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Old Assyrian Caravan Procedures PIHANS • XXII Old Assyrian Caravan Procedures By Mogens Trolle Larsen Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten Leiden 1967 UITGAVEN V AN HET NEDERLANDS HISTORISCH-ARCHAEOLOGISCH INSTITUUT TE ISTANBUL Publications de l'Institut historique et archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul sous la direction de A. A. KAMPMAN et MACHTELD J. MELLINK XXII OLD ASSYRIAN CARAVAN PROCEDURES OLD ASSYRIAN CARAVAN PROCEDURES BY MOGENS TROLLE LARSEN lSTANBUL NEDERLANDS HISTORISCH-ARCHAEOLOGISCH INSTITUUT IN HET NABIJE OOSTEN 1967 Copyright 1967 by Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten Noordeindsplein 4-6, Leiden All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form Printed in the Netherlands CONTENTS PREFACE .... VII INTRODUCTION. I a. The Sites I b. The Date 2 c. The Assyrian Trade. -3 d. The Caravan Documents 6 I. THE STANDARD TEXTS . • . 8 a. The Transport-contract . 8 b. The Notifying Message IO c. The Caravan Account .. II Il. THE TRANSACTION OF THE STANDARD TEXTS. I5 a. The Persons . I5 b. The Procedure . I8 Kanes. 20 Assur .... 37 Ill. THE CARAVAN DOCUMENTS 44 a. Transport-contracts. 44 Group Ia (Type I :2 - I :4) . 45 Group Ib (Type I:5- I:9). 47 Group 2 (Type I :Io - I :I3B) . 56 Conclusion. 65 b. Notifying Messages . 70 Group I (Type 2 :2 - 2 :4) . 7I Group 2 (Type 2 :5 - 2 :I3) . 78 Conclusion. 93 c. Caravan Accounts . 97 Group r (Type 3:2 - 3 :ro) . 98 Group 2 (Type 3 :n - 3 :I5) I22 Conclusion. qo Assur. I4I Kanes. I 55 SUMMARY ... I73 VI CONTENTS ADDENDUM. IJ9 INDEXES .. r8z a. Texts .. r8z b. Persons. r86 c. Cities. r86 d. Words . r86 PREFACE As the motto for this study I might choose the wise words of the great American Anthropologist, A. L. KROEBER: "The basic reason for the concentra­ tions of productivity seems to be that for things to be done well they must be done definitely, and definite results can be achieved only through some specific method, technique, manner, or plan of operations." Such a specific plan of operations he describes as a "style". The present investigation has indeed the aim to sketch the outlines of the "style pattern" of the Old Assyrian caravan trade, but the author is painfully aware of the fact that all too many of the questions asked have not been adequately answered. I can only hope that I have at least asked the right questions, for-as said by another eminent Anthropologist, CLAUDE L:Evr­ STRAUSS: "le savant n'est pas l'homme qui fournit les vraies reponses; c'est celui qui pose les vraies questions". However, the immense textual material available from the Old Assyrian period constantly holds out the hope-or the threat-that the answer could in fact be found among the vast amounts of data. At the same time, it makes manifest the need for new methods, for the con­ ventional philological approach all too easily degenerates into a recital of odd­ ments, a series of "interesting" riddles more or less "solved". I am afraid that attacks on this plane can with right be levelled against this book. The proper approach would undoubtedly be a structural study of the "systems of internal relationship which give to any culture its coherence or plan, and keep it from being a mere accumulation of random bits" (KROEBER). However, this in­ vestigation would be justified if it could be used as a description of one part­ and a crucial one-of the pattern of the Old Assyrian culture. I have received my basic instruction in the field of Old Assyrian from Professor KEMAL BALKAN, and I want to express my gratitude for the example he has given me by his attitude of forgiveness, mild tenacity and intimacy toward the old Assyrians. During my visits to Turkey I have had the pleasure to live at the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and I hope that the friends I met there will accept this book as a token of my gratitude for the hospitality and kindness they have shown me. I also want to express my sincere appreciation of the help I have received from my teachers, Professors ]0RGEN L1ESS0E and EBBE EGEDE KNUDSEN, and from my fellow-pupil AAGE WESTENHOLZ. Mr K. R. VEENHOF has been kind enough to suggest a number of changes and additions to my original manuscript, and he deserves my warm thanks for his help. Mogens Trolle LARSEN Hellerup, March 1967 INTRODUCTION a. THE SITES Clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform and containing documents of an economic character from the Old Assyrian period have since r88r come in vast numbers from Anatolia. Though the site Kiiltepe 20 kms north-east of Kayseri was suspected to be the source of the tablets sold on the markets in Kayseri and Istanbul, and in spite of the efforts of several archaeologists to find the archives from which the local villagers unearthed the tablets, the problem was not solved until 1925. When in this year HROZNY succeeded in finding the archives, it was with the help of a local peasant and the actual source turned out to be the fields east of the mound. The htiytik itself has up to now yielded very few tablets.1) HROZNY dug here for two seasons and unearthed more than rooo tablets. About 500 of these have now been published in ICK I and 2. The real excavation of the site-both of the mound and of the area where the tablets had been found-was initiated in 1948 when the Turkish Historical Society and the Turkish Department of Antiquities began a large-scale dig led by Professor TAHSIN OzGu<_;;; these excavations have not yet been finished and they have already resulted in the finding of a very great number of tablets.2) The mound Kiiltepe is an impressive accumulation, 550 meters long and 450 meters wide with a maximum height of about rg meters. It covers the ancient city of Kanes, in the Old Assyrian period the capital of an important kingdom. A great part of the mound was occupied by palaces, temples and possibly other official buildings. Very few tablets have been unearthed on the mound; they are found in abundant numbers in the settlement which lies in a great crescent about a hundred meters east of the walls of the city. In this area 1) For the history of the excavations of Kiiltepe I refer to P. GARELLI, Les Assyriens en Cappadoce (Paris, 1963), p. IJ-I8 (this book henceforth quoted as AC). GARELLI's study has here been used as a general source for references for which purpose it is admirably well suited, being to a large extent a recapitulation of earlier theories and views. This procedure does not imply, however, that I agree in all respects with the views expounded in AC. 2) The results of the Turkish excavations have been published by TAHSIN OzGuc; in several reports the most important of which are: Ausgrabungen in Kultepe I948 (Tiirk Tarih Kurumu Yaymlarmdan, V. Seri, No. ro- Ankara 1950), Ausgrabungen in Kultepe I949 (Tiirk Tarih Kurumu Yaymlanndan, V. Seri, No. 12- Ankara, 1953), and Kultepe­ Kani~ (Tiirk Tarih Kurumu Yaymlarmdan, V. Seri, Sayi: 19- Ankara, 1959). 2 OLD ASSYRIAN CARAVAN PROCEDURES the excavators have found another city consisting of moderately sized private houses which have turned out to have been owned mainly by Assyrian mer­ chants. This colony of merchants is normally referred to as the kiirum Kanes.3) There are four occupational levels in the kiirum of which the two oldest ones, levels 4 and 3, have not yet been dug extensively. No tablets have been found 4 in these levels. ) Level 2 marks the period of the main commercial expansion and it is from this level that the majority of the tablets have come. Level r, finally, has been subdivided into levels rb and Ia, and of these only rb has yielded a few tablets. These show that the flourishing activity of the preceding period has died out to become a dim reflection of the economic expansion wit­ nessed by the tablets from level 2. The tablets found at Kiiltepe mention several other towns and a number of these were capital cities in other Anatolian kingdoms, 5) but so far no site except Kiiltepe has produced any tablets from the period of the main Assyrian ex­ pansion. Tablets have been found at two other sites: Ali~ar 6) and Bogazkoy,7) but in both cases the documents could be dated to the last period, the one that corresponds to level rb at Kiiltepe. b. THE DATE The fact that the excavations at Assur provided us with only very few texts from the Old Assyrian period, and no economic tablets at all, has made the exact dating of the various levels rather difficult. The task is not made easier by the lack of royal inscriptions at Kiiltepe where only Erresum I has left us a proper historical text.8) However, the Turkish excavators have provided us with a stratigraphic framework which Professor KEMAL BALKAN has attempted to fill out in the books Observations on the Chronological Problems of the kiirum Kanish (Ankara, 1955) and Letter of King Anum-Ijirbi of Mama to King W arshama of Kanish (Ankara, I957). According to the theories advanced by BALKAN level 2 corresponds to the 3) Adequately defined in AC, p. 174, as "a la fois un centre commerciel etabli dans une ville et l'assemblee des marchands qui l'administre." See for Old Babylonian F. R. KRAUS, SD 5, p. 8!-83. 4) They may antedate the Old Assyrian trade on Anatolia.
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