An incredible archaeological find, a 3,500-year-old cuneiform tablet, has been made in southern Turkey. It details the economic habits of the Late Bronze Age. The tablet is from a place called Aççana Mound in the Reyhanlı district of Hatay Province and dates from the 15th century BC.
The discovery was announced by Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Ersoy, who said that the tablet had been found during restoration works in the ancient city of Alalah following a recent earthquake. “We believe that this tablet, weighing 28 grams, will provide a new perspective in terms of understanding the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age,” said Ersoy.
This 4.2 cm by 3.5 cm tablet with a thickness of 1.6 cm is a portable record for substantial quantities of wooden furniture, including tables, chairs, and stools. The tablet as an administrative record details the trade networks and economic practices of the time, revealing a well-organized system of commerce and administration.
The tablet is written in cuneiform, one of the very first writing systems developed in ancient Mesopotamia. Evidence of the use of the Sumerian cuneiform script dates back to approximately 2500 BCE. Of course, Akkadian phoneticization was based on corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs. In this way, a standardized system for recording information known by scribes across different regions was provided.
The real importance of this find is not in the contents, but in what it reveals about the sophisticated state of commerce and the complexity of the social and economic relations in ancient Mesopotamian societies. According to the tablet, these purchases were made by persons buying furniture and vendors who sold it, thus giving new insights into the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age.
The Aççana Mound has always been a rich archaeological site, providing a huge amount of materials that give some glimpses into the daily life, economic activities, and administrative practices of ancient civilizations in the region. This find adds to the growing body of evidence underlining sophisticated trade networks and economic practices of the time.
Economically, Late Bronze Age Mesopotamia had strong trade networks that not only linked it with other parts of its region but also with some other regions. This was largely an agrarian economy, supported by fertilized lands along the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys for the growing of crops like barley, wheat, and dates. Besides farming, trading became alive with such goods as textiles, pottery, and metalwork, whereby the merchants would exchange their produce with regions extending as far as Anatolia, the Levant, and the Indus Valley.
This ancient shopping list reveals not only ancient economic practices but one of the timeless human activities, commerce, binding us to our ancient ancestors in a very real way. With researchers continuing to study the tablet, it’s yielding even more information about the rich heritage of Anatolia and the ancient Near East as a whole.
This tablet, now 3,500 years old, brings one back rather poignantly to the sophisticated civilizations that laid the groundwork for contemporary society in a world where so often the modern conveniences overshadow the historical achievements.