Daily History Challenge · No. 73 · Wednesday 9 September 2026 · When?
Puzzle No. 73: When?
The event was Old Assyrian trade network and the karum of Kanesh, in c. 1950 to 1750 BCE.
The answer
Merchants from the city-state of Assur built one of the earliest documented long-distance commercial networks, linking Mesopotamia with central Anatolia by donkey caravan. Their principal hub was the karum (trading colony) at Kanesh (modern Kultepe in Turkey), a self-governing merchant quarter beside the local Anatolian town. Assyrian traders exported tin and fine textiles and brought back silver and gold, while operating sophisticated credit, partnership and profit-sharing arrangements. The roughly 22,000 cuneiform tablets excavated at Kanesh, private letters, loan contracts, accounts and legal disputes, many sealed in clay envelopes, constitute the largest archive of the early second millennium and reveal a commercial society in which women managed household textile production and businesses in Assur while husbands traded abroad. The records illuminate early commercial law, taxation, family firms and the spread of cuneiform literacy through trade.