Assur

The science outlet reports that the tablet was in a library of a family of exorcists who lived in 650 B.C. in the city of Assur, which is in present-day northern Iraq.

It never approached the grandeur of an Assyrian capital such as Nineveh, but it was part of the Assyrian network of imperial control which imposed the “Yoke of Assur” over conquered regions.

Texts from around 1900 B.C.E. found at the Anatolian town of Kanesh describe how merchant families organized donkey caravans that crossed 1000 kilometers to reach Assur, a city south of today’s Mosul in Iraq.

Students are each assigned to a Babylonian city‐state—Eshnunna, Assur, Ur and Mari—that has limited resources.

But still, the model held up: Ali Hortacsu, a University of Chicago economist on the Kanesh team, says that the trade figures between Assur and Kanesh matched the formula almost perfectly.