Oldest written documents discovered in Anatolia; Kültepe


Kültepe is an ancient city that has Kanesh ruins. It is the first city that established by Hittites B.C. in 2000. Kültepe is in Kayseri, Turkey.
History
The oldest written documents in Anatolia found out in Kültepe in 1800s. Under favour of deciphering the old Assyrian cuneiform documents and archaeological digs, which have started in 1948 and still continuing, some informations become known about Anatolian political structure, Assyrians’, who adopted a sedentary life in Kültepe and near Kültepe, business life and daily life before Hittites.
In The Middle East archaeological digs and expeditions accelerated at the end of 19. Century. Researchers, who had lived in that period, had lots of different goals. For example directing some artifacts that had aesthetic appearence to European museums, trying to prove of geography of holy writ, trying to solve the old Middle East languages and collecting some informations about diplomacy…

These researchers were in the van archaeological researches of Ottoman Empire period’s. In those days, some clay tablets with cuneiform, which were named “Cappadocia Tablets”, were sold in historical artifact market by Europe. Th. G. Pinches, Ernst Chantre, Hugo Winckler and H. Grothe had done short-dated digs in Kültepe for finding these tablets which were came from Central Anatolian but Czechoslovakian linguistic scientist Bedrich Hrozny found those and he solved Hittit language as well.
Archaeologists excavated in Karum, where is near-by Kültepe. They found some tablets with cuneiform and they got informations about Assyrians and Hittites merchants. People had lived in Kültepe from B.C. 4000s to at the end of the period of Rome.

Some Antiques
The bowl which is shaped like lion
The Bicephalous Goddes Figure
Golden ormentals
The Hittites Ritons
The letter piece which includes Arabic commercial correspondences
The Bronze Dagger which belongs to Anitta the king of Kuššara
