User:12Anonymous!/Zizizi (Assyrian)

Assyrian Businesswoman Zizizi
=== Zizizi was an Assyrian businesswoman at Kanesh, wife of an Assyrian merchant, and known for expressive letters delivered on ancient clay tablets written in cuneiform. Her journey started around 1860 B.C., when she followed her first husband to the Anatolian city of Kanesh. He later died and she remarried a local. Her father Imdi-ilum and mother Ishtar-bashti responded to her leaving home by stating ‘we are not important in your eyes”. In Kanesh Zizizi became a successful moneylender, for “The tablets women wrote indicate that they served crucial roles in trading networks, managed finances and workers, and pushed against societal expectations...”. An archived tablet found at Kanesh, holds a letter from Zizizi to her parents, that was written during an outbreak of disease, and shows her expressing anguish during that time. The tablet copy 688 found in a private archive at Kanesh displays Zizizi expressing her emotional circumstances by stating “I can’t manage anymore.” In the year 1948, Turkish archaeologist excavated the previous tablet along with others, most of them being found in the town northeast of a mound in Kültepe. They were specifically found in the storerooms of merchant houses, along with 22,200 tablets found in the town. ===