Considerations on the Assyrian settlement at Kaneš

International audienceAt the end of the twentieth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries BCE, Assyrian merchants originating from Assur developed a long distance trade in Central Anatolia and settled there progressively in some forty towns. Their commercial activities prospered during slightly more than two centuries, a period traditionally called “Old Assyrian” or “kārum period.” The center of their operations was located at Kanesh (modern Kültepe) where, according to written records dated to the first half of the nineteenth century BCE., several hundreds of them lived more or less temporarily.Kültepe was divided into two major areas: the citadel with its palace, official buildings, and temples, and the lower city, often considered in the publications as the kārum Kanesh mentioned in the tablets. The site has produced up to now some 22,500 cuneiform texts: only forty tablets were found on the citadel, the remaining come from the private houses of the lower city (Michel 2003, 116-117; 2006; 2012). These archives, which belonged in the great majority to Assyrians, also provide data concerning the population of the lower city: natives, Assyrians, and other foreigners, though such divisions must be made, when filiation is unknown, by the language of personal names. The status of the Assyrian settlement at Kanesh has been much debated. This chapter considers the recent and interesting suggestion of G. Stein to define the Assyrian kārums in Anatolia as “trade diasporas” (Stein 2008). A brief summary of the various translations proposed for the word kārum will be followed by an analysis of the Kültepe lower city population and its geographic distribution. The study of material culture affords a provisional understanding of the dynamic relations between Assyrians and the native inhabitants of the city over the two centuries covering the Old Assyrian period