Hello I'm Mathilde Touillon-Ricci
I'm currently conducting research on cuneiform tablets here at the British Museum
and welcome to my corner.
I'm currently working on these old Assyrian tablets
which date back to 4,000 years ago
and were produced along the trading roads between Anatolia and Assyria
which would be modern-day Turkey and northern Iraq respectively.
When you were an old Assyrian trader and you would send your goods
to be sold on the Anatolian market you would probably have to pay an export tax on departure
an import tax upon arrival but also on the way you would have to pay duties and transit fees and probably tolls
on the official trading routes so some traders would probably want to dodge taxes
or at least to reduce the bill at the end of the journey.
There were two ways of avoiding paying the tax and the duties
was either hiding goods and avoid clearance
or taking what the old Assyrians themselves called the narrow track
So the narrow track was the smugglers route
so it was not on the official trading route that was drawn from the trade agreements
that the old Assyrians had with the Anatolian kingdoms they were passing through.
But so the advantage of the narrow track was to avoid tolls and duties and check points on the way
The inconveniences were manifold, they were dangerous routes were you could be exposed to
bad weather because these roads would often be in the mountains and they would become more difficult to cross
and also they could become unavailable when winter came
It was also that you exposed yourself to highway thieves
because you are not benefiting from the safety and security that is provided within trade agreements
and you could also come across wild beasts.
So all these letters do emanate from individuals
but then in the letters they are very focused on trade
and for example there are no specifically politeness, salutations.
So usually a typical header would be: From person one to person two say
and then you just have the content of the letter and then no goodbye
so there is no 'hello my love, how do you do, I miss you'
it's about 'have you sent the textiles' 'yes I have' 'have you received them' 'no I haven't'
'how much will you sell them' so it's very trade oriented which doesn't mean
that the old Assyrians were heartless people is just that in these specific business letters
we are looking today it's very much about business and about instructions
of either smuggling, not smuggling, asking the right price, so a very practical sensible trade spirit.
Most of the records we have on old Assyrian contraband regards textiles and tin
which were more widely available but probably also easier to smuggle because less rare
and especially textiles it was, it's a guess, but it was probably easier to hide than maybe metal or stone.
In this letter, that is written by certain Bazazu, to his trading partners
Bazazu is calling off a smuggling operation but is nevertheless
detailing how the smuggling would have taken place if it had.
So in there Bazuzu is saying that if the narrow track, which is the smuggler's route
is available then do take the narrow track if not then, please ask the transporters to gather the tin
into small parcels and enter the town with the parcels hidden in their underwear
so this is another way of hiding your goods from official clearance; the underwear.
so yep!
I have arranged here tablets from these characters involved in trade and in contraband.
So we can see here two tablets from Pušu-ken which was the father
in the family tree arrangement I've made here
I've also placed so Lamašši who was the wife of Pušu-ken
and was in charge of making the textiles in Assyria to be sent to Anatolia
and here we've got four children, we know about five children
but we don't have any tablets for the fifth one here at the British Museum.
So here we've got two tablets from Sueyya, who was the son, including one which is very very touching.
It's a tablet written to his father Pušu-ken who is saying that he's going to
a scribal school and it's touching because it's a son who is living and growing up away from his father
and he's telling him about his school activity
and also because Sueyya would have probably been quite young when writing this tablet.
It's also very interesting because this is the only mention that we have
a direct mention from scribal teaching in the old Assyrian periods
although we have some practice and school texts that are conserved but this is a very first hand record.
Also here we've got letters from Bazazu, very trade-oriented letters
and this one is interesting because it's co-authored by the two brothers Sueyya and Bazazu
so one of the things I'm looking at currently is trying to see how, to what extent
I could identify whether it's been written by the hand of Sueyya, by the hand of Bazazu
or even by a third party's hand, so this is work in progress.
More and more because I'm looking at these letters which are first-person records of the past
I'm becoming very very attached to all this family and it's like I'm just calling them by their names
and I'm waiting to read the next tablets to see what is Bazazu saying
so it's one of the aspects I like about working with objects
is that there there is all this knowledge but it's not a cold knowledge
it is a knowledge that is fed by the people who lived 4,000 years ago
so yeah, this is just the fantastic bit of museum work.
So I hope you enjoyed the stories about old Assyrian trade and contraband and if you
want to know more please just visit gallery 54 at the British Museum there
are more Curator's corner here on my left and please why not
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