, divorce, adoption and court decisions,” he said.

The clay tablets also reveal that women were active in trade up to 4,000 years ago.

“It is very important that women were among the traders in Anatolia. Of course men traded but there were also women,” said Kulakoğlu.

“We learned from these tablets that one of them traveled 1,000 kilometers to Assyria to seek her rights in court as she failed to collect her money here. Women were active and had rights in society. Even queens were active in trade and state treaties. The king’s seal was not enough to approve a treaty; the queen’s seal was also necessary, which means that queens were equal with kings in administration,” he added, particularly referring to the case of Puduhepa, the wife of the Hittite king Hattusili III.

“Puduhepa lived 500 years after Kültepe. But the wife of an Anatolian king had a role in administration 500 years before Puduhepa. This means that Anatolian women were active in trade and administration long before the Hittite kings,” Kulakoğlu stated.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [September 20, 2016]

Clay tablet with envelope from Kaneş,  1950-1835 BCE 

[Credit: Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilisations]