Öz In the First quarter of the second millenium B.C., Central Anatolia had reached a high level of culture and art, partly due to advanced ideas introduced by Mesopotamian merchants from Assur. The most important scource for a proper understanding of this period is the site of Kültepe - Kanish, which has been the object of systematic excavations since 1948. In Kanish, people who vvrote exclusively in Old Assyrian but who spoke a variety of languages, congregated for the purpose of commerce and in doing so established close cultural interrelations. We now can estimate to what extent Anatolia profited from this cultural interchange. The intermingling of foreign peoples and the concomitant rise in local prosperity resulted in : a) the birth of a native style in representational art vvhich formed the nucleus of Hittite art as it developed later on1; b) the development of so- called Hittite pottery, which in technique and shapes reached a level unparalleled aftervvards2 ; and c) the formation of an architectural tradition for royal as well as private buildings3