Chapter 00 · 2000 – 1700 BCE
Old Assyrian
Aššur the merchant city — the great trade with Anatolia.
While Hammurabi unifies Babylonia in the south, the city of Aššur on the upper Tigris becomes a node in a long-distance trade network reaching deep into Anatolia. The Old Assyrian merchants establish kārum settlements at Kaneš (modern Kültepe) and elsewhere; their family archives — preserved by the thousand at Kaneš — record loans of tin and textiles in Akkadian dialect.