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Archaeologists Uncovered a Mysterious Ancient Tablet With Major Historical Implications

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Archaeologists Uncovered a Mysterious Ancient Tablet With Major Historical Implications

  • Archaeologists discovered a small, clay tablet covered in cuneiform in the ancient ruins of Alalah, a major Bronze Age-era city located in present-day Turkey.
  • Researchers have deciphered parts of the Akkadian cuneiform and determined the tablet to be, essentially, a receipt for a major furniture purchase.
  • Continued study of the tablet should help to shed light on the economic and administrative processes of the time period.

Most of us can do all of our shopping with the click of a few buttons, and while that’s certainly convenient, it can make it difficult to keep track when exactly that new armoire or bookshelf will show up at your doorstep. If you’re really struggling, it might help to take a page out of ancient Turkey’s proverbial book and keep the details written down—on a palm-sized piece of clay.

An excavation at the Aççana Mound—the site of the ancient Anatolian city of Alalah, which served as the capital of the Mukis Kingdom and lives on in ruins that date as far back as 4,000 years ago—recently unearthed a small clay tablet covered in inscribed cuneiform, according to a statement by Mehmet Ersoy, Turkey’s minister of culture and tourism. Researchers studying the tablet have narrowed its origins to some time in the 15th century B.C., during the Late Bronze Age.

Representatives from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism are conducting the research on the find, along with Johns Hopkins University associate professor Jacob Lauinger and doctoral student Zeynep Türker.

The initial readings of the tablet’s Akkadian cuneiform include details of a major furniture purchase. Linguists are still working through the writing, according to the ministry’s statement, but the deciphered lines detail purchases of an ample number of wooden tables, chairs, and stools. The experts are slowly putting together more information about the buyers and sellers involved with the exchange, making headway towards deciphering a window into the city’s economic processes.

The small piece of clay measures only 4.2 centimeters by 3.5 centimeters, it’s just 1.6 centimeters thick, and it weighs 28 grams. But despite its diminutive size, the tablet will help paint a much larger picture of Bronze Age Turkey as it undergoes more study, providing helpful insight into “the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age,” according to Ersoy.

Alalah was located along a trade route at the time, which would have given it the distinction of being a center of commerce in addition to its capital status. There have been other similar discoveries in the region, including another cuneiform tablet that details the purchase of an entire city (and, presumably, the furniture in it), which was uncovered in 2023.

The area—which contains ruins that date to as far back as 4,000 years ago—was first excavated by British archaeologist Leonard Wooley in the 1930s. But, as exemplified by the clay list furniture, there’s still plenty to discover about these truly ancient ruins.

And, if nothing else, perhaps the tablet’s itemized details will provide a bit of home-decor inspiration.

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