Ancient Assur: The City, its Traders, and its Commercial Network.

The ancient city of Assur was an important emporium and a central place in the trade between Mesopotamia and Anatolia during the nineteenth-eighteenth centuries BC. Its traders exported to Anatolia large quantities of tin and expensive woolen textiles, which were sold for silver and gold, shipped back to Assur. The traders, traveling with donkey caravans, used a network of colonies and trading stations, where they could live and work on the basis of treaties with the local rulers. After a description of Assur's commercial role, the activities, organization and status of the traders are analyzed. First of those in Anatolia, with reference to the colonial system and the main Anatolian emporia. Next of those in Assur—"merchant-bankers", investors (in joint-stock funds), wholesale dealers, and moneylenders—and their relations to the "City-Hall", the economic and financial heart of Assur, and the "City-Assembly", whose decisions and verdicts reveal elements of a commercial policy and attempts to promote its interests. While the city, whose trade covered a particular circuit of a much wider international network, also had to consider local and international interests, the "colonial" traders were more focused on financial profits, also via the local trade in copper and wool. But the tensions due to diverging interests were restricted and the Assyrians were able to maintain a stable, profitable and highly developed commercial system for more than two centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]