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The Metals amūtu and aši'u in the Kültepe Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop
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Extract

Professor Seton Lloyd's interest in all aspects of archaeology and his distinguished work both in Turkey and in the Diyala valley, Iraq, may justify the publication of this note on iron in Anatolia offered to him on the occasion of his 70th birthday. It was at Khafajah in 1931 that one of the earliest daggers with remains of a blade of terrestrial iron was discovered; the possible use of terrestrial rather than meteoric iron in Anatolia at the time of the Assyrian merchant colonies is discussed below.

The Kültepe text CCT 4 4a (lines 3, 23, 27, 38, 44) has been translated in the CAD (s.v. amūtu) and referred to by Garelli when discussing the meaning of the word amūtu and its Sumerian equivalent KÙ.AN.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 22 , December 1972 , pp. 159 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1972

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References

1 1 Talent = 60 minas, 1 mina (c. 1 lb.) = 60 shekels. Several small rings or a knife blade could be made from 1 oz. of wrought iron.

2 Garelli, P., Les Assyriens en Cappadoce, pp. 272, 284Google Scholar. Landsberger, , JNES. 24, p. 291Google Scholar note 25 (end) and in A.Or. XVIII, 1–2, p. 331, n. 14Google Scholar; p. 332, n. 3. Landsberger points out that one Kültepe text has annakam amūtam and suggests that this here means a kind of tin, comparing the Mesopotamian usage, where KÙ.AN = AN.NA (Inscription of Rimush, , AfO. XX, 68, b 12Google Scholar). However, Sollberger (in AfO. XX, pp. 176 ff.Google Scholar) has argued that AN.NA at the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur meant iron and refers to nails and daggers of AN.NA. See also Sollberger, , Texts from Cuneiform Sources, I, Business and Administrative Correspondence under the Kings of Ur, pp. 14, 99Google Scholar. Here in an inscription concerning a ana (AN) of Anshan (said to be lost) and in a votive inscription on an unpublished serpentine dagger hilt from Kish in the Ashmolean Museum (a-na) ana is translated (?) iron. (I owe this reference to Dr. P. R. S. Moorey). Similarly in Gudea, Statue B VII 50–52 an. na could equally well mean iron, though Landsberger here translates “tin” JNES 24, 290Google Scholar note 25, no. 3. Yet in EA 22 i 55 there seems to be no reason why the la-ḫa-nu ša sīsê ša a-mu-ú-ti, a trough (?) for horses of amūtu, weighing 300 shekels, which was inlaid with eagles of gold and lapis lazuli, should not have been made of iron. Cf. Veenhof, T. R., Aspects of Old Assyrian Trade and its Terminology (Leiden, 1972), p. 306Google Scholar, where ašium/amūtum is considered to be “a kind of iron, probably natural”.

3 A translation of amūtu as antimony and aši'u as stibnite is a possibility, although unlikely; we have no evidence that Anatolia was a source of stibnite in the second millennium B.C. The small quantities traded would seem to preclude this identification.

4 From the Old Babylonian period onwards the adj. ṣarpu is regularly applied to silver, e.g. 10 GİN kaspam ṣa-ar-pa-am damqam, 10 shekels of fine refined silver; it is also applied to earthenware and bricks in the sense of fired. The verb ṣarāpu is once applied to gold, in an administrative text from Mari (CAD s.v. ṣarāpu A. ṣarāpu).

5 cf. CAD (s.v. zakû, p. 24). This (1961) is the only instance where the CAD uses the word iron in connection with amūtu.

6 So Garelli, op. cit., p. 114 note 2 and Von Soden, AHw., but CAD. “in the near future”.

7 Bilgiç, E. in Sümeroloji Araştırmaları, 913–950Google Scholar. Summary by Güterbock, in AfO. XV, 128Google Scholar.

8 ICK 1, 39b. 2, 7,13. See CAD s.v. amūtu (a).

9 CAD, ibid. (b).

10 Bottéro, in RA XLIII, p. 154Google Scholar, l. 165.

11 Laroche, in RHA 60, pp. 9 ft.Google Scholar and 79, pp. 171 ff.

12 This article originated from discussions with Mr. H. W. H. Hodges whose imaginative expertise has always been readily at my disposal. I should not have ventured to write it without the unstinting help and encouragement of Professor O. R. Gurney. To both of them I am extremely grateful.