c. 1950 BCE–c. 1730 BCE
Old Assyrian merchant archives between Aššur and Kanesh
Trade & global routes · Archivos mercantiles · Caravanas · Crédito · Fiscalidad
Some 23,000 cuneiform texts from Kültepe-Kanesh document exchange between Aššur and Anatolian kingdoms, including textiles, tin, silver, and levies. They are an exceptional source on contracts, credit, and caravans, but belong chiefly to those who wrote and preserved archives; they do not fully represent workers, families, debtors, or communities affected by the circuit.
Precision, calendar, and review
- Start
- year · approximate
- End
- year · approximate
- Calendar and convention
- Historical-era years; the source calendar is not identified. No conversion of days is assumed.
- Year zero
- The scale goes from 1 BCE to 1 CE without year zero. Changing era names changes labels only.
- Documentary review
- Date not recorded
Reading the date: duration of a process.
Sources
- www.cambridge.org (opens in a new tab)
Source provenance and scope
- Publication date
- 2023-02
- What this date describes
- The cited source or edition; it may postdate the historical event.
- Bibliographic date checked
- 2026-09-23
- Date evidence
- Declared in the cited source’s publisher metadata.
The correspondence between this reference and individual claims has not yet been itemized.
This record is an editorial synthesis. Consult the sources to check claims and their limits. Chronological relationships alone do not establish causation.