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Archaeologists have found a small 3,500-year-old cuneiform tablet during excavations at a site in Turkey. The tablet could shed light on life in the Late Bronze Age.
Cuneiform, one of the oldest forms of writing, was used in the ancient Middle East.
Cuneiform recorded Sumerian, Akkadian and other languages of Mesopotamia, the region where the world’s earliest known civilization developed, in present-day Iraq. Highly skilled scribes created the distinctive wedge-shaped characters using reeds on clay tablets.
The recently discovered tablet, which dates to the 15th century BC, appears to have served as an itemized receipt. The ancient inscription, written in Akkadian cuneiform, describes the purchase of a large quantity of furniture.
“We believe that this tablet, which weighs 28 grams, will provide a new perspective in terms of understanding the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age,” Mehmet Ersoy, Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, said in a statement.
The tablet is just 1.7 inches by 1.4 inches (4.2 centimeters by 3.5 centimeters) in size and 0.6 inches (1.6 centimeters) thick. Researchers found the artifact outside the gate of the ancient city of Alalakh, now known as the archaeological mound and site of Tell Atchana.
But perhaps even more surprising is that the small tablet was found in July during restoration work following devastating earthquakes. In the aftermath of the natural disaster, archaeology became a form of recovery and healing for the community, said excavation leader Dr. Murat Akar.
An old furniture order
British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley first excavated the city of Alalakh in the 1930s. He discovered an archive of cuneiform tablets in a fortress adjacent to the gate, said Dr. Jacob Lauinger, an associate professor of Assyriology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“The new tablet comes from the same archive of tablets or from another unexcavated example in the fort, and was washed into the gate at some point,” Lauinger said.
Lauinger and Zeynep Türker, a doctoral candidate in the Johns Hopkins Department of Near Eastern Studies, are currently translating and studying the tablet with Akar, an associate professor in the archaeology department at Mustafa Kemal University in Turkey.
The findings are being published in a peer-reviewed study led by Türker, but so far their translation of the tablet reveals the purchase of about 200 or more wooden tables, chairs and stools. While other tablets from Alalakh mention furniture production at the site, nothing has reached the scale of that mentioned in the newly discovered tablet, Lauinger said.
The team is investigating the tablet’s connections to other tablets Woolley has excavated, and to cuneiform tablets mentioning furniture from other Late Bronze Age sites.
Administrative texts, such as those found at Alalakh, record the amount of raw materials and finished products produced, distributed and used by palace workers, he said.
“Therefore, they offer incredible insights into the ancient society and economy of Alalakh – we are literally reading the accounting records of an ancient accountant from almost 3,500 years ago!” Lauinger said in an email.
But the team is also trying to figure out how the tablet fits into the broader context of the society that lived in the ancient city at the time. The researchers believe that the furniture was made around the same time, rather than in batches of small orders that accumulated over time. Now the team wants to explore the different historical scenarios that would have required so much furniture.
“Was it for a special occasion in Alalakh, like a royal wedding?” Lauinger said. “Could it have been for a religious festival? Was Alalakh producing furniture for export? Hopefully we can rule out some of these scenarios and make the case that other scenarios were more likely.”
Saving a Lost City
After Woolley’s excavations ended in the late 1940s, the site was left to fend for itself for nearly a century as nature reclaimed Tell Atchana, Akar said. The site was fragile and nearly unrecognizable after being covered by a thick tangle of a deep-rooted wild plant called Syrian mesquite when Akar and his colleagues began transforming the site in 2012.
Since 2019, the team has been engaged in the difficult task of protecting, strengthening and preserving the mud architecture of the old city.
Then, in February 2023, multiple earthquakes occurred along a fault line about 1 kilometer from Tell Atchana. A 7.8 magnitude quake struck 11 cities in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, 2023, followed by a 7.5 magnitude quake nine hours later. A third quake, measuring 6.3 and 40,000 aftershocks, struck 14 days later. Tens of thousands of lives were lost.
Some parts of the site’s new excavation areas collapsed, and large-scale excavations from Woolley’s investigations were severely damaged. The archaeological research complex the team was using, however, survived and became a center of humanitarian aid in the first months after the quakes, according to a July study co-authored by Akar and his colleagues and published in the Journal of Field Archaeology.
After a few months, restoration and excavation at the site resumed to create an environment for students traumatized by the earthquake, he said. To undo the damage caused by the quakes, the local community made about 4,500 mud bricks during the 2023 field season.
“We used archaeology as a way of recovery and healing,” Akar said. “Continuing work on the site after the earthquake was also important, providing income for the local community and a way to preserve their own cultural heritage.”
It was during new excavations at Tell Atchana that the tablet was found. As excavations continue, the research team is curious to see if similar tablets will turn up in a part of the fort that Woolley never excavated, Lauinger said.
“Some archaeologists go their entire careers without finding any cuneiform tablets, so this is definitely a rare and exciting find,” Lauinger said.
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