What did free enterprise look like millennia before Adam Smith?
The ancient city of Kanesh, located at Kültepe, Turkey, is home to tens of thousands of personal letters between business people that provide an incredible detailed account of business transactions, commercial disputes, and economic difficulties encountered by merchants 4000 years ago. Kanesh has been under continuous excavation for almost a century, and the many homes uncovered offer us another take on life in this bustling, multicultural economic hub.
This tour draws on both of these sources to uncover not only the trading world of the Bronze Age, but the private lives of the traders – their religions, their families, their mistresses, and their family-business scheming!
