Kültepe

Common card · No. 272625

Kültepe (Turkish: lit. 'ash-hill'), ancient name Kaneš (Kanesh, also Kaniš/Kanish) or Neša (Nesha), was a Bronze Age (broadly, 3300–1200 BC) settlement and trading center on the Central Anatolian plateau in modern Turkey. It was a major settlement in the early 3rd millennium, and is particularly renowned for its regional importance in the early 2nd millennium. The archaeological site consists of a large mound (also known as höyük, tepe or tell), and a lower city, where a kārum (the Assyrian word for trading district) was established in the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. The over 23,000 cuneiform tablets recovered from residences at Kültepe constitute the largest collection of texts found in non-administrative locales of the ancient Near East. In 2014, the archaeological site was inscribed in the Tentative list of World Heritage Sites in Turkey.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Klaus-Peter Simon, CC BY-SA 3.0