Bronze Age

	A warrior, ca. 2500 B.C. with helmet, battle-axe and sickle-sword; a small plaque of engraved shell from the ancient city of Mari on the Euphrates (Musee National de Louvre, Paris)
	Sumer; Top to bottom: two bronze drills, a copper axehead, a copper spearhead, a copper saw blade and a bronze adzehead. (From S.N.Kramer, 1957, opcit., p. 155)
	Phalanx of Sumerian soldiers armed with copper-tipped spears; relief on a stele from Tello, Mesopotamia, 3rd. millennium BC.
	Clay model of a cart (pole, posts and axle reconstructed), with a top view of the chassis, Chanhudaro, Sarasvati-Sindhu valley, ca. 2,000 BC. The axle turns with the solid, non-spoked wheels. Copper model of a passenger box on a cart, Chanhudaro, ca. 2,000 BC.
	Carts in contemporary Mesopotamia also did not use spoked wheels. [Copper model of a chariot with four onagers harnessed abreast, from Tell Agrab, Mesopotamia; 3rd. millennium BC; the stand has been removed in the top view presented on the left.] In Mesopotamia, the under-carriage consisted (to judge from those of the hearses foundat Kish and Ur) of a single plank, 45 to 56 cm. wide, perhaps attached to the axle-tree by straps; perhaps, the axle turned with the wheels. In the case of four-wheeled wagons there is no evidence at all that the front axle was an independent pivoted bogie. Sumerians employed the onager (Equus onager Pallas), yoked in the manner of oxen to draw war chariots and passenger vehicles. Note the quiver with spears carried on the wagon and vanquished soldier crushed under the onagers. "It is most unlikely that horses were first domesticated or yoked to chariots in Mesopotamia, for the wild equid to be expected in that area was the onager, which had in fact been tamed there by 3000 BC. It is true that a single pictographic tablet of about that date contains the sign, compounded of 'ass' and 'mountain', that a thousand years later was to be regular cuneiform ideogram for 'horse'... Wild horses (Equus caballus)--essentially steppe dwellers-- have existed in northern Eurasia... The earliest convincing representations of equids drawing cars with spoked wheels occur on cylinder-seals from Hissar in north-east Persia (2000+-200 BC) and from Cappadocia (1950-1850 BC). There are written references to horse-breeding at Chagar Bazar on the Khabur by 1800 BC..." (V.Gordon Childe, 1954, Wheeled Vehicles, in: Singer et al, opcit, pp. 718ff.) [cf. Sharma's notes on the horse bones (Equus Caballus] found in Surkotada, in a domesticated setting, Sarasvati-Sindhu valley.]

It wasn't until approximately 3800 B.C. that bronze was produced in Tepe Yahya, Iran from the accidental blending of copper with other metals. This new mixture exhibited better properties than copper alone. Metal workers quickly found that bronze was more durable and easier to cast than copper. They found it could be bent and reworked back into its original cast shape.

Map of Anatolia and Mesopotamia showing Copper and Tin deposits and ancient sites:

The Bronze Age, alloying copper and tin, was used only rarely at first. During the 2nd millennium the use of true bronze increased. The age also marked the invention of the wheel and the ox-drawn plough. From about 1000 BC, the ability to forge iron, brought in the Iron Age.

The malleability of unalloyed copper, which renders it too soft for weapons, helps form vessels of every variety of form. Copper domestic vessels were regularly made in Sumer during the 4th millennium BC, in India during the third millennium BC and in Egypt a little later.

This provides a perspective for the dawn and development of the bronze age in the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization, ca. 2500 B.C. with the import of tin from sites close to the Euphrates river (Sumer) to alloy with the copper available from the Khetri mines in the central Sarasvati river basin.

As in Egypt, so in India, the smiths who worked in the precious metals of gold and silver also worked in copper and bronze. [Copper pitchers and basins for hand washing at meals were placed in the tombs. An unusual example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is plated with antimony to imitate silver, which was very rare in the Old Kingdom (c. 2686-c. 2160 BC). The basins and the bodies of the ewers were hammered from single sheets of copper. The spouts of the ewers were cast in molds and attached to the bodies by means of copper rivets or were simply inserted in place and crimped to the bodies by cold hammering. Source: 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica.]

Kanesh is the ancient city situated on the hill Kültepe. Outside the city, on the base of the hill, a major trading colony has been found with a large number of clay tablets. These tablets are illegally traded since 1888 CE, until formal excavations start in 1948 CE and continue up to now.

Number of tablets. About 14000 clay tablets are now stored in Ankara, a number that is yearly increasing by several hundreds. It is still only a small fraction of the total expected tablets.

Contents of the tablets. The contents of the letters usually refer to the commercial process, but there are also letter about incidental problems (illness, the current political situation en route, correspondence with agents).

Starting the enterprise. To set up a caravan a merchant in Aur buys his merchandise with silver. He chooses a carrier (often family) and entrusts the caravan by means of a contract for transportation. He pays export taxes and gives money for expenses and duties in transit. The journey lasts for approx. 6 weeks (25 km/day). The merchandise is sealed. Before departure of the caravan, the merchant writes an extensive letter to his representative in Kanish (an agent, often family). Goods, prices and intentions are spelled out. Each spring the caravans depart with a few hundred donkeys. The business of donkey breeding must have been great those days. The return trip (silver) requires only a few donkeys.

After 6 weeks the agent in Kanesh accepts the merchandise. He announces by letter which goods are already sold and adds taxes and expenses. The merchandise sometimes was resold to the local palace or to other local agents. The local agents, who get credit against an interest rate of 33%, leave for other parts of the country to sell the goods. The middleman often runs into financial difficulties. After reaping the profits the return trip starts with almost exclusively silver and gold. Again import- and export-taxes are raised.

Merchandise. The merchandise concerns mostly imported goods. Aur is a transit center. Coupons of wool are made in Babylonia. They measure 4x4.5 meter and weigh 2 to 2.5 kg and are sold in Anatolia for a price which is threefold the purchase price. Other items are tin. Anatolia is a center of metal industry, because wood kilns is abundantly available. Bronze contains about 10-25% tin. Many hundreds of tons of tin have been exported. The tin probably originates in Afghanistan. Although Anatolia has copper mines, copper is not obtained from this part of the country. The high costs of transport make copper out of Anatolia expensive. One prefers copper from the south, that is supplied by ship.

Financing the trade. The merchants usually form family concerns, with a son in the caravan business and an other as agent in Kanesh. Investments by other people also are significant. Partnerships are entered with moneylenders to finance the transactions. Investment is done in gold through so called zak-contracts (the Akkadian name). A partnership consists of 14 persons, who collect together 30 mine gold (a mine is about 500 gram). The merchant himself has a double share: the director is the largest stockholder. The value of 30 mine gold corresponds to the equivalent of 600 slaves or 1000 yearly wages of an average workman. If someone takes a share in a zak-contract he pays half of it in silver which is booked as the equivalent in gold. Silver is a medium of exchange. The contractual term is 12 years and one guarantees a profit of 100% (normal loans have an interests of 30%, so the profit is large). Dividend is paid during the term of the contract. Special rates apply at half-term withdrawal.

[The highlighted portion of the text indicates the possibility that the copper imported was through Sumer, perhaps from the Sarasvati-Sindhu doab.]

	An exquisite example of bronze sculpture in the civilization is this statue from Mohenjodaro attesting to the competence of the metallurgists of this major trading centre of the Sarasvati-Sindhu doab.
	Samples of bronze/copper, gold, silver ornaments and beads.
	Beads and stoneware bowl, Harappa
	More bead samples of the civilization with soldered metal joiners.