Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
Almost 4,000 years ago, people lived in a city called Kanesh. Today we call this place Kultepe. It is in Turkey. Merchants there wrote letters on clay. They put each clay letter inside a clay envelope. This kept the letter private.
Many of these clay envelopes are still closed today. For a long time, scientists could not read the letter inside. They could only open the envelope by breaking it. Breaking it would destroy the letter too.
Now scientists have a new tool. It is a scanner called ENCI. Cecile Michel led the team that built it. The scanner uses X-rays. It can look inside the clay envelope. It does not break the seal.
The team used the scanner on a letter from a woman named Anna-anna. She wrote to her husband, Ennum-Ashur. He was away trading. Anna-anna wanted silver that he was owed. The letter shows she managed money and business herself.
- letter
- a written message sent to someone
- seal
- a mark or cover that closes something shut
- old
- from a long time ago
- clay
- soft earth that can be shaped and then hardened
- envelope
- a cover that holds a letter inside
- scanner
- a machine that looks inside things without opening them
- silver
- a valuable grey metal
- husband
- a woman's married partner
Level 2 — Elementary
Nearly 4,000 years ago, Assyrian merchants living in the city of Kanesh, known today as Kultepe in central Turkey, wrote their business letters on clay tablets. To keep each letter private during shipping, they sealed the tablet inside its own clay envelope, much like people today seal a letter inside a paper envelope.
Several hundred of these sealed clay envelopes have survived intact through the centuries. That has always been a problem for archaeologists, because the only way to read the letter inside was to break the envelope open, destroying it in the process.
An international research team, led by Assyriologist Cecile Michel of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg, built a portable, high definition X-ray scanner nicknamed ENCI. Unlike a hospital scanner, it can travel to a museum. It was first used at the Louvre Museum in Paris in 2024, and later taken to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, where many Kanesh tablets are kept.
With the scanner, the team read the cuneiform writing inside sealed envelopes for the first time. One letter, dating to the first half of the 19th century BCE, was written by a woman named Anna-anna to her husband, Ennum-Ashur, who was away on a trading journey. In it, she describes trying to recover silver owed to him, and her envelope carries eight impressions of her own personal seal. Researchers say the letter shows that women in these households actively handled business and money while their husbands traveled. The findings were published in the journal npj Heritage Science in 2026.
- merchant
- a person who buys and sells goods for a living
- cuneiform
- an ancient system of writing made of wedge shaped marks
- seal
- a stamped mark that shows who owns or sent something
- envelope
- a clay or paper cover that holds a letter inside
- tomography
- a scanning method that creates images of the inside of an object
- archaeologist
- a scientist who studies old objects and ancient peoples
- impression
- a mark left by pressing something into a soft surface
- portable
- able to be carried or moved easily
Level 3 — Intermediate
For nearly 4,000 years, sealed clay envelopes from the ancient Assyrian trading colony of Kanesh, the site now known as Kultepe in central Turkey, have kept their contents hidden. Assyrian merchants who traded there sealed their business letters inside individual clay envelopes for privacy during shipment, a practice not unlike enclosing a modern letter inside a paper envelope, and several hundred of these envelopes have survived intact, unopened since antiquity.
That survival has long presented archaeologists with a dilemma: opening an envelope to read the letter inside meant destroying it. An international research team, led by Assyriologist Cecile Michel of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg, addressed the problem by building a transportable, high definition X-ray computed tomography scanner nicknamed ENCI, designed specifically to operate inside a museum rather than a hospital or laboratory setting.
The scanner was deployed for the first time at the Louvre Museum in Paris in 2024, and was later brought to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, where much of the surviving Kanesh material is housed. Using it, the team was able to see inside sealed envelopes and read the cuneiform text within for the first time, without breaking a single seal.
Among the letters recovered this way is one written by a woman named Anna-anna to her husband, Ennum-Ashur, who was away on a trading journey. Dating to the first half of the 19th century BCE, roughly 3,800 to 3,850 years ago, the letter describes Anna-anna's efforts to recover silver owed to her absent husband, whose debtor insisted he would only repay the sum once Ennum-Ashur himself returned. Her envelope bears eight impressions of her own personal seal. Researchers argue the letter demonstrates that women in these merchant households were not passive bystanders but active participants in business and financial affairs while their husbands traded abroad. The study appeared in the journal npj Heritage Science in 2026.
- colony
- a settlement of people living away from their home country, often for trade
- dilemma
- a difficult situation requiring a choice between unwelcome options
- computed tomography
- an imaging method that builds a picture from many X-ray scans
- debtor
- a person who owes money to someone else
- antiquity
- the distant past, especially ancient times
- passive
- not playing an active part, accepting rather than acting
- correspondence
- letters exchanged between people
- seal impression
- a mark pressed into clay or wax to show ownership or authorship
Level 4 — Advanced
Nearly four millennia after they were folded shut, a cache of clay envelopes from the Old Assyrian trading colony of Kanesh, the site known today as Kultepe in central Turkey, is finally yielding what it has withheld since antiquity. Assyrian merchants working there enclosed their business correspondence, inscribed on clay tablets, inside individual clay envelopes to preserve confidentiality in transit, and several hundred of these envelopes survive unopened, their contents locked away by the very act meant to protect them.
Until recently, that protection was also an obstacle: prying an envelope open to read its letter necessarily destroyed both. An international research team led by the Assyriologist Cecile Michel, of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg, has circumvented the problem with an instrument called ENCI, a transportable, high definition X-ray computed tomography scanner built expressly for deployment inside museum galleries rather than hospital radiology suites or research laboratories.
ENCI made its debut at the Louvre in Paris in 2024 before traveling to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, custodian of much of the surviving Kanesh corpus. There, the scanner allowed researchers to peer through unbroken clay seals and transcribe cuneiform text that had gone unread since it was written, without compromising a single artifact.
One such transcription belongs to a letter, dated to the first half of the 19th century BCE and thus some 3,800 to 3,850 years old, from a woman named Anna-anna to her husband, Ennum-Ashur, then absent on a trading expedition. The text recounts her pursuit of silver owed to him, an obligation her debtor declined to settle except upon Ennum-Ashur's own return. Her envelope bears eight impressions of her personal seal, a detail scholars read as evidence that women within these merchant households were far from passive figures, actively conducting business and managing finances in their husbands' extended absences. The findings appear in the journal npj Heritage Science, published in 2026.
- cuneiform
- the wedge shaped script used to write several ancient Near Eastern languages
- Assyriologist
- a scholar who studies the languages, history and culture of ancient Assyria and Mesopotamia
- tomography
- an imaging technique that reconstructs cross sectional views of an object's interior
- confidentiality
- the state of being kept private or secret
- custodian
- an institution or person responsible for guarding and preserving something
- corpus
- a complete collection of writings or texts on a subject
- transcription
- a written version of spoken or otherwise recorded material
- obligation
- a duty to do something, such as repay a debt
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