During the early second millennium BCE, the inhabitants of the city of Aššur, on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, undertook intensive exchanges with central Anatolia. They set up commercial settlements (kārum*, wabartum*) in some thirty towns, the network center being located at Kültepe, ancient Kaneš, not far from the modern city of Kayseri. They exported tin, originating from far to the east, and textiles, produced locally at Aššur or imported from southern Mesopotamia, and brought back gold and silver to their mother city as proceeds from their merchandise. The two and a half centuries of long-distance trade between Aššur and Anatolia (1950-1700) correspond conventionally to the Old Assyrian period. 1 For this period, only two dozen texts were found at Aššur, while the city of Kaneš, the destination of the Assyrian caravans, provided the bulk of the written sources: 22,700 clay tablets written in the Old Assyrian dialect. These cuneiform texts constitute the private archives of the Assyrian merchants settled in the kārum*. They include letters, which document the context and development of disputes, and a great variety of legal texts that scholars usually divide into two categories: contracts and judicial records. The contracts concern both records of family law and commercial agreements, such as loans, transport and caravan contracts, deposits, partnerships and investments. The judicial records consist of witnessed depositions, records of private arbitration, oaths, judgments, binding orders, etc. All these texts, kept by those involved, document mainly trade, the raison d'être of the Assyrians in central Anatolia. During the Old Assyrian period, the Aššur city-state had a tripartite structure consisting of the king, the assembly and the eponym (Larsen 1976; Dercksen 2004). The Aššur city assembly, most often referred to as the City (ālum) held fundamental powers. As an administrative, legal and economic center, the assembly was called on regularly to settle disputes between merchants, thus acting as a court of law. The judgments of the Aššur assembly were recorded on official tablets, sealed by the king, and when necessary, sent to the Kaneš district authorities. The economic rules were based on the Aššur assembly judgments and laws were engraved on a stele (nârum), no copies of which have been found (Veenhof 1995; Veenhof 2012b). These laws, probably protectionist, had a mainly commercial content: regulations for losses to caravans, for debt repayments, for closing the accounts of a deceased merchant, etc. They also have covered both legal procedures and the requirements for evidence given by witnesses. Three tablets found at Kültepe attest to fixing the statutes of the kārum* and are understood to complete and specify the legislation in force within the framework of the trade treaties concluded with the Anatolian rulers. The trade bureau (bēt kārim) at Kaneš also functioned as a court of law, through its plenary assembly of "small and big men" (ṣaher rabi). Its decisions dealt among other things with the seizure of goods and persons, the transfer of people and the repatriation of a deceased merchant's property to Aššur. In order to render a judgment, the kārum* hear the testimony of the factual witnesses, often given under oath, and study the tablets associated with the examined case. Letters, minutes, witnessed depositions, records of private mediations and arbitrations, and judgements discovered in the archives of the Assyrian merchants at Kaneš provide many examples of legal proceedings that highlight the shortcomings of partnership agreements based usually on mutual trust and reputation.