CUNEIFORM DOCUMENTS

The section of Ancient Oriental Works of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum contains one of the world's richest historical -archives in existence today, the Cuneiform Documents. These were written on soft clay, and then either dried in the sun or baked in special ovens, and include 4000 year old letters, edicts, title deeds, agreements, in short they are written records of the political, economic and social life of an age. If it were not for these history could not have been written. We would have been left in the dark about the Sumerians, the Hittites and the Assyrians. These clay tablets have informed us about the past, they have spread it 5n front of us in all its facets.

Istanbul Archaeological Museum contains 74 thousand clay tablets written in cuneiform. Have all of these been read? According to museum officials most of them have been studied and an inventory prepared, but there are still many that have not been read or studied. If you are curious about the source of such a large number of tablets, here is the answer. Before the First World War the region of Mesopotamia in Iraq where several ancient civilizations sprang up was part of the Ottoman Empire. Founder of Istanbul Archaeological Museum Osrnan Hamdi Bey was Director of Museums. Just as he had a law passed making all ancient Works the property of the state, so Hamdi Bey was organizing archaeological excavations in territories under the sovereignty of the Ottoman State. Most of these tablets were found in excavations in Mesopotamia and brought to Istanbul. There are also valuable documents left from the Babylonian library. The rest of the tablets were found in Anatolia. A significant number of cuneiform tablets were found at the site of the former Hittite capital; Hattusas (now called Bogazkoy and at the centre of the Anatolian trade colonies of the Assyrians, Kanis (near Kayseri and now called Kultepe). Finding them is easy but who is going to read them. Foreign experts you may say. The first person to consider this serious problem was Atatürk. He established the Faculty of Language and History in Ankara in order to train experts in the Hittite, Sumerian and Akad Language, and he also had students sent to Europe and America. Today Turkish experts can both discover and read these tablets.

There are extremely interesting examples of tablets among those in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. For example the tablet of the famous Kades Treaty of 1269 BC between the Hitite King Hatusilis II and the Egyptian Pharaoh Barneses II, according to Which both states were to live in friendship and defend one another against enemies. Political criminals escaping from either country were to be deported back. As the first written record of a political treaty between states, tho Kades Treaty tablet was exhibited in the United Nations building in New York a few years ago Commercial agreements are also valuable records. Most of these are letters sent by Assyrian traders to Anatolian traders. From these tablets it has been learned what ores were mined, what food was eaten and what clothes worn, the cloth which was woven, what weapons were used, the life of the people and the economic situation. A tablet found in Kultepe which was sent to Kanis from Assyria 4 thousand years ago mentions a case of smuggling through customs. This is perhaps the earliest known case of smuggling. The Assyrian trader, after telling his friend that the smuggled goods were discovered at the border and the matter being followed up, said to his friend: "If anyone ever asks you to give them your tin and cloth and promises to smuggle them for you, beware not to listen, because they are all accomplices there". Another tablet is a moving love letter, in which the lover asks why his loved one has left him all alone. In another letter the writer says to his loved one "I love you like hot olive oil'. And on another, in the form of a, poem, is written: "My precious caresses are sweeter than honey. Come my bridegroom and let me caress you" These words are probably the first passions poured out in cuneiform by a fiery lover. These few examples will have to suffice here...

Yes... There is a historical treasure house that most of us are unaware of in Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The world's first written documents. Their worth cannot be measured in millions. The voices of the first writers, using a language that today only experts can understand, who brought civilization to the world and are only now letting the world know their names and fame, who established a stable legal and commercial system, who longed to live in peace, who loved and were loved....