Kültepe (Kanesh/Karum Kanesh) – Kayseri, Türkiye
Kültepe is the mound and lower town of ancient Kanesh, seat of the Assyrian merchant colonies (karum) in the early 2nd millennium BC. Thousands of cuneiform tablets document trade, law, and society, revealing Old Assyrian and Anatolian interactions. Architectural remains include karum houses with archives, palatial/administrative buildings, and later Hittite levels. The tablet corpus is crucial for Anatolian chronology and early Indo-European (Hittite) language attestations.
Sources
- UNESCO Tentative List – https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1403/
- Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanesh
- T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı – Kültepe/Kaniş tanıtımı