The ancient Anatolian city of Kanesh (present-day Kültepe, Turkey) was a continuously inhabited site from the early Bronze Age through Roman times. The city flourished c.2000–1750 BCE as an Old Assyrian trade outpost and the earliest attested commercial society in world history. More than 23,000 elaborate clay tablets from private merchant houses provide a detailed description of a system of long-distance trade that reached from central Asia to the Black Sea region and the Aegean. The texts record common activities such as trade between Kanesh and the city state of Assur, and between Assyrian merchants and local people. The tablets tell us about the economy as well as the culture, language, religion, and private lives of individuals we can identify by name, occupation, and sometimes even personality. This book presents an in-depth account of this vibrant Bronze Age Anatolian society, revealing the daily lives of its inhabitants.

This book presents a detailed description of the political, cultural, and economic world of ancient Kanesh (present-day Kültepe, Turkey), a vibrant Bronze Age Anatolian trade outpost and the earliest attested commercial society in world history.

Der erste Teil bietet eine kritische Gesamtschau unseres Wissens und zugleich eine EinfÃ"hrung in das Studium der altassyrischen Epoche (die ersten beiden Jahrhunderte des 2. Jahrtausends), wie wir sie durch Entdeckungen in Assur und die Keilschriftarchive der altassyrischen Händler kennen, die in der Handelskolonie (genannt karum) in der Unterstadt des alten Kanesh (moderne KÃ"ltepe) in Zentralanatolien lebten. Die ersten Kapitel bestimmen, was "altassyrisch" ist und analysieren die Chronologie und die verfÃ"gbaren archäologischen und schriftlichen Quellen. Darauf folgt eine kritische Darstellung der Veröffentlichungen zu den altassyrischen Quellen. Nach einem Abriss der Altassyrischen Geschichte folgt ein Ãberblick zur "anatolischen Situation", der die Städte, lokale Herrscher und die rund vierzig altassyrischen Handelsniederlassungen in Nordmesopotamien und Anatolien behandelt. Ein eigenes Kapitel ist den wichtigen altassyrischen Handelsverträgen gewidmet. Der zweite Teil fasst die jÃ"ngsten Erkenntnisse zur Geschichte Nordsyriens zeitgleich mit der späten Phase des altassyrischen Handels zusammen. Der ausfÃ"hrlichen Untersuchung der Quellen ist ein Appendix der wichtigsten Texte beigefÃ"gt. Das Buch ist durch umfassende Indices erschlossen und enthält eine ausfÃ"hrliche Bibliographie.

Coinage appeared at a moment when it fulfilled an essential need in Greek society and brought with it rationalization and social leveling in some respects, while simultaneously producing new illusions, paradoxes, and new elites. In a book that will encourage scholarly discussion for some time, David M. Schaps addresses a range of important coinage topics, among them money, exchange, and economic organization in the Near East and in Greece before the introduction of coinage; the invention of coinage and the reasons for its adoption; and the developing use of money to make more money.

This volume breaks new ground in approaching the Ancient Economy by bringing together documentary sources from Mesopotamia and the Greco-Roman world. Addressing textual corpora that have traditionally been studied separately, the collected papers overturn the conventional view of a fundamental divide between the economic institutions of these two regions. The premise is that, while controlling for differences, texts from either cultural setting can be brought to bear on the other and can shed light, through their use as proxy data, on such questions as economic mentalities and market development. The book also presents innovative approaches to the quantitative study of large corpora of ancient documents. The resulting view of the Ancient Economy is much more variegated and dynamic than traditional ïprimitivistÍ views would allow. The volume covers the following topics: Babylonian house size data as an index of urban living standards; the Old Babylonian archives as a source for economic history; Middle Bronze Age long distance trade in Anatolia; long-term economic development in Babylonia from the 7th to the 4th century BC; legal institutions and agrarian change in the Roman Empire; papyrological evidence for water-lifting technology; money circulation and monetization in Late Antique Egypt; the application of Social Network Analysis to Babylonian cuneiform archives; price trends in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as well as the effects of locust plagues on prices.

This five-volume set presents some 1,000 comprehensive and fully illustrated histories of the most famous sites in the world. Entries include location, description, and site details, and a 3,000- to 4,000-word essay that provides a full history of the site and its condition today. An annotated further reading list of books and articles about the site completes each entry. The geographically organized volumes include: * Volume 1: The Americas * [1-884964-00-1] * Volume 2: Northern Europe * [1-884964-01-X] * Volume 3: Southern Europe * [1-884964-02-8] * Volume 4: Middle East & Africa * [1-884964-03-6] * Volume 5: Asia & Oceania * [1-884964-04-4]