While their husbands were on the road, or striking deals in some faraway trading settlement, these women looked after their businesses back home. But they also accumulated and managed their own wealth, and gradually gained more power in their personal lives. 

“These women were really strong and independent, because they were alone, they were the head of the household while the husband was away,” says Cécile Michel, a senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, and author of the book, titled Women of Assur and Kanesh. Through more than 300 letters and other documents, the book tells a strikingly detailed and colourful story of the women’s struggles and triumphs. Though brimming with drama and adventure, the clay letters themselves are tiny, about the size of the palm of a hand. 

The businesswomen’s story is tied to that of the Assyrian merchant community as a whole. In their heyday, the Assyrians were among the most successful and well-connected traders of the Near East. Their caravans of up to 300 donkeys criss-crossed mountains and uninhabited plains, carrying raw materials, luxury goods and, of course, clay letters. 

“It was one leg of a huge international network, which started somewhere in Central Asia, with lapis-lazuli from Afghanistan, carnelian from Pakistan, and the tin may have come from Iran or further to the east,” says Jan Gerrit Dercksen, an Assyriologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who has also worked on the Kanesh tablets. Foreign traders brought these goods to the gates of Assur, along with textiles from Babylonia in southern Iraq. They were sold to the Assyrians, who packed them onto caravans bound for Kanesh and other towns in the Anatolian region in Turkey, where they were sold for gold and silver. 

Complex financial instruments facilitated this trade, such as the “naruqqum”, which literally means “bag”. It refers to a joint-stock company in which Assyrian investors pooled their silver to fund merchant-led caravans over many years. The merchants also developed a lively business jargon. “The tablet is dead” meant that a debt had been paid and the clay-tablet contract recording it was therefore cancelled. “Hungry silver” referred to silver that was not being invested, idly sitting around instead of generating a profit.

Assyrian women contributed to this bustling commercial network by producing textiles for export, issuing loans to merchants, buying and selling houses, and investing in naruqqum schemes. Their skills as weavers allowed them to earn their own silver. They kept a keen eye on foreign fashions and market trends to secure the best prices, as well as on taxes and other costs that dented their profits. 

“They really are accountants. They know perfectly well what they should get back in exchange for their textiles. And when they earn this money from the sale of their textiles, they pay for the food, for the house, for daily life, but they also invest,” says Michel, who has also co-created a new documentary about the women. 

‘Guardians of the archives’ 

This commercial acumen allowed some to slip into positions that were unusual for women at the time, by functioning as their husbands’ trusted business partners. The traders in turn benefited from having literate and numerate wives who could help with day-to-day business as well as emergencies. One Assyrian merchant writes to his wife, Ishtar-bashti: “Urgent! Clear your outstanding merchandise. Collect the gold of the son of Limishar and send it to me… Please, put all my tablets in safekeeping.” Others ask their wives to pick specific tablets from the household’s private archives to find financial information or settle a business matter.