Old Assyrian Merchant Letters (Kanesh Archives)

Various (Assyrian merchant families trading between Ashur and Anatolia) · c. 1950-1836 BC (the Kanesh karum II period) · Kanesh (Turkey) · letters

Tens of thousands of private letters and contracts from an Assyrian trading colony in central Anatolia argue that long-distance commerce, not royal conquest, was the Assyrian state's first and most enduring form of expansion.