Old Assyrian Empire: A Visual History

The Old Assyrian period (about 2025-1364 BC) covers the city-state of Ashur from the fall of Ur III to its subjection under Mitanni. Ashur was governed by a king and an assembly of merchant houses whose family firms exported Anatolian trade goods, tin from the east and Babylonian textiles, to a colony at Kanesh (Kultepe) in Cappadocia by donkey caravan, in exchange for silver and gold; their archives are the richest merchant records of antiquity. The Amorite Shamshi-Adad I (about 1808-1776) seized Ashur and built a short-lived kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia from Mari to Ekallatum, which fell apart after his death; Assyria then spent two centuries in obscurity under Babylonian and Mitannian shadows.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Old Assyrian period. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Assyrian territory

Timeline of the Old Assyrian period

1. 2,025 BC
   Ashur independent after Ur III
2. 1,950 BC
   Kanesh trade at its height
3. 1,836 BC
   Kanesh karum burned
4. 1,808 BC
   Shamshi-Adad takes Ashur
5. 1,776 BC
   Shamshi-Adad dies
6. 1,760 BC
   Hammurabi dominates Assyria
7. 1,500 BC
   Vassal of Mitanni
8. 1,364 BC
   Ashur-uballit I; Middle Assyrian period

The Kanesh trade

From about 1950 to 1750 BC Assyrian merchants maintained a karum, a trading quarter, at Kanesh, 1,000 km away in Anatolia, and smaller ones at 40 other towns. Caravans of 200 to 300 donkeys carried tin and fine wool textiles; profits of 100 percent on tin were normal. The tablets record contracts, loans at 30 percent interest, lawsuits, letters from wives in Ashur complaining of neglect, and joint-stock partnerships. Kanesh burned around 1836 BC and the trade revived and faded over the next century.

Shamshi-Adad

Shamshi-Adad, an Amorite chieftain, took Ekallatum and then Ashur around 1808 BC, conquered Mari and installed his sons Ishme-Dagan and Yasmah-Addu as viceroys at Ekallatum and Mari, ruling from Shubat-Enlil (Tell Leilan). His letters to his sons, scolding the idle Yasmah-Addu, are famous. He fought Eshnunna and Yamhad and adopted the old Akkadian title 'king of the universe'. Later Assyrian king lists made him an ancestor.

Obscurity

After Shamshi-Adad's death around 1776 his kingdom broke up; Zimri-Lim retook Mari, then Hammurabi took everything. Ashur reverted to a small kingdom, briefly under Babylonian influence, and from about 1500 was a vassal of Mitanni, whose king Saushtatar carried off its gold door. Ashur-uballit I's revolt around 1365 opened the Middle Assyrian period.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Neo-Sumerian Empire (Ur III) (2,112 BC to 2,004 BC)
• First Babylonian Empire (1,894 BC to 1,595 BC)
• Old Hittite Kingdom (1,650 BC to 1,500 BC)
• Mitanni (1,500 BC to 1,300 BC)
• Middle Assyrian Empire (1,365 BC to 1,050 BC)
• Larsa (2,025 BC to 1,763 BC)
• Akkadian Empire (2,334 BC to 2,154 BC)

8 surprising things about the Old Assyrian period

1. The 23,000 tablets found at Kultepe are the largest private archive of the ancient world, and mostly letters between merchants and their families.
2. Old Assyrian women in Ashur wove the textiles the men sold, and some ran their own businesses and sued for unpaid debts.
3. The Kanesh tablets show Assyrian merchants using a form of insurance and futures contract 4,000 years ago.
4. Shamshi-Adad wrote to his son at Mari: 'While your brother wins victories here, you lie about among the women.'
5. The oldest evidence of the Hittite language is in personal names in the Kanesh tablets.
6. The Old Assyrian city was governed partly by an assembly and an annual official, the limmu, whose names dated the year, giving a chronology of 250 years.
7. Ashur's patron god Ashur was originally the city's own rock; the city and the god had the same name.
8. The tin the Assyrians sold came from as far as Afghanistan, and Kanesh silver came back to pay for it.

Sources

• Assyria: The Old Assyrian period Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Old Assyrian period Wikipedia
• Assyria World History Encyclopedia
• Mogens Trolle Larsen, Ancient Kanesh: A Merchant Colony in Bronze Age Anatolia (2015) Cambridge University Press

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