R. de Boer

The Ikun-pisa Letter Archive from Tell ed-Der R. de Boer

This volume sees the publication of fifty-six early Old Babylonian
letters from ca. 1880 BCE. They were found by legendary Iraqi
archaeologist Taha Baqir in 1941 at the site of Tell ed-Der, ancient
Sippar-Amnanum, in central Iraq. The letters are written in an early
dialect of Akkadian and are part of the archives of an ancient firm.
This firm consisted of a number of families engaged in local
agriculture, the manufacturing of textiles, crediting, and international
trade. As such it was part of the same larger trade networks as those
already known from the contemporary Old Assyrian archives found in
central Turkey. The firm strived to have good relations with local
Amorite rulers, such as Sumu-la-El, the first king of Babylon, and they
used their own trading agents to represent them in far-away cities such
as Mari. For these reasons, the letters are also an important source for
Babylonia's political and socio-economic history.