Kültepe

Kültepe is a large settlement mound with a lower town beside it, and it was Kanesh - a major Bronze Age centre and, from around 1950 BCE, the seat of a karum, a trading colony of Assyrian merchants from Ashur who ran a long-distance trade in tin and textiles into Anatolia in exchange for silver and gold. They kept records, and roughly twenty-three thousand cuneiform tablets have been excavated from the merchants' houses: contracts, letters, loans, court cases, marriage agreements, complaints from wives in Ashur about husbands not coming home. They are the earliest written documents found in Anatolia and among the most detailed pictures of ancient commerce anywhere. What is visible on site is the excavated mud-brick foundations of the palace on the mound and the streets and houses of the karum below, along with an on-site museum. The tablets themselves are largely in Ankara, Kayseri and Istanbul.

What you actually see

• The karum streets - merchants' house foundations in the lower town.
• The palace mound - the excavated citadel above.
• The site museum - finds and explanation of the tablet archive.
• The plain - the Kayseri basin with Erciyes behind.

When to go

April to June and September to October. Mornings; the mound is exposed with no shade and the plateau is hot in summer and bitter in winter.

Honest expectations

What survives is mud-brick foundations at knee height - the interest is historical rather than visual, and visitors expecting standing architecture will be disappointed. The tablets are in museums elsewhere. A car is needed.

Nearby

Kayseri and its museums are 20 km west; Mount Erciyes rises south of the city.