Cuneiform tablet case impressed with cylinder seal, for cuneiform tablets 1983.135.4a, b: private letter
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Kültepe, the ancient city of Kanesh, was part of the network of trading settlements established in central Anatolia by merchants from Ashur (in Assyria in northern Mesopotamia) in the early second millennium B.C. Travelling long distances, and often living separately from their families, these merchants traded vast quantities of goods, primarily tin and textiles, for Anatolian copper and other materials. Although the merchants adopted many aspects of local Anatolian life, they brought with them Mesopotamian tools used to record transactions: cuneiform writing, clay tablets and envelopes, and cylinder seals. Using a simplified version of the elaborate cuneiform writing system, merchants tracked loans as well as business deals and disputes, and sent letters to families and business partners back in Ashur. At Kültepe, thousands of these texts stored in household archives were preserved when fire destroyed the city in ca. 1836 B.C. Because the tablets document the activities of Assyrian merchants, they provide a glimpse into the complex and sophisticated commercial interactions that took place in the Near East during the beginning of the second millennium B.C. This clay envelope or case was used to hold two small tablets (MMA 1983.135.4a, b) that comprise a letter from a merchant to his family. A cylinder seal was rolled twice across the reverse of the case. The seal impressions shows a scene in which a worshipper approaches the sun god. Behind this figure, a suppliant goddess and the warrior goddess Ishtar appear. These figures, along with the nude youth with a forelock who stands on a platform and carries a bucket, evoke Mesopotamian motifs, and show how merchants living abroad may have retained their sense of identity through personal possessions. Cuneiform writing on the obverse of the case indicates the recipients of the letter, and identifies the seal impression as that of Ashur-muttabbil, who wrote the missive.
Ancient Near Eastern Art
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.