In studies of the Assyrian merchant community established at Kultepe
(KARUM Kanesh, level 2) in Anatolia in the early second millennium B.C.,
the texts with their associated cylinder and stamp sealings found there
have traditionally been investigated separately. This book specifically
seeks to integrate glyptic and textual studies in a way helpful both to
scholars of Old Assyrian and to those with an interest in seals and
sealing in the ancient Near East. The combined study of texts and
sealings illuminates commercial and socio-legal activity in fresh ways,
whilst the stylistic analyses sharpens chronological arguments and
throws light on the community's foreign contacts. The book consists of
two parts. The first analyses the sealing practices (in general and per
type of record, with a special chapter on witnesses) and the seals,
their ownership, manufacture, styles, iconography and inscriptions.
Special chapters deal with the archives of the KARUM (with a list of
their locations) and with the dating of texts and seals (with a list of
the eponyms). Part two is a catalogue of 677 seals. It consists of
tables offering, in a condensed form, essential data from the text
envelopes on which the seals have been impressed, and of drawings of
each of them. Extensive indices, of names, eponyms, seal owners/users,
seal inscriptions, texts and seals complete this well-documented volume.
