ABSTRACT
From C20 to C18, during the Middle Bronze Age, Assyrian merchants conducted extensive trading operations in Anatolia by setting up merchant colonies along trade routes which linked the Assyrian city Ashur with the towns and kingdoms of northern and central Anatolia. Detailed records of their trading activities have been preserved on clay tablets in Assyrian cuneiform. ese have been unearthed at several Anatolian sites, by far the greatest number at Kanesh (aka Nesa; modern Kültepe) which lay just south of the Kızıl Irmak r., 21 km east of modern Kayseri. More than 22,000 merchant documents have been recovered from the second of Kanesh’s four major levels, and a further 420 from the succeeding level Ib. From these documents it is clear that Kanesh was the Anatolian headquarters of the trading network, and also the residence of one of the Anatolian kings. e settlement consisted of a 20 m high mound (c. 550 m in diameter), where the royal palace was located, and a lower city where the merchants dwelt. Information provided by the tablets indicates that there were at least twenty-one merchant colonies established between the Assyrian homeland and the ve attested Anatolian kingdoms of the period. e more important colonies were called kāru (singular kārum), the lesser ones wabaratum (singular wabartum). So far only three have been identied, Kanesh, Hattus (on the site of the later Hittite capital Hattusa) and a settlement at modern Alişar (perhaps ancient Ankuwa). Tin, used in the manufacture of bronze, and high quality textiles were imported into the Anatolian kingdoms by donkey-caravans from Assyria – commercial ventures nanced by consortia of Assyrian businessmen who established branch oces in the colonies oen managed by family members. e imports were traded by the merchants for metals readily obtainable in Anatolia, especially silver and gold. e local rulers and the towns through which the caravans passed imposed heavy tolls and customs duties on the caravaneers, and there were severe penalties for those attempting to avoid these costs. Growing instability within and between the Anatolian kingdoms was almost certainly one of the main factors that ended the Assyrian colony period around mid C18.
