A 4,000-year old tale of trade and contraband I Curator's Corner S3 Ep9 #CuratorsCorner

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.