Tell Barri

Last updated
Tell Barri
Tell Barri 1.jpg
View of Tell Barri from the west
Syria adm location map.svg
Archaeological site icon (red).svg
Shown within Syria
Alternative nameKahat
Location Al-Hasakah Governorate, Syria
Region Mesopotamia
Coordinates 36°44′21″N41°07′38″E / 36.73917°N 41.12722°E / 36.73917; 41.12722
TypeSettlement
Area37 ha (91 acres)
Height32 m (105 ft)
Site notes
Excavation dates1980-2010
ArchaeologistsPaolo Emilio Pecorella, Mirjo Salvini, Raffaella Pierobon-Benoit

Tell Barri (ancient Kahat) is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in north-eastern Syria in the Al-Hasakah Governorate. Its ancient name was Kahat as proven by a threshold found on the south-western slope of the mound. [1] Tell Barri is situated along the Wadi Jaghjagh, a tributary of the Khabur River.

Contents

It lies 22 kilometers away from the site Tell Arbid and 8 kilometers north of the ancient city of Nagar (Tell Brak).

History

The earliest layers discovered at Tell Barri date to the Halaf period. Barri was in the fertile crescent and could benefit from winter rains as well as the river water. This developed the early agriculture of the area.

Early Bronze Age

The site of Tell Barri was inhabited since the fourth millennium BC. Ninevite 5 period pottery from the early 3rd millennium BC was found at the site. [2] Tell Barri came under Akkadian cultural influence. The large urban centre at Tell Brak was nearby.

Middle Bronze Age

In the Middle Bronze IIA, the eighteenth century BC, the city now known as Kahat is attested from the palace archives of Mari. Kahat seems to have been ruled by semi-independent kings. The town then came under the rule of the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia, whose capital, Shubat-Enlil, was northeast of Kahat. A seal of a ruler of Kahat, Iamsi-Hadnu (contemporary of Tilabnu of Sehna) was found on a treaty at Tell Leilan. [3] Another treaty found at Leilan was signed by Sūmum, a ruler of Kahat and Ḫaya-abum, the ruler of Šehna. [4] When the empire collapsed, the harem of its king Shamshi-Adad I (r. 1809-1775 BC) sought refuge at Kahat.

Following the death of Shamshi-Adad I, Zimri-Lim of Mari (r. 1775-1761 BC) regain the throne of Mari and eventually conquered Kabiya of Kahat. One of the year names of Zimri-Lim was "Year in which Zimri-Lim seized Kahat". [5] [6] Mari retained control over this region until its fall to Hammurabi of Babylon (r. 1792-1750 BC).

Late Bronze Age

Stele of Shar-pati-beli, governor of Assur, Nasibina, Urakka, Kahat, and Masaka. 831 BCE. From Assur, Iraq. Pergamon Museum Stele of Shar-pati-beli, governor of Assur, Nasibina, Urakka, Kahat, and Masaka. 831 BCE. From Assur, Iraq. Pergamon Museum.jpg
Stele of Shar-pati-beli, governor of Assur, Naṣibina, Urakka, Kahat, and Masaka. 831 BCE. From Assur, Iraq. Pergamon Museum

Mitannian Period

By the 15th century BC, the town emerged as a religious centre when the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni established itself in the region. [7]

The temple to the Storm god Teshub in Kahat is specifically mentioned in the Shattiwaza treaty of the fourteenth century BC. [8] In 1345 BC, Suppiluliuma I of Hatti defeated the Mitanni stronghold of Carchemish, which led to the defeat of Tushratta of Mitanni. Tushratta was assassinated and the Mitanni Empire entered a civil war. Suppiluliuma entered a treaty with Shattiwaza (r. 1330-1305 BC), son of Tushratta, making the remnants of the Kingdom of Mitanni a vassal of the Hittites, and a buffer-state between Hatti in the west and Assyria in the east.

Middle Assyrian Period

Shortly afterwards the town fell into the hands of the Middle Assyrian Empire. A large palace was built dated to the time of Assyrian ruler Adad-Nirari I (c. 1305 to 1274 BC). [9]

Iron Age

In the Neo-Assyrian Empire period a palace was built by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta II (891-884 BC) in Kahat.

The town lived on after the end of the Assyrian empire in the seventh century BC as a part of Achaemenid Assyria. Babylonians, Persians, Seleucids, Romans, Byzantine, and Parthians left their trace. The site was inhabited into the Arab period. [10]

Archaeology

View of an excavation area at Tell Barri. Note the person standing in the middle for scale. Tell Barri 2.jpg
View of an excavation area at Tell Barri. Note the person standing in the middle for scale.

The height of the town mound is 32 meters (105 feet), and its base covers 37 hectares (90 acres). There is also a 7 hectare lower town.

In 1980 excavations were begun by a team of Italian archaeologists from the University of Florence, led by Paolo Emilio Pecorella and Mirjo Salvini. [11] [12] [13] From 2006 until 2010, the dig was conducted by a team from University of Naples Federico II led by Raffaella Pierobon-Benoit. [14]

The town was walled in the second millennium BC, with an acropolis at its centre. Tombs were found at the site. Many ceramics were discovered, which have helped the archaeologists to determine the different strata of occupation of the mound. Artifacts from Tell Barri, including cuneiform tablets, have been taken to the museum of Aleppo.

Significant discoveries include a sacred complex in Area G (third millennium BC). Twenty graves from the Khabur period in the early 2nd millennium BC were excavated there. [15] Also found were the remains of the royal palace of Neo-Assyrian ruler Tukulti-Ninurta II (Area J), and the Great Circuit Wall that surrounds the tell and dates to the Parthian period. [16] Scant traces of Roman occupation have been found in many areas of the site. Recently, Islamic occupation (houses' quarter) has been attested on the northern slope of the mound.

The site has suffered significant looting during the Syrian Civil War. [17]

See also

Notes

  1. Georges Dossin, Le Site de la ville de Kahat", Annales Archéologiques de Syrie, vol. 11/12, pp. 197-207, 1961-62
  2. Smogorzewska, Anna, "The Final Stage of Ninevite 5 Pottery: Morphological Types, Technology and Diachronic Analysis from Tell Arbid (North-East Syria)", Iraq, vol. 78, pp. 175–214, 2016
  3. Frayne, Douglas, "Old Babylonian Period (2003-1595 B.C.), RIM. The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. University of Toronto Press, 1990 ISBN   978-1-4426-7803-3
  4. J. Eidem, "The Royal Archives from Tell Leilan: Old Babylonian Letters and Treaties from the Lower Town Palace East", PIHANS 117, Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Osten, 2011
  5. Mari Letter ARM 28.131
  6. Jean-Marie Durand (1998) Les documents epsitolaires du Palais de Mari, pp. 322-323
  7. D’Agostino, A., "Pottery production and transformation of the social structure in an ‘Assyrian’ settlement from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The Tell Barri case.", in H. Kühne, R. M. Czichon and F. J. Kreppner (eds), Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. 29 March–3 April 2004, Freie Universität Berlin II. Social and Cultural Transformation, The Archaeology of Transitional Periods and Dark Ages. Excavation Reports, Wiesbaden, pp. 47–63, 2008
  8. Charpin, D., "Le temple de Kahat d‘après un document inédit de Mari", MARI, Annales de Recherches Interdisciplinaires 1, pp. 137–47, 1982
  9. Florio, Giovanni, et al., "Multiscale techniques for 3D imaging of magnetic data for archaeo‐geophysical investigations in the Middle East: The case of Tell Barri (Syria).", Archaeological Prospection 26.4, pp. 379-395, 2019
  10. Palermo, Rocco, "Evidence of Destruction in Tell Barri.", Destruction: Archaeological, Philological and Historical Perspectives, 2013
  11. Pecorella, P. E., "The Italian Excavations at Tell Barri (Kahat) 1980-1985", pp. 47-66 in Eichler, S., Wäfler, M., and Warburton, D., eds. Tall al-Hamidiya 2. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1990
  12. P.E. Pecorella, Tell Barri / Kahat 1. Relazione sulle campagne 1980–1991 a Tell Barri / Kahat, nel bacino de Habur, Universita degli studi di Firenze, 1982
  13. P.E. Pecorella, Tell Barri / Kahat 2. Relazione sulle campagne 1980–1993 a Tell Barri / Kahat, nel bacino de Habur (Siria), Universita degli studi di Firenze, 1998, ISBN   88-87345-02-3
  14. Paolo Emilio Pecorella and Raffaella Pierobon Benoit, Tell Barri / Kahat 3. La sequenza ceramica, Firenze University Press, in press
  15. Valentini, Stefano, "Burial Customs and Funerary Ideology in Tell Barri/Kahat during the Middle Bronze Age, Related to the Upper Mesopotamia", Proceedings of the Third International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Paris, 2002
  16. D’Agostino, Anacleto, "The Assyrian–Aramaean interaction in the Upper Khabur: the archaeological evidence from Tell Barri iron age layers", Syria, vol. 86, pp. 17–41, 2009
  17. Casana J, Laugier EJ (2017) Satellite imagery-based monitoring of archaeological site damage in the Syrian civil war. PLoS ONE 12(11): e0188589. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188589

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hurrians</span> Historical ethnic group of Southwest Asia

The Hurrians were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria, upper Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitanni</span> Ancient Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia

Mitanni, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat in Assyrian records, or Naharin in Egyptian texts, was a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia with Indo-Aryan linguistic and political influences. Since no histories, royal annals or chronicles have yet been found in its excavated sites, knowledge about Mitanni is sparse compared to the other powers in the area, and dependent on what its neighbours commented in their texts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yamhad</span> Semitic kingdom in Syria

Yamhad (Yamḫad) was an ancient Semitic-speaking kingdom centered on Ḥalab (Aleppo) in Syria. The kingdom emerged at the end of the 19th century BC and was ruled by the Yamhad dynasty, who counted on both military and diplomacy to expand their realm. From the beginning of its establishment, the kingdom withstood the aggressions of its neighbors Mari, Qatna and the Old Assyrian Empire, and was turned into the most powerful Syrian kingdom of its era through the actions of its king Yarim-Lim I. By the middle of the 18th century BC, most of Syria minus the south came under the authority of Yamhad, either as a direct possession or through vassalage, and for nearly a century and a half, Yamhad dominated northern, northwestern and eastern Syria, and had influence over small kingdoms in Mesopotamia at the borders of Elam. The kingdom was eventually destroyed by the Hittites, then annexed by Mitanni in the 16th century BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carchemish</span> Ancient city in Syria

Carchemish, also spelled Karkemish, was an important ancient capital in the northern part of the region of Syria. At times during its history the city was independent, but it was also part of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires. Today it is on the frontier between Turkey and Syria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Washukanni</span> Capital of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni

Washukanni was the capital of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, from around 1500 BC to the 13th century BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shamshi-Adad I</span> Amorite conqueror (r. 1808–1776 BC)

Shamshi-Adad, ruled c. 1808–1776 BC, was an Amorite warlord and conqueror who had conquered lands across much of Syria, Anatolia, and Upper Mesopotamia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tell Halaf</span> Archaeological site in Syria

Tell Halaf is an archaeological site in the Al Hasakah governorate of northeastern Syria, a few kilometers from the city of Ras al-Ayn near the Syria–Turkey border. The site, which dates to the sixth millennium BCE, was the first to be excavated from a Neolithic culture, later called the Halaf culture, characterized by glazed pottery painted with geometric and animal designs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tell Leilan</span> Archaeological site in Syria

Tell Leilan is an archaeological site situated near the Wadi Jarrah in the Khabur River basin in Al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria. The site has been occupied since the 5th millennium BC. During the late third millennium, the site was known as Shekhna. During that time it was under control of the Akkadian Empire and was used as an administrative center. Around 1800 BC, the site was renamed "Shubat-Enlil" by the king Shamshi-Adad I, and it became his residential capital. Shubat-Enlil was abandoned around 1700 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tell Brak</span> Archaeological site in Syria

Tell Brak was an ancient city in Syria; its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city's original name is unknown. During the second half of the third millennium BC, the city was known as Nagar and later on, Nawar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tell Fekheriye</span>

Tell Fekheriye is an ancient site in the Khabur river basin in al-Hasakah Governorate of northern Syria. It is securely identified as the site of Sikkan, attested since c. 2000 BC. While under an Assyrian governor c. 1000 BC it was called Sikani. Sikkan was part of the Syro-Hittite state of Bit Bahiani in the early 1st millennium BC. In the area, several mounds, called tells, can be found in close proximity: Tell Fekheriye, Ras al-Ayn, and 2.5 kilometers east of Tell Halaf, site of the Aramean and Neo-Assyrian city of Guzana. During the excavation, the Tell Fekheriye bilingual inscription was discovered at the site, which provides the source of information about Hadad-yith'i.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terqa</span> Ancient city in Syria

Terqa is the name of an ancient city discovered at the site of Tell Ashara on the banks of the middle Euphrates in Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria, approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) from the modern border with Iraq and 64 kilometres (40 mi) north of the ancient site of Mari, Syria. Its name had become Sirqu by Neo-Assyrian times.

Tell Arbid is an ancient Near East archaeological site in the Khabur River Basin region of Al-Hasakah Governorate, Syria, about 50 kilometers north northeast of modern Al-Hasakah. It is located 45 kilometers south of Tell Mozan, the site of ancient Urkesh and about 15 kilometers from the site of Chagar Bazar. The Halafian site of Tell Arbid Abyad is a short distance away.

Tell al-Rimah is an archaeological settlement mound, in Nineveh Province (Iraq) roughly 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of Mosul and ancient Nineveh in the Sinjar region. It lies 15 kilometers south of the site of Tal Afar. Its ancient name in the 2nd Millennium BC is thought have been Karana though the name of Qattara has also been suggested. In any case Karana and Qattara were very close together and thought to be part of a small kingdom. It has also been suggested that the site's name in the 1st Millennium BC was Zamaḫâ. It is near the circular walled similar archaeological sites of Tell Hadheil, a large Early Dynastic site with Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian occupation, and Tell Huweish. Tell Hamira, known earlier as Tell Abu Hamira, is 16 kilometers to the east and has also been suggested as the site of Karana. Currently, archaology leans toward Qattara as the ancient name of Tell Al-Rimah.

Tell Afis is an archaeological site in the Idlib Governorate of northern Syria, lying about fifty kilometers southeast of Aleppo and 11 kilometers north of the ancient site of Ebla. The site is thought to be that of ancient Hazrek capital of the Kingdom of Hamath and Luhuti. The Stele of Zakkur, dated c, 785 BC, which contains a dedication in Aramaic to the gods Iluwer and Baalshamin, was discovered at the top of the acropolis in 1903 by the French Consul Henri Pognon. It is now in the Louvre Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tell Sheikh Hamad</span> Archaeological site in Syria

Tell Sheikh Hamad, also Dur-Katlimmu, is an archeological site in eastern Syria on the lower Khabur River, a tributary of the Euphrates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tell Taban</span> Archaeological site in Syria

Tell Taban is an archaeological site in north-eastern Syria in the Al-Hasakah Governorate. It is the site of the ancient city of Ṭābetu.

Kunnam also often called Kunnam of Elam was a military expedition leader of the kingdom of Elam in the 18th century BC. He was part of a military campaign into Mesopotamia and is mainly known from cuneiform letters found at Mari, a Syrian city state where there are the royal archives preserved. He was a contemporary of Zimri-Lim of Mari and Hammurabi of Babylon.

The greater ancient Near East offers some of the oldest evidence of the existence of international relations, since it was there that states first developed around the 4th millennium B.C.E. Almost 3000 years of the evolution of diplomatic relations are thus visible in sources from the ancient Near East. However, because only certain periods are well documented within that timespan, there remain many gaps in the modern study of diplomacy in this era.

Qasr Shemamok is an ancient Near East archaeological site about 30 kilometers south of modern Erbil in Erbil Governorate, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq along the Shiwazor river. It is about 25 kilometers from the ancient site of Nimrud. Remains at the site date mainly to the Hurrian, Middle Assyrian, Neo-Assyrian, Parthian, Sassanian times. Under the Assyrians it was named Kilizu and was a provincial capital. It is not far from the ancient sites of Kurd Qaburstan, Tell Halawa, Tell Aliawa, and Tell Baqrta.

Tall Al-Hamidiya is an ancient Near Eastern archeological site the upper Hābūr region of modern-day Syria in the Al-Hasakah Governorate on a loop of the Jaghjagh River. It is located just to the north of the site of Tell Barri, just to the east of the ancient site of Tell Arbid, just to the west of Tell Farfara and 20 kilometers north of Tell Brak. It has been suggested as the location of Ta'idu/Taite. If so, it was mentioned as Ta'idu in early 2nd millennium BC Ebla and Mari texts. Later it was a provincial capital of the Middle Bronze Age Mitanni Empire. This identification is based primarily on a few Middle Assyrian Neo-Assyrian sources, as Taite, and the proximity of Kahat, known to have been nearby. Other locations have been proposed for Ta'idu/Taite.

References