Merchants

Sources

The Meluhhan Presence. References to Meluhha in texts dating to the third millennium b.c.e. are thought to indicate the region occupied by the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley of modern Pakistan and India. Meluhha was said to be the source for exotic hardwoods, copper, tin, silver, and carnelian. The presence of certain distinctive objects among the grave goods found in the Royal Tombs at Ur (circa 2500 b.c.e.) is seen as a clear indication of commercial and/or diplomatic contacts between southern Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. These objects include containers and vessels made from mollusk shells that are indigenous to the Arabian Sea and necklaces and belts strung with long biconical and “etched” carnelian beads. It has even been suggested that the bodies of several women found in the Great Death Pit at Ur were in fact those of Harappan ladies who accompanied the deceased, who is thought to be king Mesanepada, founder of the First Dynasty of Ur (circa 2600 b.c.e.), into the next world. Their headdresses with gold flowers and their necklaces with pendant gold leaves are not unlike the headdresses and necklaces depicted on Harappan figurines. Evidence from the last three centuries of the third millennium b.c.e. suggests the presence of Harappan merchants from Meluhha within Mesopotamia. Whether they were private businessmen or agents of some state entity in the Indus Valley is unknown. An inscription of Sargon of Akkad (circa 2334 - circa 2279 b.c.e.) refers to Meluhhan ships tied up at the quay of the capital city, Agade (Akkad). An inscribed Akkadian-period cylinder seal of unknown provenance identifies its owner as an interpreter of Meluhhan speech, while a locally made Harappan-like stamp seal from Ur bears a partially legible cuneiform inscription that might be the name or title of its presumed Meluhhan owner. Following the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, circa 2193 b.c.e., Meluhhan ships were still apparently calling on Mesopotamian ports. An inscription of Gudea, ruler of Lagash (circa 2100 b.c.e.), states that Meluhhan merchants brought wood and other raw materials directly to him. Archival texts dated in the reigns of the Ur III kings Shulgi (circa 2094 - circa 2047 b.c.e.), Amar-Suena (circa 2046 - circa 2038 b.c.e.), and Shu-Sin (circa 2037 -circa 2029 b.c.e.) suggest the existence of a village of by-then-long-acculturated Meluhhan colonists in the vicinity of Lagash. Early in the second millennium b.c.e., following the collapse of Indus Valley urban culture, the period of direct contact between the Indus Valley and lower Mesopotamia came to an end.

Assyrian Merchantmen. Discoveries at the site of the ancient city of Kanesh, modern Kültepe, in central Anatolia yielded the first extensive evidence of Mesopotamian merchants operating on their own behalf for the principal purpose of making a monetary profit. There, some 1,750 cuneiform tablets were found in private houses in the karum (literally: “the harbor”), the walled lower city. In all, some seventy archives—each containing from a few dozen to more than a thousand cuneiform tablets written in an archaic dialect of Assyrian—were found, most as they had been left at the destruction of the city circa 1830 b.c.e., with tablets in jars, baskets, wooden boxes, on shelves along walls, or stacked on reed matting. The tablets were archival texts, letters, and legal documents providing evidence of the business activities of the city’s resident traders, who were predominantly foreigners from the city of Ashur on the Tigris River. From circa 1910 to circa 1830 b.c.e., and again from circa 1810 to circa 1740

B.C.E., caravans of donkeys were loaded at Ashur with woolen textiles and tin and transported to Kanesh, where the goods as well as the donkeys were exchanged for currency—silver and gold bullion. From Kanesh the goods were further distributed across Anatolia. The tin and, for the most part, the textiles were imports into Assyria—the tin presumably from the east and the textiles from Babylonia to the south. Some textiles were also produced locally at Ashur specifically for the Anatolian trade. One merchant, Puzur-Ashur, wrote a letter to his wife, Waqqurtum, giving instructions regarding the kind and quantities of textiles he needed for his business dealings abroad:

(Concerning) the fine cloth that you sent me, you must make cloth like that and send it to me. … Have one side of the cloth combed, but not shaved smooth: it should be close-textured. Compared to the textiles you sent me earlier, you must work in one pound of wool more per piece of cloth, but they must still be fine! The other side (of the cloth) must be just lightly combed: if it still looks hairy, it will have to be closeshaved, like kutanu-cloth (a common textile). As for the abarne-cloth which you sent me, you must not send me that sort of thing again. If you do want to do so, then make it the way I used to wear it. But if you don’t want to make fine textiles—as I have heard it they can be bought in quantity over there (i.e., where you are); buy (them) and send them to me. One finished (piece of) cloth, when you make it, should be nine ells long and eight ells wide (4.5 by 4 m). (Veenhof, 1972)

Away on Business. The Assyrian merchants made two round trips a year via an overland route that probably covered on the order of 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) each way and took some five to six weeks to complete. Husbands left their wives at home and accompanied their caravans. Often these men settled in the emporia (trading centers) and corresponded with their wives, who were left behind. Some husbands paid scant attention to the needs of their wives and families back in Ashur. Some even took second wives and raised second families in Anatolia; others never returned home until their old age, leaving their wives lonely, ill, and at times, destitute. One such wife, Taram-Kubi, wrote her husband about her desperate situation and what she perceived to be his selfishness:

You wrote to me as follows: “Keep the bracelets and rings that you have; they will be needed to buy you food.” It is true that you send me half a pound of gold through Ili-bani, but where are the bracelets that you have left behind? When you left, you didn’t leave me one shekel of silver. You cleaned out the house and took everything with you.

Since you left, a terrible famine has hit the city of Ashur. You did not leave me one liter of barley. I need to keep on buying barley for our food. … Where is the extravagance that you keep on writing about? We have nothing to eat. Do you think we can afford indulgence? Everything I had available I scraped together and sent to you. Now I live in an empty house and the seasons are changing. Make sure that you send me the value of my textiles in silver so that I can at least buy ten measures of barley. (Michel; translated by Van De Mieroop)

Business and the Local Authorities. The Assyrian trade with Anatolia was quite profitable. Tin was sold in Kanesh at twice its purchase price in Ashur, and fine textiles were marked up as much as 300 percent. The local Anatolian ruler took a percentage of each donkey load as a tax payment for himself and had the right of first refusal to purchase another 10 percent of the textiles at a reasonable price. Nonetheless, the Assyrian merchants typically realized net profit margins of up to 100 percent per year. The Assyrians lived in their own commercial quarter, the karum; and the local ruler granted them the right to their own administrative and judicial authorities. The Assyrian merchants promised to abide by their business relationship with the local ruler and not attempt to avoid payment of taxes. Nevertheless, it appears that they engaged in smuggling in an effort to evade such taxes. In one letter three merchants warned an associate:

As the orders of the karum (the trading authorities) are firm, your smuggling that you wrote about is not feasible, so we shall not write you about your smuggling. Make up your own mind! Do not rely on colleagues! Beware! (Larsen, 1988)

Sources

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, “The Indus Civilization,” in Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, edited by Joan Aruz with Ronald Wallenfels (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), pp. 377-381.

Mogens Trolle Larsen, The Old Assyrian City-State and Its Colonies (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1976).

Larsen, “Old Assyrian Texts,” in Tablets, Cones, and Bricks of the Third and Second Millennia B.C., edited by Ira Spar, volume 1 of Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988), pp. 92-143.

Cécile Michel, Correspondance des marchands de Kanish au début du IIe millénaire avant J.-C., Littératures anciennes du Proche-Orient, 19 (Paris: Cerf, 2001).

Simo Parpola, Asko Parpola, and Robert H. Brunswig Jr., “The Meluhha Village: Evidence of Acculturation of Harappan Traders in Late Third Millennium Mesopotamia,” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 20 (1977): 129-165.

D. T. Potts, “Distant Shores: Near Eastern Trade with South Asia and Northern Africa,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, 4 volumes, edited by Jack M. Sasson (New York: Scribners, 1995), III: 1451-1463.

Marc Van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 B.C. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004).

Klaas R. Veenhof, Aspects of Old Assyrian Trade and its Terminology, Studia et Documenta, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1972).

Veenhof, “Kanesh: An Assyrian Colony in Anatolia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, 4 volumes, edited by Jack M. Sasson (New York: Scribners, 1995), II: 859-871.