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Old Assyrian Royal Families as Private Entrepreneurs in the Anatolian Trade

A relatively small, but not insignificant, number of royal letters authored by the rulers of the city-state of Assur have been discovered among the private archives of the Assyrian merchants settled at Kaneš (modernday Kültepe). These letters date to the early part of the Old Assyrian Colony period, and especially to the heyday of the trade, ca. 1895–1860 bc. Such royal letters can be divided into an official and a private group. Twenty-six official letters can further be divided as “legal” and “administrative” letters; the ten private letters are concerned mainly with the commercial activities of the Old Assyrian rulers (see Appendix for a diagram of the Old Assyrian kings). Together with other types of documentation, they demonstrate their participation in the Anatolian trade. It is clear that trusted agents and family members of the rulers performed these trading activities, alongside some of the prominent family firms based in Kaneš. However, the total volume of merchandise traded by the royal family, as attested in the texts, suggests that they played a minor role as active trading entrepreneurs when compared to many of the other merchants known from Kaneš and Assur. After the collapse of the Ur III state, the city of Assur had become an independent polity ruled by a wealthy trader oligarchy. During this time, commonly referred to as the Old Assyrian Colony Period, the city played an important role as a major trading center in a long-distance trade network that is sporadically attested across a ca. 250-year period. The wealthy merchants of Assur conducted a systematic and comprehensive trade based on colonies (kārum) and stations (wa bartum) in Central Anatolia and Northern Syria. More than 23,000 cuneiform texts discovered at the site of Kültepe (near modern-day Kayseri) show that this site formed the administrative center of other Assyrian commercial settlements in the region, and they form a unique record for many aspects of the long distance trade.1 The Assyrian trade was based on two main commercial products: tin and textiles. The tin may have originated in Central Asia, but its sources remain unknown, while the textiles for the most part seem to have originated from Mesopotamia. They were transported by donkey caravans from Assur to the cities of Central Anatolia and sold or transshipped to even more remote regions. After selling their