Rare sealed clay tablet takes center stage at museum

KAYSERİ

A 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet preserved inside a clay envelope and discovered during excavations at Kültepe Kaniş/Karum Mound is on display at the Kayseri Archaeology Museum.

The artifact is among 28 cuneiform tablets exhibited at the museum, all unearthed during ongoing excavations at Kültepe, located about 20 kilometers northeast of Kayseri. Archaeological work at the site has continued since 1948.

What makes the tablet particularly noteworthy is that the text hidden inside its clay envelope was deciphered without opening or damaging the outer casing. The reading was made possible through a joint project conducted by France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Hamburg.

Using advanced imaging technology, researchers were able to identify a commercial agreement concerning wheat and barley between Shawidashu, son of Sharapunuwa, and a man named Enishar.

Professor Fikri Kulakoğlu, head of the Kültepe excavation team, said approximately 23,500 cuneiform documents have been uncovered at the site to date.

He noted that the collection has been inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register under the title “Private Archives of Assyrian Merchants.”

Kulakoğlu said the largest collection of Kültepe tablets is displayed at the Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, while around 4,000 tablets that were removed from the country before systematic excavations began are now housed in museums around the world.

According to Kulakoğlu, Assyrian merchants from the city of Assur, located roughly 100 kilometers south of present-day Mosul, established Kültepe as their administrative and commercial center around 4,000 years ago.

“Everything that can be found in the accounting office of a modern company also existed in the merchant archives at Kültepe,” he said. “Records of debts, credits, orders and contracts — essentially anything related to money and trade — were written on these tablets.”

He explained that written clay tablets were commonly enclosed within an outer clay layer functioning as an envelope. The exterior usually contained a summary of the document, its destination and the seals of witnesses.

Until recently, scholars often had to break the envelopes in order to read the contents. Thanks to advances in imaging technology, however, researchers can now scan the artifacts using highly sensitive tomography-like devices and read the hidden text without causing any damage.