Assyrian Women: Letters and Weaving

Here’s a feast of intriguing glimpses into the lives of ancient Assyrian women.

Cuneiform Letters of Assyrian Women

Cuneiform letters Assyrian women wrote around 1860 BCE reveal surprisingly independent business women involved in international textile trade. Archaeologists excavated the letters from the site of ancient Kanesh (Kültepe in modern Turkey). Archaeology’s Nov/Dec issue features an excellent article about the insights these letters provide into the women’s daily lives.

Weaving and Textile Demonstrations

Also, I’ll alert everyone interested in weaving and spinning to the 30 min video on the last page of the article. An experimental archaeologist does amazing demonstrations of ancient textile production. This video isn’t glitzy, but it’s well produced and full of content not hype. She shows how she draws her starting data from the accidental imprints of the textiles on clay bullae. Bullae are plugs of clay with seals pressed into them. In this context, attached to the textiles, they id the owner/producer. Sort of an ancient bar code. I would never have guessed the depth of information that the archaeologist draws from the imprints. The textiles do not survive to speak for themselves.

The Lives of Assyrian Women in International Trade

These women lived during the Middle Bronze Age. Historians refer to this part of Anatolian history as the Assyrian Colony period. The Hittite Empire of the Late Bronze Age, the setting of my fiction, had not yet begun.

There’s a good reason we have so much Kanesh correspondence–23,000 tablets overall from the site. In this Middle Bronze Age period, a large district of the city was an Assyrian colony, called a karum. Merchant families from far away Assur and elsewhere in Assyria sent members to live in the karum. Often a husband would leave behind his wife in Assyria. He’d sell the textiles in Anatolia. She’d oversee (and do) the production of the textiles. In other cases, the Assyrian women ended up living in Anatolia. Donkey caravans loaded with textiles travelled a precarious route between. The journey took six weeks. The letters went back and forth with the caravans. Each textile required a huge amount of time and effort to make. It’s not surprising that when husbands criticized the work, they received highly upset letters in reply.

Literacy among Assyrian Women

The high rate of literacy among these textile traders, both women and men, may also surprise you. I found fascinating the discussion of the simpler style of cuneiform that scholars believe indicates the writers picked up their literacy on the fly, so to speak. Long distance family life created the need and both men and women rose to the challenge.

On that note, one of the other delights of the video for me was watching a scholar read from one of the tablets. She translates it as she goes. You see her flip the tablet, in essence, “turning the page.” She points to some notes on one edge indicating the size of the finished textiles that the sender requests. Watching the mechanics of how they handled these tablets is just plain fun. If you’re as nerdy about the ancient world as I am!

I hope you enjoy reading “Assyrian Women of Letters” and find the video at the end of the article.