The Intimate Bond (18 page)

Assur flourished at a time when bronze technology was of enormous importance, both for utilitarian artifacts and weapons and for ornaments and ceremonial vessels of all kinds. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was a currency of imperial gifts and diplomatic exchange,
prized for its durability and lustrous glow. Copper was relatively commonplace, but tin was a rarity, highly prized, and a staple of Assyrian trade. The city's merchants purchased the metal from Babylonia, but it originally came from modern-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Eurasia. Who controlled the mines and to what extent Assur monopolized the tin trade is a mystery, but shipments of the metal passed westward by donkey caravan to the Anatolian Plateau. Assur's merchants also handled both locally woven textiles and highly prized Akkadian fabrics from the south. One expert has estimated that the ratio of donkey loads of textiles and wool to tin to pass west was in the order of three to one. However, one load of tin was five times as valuable as one of textiles.
⁶

Assyrian commerce with Anatolia depended on trading colonies. For centuries, an Assyrian quarter of merchants and soldiers, known as a
kârum
, an Akkadian word for “port” or “quay”—Akkadian was the lingua franca of the time—prospered outside the city of Kultepe in central Turkey. Karum Kanesh was the terminus of a caravan trade in tin and textiles that lasted between about 1895 and 1715
BCE
. The merchants of the
kârum
maintained contacts with a much larger set of trading networks through Anatolia and farther afield. The entire region was a patchwork of city-states and shifting alliances, which required adept diplomacy. The Assyrians with their tin and much-coveted textiles kept a strategic advantage by executing sworn agreements with local rulers. Tolls and tribute were important sources of income for such worthies. The cuneiform tablets from the
kârum
contain frequent references to payments made by caravans along the road.

Like so much ancient trade, the Assur caravan trade was in the hands of powerful family-run merchant houses, in this case Assyrian, within a framework of carefully administered and financed partnerships that depended on agents in Kanesh. The entire enterprise relied on the hardworking donkey. (The Assyrians also possessed mules, or
perdum
, which were used for riding, especially by more prominent individuals.)
⁷

The Assyrian donkey was a dark-colored pack animal—
emarum sallamum
, or “black donkey”—apparently a larger animal than the modern equivalent, with a long body and ears. They were plentiful, sturdy, and generally docile. As far as the merchants were concerned, donkeys
were merely a means of transport to be used as efficiently as possible, so their life expectancy was relatively short. Heavily laden Assyrian donkeys must have been tough beasts, operating as they did in rough terrain. The Kanesh tablets tell us that many caravans arrived without losing any animals. Others suffered casualty rates of 50 to even 70 percent, but whether this was because of disease or weather conditions is unknown.

A donkey caravan—
ellatum
, a word approximating to “traveler”—was the terrestrial equivalent of an ocean convoy. Most people preferred to travel in company, with caravans leaving once there were enough individuals wanting to reach a specific destination, perhaps several times a month. Apart from security considerations, caravans lessened labor expenses and, perhaps just as important, were an invaluable source of intelligence on conditions along well-traveled routes. Like Egyptian caravans, an
ellatum
moved slowly but steadily, apparently traveling about twenty-five kilometers (fifteen miles) a day, what one might call a donkey pace. (A British army manual from modern times states that a donkey carrying a full load would travel about 3.4 kilometers (2 miles) an hour for six hours a day, which provides a yardstick.) (Also see sidebar “Xenophon Once Again.”) The journey from Assur to Kanesh, some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) took about six weeks through rocky desert, mountain passes, dense forest, and flat plains.

The caravans required large numbers of strong beasts, so much so that breeding and training centers (
gigamlum
) sold them in many places. Assur in particular required a regular supply of male donkeys for load carrying; females were used for breeding. A caravan pack animal cost about sixteen to seventeen shekels in Assur, a few shekels more for saddles and panniers. Those sold in Anatolia fetched between twenty and thirty, so the profit margin was virtually nonexistent, once one took into account the costs of feeding the animal. Its care was minimal—the tablets speak of straw as fodder, the beasts being permitted to graze in spring, sometimes in rented paddocks along the way.

The vehicles of the caravan trade were just that, disposable pack animals worked to death or sold at the other end with the hope that one would break even. Few of the beasts made the return journey. The
gold and silver carried eastward required many fewer pack animals. Hundreds, if not thousands, of donkeys plodded along the caravan routes, in convoys large and small—we have no means of estimating the precise numbers. As Assyriologist Gojko Barjamovic remarked in an e-mail to the author, “Someone must have been mass producing donkeys somewhere. The animals were not exactly cheap . . . about the price of a . . . female slave. These were not exactly Mercedeses, but at least the Dodge Ram trucks of the day. And people drove them in a comparably heinous and destructive manner.”
⁸

Each donkey carried about 75 kilograms (165 pounds), loaded on a pack saddle, perhaps a leather- or cloth-covered wooden frame over a saddle cloth. Tin lay in two goat hair or leather half packs, one on either side of the beast, textiles in leather bags atop the pack saddle. With relatively standardized loads, merchants could be charged costs per load, which made the logistics of the trade somewhat easier to control.

Just how large Assyrian caravans were is a matter of debate, but groups of forty donkeys or more were not uncommon. A cuneiform tablet from the archives at the city of Mari in Syria tells us that one
ellatum
organized by local merchants comprised some three hundred donkeys and three hundred men, presumably the drivers, at a rate of about one per beast. Junior members of the merchant family often served as caravan leaders. They were responsible for the administration of the convoy and its safe arrival, and for the letter tablets in clay envelopes that formed part of the cargo. Tablet after tablet pleads for messages to be sent with the first available caravan; at the typical pace of twenty-four kilometers (fifteen miles) daily, each day truly counted.

Just the provisioning of caravans was a major task. As a result, the caravan routes changed little over the generations, proceeding from staging post to staging post, using agreements with local rulers to ensure safe passage. Inns along the routes fulfilled many functions, including storage of goods as well as providing food, fodder, and water. The last was an important consideration, especially with large caravans of three hundred beasts or so, which could consume six tons of water daily. Just growing and processing the fodder at such inns would have been a full-time job
involving significant numbers of workers. Everywhere, the Assyrian caravan trade had a lasting effect on communities through which it passed.

We will never be able to reconstruct the full details of the caravan trade from surviving clay tablets. The primary sources are too incomplete and leave out many telling details of what was a very profitable, if sometimes risky, trade. The weary pack animals earned huge sums for their owners. Profit margins for tin (about 100 percent) and textiles (200 percent) were enormous. Just to give an impression of the value of the textiles, one standard-size cloth would buy about 3,600 loaves of bread, 7 kilograms (15 pounds) of copper, or 12 sheep. A single length of fine textile was even more valuable than a slave. One family's tablet records a caravan of thirty-four donkeys that carried about 600 kilograms (1,322 pounds) of tin and 684 textiles, a mere smidgen of the wealth that traveled from Assur to Anatolia on donkey's backs. If one arbitrarily estimates one donkey load of tin per Assyrian family annually, about two tons' worth traveled west over a thirty-year period from 1889 to 1859
BCE
, a staggering figure.

Global Beasts

Merchants, travelers, pilgrims—everyone in the eastern Mediterranean used donkeys and sometimes mules, before horses and camels became people movers. Cities such as Damascus prospered because they lay at the crossroads of strategic donkey caravan routes. Convoys of beasts wended their way from central and southern Mesopotamia, traveling north along the Tigris and Euphrates before heading west rather than traveling straight across the arid and dangerous Syrian Desert, where brigands lurked. The caravans supplied the markets of Aleppo, Hamath, and Damascus, where they linked up with other groups from the north. From these hubs, the donkeys headed south to Egypt and places near the Red Sea. Some of the largest caravans are said to have involved three thousand beasts, many of them carrying fodder and water for the other pack animals.

Donkeys also carried loads deep into Armenia and eastward, along what became known as the Silk Road, linking Europe and China. They
came to Greece as early as the tenth century
BCE
, where they found work in every aspect of daily life—packing loads from mountain villages to ships, hauling logs from forests, laboring on construction sites, grinding grain, and carrying baskets through rows of vines on hillside vineyards.
⁹
Without them, classical Athens would have lacked firewood, been chronically short of food, and its workshops and stores without raw materials or items to sell.

The Greeks made a clear distinction between the noble horse and the “servile” donkey, which corresponded in broad terms with that between people who were free and slaves. The ass was a menial laborer, a source of ribald humor, one of the unfree, despite being ridden by people of wealth or spiritual importance such as Christ and the Prophet Muhammad.
¹⁰
However, donkeys developed strong ties with Christian symbolism as a result of Christ's triumphant ride into Jerusalem. Christianity helped raise the status of the donkey, which supported the Savior when others ignored him.

“Sturdy, Sound in All Parts”

Roman donkeys worked hard throughout their lives, both on the farm and in pack trains. Like Greek beasts, they pulled plows on lighter soils, crushed olives, ground grain, and carted manure. Their panniers carried grain, oil, wine, and all kinds of other merchandise. Farmers kept only as many as they needed, while traders assembled their herds depending on the loads to be carried. Heavily laden, straining donkeys caused traffic jams in narrow city streets, polluted the roads, and filled the air with their loud braying. But they were tolerated because they were uncomplaining load carriers that required little maintenance. Donkey breeding was a major industry throughout the empire. Beasts that were “sturdy, sound in all parts, full bodies, and of good stock” served as the best breeding donkeys.
¹¹
Pregnant jennies were never worked. The young were weaned only partially after a year and were trained at age three for specific needs. Beasts destined to become pack animals were castrated when two years old, to ensure they were as tractable as possible.

Mules assumed increasing importance, especially in Roman times. Sumerians were probably the first to breed hybrid equids, perhaps during the third millennium
BCE
. By Assyrian times,
perdum
, the mule, was commonplace, ridden by people of status as well as serving as a pack animal. Mules came into their own during Roman times as powerful and resilient pack animals, so much so that they became the primary baggage and draft animal of the Roman army and the
cursus publicum
, the official courier and road service based on the empire's network of highways.

Throughout the Roman Empire both donkeys and mules were essential to the transport of goods and people. Pack trains helped maintain military supply lines, especially over relatively short distances in remote areas without roads and away from rivers, which were the best way of hauling bulk cargos such as grain and wine amphorae. Both beasts hauled wagons wherever the terrain was not too challenging and roads were passable. Over short distances, mules were superior. A string of twenty mules could carry as much as five ox-drawn wagon loads.

Mules occupied a kind of intermediate role between the humble donkey and the noble horse. Like horses, mules had many personalities. Some were spirited animals that could give an aristocrat a lively ride, while more placid beasts carried common folk. (The best mules were probably the size of small horses, some fourteen to fifteen hands—one hand equals ten centimeters, or four inches—just over a meter [3.2 feet].) Mule breeding was highly profitable. According to the Roman author Columella, mares “should be big and handsome and well able to endure toil.”
¹²
Each mare produced about five foals between the ages of four and ten, and gestation periods were just over a year. This, and the difficulties of breeding, made for expensive mules, which were carefully trained. For example, trainers drove mule foals into the mountains in summer to harden their hooves against their eventual use on rough road surfaces.

These tough and undemanding animals tackled rugged terrain and mountain landscapes, were surefooted, and carried heavy loads. They crossed into Gaul with legions conquering Celtic and Germanic tribes and served as pack animals and mounts for auxiliary troops
defending the Rhine frontier. The remains of at least four mules came from a large garbage dump of 160
CE
, at the Biriciana frontier fort near the Bavarian town of Weißenburg.
¹³
Dogs gnawed the bones of the carelessly buried animals. Using serial stable isotope analysis on one of the mule teeth, German researchers were able to show that the mule was probably bred in northern Italy. From its eighth year onward, the beast frequented higher altitudes, probably packing across the Alps, silent testimony to the importance of mules to Roman garrisons.