An excavation of the Bronze Age Aççana Mound in the Old City of Alalah in Turkey’s southeastern Hatay province has uncovered an Akkadian cuneiform tablet that records a large furniture purchase. The tablet is petite at just 1.65 inches by 1.38 inches with a thickness of 0.63 inches and weighing just shy of an ounce. It dates to the 15th century B.C. and is written in Akkadian, the language spoken of Mesopotamia at that time. The first lines note a large number of wooden tables, chairs and stools, who paid for them and who received them.
The mound is in the ancient city of Alalakh, the capital of the Bronze Age city-state of Mukis. First excavated in the 1930s by British archaeologist Leonard Woolley, the most recent excavation project began in 2021 with the aim of exploring the religion, commerce and daily life of the Late Bronze Age settlement and its diplomatic and trade connections to Eastern Mediterranean powers like the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Mitanni Empire in the Fertile Crescent.
Hittite and Mitanni artifacts have been found in different layers of the mound, imported over the active trade routes that crossed the Amik Valley. The empires wanted to establish commercial ties with Alalakh because it was so agriculturally rich. They had visions of the Amik valley becoming their breadbasket, feeding the growing empires. Skeletal remains found in the mound have had archaeological DNA extracted and analyzed, and researchers have found they were local people who lived in the town, not visitors or traders or foreign dignitaries.
This year, the excavation team was also working on restoring some of the architectural remains that were damaged in the devastating 2023 earthquake. The tablet was discovered during the restoration work.Continue reading...