The Alaroidians
Neolithic Age
The Neolithic Era, or Period, from νέος (néos, “new”) and λίθος (líthos, “stone”), or New Stone age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 10,200 BC, according to the ASPRO chronology in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world and ending between 4,500 and 2,000 BC.
Traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age, the Neolithic followed the terminal Holocene Epipaleolithic period and commenced with the beginning of farming, which produced the “Neolithic Revolution”. It ended when metal tools became widespread (in the Copper Age or Bronze Age; or, in some geographical regions, in the Iron Age). The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops and of domesticated animals.
The beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant (Jericho, modern-day West Bank) about 10,200–8,800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called “proto-neolithic” is now included in the PPNA between 10,200 and 8,800 BC. As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas are thought to have forced people to develop farming. By 10,200–8,800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa and North Mesopotamia. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep and goats. By about 6,900–6,400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, and the use of pottery.
Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. In other parts of the world, such as Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, independent domestication events led to their own regionally-distinctive Neolithic cultures that arose completely independent of those in Europe and Southwest Asia. Early Japanese societies used pottery before developing agriculture.
Unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species (Homo sapiens sapiens) reached the Neolithic. Homo floresiensis may have survived right up to the very dawn of the Neolithic, about 12,200 years ago.
The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νεολιθικός, neolithikos, from νέος neos, “new” + λίθος lithos, “stone”, literally meaning “New Stone Age.” The term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.
Periods by pottery phase
In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing by in the 10th millennium BC. Early development occurred in the Levant (e.g. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are also attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by c. 8,000 BC.
The prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, China, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 5,000–6,000 BC, neolithic cultures east of the Taihang Mountains, filling in an archaeological gap between the two Northern Chinese cultures. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards and the collection of neolithic findings at the site consists of two phases.
Neolithic 1 – Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)
Sites in the Levant (Jericho, Palestine & Jbeil (Byblos), Lebanon) that go back to around 9,500 to 9,000 BC are considered the beginning of the Neolithic 1 (PPNA). The actual date is not established with certainty due to different results in carbon dating by scientists in the British Museum and Philadelphia laboratories. The Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic have caused further problems with the timeline.
An early temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated to 10,000 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the Neolithic 1. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. This temple site may be the oldest known human-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres (100,000 m2), contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects and birds. Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which may have supported roofs.
The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour. Emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated (animal husbandry and selective breeding).
In the 21st century, remains of figs were discovered in a house in Jericho dated to 9,400 BC. The figs are of a mutant variety that cannot be pollinated by insects, and therefore the trees can only reproduce from cuttings. This evidence suggests that figs were the first cultivated crop and mark the invention of the technology of farming. This occurred centuries before the first cultivation of grains.
Settlements became more permanent with circular houses, much like those of the Natufians, with single rooms. However, these houses were for the first time made of mudbrick. The settlement had a surrounding stone wall and perhaps a stone tower (as in Jericho). The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned. There are also some enclosures that suggest grain and meat storage.
Neolithic 2 – Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB)
The Neolithic 2 (PPNB) began around 8,800 BC according to the ASPRO chronology in the Levant (Jericho, Palestine). As with the PPNA dates there are two versions from the same laboratories noted above. But this terminological structure is not convenient for southeast Anatolia and settlements of the middle Anatolia basin. This era was before the Mesolithic era.
Settlements have rectangular mudbrick houses where the family lived together in single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an ancestor cult where people preserved skulls of the dead, which were plastered with mud to make facial features. The rest of the corpse may have been left outside the settlement to decay until only the bones were left, then the bones were buried inside the settlement underneath the floor or between houses.
Neolithic 3 – Pottery Neolithic (PN)
The Neolithic 3 (PN) began around 6,400 BC in the Fertile Crescent. By then distinctive cultures emerged, with pottery like the Halafian (Turkey, Syria, Northern Mesopotamia) and Ubaid (Southern Mesopotamia). This period has been further divided into PNA (Pottery Neolithic A) and PNB (Pottery Neolithic B) at some sites.
The Chalcolithic period began about 4500 BC, then the Bronze Age began about 3500 BC, replacing the Neolithic cultures.
Periods by region
Fertile Crescent
Around 10,200 BC the first fully developed Neolithic cultures belonging to the phase Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) appeared in the fertile crescent. Around 10,700 to 9,400 BC a settlement was established in Tell Qaramel, 10 miles north of Aleppo. The settlement included 2 temples dating back to 9,650. Around 9000 BC during the PPNA, the world’s first town, Jericho, appeared in the Levant. It was surrounded by a stone and marble wall and contained a population of 2000–3000 people and a massive stone tower. Around 6,400 BC the Halaf culture appeared in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, and Northern Mesopotamia and subsisted on dryland agriculture.
In 1981 a team of researchers from the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, including Jacques Cauvin and Oliver Aurenche divided Near East neolithic chronology into ten periods (0 to 9) based on social, economic and cultural characteristics. In 2002 Danielle Stordeur and Frédéric Abbès advanced this system with a division into five periods. Natufian (1) between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, Khiamian (2) between 10,200-8,800 BC, PPNA: Sultanian (Jericho), Mureybetian, early PPNB (PPNB ancien) (3) between 8,800-7,600 BC, middle PPNB (PPNB moyen) 7,600-6,900 BC, late PPNB (PPNB récent) (4) between 7,500 and 7,000 BC and a PPNB (sometimes called PPNC) transitional stage (PPNB final) (5) where Halaf and dark faced burnished ware begin to emerge between 6,900-6,400 BCE. They also advanced the idea of a transitional stage between the PPNA and PPNB between 8,800 and 8,600 BC at sites like Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Aswad.
Southern Mesopotamia
Alluvial plains (Sumer/Elam). Little rainfall makes irrigation systems necessary. Ubaid culture from 6,900 BC.
Domestication of sheep and goats reached Egypt from the Near East possibly as early as 6,000 BC. Graeme Barker states “The first indisputable evidence for domestic plants and animals in the Nile valley is not until the early fifth millennium bc in northern Egypt and a thousand years later further south, in both cases as part of strategies that still relied heavily on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild plants” and suggests that these subsistence changes were not due to farmers migrating from the Near East but was an indigenous development, with cereals either indigenous or obtained through exchange. Other scholars argue that the primary stimulus for agriculture and domesticated animals (as well as mud-brick architecture and other Neolithic cultural features) in Egypt was from the Middle East.
Europe
In southeast Europe agrarian societies first appeared in the 7th millennium BC, attested by one of the earliest farming sites of Europe, discovered in Vashtëmi, southeastern Albania and dating back to 6,500 BC. Anthropomorphic figurines have been found in the Balkans from 6000 BC, and in Central Europe by c. 5500 BC. Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are the Sesklo culture in Thessaly, which later expanded in the Balkans giving rise to Starčevo-Körös (Cris), Linearbandkeramik, and Vinča. Through a combination of cultural diffusion and migration of peoples, the Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BC. The Vinča culture may have created the earliest system of writing, the Vinča signs, though it is almost universally accepted amongst archeologists that the Sumerian cuneiform script was the earliest true form of writing and the Vinča signs most likely represented pictograms and ideograms rather than a truly developed form of writing. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built enormous settlements in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine from 5300 to 2300 BC. The megalithic temple complexes of Ġgantija on the Mediterranean island of Gozo (in the Maltese archipelago) and of Mnajdra (Malta) are notable for their gigantic Neolithic structures, the oldest of which date back to c. 3600 BC. The Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni, Paola, Malta, is a subterranean structure excavated c. 2500 BC; originally a sanctuary, it became a necropolis, the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, and showing a degree of artistry in stone sculpture unique in prehistory to the Maltese islands.
Hurrians:
Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians, a people who had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. Hurrian was the language of the Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in Syria.
It is generally believed that the speakers of this language originally came from the Armenian mountains and spread over southeast Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.
Knowledge of Hurrian culture relies on archaeological excavations at sites such as Nuzi and Alalakh as well as on cuneiform tablets, primarily from Hattusa (Boghazköy), the capital of the Hittites, whose civilization was greatly influenced by the Hurrians.
Tablets from Nuzi, Alalakh, and other cities with Hurrian populations (as shown by personal names) reveal Hurrian cultural features even though they were written in Akkadian. Hurrian cylinder seals were carefully carved and often portrayed mythological motifs. They are a key to the understanding of Hurrian culture and history.
The Hurrians were masterful ceramists. Their pottery is commonly found in Mesopotamia and in the lands west of the Euphrates; it was highly valued in distant Egypt, by the time of the New Kingdom.
Archaeologists use the terms Khabur ware and Nuzi ware for two types of wheel-made pottery used by the Hurrians. Khabur ware is characterized by reddish painted lines with a geometric triangular pattern and dots, while Nuzi ware has very distinctive forms, and are painted in brown or black.
The Hurrians had a reputation in metallurgy. The Sumerians borrowed their copper terminology from the Hurrian vocabulary. Copper was traded south to Mesopotamia from the highlands of Anatolia. The Khabur Valley had a central position in the metal trade, and copper, silver and even tin were accessible from the Hurrian-dominated countries Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa situated in the Anatolian highland.
Gold was in short supply, and the Amarna letters inform us that it was acquired from Egypt. Not many examples of Hurrian metal work have survived, except from the later Urartu. Some small fine bronze lion figurines were discovered at Urkesh.
The Mitanni were closely associated with horses. The name of the country of Ishuwa, which might have had a substantial Hurrian population, meant “horse-land”.[citation needed] A famous text discovered at Hattusa deals with the training of horses. The man who was responsible for the horse-training was a Hurrian called Kikkuli. The terminology used in connection with horses contains many Indo-Aryan loan-words (Mayrhofer, 1974).
Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are the oldest known instances of written music, dating from c. 1400 BCE. Amongst these fragments are found the names of four Hurrian composers, Tapšiẖuni, Puẖiya(na), Urẖiya, and Ammiya.
The Hurrian culture made a great impact on the religion of the Hittites. From the Hurrian cult centre at Kummanni in Kizzuwatna Hurrian religion spread to the Hittite people. Syncretism merged the Old Hittite and Hurrian religions. Hurrian religion spread to Syria, where Baal became the counterpart of Teshub. The later kingdom of Urartu also venerated gods of Hurrian origin. The Hurrian religion, in different forms, influenced the entire ancient Near East, except ancient Egypt and southern Mesopotamia.
Hurrian cylinder seals often depict mythological creatures such as winged humans or animals, dragons and other monsters. The interpretation of these depictions of gods and demons is uncertain. They may have been both protective and evil spirits. Some is reminiscent of the Assyrian shedu.
The Hurrian gods do not appear to have had particular “home temples”, like in the Mesopotamian religion or Ancient Egyptian religion. Some important cult centres were Kummanni in Kizzuwatna, and Hittite Yazilikaya. Harran was at least later a religious centre for the moon god, and Shauskha had an important temple in Nineve, when the city was under Hurrian rule. A temple of Nergal was built in Urkesh in the late third millennium BCE. The town of Kahat was a religious centre in the kingdom of Mitanni.
The Hurrian myth “The Songs of Ullikummi”, preserved among the Hittites, is a parallel to Hesiod’s Theogony; the castration of Uranus by Cronus may be derived from the castration of Anu by Kumarbi, while Zeus’s overthrow of Cronus and Cronus’s regurgitation of the swallowed gods is like the Hurrian myth of Teshub and Kumarbi. It has been argued that the worship of Attis drew on Hurrian myth. The Phrygian goddess Cybele would then be the counterpart of the Hurrian goddess Hebat.
Urartians:
Urartians share mostly of their history together with the Hurrians, excepet that Urartians didn’t take part in the formation of the Hurrian Late Bronze Age kingdom of Mitanni, but continued their existence in states as Nairi (KUR.KUR Na-i-ri, also Na-‘i-ru) and later Urartu (Armenian: Urartu, Assyrian: māt Urarṭu; Babylonian: Urashtu).
The name Urartu (Armenian: Urartu, Assyrian: māt Urarṭu; Babylonian: Urashtu), corresponding to Kingdom of Ararat or Kingdom of Van (Urartian: Biai, Biainili – from which is derived the Armenian toponym “Van”), comes from Assyrian sources.
The Assyrian King Shalmaneser I (1274–1245 BC or 1263–1234 BC) recorded a campaign in which he subdued the entire territory of “Uruatri” in 1274 BC. Uruartri itself was in the region centred around Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands.
The Shalmaneser text uses the name Uratri to refer to a geographical region, not a kingdom. The Assyrian inscriptions mention Uruartri as one of the states of Nairi which he conquered and names eight “lands” contained within Urartu (which at the time of the campaign were still disunited).
Shubria, also known as Subartu, was part of the Urartu confederation. Later, there is reference to a district in the area called Arme or Urme, which some scholars have linked to the name Armenia.
Strictly speaking, Urartu is the Assyrian term for a geographical region, while “kingdom of Urartu” or “Biainili lands” are terms used in modern historiography for the Iron Age state that arose in that region. The kingdom rose to power in the mid-9th century BC, but was conquered by Media in the early 6th century BC.
That a distinction should be made between the geographical and the political entity was already pointed out by König (1955). The landscape corresponds to the mountainous plateau between Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus mountains, later known as the Armenian Highlands.
According to archaeological data farming on the territory of Urartu began to develop since the Neolithic period, even in the 3rd millennium BC. In Urartian age agriculture was well developed and closely related to the Assyrian on the selection of cultures and ways of processing.
Hurrian & urartian:
The Hurro-Urartian language family are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian, both of which were spoken in the triangle made up of the Taurus, Caucasus and Zagros mountains, an area also known as the Armenian highland.
Hurro-Urartian is ergative, agglutinative languages, and is neither related to the Semitic nor to the Indo-European language families. I.M. Diakonoff and S. Starostin see similarities between the Hurro-Urartian languages and the Northeast Caucasian languages, and thus place it in the Alarodian family.
Urartian and Hurrian is closely related. The closeness holds especially true of the so-called Old Hurrian dialect, known above all from Hurro-Hittite bilingual texts, but the two languages must have developed quite independently from approximately 2000 BCE onwards. Although Urartian is not a direct continuation of any of the attested dialects of Hurrian, many of its features are best explained as innovative developments with respect to Hurrian as we know it from the preceding millennium.
Proponents of linguistic macrofamilies have suggested that Hurro-Urartian is part of an “Alarodian” phylum, together with Northeast Caucasian and further as “Macro-Caucasian”, but these theories are without support in mainstream linguistics.
Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians, a people who entered northern Mesopotamia, Syria and the southeastern parts of Anatolia from the Armenian highland around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC.
Archeologists have discovered the texts of numerous spells, incantations, prophecies and letters at sites including Hattusha, Mari, Tuttul, Babylon, Ugarit and others. The earliest Hurrian text fragments consist of lists of names and places from the end of the third millennium BC. The first full texts date to the reign of king Tish-atal of Urkesh and were found on a stone tablet accompanying the Hurrian foundation pegs known as the “Urkish lions.” At the start of the second milliennium BC.
There have been various Hurrian-speaking states, of which the most prominent one was the kingdom of Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia (1450–1270 BC), and was likely spoken at least initially in Hurrian settlements in Syria. There was also a Hurrian-Akkadian creole, called Nuzi, spoken in the Mitanni provincial capital of Arrapha.
There was also a strong Hurrian influence on Hittite culture in ancient times, so many Hurrian texts are preserved from Hittite political centres. The Mitanni variety is chiefly known from the so-called “Mitanni letter” from Hurrian Tushratta to pharaoh Amenhotep III surviving in the Amarna archives. The “Old Hurrian” variety is known from some early royal inscriptions and from religious and literary texts, especially from Hittite centres.
The Hurrian of the Mitanni letter differs significantly from that used in the texts at Hattusha and other Hittite centres, as well as from earlier Hurrian texts from various locations. The non-Mitanni letter varieties, while not entirely homogeneous, are commonly subsumed under the designation Old Hurrian.
In the thirteenth century BC, invasions from the west by the Hittites and the south by the Assyrians brought the end of the Mitanni empire, which was divided between the two conquering powers. In the following century, attacks by the Sea Peoples brought a swift end to the last vestiges of the Hurrian language.
It is around this time that other languages, such as the Hittite language and the Ugaritic language also became extinct, in what is known as the Bronze Age collapse. In the texts of these languages, as well as those of Akkadian or Urartian, many Hurrian names and places can be found.
Urartian, Vannic, and (in older literature) Chaldean (Khaldian, or Haldian), is attested from the late 9th century BC to the late 7th century BC as the official written language of the state of Urartu and was probably spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu that was located in the region of Lake Van, with its capital near the site of the modern town of Van, in the Armenian Highland, modern-day Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey.
It was probably spoken by the majority of the population in the mountainous areas around Lake Van and the upper Zab valley. It must have branched off from Hurrian approximately at the beginning of second millennium BC.
It has also been proposed that two little known groups, the Nairi and the Mannae, might have been Urartian speakers, but as little is known about them, it is hard to draw any conclusions about what languages they spoke.
First attested in the 9th century BCE, Urartian ceased to be written after the fall of the Urartian state in 585 BCE, and presumably it became extinct due to the fall of Urartu. It must have been replaced by an early form of Armenian, perhaps during the period of Achaemenid Persian rule, although it is only in the fifth century CE that the first written examples of Armenian appear.
It survives in many inscriptions found in the area of the Urartu kingdom, written in the Assyrian cuneiform script. There have been claims of a separate autochthonous script of “Urartian hieroglyphs” but these remain unsubstantiated. The inscription corpus is too sparse to substantiate the hypothesis. It remains unclear whether the symbols in question form a coherent writing system, or represent just a multiplicity of uncoordinated expressions of proto-writing or ad-hoc drawings.
The Aloridian city culture:
The Aloridian urban culture was not represented by a large number of cities. Urkesh was the only Aloridian city in the third millennium BC. In the second millennium BC we know a number of Aloridian cities, such as Arrapha, Harran, Kahat, Nuzi, Taidu and Washukanni – the capital of Mitanni.
Although the site of Washukanni, alleged to be at Tell Fakhariya, is not known for certain, no tell (city mound) in the Khabur Valley much exceeds the size of 1 square kilometer (250 acres), and the majority of sites are much smaller.
The Aloridian urban culture appears to have been quite different from the centralized state administrations of Assyria and ancient Egypt. An explanation could be that the feudal organization of the Aloridian kingdoms did not allow large palace or temple estates to develop.
Aloridian settlements are distributed over three modern countries, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The heart of the Aloridian world is dissected by the modern border between Syria and Turkey. Several sites are situated within the border zone, making access for excavations problematic.
A threat to the ancient sites are the dam many projects in the Euphrates, Tigris and Khabur valleys. Several rescue operations have already been undertaken when the construction of dams put entire river valleys under water.
The tells, or city mounds, often reveal a long occupation beginning in the Neolithic and ending in the Roman period or later. The characteristic Aloridian pottery, the Khabur ware, is helpful in determining the different strata of occupation within the mounds.
The Aloridian settlements are usually identified from the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Late Bronze Age, with Tell Mozan (Urkesh) being the main exception.
The first major excavations of Aloridian sites in Iraq and Syria began in the 1920s and 1930s. They were led by the American archaeologist Edward Chiera at Yorghan Tepe (Nuzi), and the British archaeologist Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak.
Recent excavations and surveys in progress are conducted by American, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and Italian teams of archaeologists, with international participants, in cooperation with the Syrian Department of Antiquities.
Center – West:
The Khabur Valley:
The Khabur River (also Habur, Habor, Kebar, Chebar, Chaboras) is the largest perennial tributary to the Euphrates in Syrian territory. It begins in southeastern Turkey and flows south to eastern Syria, where it empties into the Euphrates River near the town of Busayrah.
The river, with its several branches, such as the Aweidj, Dara, Djirdjib, Jaghjagh, Radd and Zergan Rivers, is not a major water course, and during most of the year is represented by wadis (dry riverbeds). Several important wadis join the Khabur north of Al-Hasakah, together creating what is known as the Khabur Triangle, or Upper Khabur area.
Although the Khabur originates in Turkey, the karstic springs around Ra’s al-‘Ayn are the river’s main source of water. From north to south, annual rainfall in the Khabur basin decreases from over 400 mm to less than 200 mm, making the river a vital water source for agriculture throughout history. The Khabur joins the Euphrates near the town of Busayrah.
Another Khabur river begins in Şırnak, Turkey, flows through Zakho, Iraq, and empties into the River Tigris at the tripoint between Turkey, Iraq and Syria; see Khabur (Tigris). In Sumerian mythology, the Habur is equivalent to the River Styx in Greek myth.
Since the 1930s, numerous archaeological excavations and surveys have been carried out in the Khabur Valley, indicating that the region has been occupied since the Lower Palaeolithic period. Important sites that have been excavated include Tell Halaf, Tell Brak, Tell Leilan (ancient Shekhna), Tell Mashnaqa, Tell Mozan, Tell Barri and Urkesh.
The region has given its name to a distinctive painted ware found in northern Mesopotamia and Syria in the early 2nd millennium BC, called Khabur ware. Khabur ware is a specific type of pottery named after the Khabur River region, in northeastern Syria, where large quantities of it were found by the archaeologist Max Mallowan at the site of Chagar Bazar.
The pottery’s distribution is not confined to the Khabur region, but spreads across northern Iraq and is also found at a few sites in Turkey and Iran. Archaeologists associate the pottery with the cuneiform texts dated to the reign of Shamshi-Adad I, although it is not clear how much earlier it was manufactured.
Four main Khabur ware phases are established, 1-4. While the starting date for phase 1 is inconclusive, a tentative date of ca. 1900 BC is suggested based on evidence from Tell Brak. The beginning of the second, and the main, phase of Khabur ware is dated to the reign of Shamshi-Adad I (ca. 1813 BC), based on evidence from Chagar Bazar, Tell al-Rimah, Tell Taya and Tell Leilan. The third phase of Khabur ware is dated to ca. 1750, and lasts until ca. 1550. The fourth and last phase, is a period shared between Khabur ware and Nuzi ware, and ends with the its disappearance ca. 1400 BC.
The pottery is wheel-made and decorated with monochrome designs in red, brown or black. The designs found on the pottery are combinations of simple motifs, usually geometric with horizontal bands, triangles and others. Naturalistic designs become more common in its later phases. Its final phase manifests jars with button bases and tall vertical necks, a form characteristic of the painted Nuzi ware, of the Late Bronze Age, which indicates an overlap between the two wares until the disappearance of the Khabur ware.
The region of the Khabur River is also associated with the rise of the kingdom of the Mitanni that flourished c.1500-1300 BC. The Khabur Valley had a central position in the metal trade, and copper, silver and even tin were accessible from the Hurrian-dominated countries Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa situated in the Anatolian highland. The name of the country of Ishuwa, which might have had a substantial Hurrian population, meant “horse-land”.
Tell Halaf culture:
Tell Halaf is an archaeological site in the Al Hasakah governorate of northeastern Syria, near the Turkish border, just opposite Ceylanpınar. The site dates to the 6th millennium BCE and was later the location of the Aramaean city-state of Guzana or Gozan.
It is the type site of the Halaf culture, which developed from Neolithic III at this site without any strong break. It was the first find of a Neolithic culture, subsequently dubbed the Halaf culture, characterized by glazed pottery painted with geometric and animal designs.
The Tell Halaf site flourished from about 6100 to 5400 BCE, a period of time that is referred to as the Halaf period. Halaf pottery has been found in other parts of northern Mesopotamia, such as at Nineveh and Tepe Gawra, Chagar Bazar and at many sites in Anatolia (Turkey) suggesting that it was widely used in the region.
In addition, the Halaf communities made female figurines of partially baked clay and stone and stamp seals of stone, (see also Impression seal). The seals are thought to mark the development of concepts of personal property, as similar seals were used for this purpose in later times.
The Halaf people used tools made of stone and clay. Copper was also known, but was not used for tools. The Nakh-Dagestanians had a reputation in metallurgy. The Sumerians borrowed their copper terminology from the Hurrian vocabulary. Copper was traded south to Mesopotamia from the highlands of Anatolia.
Hamoukar:
Hamoukar is a large archaeological site located in the Jazira region of northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border (Al Hasakah Governorate) and Turkey. The Excavations have shown that this site houses the remains of one of the world’s oldest known cities, leading scholars to believe that cities in this part of the world emerged much earlier than previously thought.
Traditionally, the origins of urban developments in this part of the world have been sought in the riverine societies of southern Mesopotamia (in what is now southern Iraq). This is the area of ancient Sumer, where around 4000 BC many of the famous Mesopotamian cities such as Ur and Uruk emerged, giving this region the attributes of “Cradle of Civilization” and “Heartland of Cities.”
Following the discoveries at Hamoukar, this definition may have to extended further up the Tigris River to include that part of northern Syria where Hamoukar is located.
This archaeological discovery suggests that civilizations advanced enough to reach the size and organizational structure that was necessary to be considered a city could have actually emerged before the advent of a written language. Previously it was believed that a system of written language was a necessary predecessor of that type of complex city.
Most importantly, archaeologists believe this apparent city was thriving as far back as 4000 BC and independently from Sumer. Until now, the oldest cities with developed seals and writing were thought to be Sumerian Uruk and Ubaid in Mesopotamia, which would be in the southern one-third of Iraq today.
The discovery at Hamoukar indicates that some of the fundamental ideas behind cities – including specialization of labor, a system of laws and government, and artistic development – may have begun earlier than was previously believed.
The fact that this discovery is such a large city is what is most exciting to archaeologists. While they have found small villages and individual pieces that date much farther back than Hamoukar, nothing can quite compare to the discovery of this size and magnitude.
Eye Idols made of alabaster or bone have been found in Tell Hamoukar. Eye Idols have also been found in Tell Brak, the biggest settlement from Syria’s Late Chalcolithic period.
Excavation work undertaken in 2005 and 2006 has shown that this city was destroyed by warfare by around 3500 BC – probably the earliest urban warfare attested so far in the archaeological record of the Near East. Contiuned excavations in 2008 and 2010 expand on that.
Urkesh:
Hurrian names occur sporadically in north western Mesopotamia and the area of Kirkuk in modern Iraq by the Middle Bronze Age. Their presence was attested at Nuzi, Urkesh and other sites. They eventually infiltrated and occupied a broad arc of fertile farmland stretching from the Khabur River valley to the foothills of the Zagros Mountains.
The Khabur River valley became the heart of the Hurrian lands. The first known Hurrian kingdom emerged around the city of Urkesh (modern Tell Mozan) located in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains in Al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria during the third millennium BC.
Urkesh was founded during the fourth millennium BC possibly by the Hurrians on a site which appears to have been inhabited previously for a few centuries.
There is evidence that they were allied with the Akkadian Empire indicating they had a firm hold on the area by the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad (ca. 2254–2218 BCE).
Urkesh was an ally of the Akkadian Empire through what is believed to have been a dynastic marriage tradition. Tar’am-Agade the daughter of the Akkadian king, Naram-Sin, is believed to have been married to the king of Urkesh.
The city-state of Urkesh had some powerful neighbors. At some point in the early second millennium BCE, the Amorite kingdom of Mari to the south subdued Urkesh and made it a vassal state.
During the early second millennium BC the city passed into the hands of the rulers of Mari, a city a few hundred miles to the south. The king of Urkesh became a vassal (and apparently an appointed puppet) of Mari. The people of Urkesh evidently resented this, as the royal archives at Mari provide evidence of their strong resistance; in one letter, the king of Mari tells his Urkesh counterpart that “I did not know that the sons of your city hate you on my account. But you are mine, even if the city of Urkesh is not.”
In the continuous power struggles over Mesopotamia, another Amorite dynasty made themselves masters over Mari in the eighteenth century BCE. Shubat-Enlil (modern Tell Leilan), the capital of this Old Assyrian kingdom, was founded some distance from Urkesh at another Hurrian settlement in the Khabur River valley.
In the middle of the millennium, Tell Mozan was the location of a Mitanni religious site. The city appears to have been largely abandoned circa 1350 BC, although the reason for this is unknown to archaeologists at this time.
The genealogy and identity of Urkesh’s rulers is largely unknown, but the following names have been identified as being those of the city-state’s kings. The first three known kings (only two of whom are known by name) bore the Hurrian title endan.
Tell Barri:
Tell Barri is an archaeological site in north-eastern Syria in the Al-Hasakah Governorate. It is situated along the Wadi Jaghjagh, a tributary of the Khabur River. Its ancient name was Kahat as proved by a threshold found on the south-western slope of the mound.
The earliest layers discovered at Tell Barri date to the Halaf period. Barri was situated in the fertile crescent and could benefit from winter rains as well as the river water. This developed the early agriculture of the area.
The site of Tell Barri was inhabited since the fourth millennium BC. By the middle of the third millennium BC Barri came under Akkadian cultural influence. The large urban centre at Tell Brak was only a short distance away.
By the eighteenth century BC the city 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 located northeast of Kahat.
When the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia collapsed, the harem of its king Shamshi-Adad I sought refuge at Kahat. Several centuries later, the town emerged as a religious centre when the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni established itself in the region by the fifteenth century BC. The temple to the Storm god Teshub in Kahat is specifically mentioned in the Shattiwaza treaty of the fourteenth century BC. Shortly afterwards the town fell into the hands of the Assyrians.
In the Neo-Assyrian 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.
Tell Brak:
Tell Brak (6000-2000 BC), ancient Nagar, is a tell, or settlement mound, in the Upper Khabur area in Al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria. At 40 metres (130 ft) in height, and an area of approximately 130 hectares (320 acres), it is one of the largest archaeological sites in northern Mesopotamia.
A small settlement existed at the site as early as 6000 BC, and materials from the Late Neolithic Halaf culture have been found there. Occupation continued into the succeeding Ubaid and Uruk periods.
Excavations and surface survey of the site and its surroundings reveal a city that developed from the early 4000 BC (Late Chalcolithic 3 Period) contemporaneously with (or even slightly earlier than) better known cities of southern Mesopotamia, such as Uruk.
Public buildings include the Eye Temple at the settlement’s southern edge and an administrative building with attached workshops and kilns at its northern edge (Area TW). The temple, built around 3500–3300 BCE, was named for the hundreds of small alabaster “eye idol” figurines, which were incorporated into the mortar with which the mudbrick temple was constructed.
The building’s surfaces were richly decorated with clay cones, copper panels and gold work, in a style comparable to contemporary temples of Sumer. The most dramatic discoveries during recent excavations are a series of mass graves dating to circa 3800–3600 BCE, which suggest that the process of urbanization was accompanied by an increase in the organization of warfare.
From ca 3500 BC, Brak, along with many other settlements in northern Mesopotamia, was partly colonised by immigrants from Late Uruk southern Mesopotamia.
Among extensive Late Uruk materials found at Brak is a standard text for educated scribes (the “Standard Professions” text, known from Uruk IV), part of the standardized education taught in the 3rd millennium BC over a wide area of Syria and Mesopotamia.
Third millennium BC cuneiform texts from the city of Ebla and from Brak itself identify Nagar (Brak’s ancient name) as the major point of contact between the cities of the northern Levant, eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia.
Nagar’s active commercial and cultural interchanges with Ebla are also recorded, as its power over the intervening city of Nabada (Tell Beydar). A partially burned administrative building or temple near the centre of Brak, destroyed around 2400 BCE (rediscovered in 1998) has a curved exterior wall reminiscent of the Khafajah Temple Oval in central Mesopotamia.
Skeletal remains show that the city was a source for donkey-onager hybrids used for drawing wheeled carts before the introduction of the horse, about 2300 BC.
In the late 3rd millennium BC, Nagar lay at the northern edge of the Akkadian sphere of influence. To the north, the nearby city of Urkesh may have retained some form of independence. The palace-stronghold of Naram-Sin of the 2200 BC, built at a time when Nagar was a northern administrative center of the Akkadian Empire, was more of a depot for the storage of collected tribute and agricultural produce than a residential seat.
The excavators do not credit the Akkadians with political control of the city, and the political significance of cuneiform administrative documents in Akkadian retrieved from the palace are open to interpretation. At the end of the Early Bronze Age, the site shrank in size, contemporary with a region-wide settlement disruption that some scholars have attributed to dramatic climate change.
In its early 2nd millennium BCE strata (contemporary with the Old Babylonian Period and the local kingdom of Shamshi-Adad), the site remains relatively small, with at least two areas of houses restricted to the highest ridge of the mound.
In the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE, the still relatively small area occupied contained a Late Bronze Age monumental palace and Mitanni temple (circa 1500-1360 BCE) and a continuation of the sequence of domestic occupation. A “suburb” off the main mound to the north may have comprised additional houses but is now all-but-destroyed through modern agriculture.
Chagar Bazar:
Chagar Bazar is an ancient site in northern Syria, about 35 kilometers north of Al-Hasakah, occupied from the sixth to the second millennium BC. It is situated by the small river Dara, a tributary to the Khabur River. Alternative spellings are Tell Chagar Bazar, or Šagir Bazar.
Chagar Bazar was already settled in the Neolithic. Excavations revealed pottery belonging to the Halaf and Ubaid cultures. By the Early Bronze Age, in the third millennium BC, Chagar Bazar had turned into a small town with the size of 12 hectares / 30 acres. The site appears to have been abandoned by the end of the third millennium BC. It was resettled by Hurrians in the Middle Bronze Age. Fine examples of the Khabur ware pottery dating to this period have been discovered by the excavators.
Tell Leilan:
Tell Leilan is an archaeological site situated near the Wadi Jarrah in the Khabur River basin in Al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria, a region formerly a part of ancient Assyria. The site has been occupied since the 5th millennium BC. The city originated around 5000 BC as a small farming village and grew to be a large city ca. 2600 BC, three hundred years before the Akkadian Empire.
During the late third millennium, the site was known as Shekhna. A 3-foot layer of sediment at Tell Leilan containing no evidence of human habitation offered clues as to the cause of the demise of the Akkadian imperialized city; analysis indicated that at around 2200 BC, a three-century drought was severe enough to affect agriculture and settlement.
Around 1800 BC, the site was renamed Shubat-Enlil by the Assyrian king, Shamshi-Adad I and it became the capital of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia. The conquest of the region by Shamshi-Adad I (1813–1781 BC) of Assyria revived the abandoned site of Tell Leilan. Shamshi-Adad saw the great potential in the rich agricultural production of the region and made it the capital city of his empire. He renamed it from Shehna to Shubat-Enlil, or Šubat-Enlil, meaning “the residence of the god Enlil” in the Akkadian language.
In the city a royal palace was built and a temple acropolis to which a straight paved street led from the city gate. There was also a planned residential area and the entire city was enclosed by a wall. The city size was about 90 hectares (220 acres). Shubat-Enlil may have had a population of 20,000 people at its peak.
The city prospered until the king Samsu-iluna of Babylon sacked it in 1726 BC in an attempt to maintain Babylonia’s failing influence over Assyria. The Babylonians were defeated driven out of Assyria by the Assyrian king Adasi, however Shubat-Enlil was never reoccupied and the Assyrian capital was transferred to its traditional home in Ashur.
Karkemish:
Carchemish or Karkemish (Latin: Europus) was an important ancient capital at times independent but also having been part of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo Assyrian Empires, now on the frontier between Turkey and Syria. It was the location of an important battle between the Babylonians and Egyptians, mentioned in the Bible (Jer. 46:2).
Modern neighbouring cities are Karkamış in Turkey and Jarabulus in Syria (also Djerablus, Jerablus, Jarablos, Jarâblos); the original form of the modern toponym seems to have been Djerabis, likely derived from the ancient name of the Hellenistic-Roman settlement Europos.
The site has been occupied since the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods (pot burials), with cist tombs from ca. 2400 BC (Early Bronze Age). The city is mentioned in documents found in the Ebla archives of the 3rd millennium BC.
Harran:
Harran was a major ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia whose site is near the modern village of Altınbaşak, Turkey, 24 miles (44 kilometers) southeast of Şanlıurfa. The location is in a district of Şanlıurfa Province that is also named “Harran”.
A few kilometers from the village of Altınbaşak are the archaeological remains of ancient Harran, a major commercial, cultural, and religious center first inhabited in the Early Bronze Age III (3rd millennium BCE) period. It was known as Ḫarrānu in the Assyrian period; possibly Ḫaran in the Hebrew Bible; Carrhae under the Roman Empire; Hellenopolis in the Early Christian period; and Ḥarrān in the Islamic period.
Kizzuwatna:
Hurrians also settled in the coastal region of Adaniya in the country of Kizzuwatna. Kizzuwatna (or Kizzuwadna; in Ancient Egyptian Kode), is the name of an ancient Anatolian kingdom in the 2nd millennium BC. It was situated in the highlands of southeastern Anatolia, near the Gulf of İskenderun in modern-day Turkey. It encircled the Taurus Mountains and the Ceyhan river. The center of the kingdom was the city of Kummanni, situated in the highlands. In a later era, the same region was known as Cilicia.
The country possessed valuable resources, such as silver mines in the Taurus Mountains. The slopes of the mountain range are still partly covered by woods. Annual winter rains made agriculture possible in the area at a very early date (see Çatal Hüyük). The plains at the lower course of the Ceyhan river provided rich cultivated fields.
Kummanni was the name of the Anatolian kingdom of Kizzuwatna. Its location is uncertain, but is believed to be near the classical settlement of Comana in Cappadocia. It was the major cult center of the Hurrian chief deity, Tešup. Its Hurrian name Kummeni simply translates as “The Shrine.”
The city persisted into the Early Iron Age, and appears as Kumme in Assyrian records. It was located on the edge of Assyrian influence in the far northeastern corner of Mesopotamia, separating Assyria from Urartu and the highlands of southeastern Anatolia. Kumme was still considered a holy city in Assyrian times, both in Assyria and in Urartu. Adad-nirari II, after re-conquering the city, made sacrifices to “Adad of Kumme.” The three chief deities in the Urartian pantheon were “the god of Ardini, the god of Kumenu, and the god of Tushpa.”
Tushpa:
Tushpa was the 9th century BC capital of Urartu, later becoming known as Van which is derived from Biaina the native name of Urartu. The early settlement was centered upon the steep-sided bluff now referred to as Van Fortress (Van Kalesi), not far from the shores of Lake Van and a few kilometers west of the modern city of Van. The ancient ruins are located just west of Van and east of Lake Van in the Van Province of Turkey.
Archaeological excavations and surveys carried out in the Van Province indicate that the history of human settlement in this region dates back at least as far as 5000 BC. The Tilkitepe Mound located along the shores of Lake Van and a few kilometres to the south of the citadel of Van, is the only known source of information about the oldest cultures of Van predating the founding of Tushpa.
The fortress of Van is a massive stone fortification built by the ancient kingdom of Urartu and held from the 9th-7th centuries BC. It overlooks Tushpa, and is the largest example of this kind of complex. A number of similar fortifications were built throughout the Urartian kingdom, usually cut into hillsides and outcrops in places where modern-day Armenia, Turkey and Iran meet. Successive groups such as the Armenians, Romans, Medes, Achaemenid and Sassanid Persians, Arabs, Seljuqs, Ottomans and Russians each controlled the fortress at one time or another.
The lower parts of the walls of Van Citadel were constructed of unmortared basalt, while the rest was built from mud-bricks. Such fortresses were used for regional control, rather than as a defense against foreign armies. The ancient ruins of the fortress support walls constructed during the medieval era. Other cuneiform inscriptions have been found at the site and are typically off limits unless to large tour groups due to vandalism.
The region came under the control of the Armenian Orontids in the 7th century BC and later Persians in the mid 6th century BC.
Muṣaṣir:
Muṣaṣir (Mu-ṣa-ṣir, Akkadian for Exit of the Serpent/Snake ), in Urartian Ardini (likely from Armenian Artin) was an ancient city of Urartu, attested in Assyrian sources of the 9th and 8th centuries BC. It was acquired by the Urartian King Ishpuini ca. 800 BC. The city’s tutelary deity was Ḫaldi. The city’s location is not known with certainty, although there are a number of hypotheses, all in the general area of 36°N 46°E, in the Zagros south of Lake Urmia.
Center – East
Zab river valey:
The Great Zab or Upper Zab (al-Zāb al-Akbar) is an approximately 400-kilometre (250 mi) long river flowing through Turkey and Iraq. It rises in Turkey in the mountainous region east of Lake Van at an elevation of approximately 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) and joins the Tigris on its left bank in Iraq south of Mosul.
The drainage basin of the Great Zab covers approximately 40,300 square kilometres (15,600 sq mi), and during its course, the rivers collects the water from a large number of tributaries. Numerous mountain streams and wadis join the Great Zab on its right and left banks. The Great Zab receives most of its waters from the left-bank tributaries; the Rubar-i-Shin, Rukuchuk, Rubar-i-Ruwandiz, Rubat Mawaran and Bastura Chai. Because of its torrential nature, Medieval Arab geographers have described the Great Zab – together with the Little Zab – as “demoniacally possessed”.
In Turkey, the Great Zab traverses the provinces of Van and Hakkâri, whereas in Iraq it flows through Duhok Governorate and Erbil Governorate. Together with the Tigris, the Great Zab forms the boundary between Erbil Governorate and Ninawa Governorate. In its upper reaches, the Great Zab flows through steep, rocky gorges. The stretch between Amadiya and the Bekhme Gorge – where the Bekhme Dam remains unfinished – has been called the Sapna Valley.
The river and its tributaries are primarily fed by rainfall and snowmelt – as a result of which discharge fluctuates highly throughout the year. At least six dams have been planned on the Great Zab and its tributaries, but construction of only one, the Bekhme Dam, has commenced but was halted after the Gulf War.
Although the area is not well known from an archaeological point of view, the available evidence nevertheless shows that the relatively favourable ecological conditions of the Iraqi part of the Zagros attracted human groups from early prehistory onwards. Lower Palaeolithic archaeological sites have to date not been found in the Iraqi part of the Zagros Mountains, but they are known from the Iranian side where numerous cave sites have been found during archaeological surveys.
Evidence for human occupation of the Zagros reaches back into the Lower Palaeolithic, as evidenced by the discovery of many cave-sites dating to that period in the Iranian part of the mountain range. Middle Palaeolithic stone tool assemblages are known from Barda Balka, a cave-site south of the Little Zab; and from the Iranian Zagros.
The earliest evidence for human occupation in this region comes from the Middle Palaeolithic site of Barda Balka, where Late Acheulean stone tools have been found. Archaeological research elsewhere in the Zagros confirms the importance of this area to early human hunter-gatherers – including groups of Neanderthals as evidenced by the finds in Shanidar Cave in the Great Zab basin. A Mousterian stone tool assemblage – produced by either Neanderthals or anatomically modern humans – was recently excavated in Arbil.
In prehistoric times the region was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at the Shanidar Cave. This cave-site, located in the Sapna Valley, has yielded a settlement sequence stretching from the Middle Palaeolithic up to the Epipalaeolithic period. The site is particularly well known for its Neanderthal burials. The Epipalaeolithic occupation of Shanidar, contemporary with the use of the Kebaran stone tool assemblage, is the oldest evidence for anatomically modern human occupation of the Great Zab basin.
The following Protoneolithic, or Natufian, occupation is contemporary with the oldest occupation of the nearby open-air site Zawi Chemi Shanidar.
Both open-air and cave sites are attested for the Zarzian culture, which straddles the Upper and Epipalaeolithic periods. After the Zarzian, the focus of human occupation shifted from cave-sites, which continue to be used as secondary or seasonal occupation sites up to today, to open-air sites and it was in this period that the trend toward domestication of plants and animals set in. Domestication of the goat probably occurred first in this area of the Zagros.
M’lefaat on the Khazir River (a tributary to the Great Zab) was a small village of hunter-gatherers dating to the 10th millennium BC that was contemporary with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) in the Levant.
The region was host to the Jarmo culture, a Neolithic village community that practiced agriculture and animal husbandry east of Kirkuk, circa 7000 BC. Pottery occurs from the early occupation levels onward; in its later phases it resembles pottery from the Hassuna culture circa 6000 BC. The early occupation of Tell Shemshara, in the Ranya Plain, can also be dated to this period. The archaeological fieldwork in the Ranya Plain showed that this area was occupied during the Ubaid, Uruk and Ninevite V periods – roughly from the middle 6th to the mid-3rd millennium BCE.
An archaeological survey of the Citadel of Arbil, in the plain south of the lower course of the Great Zab, has shown that this site was continuously occupied at least from the 6th millennium BCE upward.
The region was inhabited by the northern branch of the Akkadians, later known as Assyrians, and also to some degree by Hurrians. It was ruled by the Akkadian Empire from 2334 BC until 2154 BC. Assyrian kings are attested from the 23rd century BC according to the Assyrian King List, and Assyrian city-states such as Ashur and Ekallatum started appearing in the region from the mid 21st century BC.
The region enters history at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, when Arbil is mentioned as Urbilum by king Shulgi of the Ur III dynasty. From that time onward, the Little Zab basin became increasingly entangled in the affairs of the successive Mesopotamian empires that sought control over the Zagros Mountains.
Prior to the rule of king Ushpia circa 2030 BC, the city of Ashur appears to have been a regional administrative center of the Akkadian Empire, implicated by Nuzi tablets, subject to their fellow Akkadian Sargon and his successors.
Large cities were built by the Assyrians, including Ashur, Nineveh, Guzana, Arrapkha, Imgur-Enlil (Balawat), Shubat-Enlil and Kalhu (Calah/Nimrud). The great Assyrian capitals of Assur, Nineveh, Nimrud and Dur-Sharrukin were all located in the foothill zone where the Great Zab flows into the Tigris, and the Great Zab basin became increasingly integrated into the Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian empires. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the Great Zab provided water for irrigation for the lands around the capital city of Nimrud, the capital of the empire until 706 BC.
Nimrud was located only 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away from the confluence of the Great Zab with the Tigris. The Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II constructed a canal called Patti-Hegalli that tapped water from the Great Zab to irrigate the land around Nimrud, and this canal was restored by his successors Tiglath-Pileser III and Esarhaddon. This canal ran along the right bank of the Great Zab and cut through a rock bluff by means of a tunnel and is still visible today.
The Assyrians ruled the region from the 21st century BC. The region was known as Assyria, and was the center of various Assyrian empires (particularly during the periods 1813-1754 BC, 1385-1076 BC and the Neo Assyrian Empire of 911-608 BC.
In the early second millennium BC, king Shamshi-Adad of Upper Mesopotamia waged war to the land of Qabra, which was probably located along the lower course of the Little Zab, and installed garrisons in the conquered towns. The archive of clay tablets found at Tell Shemshara (ancient Shusharra) shows that the local governor switched allegiance and became a vassal of Shamshi-Adad.
During the 14th century BCE, the region was part of the Mitannian kingdom, with sites like Nuzi and Tell al-Fakhar, south of the Little Zab, yielding clay tablet archives for this period. During the late second–early first millennia BCE, the lower Little Zab basin belonged to the heartland of the Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian empires.
Between 612 and 605 BC the Assyrian empire fell, and it passed to the neo-Babylonians and later became part of the Athura Satrap within the Achaemenian Empire from 539 to 332 BC, where it was known as Athura, the Achaemenid name for Assyria.
After the fall of the Neo-Assyrian empire, the Medes gained control of the area, followed by the Achaemenids in 550 BC. The Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE – one of the decisive battles leading to the fall of the Achaemenid empire at the hands of Alexander the Great – supposedly took place north of the Great Zab in the vicinity of Mosul.
The region fell to Alexander The Great in 332 BC, and was thereafter ruled by the Greek Seleucid Empire until the mid 2nd century BC (and was renamed Syria, a Greek corruption of Assyria), when it fell to Mithridates I of Parthia. The Assyrian semi-independent kingdom of Adiabene was centred in Arbil in the first Christian centuries.
Later, the region was incorporated by the Romans as the Roman Assyria province, but shortly retaken by the Sassanids who established the Satrap of Assuristan (Sassanid Assyria) in it until the Arab Islamic conquest. The region became a center of the Assyrian Church of the East and a flourishing Syriac literary tradition during Sassanid rule.
Urmia:
Lake Urmia (Persian: Daryache-ye Orumiye, Kurdish, Zarivar-i Wermy, Armenian: “Urmia Lij”; ancient name: Lake Matiene) is a salt lake in northwestern Iran, near Iran’s border with Turkey. “Mia” is Aramaic Syriac meaning “water.” Hence Urmia simply means «Watertown” – a befitting name for a city situated by a lake and surrounded by rivers, would be the cradle of water.
The lake is between the Iranian provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, west of the southern portion of the similarly shaped Caspian Sea. It is the largest lake in the Middle East, and the third largest salt water lake on earth, with a surface area of approximately 5,200 km².
The lake is named after the provincial capital city of Urmia, originally a Assyrian name meaning town of water or cradle of water. Its ancient Persian name was Chichast (meaning, “glittering” – a reference to the glittering mineral particles suspended in the lake water and found along its shores). In the medieval times it came to be known as Lake Kabuda, or “azure”, in Persian, or “Kapuyt/Gabuyd” in Armenian.
Urmia (Kurdish: Wirmê) variously transliterated as Oroumiyeh, Orūmīyeh and Urūmiyeh, is a city in and the capital of West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. The excavations of the ancient ruins near Urmia led to the discovery of utensils that date back to 2000 years BC. According to Vladimir Minorsky, there have been villages in the Urmia plain some 2000 years BC., with their civilization under the influence of Van nation.
One of the early mentions of Lake Urmia is from the Assyrian records from 9th century BC. There, in the records of Shalmaneser III (reign 858-824 BCE), two names are mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia: Parsuwash and Matai.
It is not completely clear whether these referred to places or tribes or what their relationship was to the subsequent list of personal names and “kings”. But Matais were Medes and linguistically the name “Parsuwash” matches the Old Persian word pārsa – an Achaemenid ethno-linguistic designation.
In the ancient times, the west bank of Urmia lake was called Gilzan, and in the 9th century BC. an independent government ruled there which later joined the Urartu or Mana empire, and in the 8th century BC., the area was a vassal of the Asuzh government until it joined the Median Empire after its formation.
Lake Matianus is an old name for Lake Urmia. It was the center of the Mannaean Kingdom situated east and south of the Lake Urmia, roughly centered around the Mahabad plain in the Azerbaijan region of Iran.
The Mannaeans (Akkadian: Mannai, possibly Biblical Minni) were an ancient people who lived in the territory of present-day northwestern Iran south of lake Urmia, around the 10th to 7th centuries BC. At that time they were neighbors of the empires of Assyria and Urartu, as well as other small buffer states between the two, such as Musasir and Zikirta.
Mannae was overrun by a people who were called Matiani or Matieni, an Iranic people variously identified as Scythian, Saka, Sarmatian, or Cimmerian. It is not clear whether the lake took its name
from the people or the people from the lake, but the country came to be called Matiene or Matiane.
Naqadeh (formerly known as Sulduz) is a city in and the capital of Naqadeh County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. Important archaeological sites in the vicinity of Naqadeh include Teppe Hasanlu, 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) northwest of Naqadeh, and Hajji Firuz Tepe.
Hajji Firuz Tepe is an archaeological site located in West Azarbaijan province in northwestern Iran. The site was excavated between 1958 and 1968 by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
The excavations revealed a Neolithic village that was occupied in the second half of the sixth millennium BC where some of the oldest archaeological evidence of grape-based wine was discovered in the form of organic residue in a pottery jar.
Excavations that began in 1956 succeeded in uncovering the fortified city of Hasanlu on the south side of Lake Matianus, once thought to be a potential Mannaean site. More recently, the site of Qalaichi (possibly ancient Izirtu/Zirta) has been linked to the Mannaeans based on a stela with this toponym found at the site.
Teppe Hasanlu is an archeological site of an ancient city located in northwest Iran (in the province of West Azerbaijan), a short distance south of Lake Urmia. The nature of its destruction at the end of the 9th century BC essentially froze one layer of the city in time, providing researchers with extremely well preserved buildings, artifacts, and skeletal remains from the victims and enemy combatants of the attack.
Hasanlu Tepe is the largest site in the Gadar River valley and dominates the small plain known as Solduz. The site consists of a 25m high central “citadel” mound, with massive fortifications and paved streets, surrounded by a low outer town, 8m above the surrounding plain. The entire site, once much larger but reduced in size by local agricultural and building activities, now measures about 600m across, with the citadel having a diameter of about 200 m.
The site was inhabited fairly continuously from the 6th millennium BC to the 3rd century AD. It stretches back to the Neolithic period, after which there was fairly continuous occupation until the early Iron Age (ca 1250-330 BC), followed by a hiatus before subsequent reoccupation; occupation finally ends in Iran’s medieval period (Hasanlu period I).
Starting in the Middle Bronze III period or hasanlu VIa (1600–1450 BC), there are important changes in material culture. This is best attested at the site of Dinkha Tepe, but is also present at Hasanlu.
The most obvious change is the rapid abandonment of old styles of pottery, especially painted Khabur Ware, and the increased importance in producing monochrome unpainted pottery that is frequently polished or burnished.
This ware is known as Monochrome Burnished Ware or, formerly, “Grey Ware” – the ware occurs in a wide range of colors and this is something of a misnomer. In the Late Bronze Age or Hasanlu Period V, Monochrome Burnished Ware comes to dominate the ceramic assemblages of the Ushnu and Solduz valleys of the southern Lake Urmia Basin.
Some scholars link changes in pottery forms to cultural contact with Assyria, this being a period of expansion for the Middle Assyrian kingdom, when such kings as Adad-nirari I (1295-1264 BC), Shalmaneser I (1263-1234 BC), and Tukulti-Ninurta I (1233-1197 BC) were conducting campaigns into the Zagros mountains to the south.
During this time, there was occupation on the High Mound and Low Mound of Hasanlu, and graves have been excavated at Dinkha Tepe and Hasanlu.The continued presence in significant quantities of Assyrian goods or copies, alongside objects of local manufacture, attest to continued cultural contact with Assyria.
All and all, according to historical documents, the western part of the Urmia Lake has been a center of attention of the prehistoric nations, the evidence of which are the numerous ancient hills in the area, such as Gouy Tapeh, 6 kilometers southeast of the lake which competes with the oldest hills of Mesopotamia, Asia the Minor, and the Iranian Plateau. The site’s mound is 80 feet in height and situated by a natural spring. It was found to have been continuously occupied from the 4th millennium BC until 1200 BCE.
The claim that Urmia was the birthplace of Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrian religion (this is disputed because most experts agree Zoroaster was most likely born in the eastern part of Greater Iran), or even the burial site of one or two of the Zoroastrian priests who allegedly traveled to Bethlehem for Christ’s birth indicate that the city has been one of the largest religious and scientific centers of the ancient times.
Subartu:
Subartu, also known as Shubria, was part of the Urartu confederation. Later, there is reference to a district in the area called Arme or Urme, which some scholars have linked to the name Armenia.
Shupria (Shubria) or Arme-Shupria (Akkadian: Armani-Subartu from the 3rd millennium BC) was a Proto-Armenian kingdom, known from Assyrian sources beginning in the 13th century BC, located in the Armenian Highland, to the southwest of Lake Van, bordering on Ararat proper. Scholars have linked the district in the area called Arme or Armani, to the name Armenia.
Weidner interpreted textual evidence to indicate that after the Proto-Armenian (Hurrian) king Shattuara of Mitanni was defeated by Adad-nirari I of Assyria in the early 13th century BC, he then became ruler of a reduced vassal state known as Shubria or Subartu. The name Subartu (Sumerian: Shubur) for the region is attested much earlier, from the time of the earliest Mesopotamian records (mid 3rd millennium BC).
Together with Armani-Subartu, Hayasa-Azzi and other Indo-European populations of the region such as the Nairi fell under Kingdom of Ararat rule in the 9th century BC, and their descendants (according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia) later contributed to the ethnogenesis of the early Armenians.
Shupria is mentioned in the letter of Esarhaddon to the god Assur. Esarhaddon undertook an expedition against Shupria in 674, subjugating it.
The land of Subartu (Akkadian Šubartum/Subartum/ina Šú-ba-ri, Assyrian mât Šubarri) or Subar (Sumerian Su-bir/Subar/Šubur) is mentioned in Bronze Age literature. The name also appears as Subari in the Amarna letters, and, in the form Šbr, in Ugarit.
Subartu was apparently a polity in Northern Mesopotamia, at the upper Tigris. Most scholars accept Subartu as an early name for Assyria proper on the Tigris, although there are various other theories placing it sometimes a little farther to the east, north or west of there. Its precise location has not been identified. From the point of view of the Akkadian Empire, Subartu marked the northern geographical horizon, just as Martu, Elam and Sumer marked “west”, “east” and “south”, respectively.
The Sumerian mythological epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta lists the countries where the “languages are confused” as Subartu, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land (the Amorites). Similarly, the earliest references to the “four quarters” by the kings of Akkad name Subartu as one of these quarters around Akkad, along with Martu, Elam, and Sumer. Subartu in the earliest texts seem to have been farming mountain dwellers, frequently raided for slaves.
Eannatum of Lagash was said to have smitten Subartu or Shubur, and it was listed as a province of the empire of Lugal-Anne-Mundu; in a later era Sargon of Akkad campaigned against Subar, and his grandson Naram-Sin listed Subar along with Armani (Armenians), -which has been identified with Aleppo-, among the lands under his control. Ishbi-Erra of Isin and Hammurabi also claimed victories over Subar.
Three of the 14th century BC Amarna letters, Akkadian cuneiform correspondence found in Egypt, mention Subari as a toponym. All are addressed to Akenaten; in two (EA 108 and 109), Rib-Hadda, king of Byblos, complains that Abdi-Ashirta, ruler of Amurru, had sold captives to Subari, while another (EA 100), from the city of Irqata, also alludes to having transferred captured goods to Subari.
There is also a mention of “Subartu” in the 8th century BC Poem of Erra (IV, 132), along with other lands that have harassed Babylonia. In Neo-Babylonian times (under Nabopolassar, Nebuchadrezzar II and Nabonidus), Subartu was used as a generic term for Assyria. The term was still current under Cambyses II, who mentions Subarian captives.
Subartu may have been in the general sphere of influence of the Hurrians. There are various alternate theories associating the ancient Subartu with one or more modern cultures found in the region, including Armenian or Kurdish tribes. Some scholars, such as Harvard Professor Mehrdad Izady, claim to have identified Subartu with the current Kurdish tribe of Zibaris inhabiting the northern ring around Mosul up to Hakkari in Turkey.
Aleppo has scarcely been touched by archaeologists, since the modern city occupies its ancient site. The site has been occupied from around 5000 BC, as excavations in Tallet Alsauda show.
Sabians:
The Sabians of Middle Eastern tradition are a variety of monotheistic: Gnostic (Mandeans), Hermetic (Harranian) as well as Abrahamic religions mentioned three times in the Quran with the people of the Book, “the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians.” In the hadith, they are described merely as converts to Islam, but interest in the identity and history of the group increased over time, and discussions and investigations about the Sabians begin to appear in later Islamic literature.
Mandaeans:
Mandaeans (Modern Mandaic: Mandaʻnāye, Arabic: aṣ-Ṣabi’a al-Mandā’iyūn) are an ethnoreligious group indigenous to the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia and are followers of Mandaeism, a Gnostic religion. The Mandaeans were originally native speakers of Mandaic, a Semitic language that evolved from Eastern Middle Aramaic, before switching to colloquial Iraqi Arabic and Modern Persian.
Arbil:
Erbil (Hewlêr in Roman-alphabet Kurdish) (also written Arbil, or Irbil) (Akkadian: Arba-ilu; Arabic: Arbīl; Kurdish: Hewlêr; Sumerian: Urbilum; Syriac-Aramaic: Arbaelo) is located 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Mosul, and is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Among historians, the most accepted terminology of the word Erbil is derived from the Assyrian language which means four gods (arba’ū ilū). The city was a centre for the worship of the goddess Ishtar. In classical times the city was known by its Aramaic name, Arbela. In Old Persian the city was called Arbairā.
The name Erbil was mentioned in Sumerian holy writings (c. 2000 BC) as Urbilum, Urbelum or Urbillum. The Neo-Sumerian ruler of Ur, Amar-Sin sacked Urbilum in his second year, ca. 1975 BC)
Today, the modern Kurdish name of the city, Hewlêr, appears to be a corruption of the local Neo-Aramaic name Arbel by a series of metatheses of consonants.
Urban life at Erbil (Hewlêr) can be dated back to at least 6000 BC, and it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. when king Shulgi mentioned the city of Urbilum – the ancient name of modern-day Arbil
Historical records for the region are available from the end of the third millennium BC onward. The earliest historical reference to the region dates to the Ur III dynasty, when king Shulgi mentioned the city of Urbilum – the ancient name of modern-day Arbil.
At the heart of the city is the ancient Citadel of Arbil. The Citadel of Arbil is a tell or occupied mound, in the historical heart of Erbil, rising between 25 and 32 metres (82 and 105 ft) from the surrounding plain. The buildings on top of the tell stretch over a roughly oval area of 430 by 340 metres (1,410 ft × 1,120 ft) occupying 102,000 square metres (1,100,000 sq ft).
The earliest evidence for occupation of the citadel mound dates to the 5th millennium BC, and possibly earlier. It appears for the first time in historical sources during the Ur III period, and gained particular importance during the Neo-Assyrian period. Arbil was noted for its distinctive cult of Ishtar, and the city was called “the Lady of Ishtar” by its Assyrian inhabitants.
The Mound of Qalich Agha lies within the grounds of the Museum of Civilization, 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from the citadel. An excavation in 1996 found tools from the Halaf, Ubaid and Uruk periods. West of the citadel at Ary Kon quarter, a chamber tomb dating to the Neo-Assyrian period has been excavated.
The Hurrians were the first to establish Urbilum and expand their rule to the rest of northern Mesopotamia. It was then under the Assyrian Empire from around 2000 BC until 608 BC, and it remained part of the Assyrian province under Persian, Greek, Parthian, Roman and Sassanid rule.
The city has since been under the rule of many regional powers, including the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Arabs, and the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks.
Under the Median Empire, Cyaxares might have settled a number of people from the Ancient Iranian tribe of Sagarthians in Arbela and Kirkuk, probably as a reward for their help in the capture of Nineveh. The Persian emperor Cyrus the Great occupied Assyria in 547 BC, and established there an Achaemenid satrapy called in Old Persian Aθurā (Assyria), with Arbela as the capital.
The Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia in 331 BC, took place approximately 100 kilometres (62 mi) west of Erbil. After the battle, Darius managed to flee to the city, and, somewhat inaccurately, the confrontation is sometimes known as the “Battle of Arbela”.
Erbil became part of the region disputed between Rome and Persia under the Sasanids. The ancient Syriac kingdom of Adiabene (the Greek form of Ḥadyab) had its center at Erbil, and the town and kingdom are known in Jewish Middle Eastern history for the conversion of the royal family to Judaism. Its populace then converted during the first and second century to Christianity, with Pkidha becoming traditionally its first bishop around 104 AD.
The metropolitanate of Ḥadyab in Arbela became a centre of eastern Syriac Christianity until late in the Middle Ages. During the Sassanian period and the Abbasid Caliphate, Erbil was an important centre for Christianity. After the Mongols captured the citadel in 1258, the importance of Erbil declined.
Aratta:
Aratta is a land that appears in Sumerian myths surrounding Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, two early and possibly mythical kings of Uruk also mentioned on the Sumerian king list. In “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta”, the goddess and/or her statue were taken from Aratta to the Sumerian city of Uruk by the ruler of Uruk, Enmerkar.
Aratta is described as follows in Sumerian literature: It is a fabulously wealthy place full of gold, silver, lapis lazuli and other precious materials, as well as the artisans to craft them. It is remote and difficult to reach. It is home to the goddess Inana, who transfers her allegiance from Aratta to Uruk. It is conquered by Enmerkar of Uruk.
Inanna’s name derives from Queen of Heaven (Sumerian: nin-anna). The Cuneiform sign of Inanna; however, is not a ligature of the signs lady and sky. These difficulties have led some early Assyriologists to suggest that originally Inanna may have been a Proto-Euphratean goddess, possibly related to the Hurrian mother goddess Hannahannah, accepted only latterly into the Sumerian pantheon, an idea supported by her youthfulness, and that, unlike the other Sumerian divinities, at first she had no sphere of responsibilities.
The view that there was a Proto-Euphratean substrate language in Southern Iraq before Sumerian is not widely accepted by modern Assyriologists.
Jarmo:
Jarmo (Qal’at Jarmo) is an archeological site located in northern Iraq on the foothills of Zagros Mountains east of Kirkuk city. It is one of the oldest agricultural communities in the world, dating back to 7090 BC. It is broadly contemporary with such other important Neolithic sites such as Jericho in the southern Levant and Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia. The site of Jarmo is approximately three to four acres (12,000 to 16,000 m²) in size and lies at an altitude of 800 meters above sea level in a belt of oak and pistachio woodlands.
The excavations exposed a small village, covering an area of 12,000 to 16,000 m², and which has been dated (by carbon-14) to 7090 BC, for the oldest levels, to 4950 BC for the most recent. The entire site consists of twelve levels. Jarmo appears to be two older, permanent Neolithic settlements and, approximately, contemporary with Jericho or the Neolithic stage of Shanidar.
The high point is likely to have been between 6,200 and 5,800 BC. This small village consisted of some twenty five houses, with adobe walls and sun-dried mud roofs, which rested on stone foundations, with a simple floor plan dug from the earth. These dwellings were frequently repaired or rebuilt. In all, about 150 people lived in the village, which was clearly a permanent settlement.
In the earlier phases there is a preponderance of objects made from stone, silex- using older styles- and obsidian. The use of this latter material, obtained from the area of Lake Van, 200 miles away, suggests that some form of organized trade already existed, as does the presence of ornamental shells from the Persian Gulf. In the oldest level baskets have been found, waterproofed with pitch, which is readily available in the area.
Agricultural activity is attested by the presence of stone sickles, cutters, bowls and other objects, for harvesting, preparing and storing food, and also by receptacles of engraved marble. In the later phases instruments made of bone, particularly perforating tools, buttons and spoons, have been found.
Further research has shown that the villagers of Jarmo grew wheat of two types, emmer and einkorn, a type of primitive barley and lentils (it is common to record the domestication of grains, less so of pulses). Their diet, and that of their animals, also included species of wild plant, peas, acorns, carob seeds, pistachios and wild wheat. Snail shells are also abundant.
There is evidence that they had domesticated goats, sheep and dogs. On the higher levels of the site pigs have been found, together with the first evidence of pottery.
Jarmo is one of the oldest sites at which pottery has been found, appearing in the most recent levels of excavation, which dates it to the 7th millennium BC. This pottery is handmade, of simple design and with thick sides, and treated with a vegetable solvent. There are clay figures, zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, including figures of pregnant women which are taken to be fertility goddesses, similar to the Mother Goddess of later Neolithic cultures in the same region.
Godin Tepe:
Godin Tepe is an archaeological site in western Iran, situated in the valley of Kangavar in Kermanshah Province. The importance of the site was due to its control over the early lapis-lazuli trade between Badakhshan in Afghanistan and the Mesopotamian flood plain. Cuyler-Young suggested the existence of Elamite trading posts at the site established by merchants from Susa.
Although the excavations concentrated on levels II (ended c. 500 BC?) to V (c. 3200 BC-3000 BC), the site was inhabited since much earlier, c. 5000 BC. Traces of wine and beer found in ceramics dated to c. 3500 BC and along with the findings at Hajji Firuz Tepe, provide evidence of the early production of those beverages in the Zagros Mountains.
During the 1973 campaign, level V was excavated through a deep cut from the citadel. It was occupied during the period 3200 BC-3000 BC. At the end of level V there was a clear gap in the settlement sequence. There were signs of fire, such as room 22 whose roof was burned. The houses were in general well-preserved and contained many artefacts, but objects made of the precious metal were lacking. The archaeological evidence support the idea the settlement was abandoned quickly, but in an orderly manner.
The pottery of level V show influences from the Uruk culture, with parallels at Susa, Uruk (IV) and Nippur. The typical Jemdet Nasr tall storage jars, known from Nippur, and the bevelled rim bowls of Uruk are missing however.
Thirteen seal impressions and two cylinder seals were found at level V. They were obviously produced locally, as shown by the discovery of an uncarved cylinder. The seal impressions show a parallel with Uruk, Susa and other sites in Khuzestan. They were partly decorated with drill holes. Steatite served as raw material for these, sometimes treated with tempering.
At level V some 43 clay tablets were found of which 27 were preserved in one piece. They contained primarily accounts, like those discovered at temporary Proto-Elamite and Uruk period sites in western Iran and Mesopotamia.
Level IV (3000-2650 BC) represents the “invasion” of the northern Yanik-culture (or Transcaucasian Early Bronze I culture), best known from Yanik Tepe (Azerbaijan). The only notable architectural remains of this period consist of a number of plastered hearths.
T.Cuyler Young Jr. defined three main groups of pottery for Level IV. Two of these groups belong to Transcaucasian Early Bronze Age Culture. One of these groups bears two types of coarse ware tempered with coarse grit.The other type is characterized by a grey-black burnished surface mostly with contrasting colours in the interior and exterior of the vessels.
This type of coarse ware was used for producing bowls entirely. Conical bowls decorated with incised and excised designs are common; the incised designs are occasionally filled with a whitish paste.
The second type of coarse ware is lighter in colour, often tan or pinkish buff. The surface of the vessels is either burnished or plain. Besides bowls there are jars with protruding rims and concave or recessed necks .
The second group of Transcaucasian Pottery found at Godin Tepe was classified as Common Ware. The fabric of this group was tempered by medium-fine grit and was not well-fired. This group of pottery has the same colour range like the coarse ware. The surfaces are highly burnished though the vessels with a light interior and dark exterior are predominant. The forms consist entirely of cups, including the recessed neck types. The decoration is similar in style and technique to the previous coarse wares, but the excised designs are less common.
Level III (c. 2600 BC-1500/1400 BC) shows connections with Susa and most of Luristan, and it has been suggested that it belonged to the Elamite confederacy. Near 1400 BC, Godin Tepe was abandoned and was not re-occupied until c. 750 BC.
Level II is represented by a single structure, a fortified, mud brick walled architectural complex (133 m x 55 m) occupied by a Mede chief. The columned halls are in the same architectural tradition of the later Persian halls (Pasargadae, Susa, Persepolis), first documented at Hasanlu (V). The Level II pottery (only wheel-made micaceous buff ware) have strong parallels with Iron Age sites as Baba Jan (I), Jameh Shuran (IIa), Tepe Nush-i Jan and Pasargadae.
Godin was again abandoned during the 6th century BC, perhaps as a result or in anticipation of the expansion of Cyrus the Great (c. 550 BC) (Brown 1990) or due to the interruption of a social stratification and secondary State formation process after the fall of Assyria.
Hajji Firuz Tepe:
Hajji Firuz Tepe is a tell, or settlement mound, of roughly oval shape measuring 200 by 140 metres (660 by 460 ft) at its base and reaching an elevation of 10.3 metres (34 ft) above the plain, but archaeological deposits also continue to an unknown depth below the modern surface of the plain.
The plain in which Hajji Firuz Tepe is located lies in the northwestern part of the Zagros Mountains at an elevation of 1,300–1,350 metres (4,300–4,430 ft) amsl. The Gadar River flows through it toward the east to eventually end in marshes bordering Lake Urmia.
The area is an important crossroads, with routes leading in all directions, including an easy route toward the west, crossing the Zagros Mountains via Rowanduz and Arbil toward the Mesopotamian Plains. The Gadar River valley falls within both the modern and ancient distribution zones of the wild grape (Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris) and of the terebinth.
Although the excavations focused primarily on the Neolithic occupation layers of the site, evidence for later occupation was also attested. On different parts of the tell, material from the Chalcolithic, Late Bronze Age/Iron Age and Islamic (eleventh century AD) periods was recovered, although the Neolithic occupation seems to have been the most significant occupation.
The evidence for winemaking consisted of six 9-litre (2.4 US gal) jars that were embedded in the floor of what archeologists suspect was a kitchen area in a mudbrick building that was inhabited some time between 5400–5000 BC. Inside was yellowish deposits that chemical analysis showed contained residue of tartaric acid and calcium tartrate. Additionally, analysis found deposit of resin, identified as from the terebinth tree (Pistacia terebinthus) that grew wild in the area.
It is possible that the resin was used as a preservative, in a manner similar to the Greek wine Retsina still being produced today, suggesting that winemaking in Hajji Firuz Tepe was deliberately taking place over 7,000 years ago.
While the residue in the jar is not definitive proof of winemaking, it does provide strong evidence for the possibility. Grapes are unique in being one of the few natural sources for tartaric acid, which is the most abundant acid in wine and often crystallizes into deposits that are left in containers that have held wine. Grapes also have a natural propensity to break down into alcohol by a process that we now know as fermentation where the yeast on the grape skins metabolize the sugar in the grapes into alcohol.
This happens most readily in a close container that is kept in room temperature. Whether or not the action was deliberate, storing grapes in jars that were then embedded in the floor would have created conditions favorable for wine production.
The presence of the terebinth resin deposits in the same container as the wine give a stronger indication that winemaking was perhaps deliberate in Hajji Firuz Tepe. Resin has had a long history of being used as ancient sealant and preservative, even before it became associated with winemaking by the ancient Greeks.
The volume that was stored (54 litres (14 US gal)) also seems to indicate large scale production beyond just household storage of a food product for sustenance. Additionally, archaeologists found clay stoppers, corresponding in size to the opening of the jars, nearby that also suggest a deliberate attempt at long term preservation and protection from air exposure.
The Zagros Mountains, which separate modern day Iran from Armenia, Iraq and Turkey, is home to many wild species of grapevines in the Vitis family. While wild vines are distinguished by separate male and female vines, the potential for pollination and the production of grapes could have easily happened, providing the Aryan inhabitants access to grapes.
Several archaeological sites in the Zagros Mountains have uncovered similar findings as Hajji Firuz Tepe of jars containing tartaric deposits and wine residues. South of Hajji Firuz Tepe is Godin Tepe, a site that appears to have been inhabited just after the neolithic period (around 3500–3000 BC).
Archaeologists there have discovered even more evidence of large scale winemaking with 30-litre (7.9 US gal) and 60-litre (16 US gal) wine jars as well as large basins containing wine residue, indicating that they might have been used for treading grapes as an early wine press. The residue on the jars was also found on the side of the containers, rather than the bottom, indicating that these jars were kept on their side, most likely for long term storage.
Towards the East:
The Great Zab or Upper Zab is an approximately 400-kilometre (250 mi) long river flowing through Turkey and Iraq. It rises in Turkey near Lake Van and joins the Tigris in Iraq south of Mosul.
The Epipalaeolithic occupation of Shanidar, contemporary with the use of the Kebaran stone tool assemblage, is the oldest evidence for anatomically modern human occupation of the Great Zab basin. The following Protoneolithic, or Natufian, occupation is contemporary with the oldest occupation of the nearby open-air site Zawi Chemi Shanidar.
The Zawi Chemi Shanidar is a village site in northern Iraq near Shanidar Cave with a terminal epi-Palaeolithic under Iron Age levels. Storage pits and a circular stone structure are dated to the 9th millennium BC. Large numbers of sheep bones are claimed to show signs of domestication at that time. Sickles, grinding stones, and querns testify to the gathering of vegetable products. Occupation was probably seasonal.
Other artifacts include stone axes and non-utilitarian objects such as worked bone with incised or notched decoration. Obsidian from the Lake Van area of Anatolia indicates far-ranging contacts. Burials were associated with a stone platform.
In western Iran, the M’lefatian culture (10,500–9000 BCE) on the Khazir River (a tributary to the Great Zab) was a small village of hunter-gatherers dating to the 10th millennium BCE that was contemporary with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A in the Levant. An archaeological survey of the Citadel of Arbil, in the plain south of the lower course of the Great Zab, has shown that this site was continuously occupied at least from the 6th millennium BC upward.
the M’lefatian culture was ancestral to the assemblages of Ali Tappah (9000–5000 BCE) and Jeitun (6000–4000 BCE). Still further east, the Hissar culture has been seen as the Mesolithic precursor to the Keltiminar culture (5500–3500 BCE) of the Kyrgyz steppe, which is related to the Pit–Comb Ware culture, or Comb Ceramic culture (4200-2000 BC), a northeast European culture of pottery-making hunter-gatherers, and belongs to the Finno-Ugric peoples.
The Comb Ceramic culture was a northeast European culture of pottery-making hunter-gatherers. It existed from around 4200 BC to around 2000 BC. The name is derived from the most common type of decoration on its ceramics, which looks like the imprints of a comb.
The distribution of the artifacts found includes Finnmark (Norway) in the north, the Kalix River (Sweden) and the Gulf of Bothnia (Finland) in the west and the Vistula River (Poland) in the south. In the east the Comb Ceramic pottery of northern Eurasia extends beyond the Ural mountains to the Baraba steppe adjacent to the Altai-Sayan mountain range, merging with a continuum of similar ceramic styles. It would include the Narva culture of Estonia and the Sperrings culture in Finland, among others. Some of this region was absorbed by the later Corded Ware horizon.
They are thought to have been essentially hunter-gatherers, though e.g. the Narva culture in Estonia shows some evidence of agriculture. The Pit–Comb Ware culture is one of the few exceptions to the rule that pottery and farming coexist in Europe. In the Near East farming appeared before pottery, then when farming spread into Europe from the Near East, pottery-making came with it. However in Asia, where the oldest pottery has been found, pottery was made long before farming. It appears that the Comb Ceramic Culture reflects influences from Siberia and distant China.
It is hypothesized that the Comb Ware people may have spoken Paleo-European (pre-Finno-Ugric) or an early Uralic language. However some toponyms and hydronyms may indicate also a non-Uralic, non-Indo-European language at work in some areas.
The Kelteminar culture (5500–3500 BCE) was a Neolithic archaeological culture of sedentary fishermen occupying the semi-desert and desert areas of the Karakum and Kyzyl Kum deserts and the deltas of the Amu Darya and Zeravshan rivers in the territories of ancient Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, dated to the 6th-3rd millennium BCE.
The culture was discovered and first excavated in 1939 by the USSR Chorasmian Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition under leadership of S.P. Tolstoy, who first described it. It is named after a site of the same name. The Kelteminar culture was replaced by the Tazabagyab culture.
The Kelteminar people practised a mobile hunting, gathering and fishing subsistence system. Over time, they adopted stockbreeding. With the Late Glacial warming, up to the Atlantic Phase of the Post-Glacial Optimum, Mesolithic groups moved north into this area from the Hissar (6000–4000 BCE). These groups brought with them the bow and arrow and the dog, elements of what Kent Flannery has called the “broad-spectrum revolution”.
The Kelteminar people lived in huge houses (size 24m x 17m and height 10m), which housed the whole tribal community of about 100-120 people. They adorned themselves with beads made of shells. They manufactured stone axes and miniature trapezoidal flint arrowheads. For cooking, they used clay vessels produced without the potter’s wheel. The economy was based on sedentary fishing and hunting.
The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (or BMAC, also known as the Oxus civilization) is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilisation of Central Asia, dated to ca. 2300–1700 BCE, located in present day northern Afghanistan, eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River).
There is archaeological evidence of previous settlement in the well-watered northern foothills of the Kopet Dag from the Neolithic period. This region is dotted with the multi-period tells characteristic of the ancient Near East, similar to those south west of the Kopet Dag in the Gorgan Plain in Iran.
The inhabitants of the BMAC were sedentary people who practised irrigation farming of wheat and barley. With their impressive material culture including monumental architecture, bronze tools, ceramics, and jewellery of semiprecious stones, the complex exhibits many of the hallmarks of civilization. The complex can be compared to proto-urban settlements in the Helmand basin at Mundigak in western Afghanistan and Shahr-i Shōkhta in eastern Iran, or at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley.
As argued by Michael Witzel and Alexander Lubotsky, there is a proposed substratum in Proto-Indo-Iranian which can be plausibly identified with the original language of the BMAC. Moreover, Lubotsky points out a larger number of words apparently borrowed from the same language, which are only attested in Indo-Aryan and therefore evidence of a substratum in Vedic Sanskrit. Some BMAC words have now also been found in Tocharian. Michael Witzel points out that the borrowed vocabulary includes words from agriculture, village and town life, flora and fauna, ritual and religion, so providing evidence for the acculturation of Indo-Iranian speakers into the world of urban civilization.
A significant section of the archaeologists are more inclined to see the culture as begun by farmers in the Near Eastern Neolithic tradition, but infiltrated by Indo-Iranian speakers from the Andronovo culture in its late phase, creating a hybrid. In this perspective, Proto-Indo-Aryan developed within the composite culture before moving south into the Indian subcontinent.
As James P. Mallory phrased it: «It has become increasingly clear that if one wishes to argue for Indo-Iranian migrations from the steppe lands south into the historical seats of the Iranians and Indo-Aryans that these steppe cultures were transformed as they passed through a membrane of Central Asian urbanism. The fact that typical steppe wares are found on BMAC sites and that intrusive BMAC material is subsequently found further to the south in Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal, India and Pakistan, may suggest then the subsequent movement of Indo-Iranian-speakers after they had adopted the culture of the BMAC.»
However, archaeologists like B. B. Lal have seriously questioned the BMAC and Indo-Iranian connection, and thoroughly disputed the proclaimed relations. While others maintain there is insufficient evidence for any ethnic or linguistic identification of the BMAC solely based on material remains, in the absence of written records.
Namazga-Tepe or Namazga-depe, is a Bronze Age (BMAC) archaeological site in Turkmenistan, some 100 km from Aşgabat, near the border to Iran. The site set the chronology for the Bronze Age sites in Turkmenistan (Namazga III-VI).
Namazga IV around 2500 BCE shows proto-urban and village settlement patterns, while Namazga V around 2000-1600 BCE is the period of “urban revolution” following the Anatolian model with little or no irrigation.
Namazgadepe emerges as the production and probable governmental center, covering some 60 hectares, with Altyndepe likely a secondary capital.
Altyndepe (the Turkmen for “Golden Hill”) is a Bronze Age (BMAC) site in Turkmenistan, near Aşgabat, inhabited in the 3rd to 2nd millennia BC, abandoned around 1600 BC.
Namazga V and Altyndepe were in contact with the Late Harappan culture (ca. 2000-1600 BC), and Masson (1988) tends to identify the culture as Proto-Dravidian. The site is notable for the remains of its “proto-Zoroastrian” ziggurat.
Models of two-wheeled carts from c. 3000 BC found at Altyn-Depe are the earliest complete evidence of wheeled transport in Central Asia, though model wheels have come from contexts possibly somewhat earlier. Judging by the type of harness, carts were initially pulled by oxen, or a bull. However camels were domesticated within the BMAC. A model of a cart drawn by a camel of c. 2200 BC was found at Altyn-Depe.
Gonur Tepe is an archaeological site in Turkmenistan that was inhabited by Indo-Iranian peoples until sometime in the 2nd millennium BC dating back to 2500 BC.
The site was discovered by Greek-Russian archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi, which discovered a palace, a fortified mud-brick enclosure, and temples with fire altars which he believes were dedicated to the Zoroastrian religion.
Sarianidi also found what appears to be the boiler for the ritual drink soma, which is mentioned in the Rigveda and haoma as in the avesta. Sarianidi says he also found dishes with traces of cannabis, poppy and ephedrine. According to Sarianidi, this discovery strengthens the theory that these were the ingredients of soma.
Tepe Fullol (also known as Khush Tepe) is the site of an abandoned Bronze Age settlement in northern Afghanistan. It was discovered in 1965 by farmers who discovered gold and silver objects in a grave cache and thereby provided the first evidence of this civilisation in Afghanistan.
Tepe Fullol is situated in Baghlan Province at the junction of the Khost and Sai valleys. Based upon excavated materials, it has been dated to between 2600 and 1700 BC. There is a mound, covering a site 14 by 18 metres (46 by 59 ft) in area and 20 metres (66 ft) high.
The area’s wealth probably derived from precious materials extracted from the nearby mountains, in particular lapis lazuli, which were widely traded.
Around 1600 BCE, Altyndepe is abandoned, and Namazgadepe shrinks to a fraction of its former size. Namazga VI in the Late Bronze Age 1600-1000 BCE is characterized by the incursion of nomadic pastoralists from the Alekseyevka culture and/or Srubna culture.
Towards the South:
The Samarran Culture:
The Chalcolithic Samarra culture (ca 5500–4800 BC) is primarily known by its finely-made pottery decorated against dark-fired backgrounds with stylized figures of animals and birds and geometric designs. This widely-exported type of pottery, one of the first widespread, relatively uniform pottery styles in the Ancient Near East, was first recognized at Samarra.
Though the present archaeological site covered by mudbrick ruins is vast, the site of Samarra was only lightly occupied in ancient times, apart from the Samarran Culture identified at the rich site of Tell Sawwan, where evidence of irrigation – including flax – establishes the presence of a prosperous settled culture with a highly organized social structure.
The Samarran Culture was the precursor to the Mesopotamian culture of the Ubaid period (ca. 6500 to 3800 BC), which represents the earliest settlement on the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia. During this time, the first settlement in southern Mesopotamia was established at Eridu (Cuneiform: NUN.KI), ca. 5300 BC, by farmers who brought with them the Hadji Muhammed culture, which first pioneered irrigation agriculture.
The Ubaid culture:
The tell (mound) of al-Ubaid west of nearby Ur in southern Iraq’s Dhi Qar Governorate has given its name to the prehistoric Pottery Neolithic to Chalcolithic Tell Ubaid culture. This succeeded the Halaf culture in northern Mesopotamia. The site of the Halaf culture was then abandoned for a long period.
It appears that the Ubaid culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia. The Ubaid culture had a long duration beginning before 5300 BC and lasting until the beginning of the Uruk period, c. 4000 BC. The adoption of the wheel and the beginning of the Chalcolithic period fall into the Ubaid period.
During the Ubaid Period [5000 B.C.– 4000 B.C.], the movement towards urbanization began. “Agriculture and animal husbandry [domestication] were widely practiced in sedentary communities.” There were also tribes that practiced domesticating animals as far north as Turkey, and as far south as the Zagros Mountains.
The Ubaid period is divided into three principal phases:
Ubaid 1, sometimes called Eridu (5300–4700 BC), a phase limited to the extreme south of Iraq, on what was then the shores of the Persian Gulf. This phase, showing clear connection to the Samarra culture to the north, saw the establishment of the first permanent settlement south of the 5 inch rainfall isohyet. These people pioneered the growing of grains in the extreme conditions of aridity, thanks to the high water tables of Southern Iraq.
Ubaid 2 – (4800–4500 BC), after the type site of the same name, saw the development of extensive canal networks from major settlements. Irrigation agriculture, which seem to have developed first at Choga Mami (4700–4600 BC) and rapidly spread elsewhere, form the first required collective effort and centralised coordination of labour.
Ubaid 3/4, sometimes called Ubaid I and Ubaid II — In the period from 4500–4000 BC saw a period of intense and rapid urbanisation with the Ubaid culture spread into northern Mesopotamia replacing (after a hiatus) the Halaf culture. Ubaid artifacts spread also all along the Arabian littoral, showing the growth of a trading system that stretched from the Mediterranean coast through to Oman.
The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarised social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism. Bogucki describes this as a phase of “Trans-egalitarian” competitive households, in which some fall behind as a result of downward social mobility.
The Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order. It would seem that various collective methods, known as primitive democracy, in which disputes were previously resolved through a council of one’s peers, were no longer sufficient for the needs of the local community.
Ubaid culture is characterized by large village settlements, characterized by multi-roomed rectangular mud-brick houses and the appearance of the first temples of public architecture in Mesopotamia, with a growth of a two tier settlement hierarchy of centralized large sites of more than 10 hectares surrounded by smaller village sites of less than 1 hectare.
Domestic equipment included a distinctive fine quality buff or greenish colored pottery decorated with geometric designs in brown or black paint; tools such as sickles were often made of hard fired clay in the south. But in the north, stone and sometimes metal were used.
It appears that this early culture was an amalgam of three distinct cultural influences: peasant farmers, living in wattle and daub or clay brick houses and practicing irrigation agriculture; hunter-fishermen living in woven reed houses and living on floating islands in the marshes (Proto-Sumerians); and Proto-Akkadian nomadic pastoralists, living in black tents.
The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. It is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture. Eridu remained an important religious center when it was gradually surpassed in size by the nearby city of Uruk.
The story of the passing of the me (gifts of civilisation) to Inanna, goddess of Uruk and of love and war, by Enki, god of wisdom and chief god of Eridu, may reflect this shift in hegemony.
Uruk:
Uruk (Sumerian: Unug; Akkadian: Uruk; Aramaic: Erech; Hebrew: Erech; Ancient Greek: Arabic: Warkā) was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.
Uruk gave its name to the Uruk period, the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia spanning c. 4000 to 3100 BC, succeeded by the Jemdet Nasr period of Sumer proper. Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid 4th millennium BC. At its height c 2900 BC, Uruk probably had 50,000–80,000 residents living in 6 km2 of walled area; making it the largest city in the world at the time.
The semi-mythical king Gilgamesh, according to the chronology presented in the Sumerian king list, ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC. The city lost its prime importance around 2000 BC, in the context of the struggle of Babylonia with Elam, but it remained inhabited throughout the Seleucid and Parthian periods until it was finally abandoned shortly before or after the Islamic conquest.
The site of Uruk was discovered in 1849 by William Kennett Loftus who led the first excavations from 1850 to 1854. The Arabic name of Babylonia, al-ʿIrāq, is thought to be derived from the name Uruk, via Aramaic (Erech) and possibly Middle Persian (Erāq) transmission.
In addition to being one of the first cities, Uruk was the main force of urbanization during the Uruk period (4000–3200 BC). This period of 800 years saw a shift from small, agricultural villages to a larger urban center with a full-time bureaucracy, military, and stratified society. Although other settlements coexisted with Uruk, they were generally about 10 hectares while Uruk was significantly larger and more complex.
The Uruk period culture exported by Sumerian traders and colonists had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually evolved their own comparable, competing economies and cultures. Ultimately, Uruk could not maintain long-distance control over colonies such as Tell Brak by military force.
Geographic factors underpin Uruk’s unprecedented growth. The city was located in the southern part of Mesopotamia, an ancient site of civilization, on the Euphrates rivers. Through the gradual and eventual domestication of native grains from the Zagros foothills and extensive irrigation techniques, the area supported a vast variety of edible vegetation. This domestication of grain and its proximity to rivers enabled Uruk’s growth into the largest Sumerian settlement, in both population and area, with relative ease.
Uruk’s agricultural surplus and large population base facilitated processes such as trade, specialization of crafts and the evolution of writing. Evidence from excavations such as extensive pottery and the earliest known tablets of writing support these events. Excavation of Uruk is highly complex because older buildings were recycled into newer ones, thus blurring the layers of different historic periods. The topmost layer most likely originated in the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC) and is built on structures from earlier periods dating back to the Ubaid period.
In myth, Uruk was founded by Enmerkar, who brought the official kingship with him, according to the Sumerian king list. He also, in the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, constructs the House of Heaven (Sumerian: Eanna) for the goddess Inanna in the Eanna District of Uruk. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh builds the city wall around Uruk and is king of the city.
Uruk went through several phases of growth, from the Early Uruk period (4000–3500 BC) to the Late Uruk period (3500–3100 BC). The city was formed when two smaller Ubaid settlements merged. The temple complexes at their cores became the Eanna District and the Anu District dedicated to Inanna and Anu, respectively.
The Anu District was originally called Kullaba (Kulab or Unug-Kulaba) prior to merging with the Eanna District. Kullaba dates to the Eridu period when it was one of the oldest and most important cities of Sumer. There are different interpretations about the purposes of the temples. However, it is generally believed they were a unifying feature of the city. It also seems clear that temples served both an important religious function and state function. The surviving temple archive of the Neo-Babylonian period documents the social function of the temple as a redistribution center.
The Eanna District was composed of several buildings with spaces for workshops, and it was walled off from the city. By contrast, the Anu District was built on a terrace with a temple at the top. It is clear Eanna was dedicated to Inanna from the earliest Uruk period throughout the history of the city. The rest of the city was composed of typical courtyard houses, grouped by profession of the occupants, in districts around Eanna and Anu.
Uruk was extremely well penetrated by a canal system that has been described as, “Venice in the desert.” This canal system flowed throughout the city connecting it with the maritime trade on the ancient Euphrates River as well as the surrounding agricultural belt.
It should be noted the original city of Uruk was sited southwest of the ancient Euphrates River, now dry. Currently, the site of Warka is northeast of the modern Euphrates river. The change in position was caused by a shift in the Euphrates at some point in history, and may have contributed to the decline of Uruk.
Mesh & the birth of civilization:
Enki, considered as the master shaper of the world, god of wisdom and of all magic, was characterized as the lord of the Abzu (Apsu in Akkadian), the freshwater sea or groundwater located within the earth.
The main temple to Enki is called E-abzu, meaning “abzu temple” (also E-en-gur-a, meaning “house of the subterranean waters””), a ziggurat temple surrounded by Euphratean marshlands near the ancient Persian Gulf coastline at Eridu.
Enki was the keeper of the divine powers called Me, the gifts of civilization. His image is a double-helix snake, or the Caduceus, very similar to the Rod of Asclepius used to symbolize medicine. He is often shown with the horned crown of divinity dressed in the skin of a carp. The Christian symbol is the fish.
Enki advises that they create a servant of the Gods, humankind, out of clay and blood. Against Enki’s wish the Gods decide to slay Kingu, and Enki finally consents to use Kingu’s blood to make the first human, with whom Enki always later has a close relationship, the first of the seven sages, seven wise men or “Abgallu” (*Ab = water, *Gal = great, *Lu = Man), also known as Adapa.
Adapa, the first man fashioned, later goes and acts as the advisor to the King of Eridu, when in the Sumerian Kinglist, the “Me” of “kingship descends on Eridu”.
Mesoptamian myth tells of seven antedilluvian sages, who were sent by Ea, the wise god of Eridu, to bring the arts of civilisation to humankind.
The first of these, Adapa, also known as Uan, the name given as Oannes by Berossus, introduced the practice of the correct rites of religious observance as priest of the E’Apsu temple, at Eridu.
The sages are described in Mesoptamian literature as ‘pure parādu-fish, probably carp, whose bones are found associated with the earliest shrine, and still kept as a holy duty in the precincts of Near Eastern mosques and monastries.
Adapa as a fisherman was iconographically portrayed as a fish-man composite. The word Abgallu, sage, (Ab = water, Gal = Great, Lu = Man, Sumerian) survived into Nabatean times, around the time of Christ, as apkallum, used to describe the profession of a certain kind of priest.
Adapa is often identified as advisor to the mythical first (antediluvian) king of Eridu, Alulim. In addition to his advisory duties, he served as a priest and exorcist, and upon his death took his place among the Seven Sages or Apkallū. (Apkallu, “sage”, comes from Sumerian AB.GAL.LU (Ab=water, Gal=Great Lu=Man) a reference to Adapa, the first sage’s association with water.)
Oannes (Hovhannes in Armenian) was the name given by the Babylonian writer Berossus in the 3rd century BCE to a mythical being who taught mankind wisdom. Berossus describes Oannes as having the body of a fish but underneath the figure of a man. He is described as dwelling in the Persian Gulf, and rising out of the waters in the daytime and furnishing mankind instruction in writing, the arts and the various sciences.
The name “Oannes” was once conjectured to be derived from that of the ancient Babylonian god Ea, but it is now known that the name is the Greek form of the Babylonian Uanna (or Uan) a name used for Adapa in texts from the Library of Ashurbanipal.
Adapa was a mortal man from a godly lineage, a son of Ea (Enki in Sumerian), the god of wisdom and of the ancient city of Eridu, who brought the arts of civilization to that city (from Dilmun, according to some versions). He broke the wings of Ninlil the South Wind, who had overturned his fishing boat, and was called to account before Anu.
Ea, his patron god, warned him to apologize humbly for his actions, but not to partake of food or drink while he was in heaven, as it would be the food of death.
Anu, impressed by Adapa’s sincerity, offered instead the food of immortality, but Adapa heeded Ea’s advice, refused, and thus missed the chance for immortality that would have been his.
Parallels can be drawn to the story of Genesis, where Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden by Yahweh, after they ate from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thus losing immortality.
The Alorodians & the Semites:
The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC (see Sargon of Akkad) and Eblaite, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts circa 2800 BC. Researchers in Egypt also claim to have discovered Canaanite snake spells that “date from between 3000 and 2400 BC.”
The Semitic family is a member of the larger Afroasiatic family, all of whose other five or more branches are based in north and north east Africa. Largely for this reason, the ancestors of Proto-Semitic speakers were originally believed by some to have first arrived in the Middle East from North Africa, possibly as part of the operation of the Saharan pump, around the late Neolithic.
Juris Zarins has suggested the development of a Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex of cultures in the period of the 6,200 BCE climatic crisis, stretching from the Red Sea shoreline and northeastward into modern day Syria and Iraq, which spread Proto-Semitic languages through the region. This complex may have developed from the fusion of Harifian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B cultures in the Southern Levant, first evidenced in the Munhata culture and later Yarmukian culture of the region.
As Harifian used the Outacha retouch point technique found earlier in the Fayyum, it has been suggested that Proto-Semitic may have come from Egypt across the Sinai. The climatic recovery during the Chalcolithic led to the development of the secondary products revolution and the Ghassulian culture, pioneering the Mediterranean mixed economy with subsistence horticulture, extensive grain farming, commercial production of olives and wine, and nomadic transhumance pastoralism. The mix has varied historically with climate change. The Ghassulians are usually accepted as being early Semitic speakers.
Diakonoff sees Semitic originating between the Nile Delta and Canaan as the northernmost branch of Afroasiatic. A recent Bayesian analysis of alternative Semitic histories identifies an origin of Semitic languages in the Levant around 3,750 BC with a single introduction from southern Arabia into Africa around 800 BC.
In one interpretation, Proto-Semitic itself is assumed to have reached the Arabian Peninsula by approximately the 4th millennium BC, from which Semitic daughter languages continued to spread outwards.
When written records began in the late 4th millennium BC, the Semitic-speaking Akkadians (Assyrians/Babylonians) were entering Mesopotamia from the deserts to the west, and were probably already present in places such as Ebla in Syria. Akkadian personal names began appearing in written record in Mesopotamia from the late 29th Century BC.
By the late 3rd millennium BC, East Semitic languages such as Akkadian and Eblaite dominated in Mesopotamia and north east Syria, while West Semitic languages such as Amorite, Canaanite and Ugaritic were probably spoken from Syria to the Arabian Peninsula, although Old South Arabian is considered by most to be South Semitic although data is sparse.
The Akkadian language of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia had become the dominant literary language of the Fertile Crescent, using the cuneiform script which was adapted from the Sumerians. The Middle Assyrian Empire originating in the 14th century BC facilitated the use of Akkadian as a ‘lingua franca’ in many regions outside its homeland. The related but more sparsely attested Eblaite disappeared with the city, and Amorite is attested only from proper names in Mesopotamian records.
For the 2nd millennium, somewhat more data are available, thanks to the spread of an invention first used to capture the sounds of Semitic languages – the alphabet. Proto-Canaanite texts from around 1500 BC yield the first undisputed attestations of a West Semitic language (although earlier testimonies are possibly preserved in Middle Bronze Age alphabets), followed by the much more extensive Ugaritic tablets of northern Syria from around 1300 BC. Incursions of nomadic Semitic Aramaeans, and later still Chaldeans and Suteans, from the Syrian desert begin around this time. Akkadian continued to flourish, splitting into Babylonian and Assyrian dialects.
In the 1st millennium BC, the alphabet spread much further, giving us a picture not just of Canaanite but also of Aramaic, Old South Arabian, and early Ge’ez. During this period, the case system, once vigorous in Ugaritic, seems to have started decaying in Northwest Semitic. Phoenician colonies (such as Carthage) spread their Canaanite language throughout much of the Mediterranean, while its close relative Hebrew became the vehicle of a religious literature, the Torah and Tanakh, that would have global ramifications.
However, as an ironic result of the Assyrian Empire’s vast conquests, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent and much of the Near East and parts of Asia Minor, gradually pushing Akkadian, Hebrew, Phoenician-Canaanite, and several other languages to extinction, although Hebrew and Akkadian remained in use as liturgical languages, Hebrew in particular developing a substantial literature. Meanwhile, Ge’ez texts, imported from Arabia in the 8th Century BC, give the first direct record of Ethiopian Semitic.
Armi – Aleppo:
Aleppo appears in historical records as an important city much earlier than Damascus. The first record of Aleppo comes from the third millennium BC, when Aleppo was the capital of an independent kingdom closely related to Ebla, known as Armi to Ebla and Armani to the Akkadians.
Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world; it has been inhabited since perhaps as early as the 6th millennium BC. Excavations at Tell as-Sawda and Tell al-Ansari, just south of the old city of Aleppo, show that the area was occupied since at least the latter part of the 3rd millennium BC; and this is also when Aleppo is first mentioned in cuneiform tablets unearthed in Ebla and Mesopotamia, in which it is noted for its commercial and military proficiency. Such a long history is probably due to its being a strategic trading point midway between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia
Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh, Idlib Governorate, Syria) was an ancient city about 55 km (34 mi) southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC. Giovanni Pettinato describes Armi as Ebla’s alter ego. Naram-Sin of Akkad destroyed both Ebla and Armani in the 23rd century BC.
The site is most famous for the Ebla tablets, an archive of about 20,000 cuneiform tablets found there, dated from around 2250 BC, written in Sumerian script to record the Eblaite language – a previously unknown language that is now the earliest attested Semitic language after the closely related Akkadian.
Eblaite (also known as Eblan) is an extinct Semitic language, which was spoken in the 3rd millennium BC in the ancient city of Ebla, at Tell Mardikh, between Aleppo and Hama, in western modern Syria. Eblaite is an Eastern Semitic language like Akkadian, indeed it may be very close to pre-Sargonic Akkadian.
A more recent study by Andrew Kitchen and others using Bayesian techniques in phylogenetic analysis identifies a place of origin for Semitic in the Levant, suggesting that Akkadian is the most basal of Semitic languages.
A palace dating ca. 2500 – 2000 BC has been discovered. About 2,500 well-preserved cuneiform tablets were discovered in the ruins. About 80% of the tablets are written using the usual Sumerian combination of logograms and phonetic signs, while the others exhibited an innovative, purely phonetic representation using Sumerian cuneiform of a previously unknown Semitic language, which was called Eblaite.
These 15,000 clay tablets are one of the most important archaeological discoveries in our times, yet they have not even been deciphered, translated or published complete due to political/religious boundary issues. The most likely date of these archives is about 2500 BC.
Many ancient Hebraic names that have not been found in other Near Eastern languages have been reported to occur in similar forms in Eblaite (Adamu, H’à-wa, Jabal, Abarama, Bilhah, Ishma-el, Isûra-el, Esau, Mika-el, Mikaya, Saul, David, et al.). A large number of Biblical locations (many of them known from other sources) have also been reported to occur in the texts: for example Ashtaroth, Sinai, Jerusalem (Ye-ru-sa-lu-um), Hazor, Lachish, Gezer, Dor, Megiddo, Joppa, Ur etc. Giovanni Pettinato has also claimed to find references to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Ebla’s close link to southern Mesopotamia, where the script had developed, further highlights the links between the Sumerians, hurrians and Semitic cultures at that time. Some well-known Semitic deities appear at Ebla, including Dagan (written as dBE), Ishtar (Ashtar), Resheph (Rasap), Kamish, Hadad (Hadda), Shapash (Shipish), and some otherwise unknown ones (Kura, Nidakul), plus a few Sumerian gods (Enki and Ninki) and Hurrian gods (Ashtapi, Hebat, Ishara). The four city gates were named after the gods Dagan, Baal (Hadda), Rasap, and Utu. Overall, about forty deities are mentioned in the tablets as receiving sacrifices.
The name “Ebla” means “White Rock”, and refers to the limestone outcrop on which the city was built. Although the site shows signs of continuous occupation from before 3000 BC, its power grew and reached its apogee in the second half of the following millennium. Ebla’s first apogee was between ca. 2400 and 2240 BC; its name is mentioned in texts from Akkad from ca. 2300 BC.
Most of the Ebla palace tablets, which date from that period, are about economic matters; they provide a good look into the everyday life of the inhabitants, as well as many important insights into the cultural, economic, and political life in northern Mesopotamia around the middle of the third millennium B.C. The texts are accounts of the state revenues, but they also include royal letters, Sumerian-Eblaite dictionaries, school texts and diplomatic documents, like treaties between Ebla and other towns of the region.
Mari (modern Tell Hariri, Syria) was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometers north-west of the modern town of Abu Kamal on the western bank of the Euphrates river, some 120 km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria. It is thought to have been inhabited since the 5th millennium BC, although it flourished with a series of superimposed palaces that spanned a thousand years, from 2900 BC until 1759 BC, when it was sacked by Hammurabi.
Mari had been inhabited since the 5th millennium BC, but the real significance of the city was during the third and second millennia BC. The city flourished from about 2900 BC, since it was strategically important as a relay point between the Sumerian cities of lower Mesopotamia, and the cities of northern Syria. Sumer required building materials such as timber and stone from northern Syria, and these materials had to go through Mari to get to Sumer.
The Sumerian King List (SKL) records a dynasty of six kings from Mari enjoying hegemony between Adab and Kish, ca. 25th c. BC. Several names of kings from this period, including those from the kings’ list, are also known from correspondence found elsewhere, including Ebla.
After a period of eminence, Mari was destroyed in the mid-24th century BC. This destruction brought a period of relative decline in importance in the region, and the city was reduced to no more than a small village. Historians are divided as to who destroyed the city; some name Sargon of Akkad (who stated that he had passed through Mari on his famous campaign to the west), while others say it was the Eblaites, Mari’s traditional commercial rivals.
At some point in the early second millennium BCE, the Amorite kingdom of Mari to the south subdued Urkesh and made it a vassal state. In the continuous power struggles over Mesopotamia, another Amorite dynasty made themselves masters over Mari in the eighteenth century BCE. Shubat-Enlil (modern Tell Leilan), the capital of this Old Assyrian kingdom, was founded some distance from Urkesh at another Hurrian settlement in the Khabur River valley.
In the Old Babylonian period, Aleppo’s name appears as Ḥalab (Ḥalba) for the first time. Aleppo was the capital of the important Amoritic-Hurrian kingdom of Yamḥad (ca. 1800–1600 BC), alternatively known as the ‘land of Ḥalab,’ was the most powerful in the Near East at the time.
The kingdom of Yamhad is recorded as struggling for this area with the early Hittite king Hattusilis I around 1600 BCE. Yamḥad was destroyed by the Hittites under Mursilis I in the 16th century BC. However, Aleppo soon resumed its leading role in Syria when the Hittite power in the region waned due to internal strife. The Hittites were influenced by the Hurrian culture over the course of several centuries.
The Hebrews:
Hebat, also transcribed Kheba or Khepat, was the mother goddess of the Hurrians, known as “the mother of all living”. She is also a Queen of the gods. The people of Ebla were Semites. The term “Hebrew” comes from Eber, but the descendants of Eber also include the “Habiru.” Discoveries at Ebla seems to indicate the founder and king of Ebla to be “Ebrim.”
The Hurrians also migrated west in this period. By 1725 BCE they are found also in parts of northern Syria, such as Alalakh. Idrimi was a Hurrianised Semitic son of the king of Aleppo who had been deposed by the new regional master, Barattarna, king of the Mitanni in the 15th century BC. Nevertheless he succeeded in regaining his seat and was recognized as a vassal by Barattarna.
Idrimi founded the kingdom of Mukish, and ruled from Alalakh, an ancient city-state near modern Antakya in the Amuq River valley of Turkey’s Hatay Province, as a vassal to the Mitanni. He also invaded the Hittite territories to the north, resulting in a treaty with the country Kizzuwatna.
Alalakh was founded by the Amorites during the Middle Bronze Age in the 2nd millennium BC. The first palace was built c. 2000 BC, contemporary with the Third Dynasty of Ur. The written history of the site may begin under the name Alakhtum, with tablets from Mari in the 18th century BC, when the city was part of the kingdom of Yamhad (modern Aleppo).
An inscription on a statue base found at Alalakh records Idrimi’s vicissitudes. After his family had been forced to flee to Emar, with his mother’s people, he left them and joined the “Hapiru people” in “Ammija in the land of Canaan”, where other refugees from Aleppo recognized him as the “son of their overlord” and “gathered around him;” after living among them for seven years, he led his new friends and Habiru allies in a successful attack by sea on Alalakh, where he became king.
Habiru or Apiru or ˁpr.w (Egyptian) was the name given by various Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic sources (dated, roughly, between 1800 BC and 1100 BC) to a group of people living as nomadic invaders in areas of the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia and Iran to the borders of Egypt in Canaan.
Depending on the source and epoch, these Habiru are variously described as nomadic or semi-nomadic, rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, and bowmen, servants, slaves, migrant laborers, etc. As more texts were uncovered throughout the Near East, it became clear that the Habiru were mentioned in contexts ranging from unemployed agricultural workers and vagrants, to mounted mercenary bowmen. The context differed depending upon where the references were found.
The names Habiru and Apiru are used in Akkadian cuneiform texts. The corresponding name in the Egyptian script appears to be ʕpr.w, conventionally pronounced Apiru (W,or u-vowel “quail-chick” being used as the Egyptian plural suffix). In Mesopotamian records they are also identified by the Sumerian logogram SA.GAZ. The name Habiru was also found in the Amarna letters, which again include many names of Canaanite peoples written in Akkadian. The Amarna letters written to Egyptian pharaohs in the 14th century BC document a time of unrest in Canaan that goes back before the battle of Kadesh to the time of Thutmose I.
Though found throughout most of the Fertile Crescent, the arc of civilization “extending from the Tigris-Euphrates river basins over to the Mediterranean littoral and down through the Nile Valley during the Second Millennium, the principal area of historical interest is in their engagement with Egypt.”
Carol Redmount who wrote ‘Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt’ in The Oxford History of the Biblical World concluded that the term “Habiru” had no common ethnic affiliations, that they spoke no common language, and that they normally led a marginal and sometimes lawless existence on the fringes of settled society. She defines the various Apiru/Habiru as “a loosely defined, inferior social class composed of shifting and shifty population elements without secure ties to settled communities” who are referred to “as outlaws, mercenaries, and slaves” in ancient texts. In that vein, some modern scholars consider the Habiru to be more of a social designation than an ethnic or a tribal one.
The earliest recorded instance of the term is dated to the reign of king Irkabtum of the north Mesopotamian (Amorite) kingdom of Yamkhad (c. 1740 BC), who had a year named “Year when king Irkabtum made peace with Semuma and the Habiru.” This has been taken to show that the Habiru led by Semuma already wielded such influence in the neighborhood of Alalakh that the local sovereign felt obliged to conclude a treaty with them.
Sumerian documents from the 15th century next describe these groups speaking various languages, and although described as vagrant, also having significant influence and military organisation. Those people are designated by a two-character cuneiform logogram transcribed as SA.GAZ which is equated with the West Semitic hapiru and the Akkadian habbatu meaning bandit, robber or raider.
The Sumerian logogram SA.GAZ appears in texts from Southern Mesopotamia, dated from about 1850 BC, where it is applied to small bands of soldiers, apparently mercenaries at the service of local city-states and being supplied with food or sheep.
One of those texts uses the Akkadian cuneiform word Hapiri instead of the logogram; another described them as “soldiers from the West”. Their names are predominantly Akkadian; some are West Semitic, some unknown. Their origins, when recorded, are in local towns.
A letter to an Old Assyrian merchant resident in Alishar requests his aid in freeing or ransoming some Hapiri, formerly attached to the palace of Shalahshuwe (as yet unidentified), now prisoners of the local authorities.
The Tikunani Prism, dated from around 1550 BC, lists the names of 438 Habiru soldiers or servants of king Tunip-Tessup of Tikunani, a small city-state in central Mesopotamia. The majority of these names are typically Hurrian, the rest are Semitic, one is Kassite.
Another text from around 1500 BC describes the Hapiru as soldiers or laborers, organized into bands of various sizes commanded by SA.KAS leaders: one band from Tapduwa has 15 soldiers, another from Sarkuhe has 29, and another from Alalakh has 1,436.
SA.GAZ ‘murderer, robber’, literally ‘one who smashes sinews’, is an original Sumerian nominal compound attested as early as ca. 2500 BC. It is later equated with Akkadian habbātu ‘plunderer, bandit’ and šaggāšu ‘murderer’. It has been suggested that a second Sumerian logogram SAG.GAZ ‘one who smashes heads’, a variant of SA.GAZ, may be artificially derived from the like-sounding šaggāšu, even though SAG.GAZ is attested in several unilingual Sumerian texts from at least 2100 BC. SA.GAZ and occasionally SAG.GAZ are equated with Akkadian hāpiru, a West Semitic loanword first attested in early 2nd millennium Assyrian and Babylonian texts, in texts from El Amarna in Egypt.
A number of the Amarna letters—sent to pharaohs Amenhotep III, Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) and, briefly, his two successors from vassal kings in Canaan and Syria in the 14th century BC — mention the “Habiru”. These letters, written by Canaanite scribes in the cuneiform-based Akkadian language, complain about attacks by armed groups who were willing to fight and plunder on any side of the local wars in exchange for equipment, provisions, and quarters.
Those people are identified by the Sumerian logogram SA.GAZ in most of the letters, and by the Akkadian name Hapiru in a few from the area of Jerusalem. They appear to be active on a broad area including Syria (near Damascus), Phoenicia (Sumur, Batrun and Byblos), and to the south as far as Jerusalem. None of the kings of the region, with the possible exception of one Abdi-Ashirta, are called Habiru or SA.GAZ.
Sources also discuss one Labayu, who had been an Egyptian vassal, and set up for himself. Attacking Megiddo, he assembled a group of Hapiru who consisted of both dispossessed local people and invaders. Having won Megiddo for himself, he gave his supporters Shechem for their own. (Harrelson, van der Steen)
Idrimi, the 15th century BC King of Alalakh, son of the King of Aleppo, states in his chronicles, that after his family had been forced to flee to Emar, with his mother’s people, he left them and joined the “Hapiru people” in “Ammija in the land of Canaan”, where the Hapiru recognized him as the “son of their overlord” and “gathered around him;” after living among them for seven years, he led his Habiru warriors in a successful attack by sea on Alalakh, where he became king.
The terms “Hebrews” and “Israelites” usually describe the same people, called Hebrews before the conquest of the Land of Canaan and Israelites afterwards, but there is some disagreement among historical scholars about the relationship between the Hebrews and Israelites.
The hieroglyphic rendering of the Egyptian word š3sw (Shasu) means “those who move on foot”. Shasu were Semitic speaking pastoral cattle nomads who appeared in the Levant from the late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age or Third Intermediate Period of Egypt. They were organized in clans under a tribal chieftain, and were described as brigands active from the Jezreel Valley to Ashkelon and the Sinai.
The Shasu replaced the outlaw ‘Apiru (cuneiform SA.GAZ) as the major source of instability in the Egyptian Levantine empire from the reign of Tutankhamun onwards. The name “Shasu of Yhw”, e.g. the name rings from Soleb and Amarah-West, corresponds very precisely to the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH.
The demonym ‘Israel’ can reasonably be referred to a Shasu enclave, and it can be concluded that the Shasu originated from Moab and northern Edom and eventually helped to constitute the nation of ‘Israel’ which later established the Kingdom of Israel.
The Shasu are mostly depicted hieroglyphically with a determinative indicating rather a land than a people, referencing people of that particular land.
The term Ahlamû (= wanderers) appears equivalent to the Egyptian term Shasu. In the following century, the Ahlamû cut the road from Babylon to Hattusas, and Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 BC) claims that he conquered Mari, Hana and Rapiqum on the Euphrates and “the mountain of the Ahlamû”, apparently the region of Jebel Bishri.
Regarding the Shasu of Yhw, Astour has observed that the “hieroglyphic rendering corresponds very precisely to the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH, or Yahweh, and antedates the hitherto oldest occurrence of that Divine Name – on the Moabite Stone – by over five hundred years.”
Donald B. Redford thinks it reasonable to conclude that the demonym ‘Israel’ recorded on the Merneptah Stele refers to a Shasu enclave, and that, since later Biblical tradition portrays Yahweh “coming forth from Se’ir” the Shasu, originally from Moab and northern Edom, went on to form one major element in the amalgam that was to constitute the “Israel” which later established the Kingdom of Israel. Rainey has a similar view in his analysis of the el-Amarna letters.
The proposed link between the Israelites and the Shasu may, however, be undermined by the fact that in the Merneptah reliefs, the group later known as the Israelites are not described or depicted as Shasu. The Shasu are usually depicted hieroglyphically with a determinative indicating a land not a people.
Some scholars like Frank J. Yurco and Michael G. Hasel identify the Shasu in Merneptah’s Karnak reliefs as a separate entity from Israel since they wear different clothing, hairstyles, and are determined differently by Egyptian scribes. Moreover, Israel is determined as a people, though not necessarily as a socioethnic group. Egyptian scribes tended to bundle up rather disparate groups of people under one ‘artificial unifying rubric.’ The most frequent designation for the “foes of Shasu” is the hill-country determinative. Thus they are differentiated from the Canaanites, who are defending the fortified cities of Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yenoam.
At the same time, the hill-country determinative is not always used for Shasu, as is the case in the “Shasu of Yhw” name rings from Soleb and Amarah-West. A common viewpoint (e.g. Dever) is that the proto-Israelites arose from the local Canaanite population as a process of large scale settlement of the highlands around the 12th century BCE. At most this would allow the Shasu to be a cultural and religious influence, rather than a significant ancestral population to the Israelites.
Abdi-Heba, the Egyptian vassal ruler of Jerusalem in the Amarna period (mid-1330s BC), wrote a series of letters to the Egyptian king in which he complained about the activities of the “Habiru.” The Habiru were plundering the lands of the king.
Abdi-Heba wanted to know why the king was letting them behave in this way; why he was not sending archers to protect his, the king’s properties. If he did not send military help the whole land would fall to the Habiru.
Jebusites:
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jebusites were a Canaanite tribe who inhabited and built Jerusalem prior to its conquest by King David according to the Biblical account; the Books of Kings state that Jerusalem was known as Jebus prior to this event. According to some Biblical chronologies, the city was conquered by King David in 1003 BC, or according to other sources 869 BC.
The Tanakh portion of the Bible contains the only surviving ancient text known to use the term Jebusite to describe the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Jerusalem; according to the Table of Nations at Genesis 10, the Jebusites are identified as a Canaanite tribe, which is listed in third place among the Canaanite groups, between the Biblical Hittites and the Amorites.
Prior to modern archaeological studies, most Biblical scholars held the opinion that the Jebusites were identical to the Hittites, which continues to be the case, though less so. However, an increasingly popular view, first put forward by Edward Lipinski, professor of Oriental and Slavonic studies at the Catholic University of Leuven, is that the Jebusites were most likely an Amorite tribe; Lipinski identified them with the group referred to as Yabusi’um in a cuneiform letter found in the archive of Mari, Syria.
As Lipinski noted, however, it is entirely possible that more than one clan or tribe bore similar names, and thus that the Jebusites and Yabusi’um may have been separate people altogether. In the Amarna letters, mention is made of the contemporaneous king of Jerusalem was named Abdi-Heba, which is a theophoric name invoking a Hurrian goddess named Hebat; unless a different ethnic group occupied Jerusalem in this period, this implies that the Jebusites were Hurrians themselves, were heavily influenced by Hurrian culture, or were dominated by a Hurrian maryannu class.
There appears to be a possible connection between the Hivites and the Hurrians. They dwelt in the mountainous regions of Canaan stretching from Lebanon – specifically Lebo Hamath – and Mt. Hermon in the north to the central Benjamin plateau in the Hill country just north of Jerusalem. Within this region we find specific enclaves of Hivites mentioned in the Bible. This period, when Canaan formed part of the Egyptian empire corresponds in biblical accounts to Joshua’s invasion. In the bible, Jerusalem is defined as lying within territory allocated to the tribe of Benjamin (though occupied by Jebusites).
Jerusalem:
Ceramic evidence indicates occupation of the City of David, within present-day Jerusalem, as far back as the Copper Age (c. 4th millennium BCE), with evidence of a permanent settlement during the early Bronze Age (c. 3000–2800 BCE). The Execration Texts (c. 19th century BCE), which refer to a city called rwš3lmm, variously transcribed as Rušalimum/Urušalimum/Rôsh-ramen and the Amarna letters (c. 14th century BCE) may be the earliest mention of the city.
Some archaeologists, including Kathleen Kenyon, believe Jerusalem was founded by Northwest Semitic people with organized settlements from around 2600 BCE. Nadav Na’aman argues its fortification as the centre of a kingdom dates to around the 18th century BCE. The first settlement lay on the Ophel ridge. The biblical account first mentions Jerusalem (“Salem”) as ruled by Melchizedek, an ally of Abraham.
In the late Bronze Age Jerusalem was the capital of an Egyptian vassal city-state, a modest settlement governing a few outlying villages and pastoral areas, with a small Egyptian garrison and ruled by appointees such as king Abdi-Heba, or Abdi-Hebat, At the time of Seti I and Ramesses II, major construction took place as prosperity increased.
Abdi-Heba’s name can be translated as “servant of Hebat”, a Hurrian goddess. Whether Abdi-Heba was himself of Hurrian descent is unknown, as is the relationship between the general populace of pre-Israelite Jerusalem (called, several centuries later, Jebusites in the Bible) and the Hurrians.
Egyptian documents have him deny he was a ḫazānu and assert he is a soldier (we’w), the implication being he was the son of a local chief sent to Egypt to receive military training there.
This period, when Canaan formed part of the Egyptian empire corresponds in biblical accounts to Joshua’s invasion. In the bible, Jerusalem is defined as lying within territory allocated to the tribe of Benjamin (though occupied by Jebusites).
David is said to have conquered these in the Siege of Jebus, and transferred his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem which then became the capital of a united Kingdom of Israel, and one of its several religious centres. The choice was perhaps dictated by the fact that Jerusalem did not form part of Israel’s tribal system, and was thus suited to serve as the centre of its federation.
Opinion is divided over whether a Large Stone Structure and a nearby Stepped Stone Structure may be identified with King David’s palace, or dates to a later period.
According to the Bible, King David reigned for 40 years. The generally accepted estimate of the conclusion of this reign is 970 BCE. The Bible records that David was succeeded by his son Solomon, who built the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah. Solomon’s Temple (later known as the First Temple), went on to play a pivotal role in Jewish history as the repository of the Ark of the Covenant.
For more than 400 years, until the Babylonian conquest in 587 BCE, Jerusalem was the political capital of the united Kingdom of Israel and then the Kingdom of Judah. During this period, known as the First Temple Period, the Temple was the religious center of the Israelites. On Solomon’s death (c. 930 BCE), the ten northern tribes split off to form the Kingdom of Israel.
Under the leadership of the House of David and Solomon, Jerusalem remained the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.
When the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom. The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE, as the Babylonians conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and laid waste to Solomon’s Temple.
The Hivites:
The Hivites were one group of descendants of Canaan, son of Ham, according to the Table of Nations in Genesis. They are refered to as Canaanites, which is considered to relate to their descent from the ancestor Canaan and to be a reference to a cultural distinctiveness or tribal affiliation, more than a reference to the geographical area of Canaan.
The Hivites were one of seven national groups living in the land of Canaan when the Israelites under Joshua commenced their conquest of the land. They are referred to as one of the seven nations to be removed from the land of Canaan – Hittites (Neo-Hittites), Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – and whose land had been promised to the Children of Israel.
However, it appears that Hivites continued to be a separate cultural group within the land of Israel until at least the time of Solomon, and it is not clear if, when or how they ceased to be a separate group before the Israelite kingdoms came to an end. No name resembling Hivite has been found in Egyptian or Babylonian inscriptions.
There appears to be a possible connection (or confusion) between the Hivites and the Hurrians, Horites. They dwelt in the mountainous regions of Canaan stretching from Lebanon – specifically Lebo Hamath – and Mt. Hermon in the north to the central Benjamin plateau in the Hill country just north of Jerusalem. Within this region we find specific enclaves of Hivites mentioned in the Bible.
Several key features can be inferred about the cultural distinctiveness of the Hivite peoples. The Hivites did not practice male circumcision, one of the few peoples living in the land of Canaan that did not. Circumcision, as a practice was quite common among the peoples existing in the land of Canaan. Egyptians, Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, and other various proto-Canaanite tribes practiced male circumcision along with the Hebrews. Other than Israel’s arch-nemesis – the Philistines – the Hivites appear to be an exception to the rule of circumcision which does lend them quite a distinction among the tribes of Canaan during this time period.
The Hivites continued to exist as a distinct people group at least until the time of David, when they were counted in a regional census taken at this time. During the reign of Solomon, they are described as part of the slave labor for his many building projects. The Israelites was forbidden from marrying Hivites, because they followed other gods; but it is not clear how strictly the prohibition was observed.
It appears that the Hivite cultural distinctiveness ceased before the Assyrian conquest of the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BCE, and the Babylonian conquest of the southern Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE, each with consequential population deportations.
The Hyksos:
The Hyksos or Hycsos (Egyptian: heqa khaseshet, “foreign rulers”) were a mixed people from West Asia who took over the eastern Nile Delta, ending the thirteenth dynasty, and initiating the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt.
The Hyksos had Canaanite and Hurrian names. They introduced new tools of warfare into Egypt, most notably the composite bow and the horse-drawn chariot.
The Jewish historian Josephus maintains that the Hyksos were in fact the children of Jacob who joined his son Joseph in Egypt to escape a famine in the land of Canaan. The Hyksos first appeared in Egypt c.1800 BC, during the eleventh dynasty, and began their climb to power in the thirteenth dynasty.
They came out of the second intermediate period in control of Avaris and the Nile delta and ruled Lower Egypt as Semite kings (fifteenth dynast). Kamose, the last king of the Theban 17th Dynasty, refers to the Hyksos King Apophis as a Chieftain of Retjenu (Canaan), and at the end of the seventeenth dynasty, they were expelled by an ethnic Egyptian pharaoh (c.1560 BC).
Outside of Thera and Crete, only three sites have a record of Minoan civilization, one being Avaris, the others Tell Kabri in Israel and Alalakh in Syria. It is speculated by the excavator of Tell Dab’a, Austrian archaeologist Bietak, that there was close contact with the rulers of Avaris, and the large building representing the frescoes allowed the Minoans to have a ritual life in Egypt. French archaeologist Yves Duhoux proposed the existence of a Minoan ‘colony’ on an island in the Nile delta.
The site at Tell el-Dab’a, covering an area of about 2 square kilometers, is in ruins today, but excavations have shown that at one point it was a well-developed center of trade with a busy harbour catering to over 300 ships during a trading season.
Artifacts excavated at a temple erected in the Hyksos period have produced goods from all over the Aegean world. The temple even has Minoan-like wall paintings that are similar to those found on Crete at the Palace of Knossos. A large mudbrick tomb has also been excavated to the west of the temple, where grave-goods, such as copper swords, have been found
The Hyksos practiced horse burials, and their chief deity became the Egyptian storm and desert god, Seth, whom they identified with their native storm god. Although most Hyksos names seem Semitic, the Hyksos also included Hurrians, who, while speaking an isolated language, were under the rule and influence of Indo-Europeans.
The Hyksos brought several technical improvements to Egypt, as well as cultural impulses such as new musical instruments and foreign loan words. The changes affected techniques from bronze working and pottery to weaving, and new breeds of animals and new crops were introduced. In warfare, they introduced the horse and chariot, the composite bow, improved battle axes, and advanced fortification techniques.
In his Against Apion, the 1st-century AD historian Josephus Flavius debates the synchronism between the Biblical account of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and two Exodus-like events that the Egyptian historian Manetho apparently mentions. It is difficult to distinguish between what Manetho himself recounted, and how Josephus or Apion interpret him.
Josephus identifies the Israelite Exodus with the first exodus mentioned by Manetho, when some 480,000 Hyksos “shepherd kings” (also referred to as just ‘shepherds’, as ‘kings’ and as ‘captive shepherds’ in his discussion of Manetho) left Egypt for Jerusalem. The mention of “Hyksos” identifies this first exodus with the Hyksos period (16th century BC).
Josephus records the earliest account of the false but understandable etymology that the Greek phrase Hyksos stood for the Egyptian phrase Hekw Shasu meaning the Bedouin-like Shepherd Kings, which scholars have only recently shown means “rulers of foreign lands.”
Traditionally only the Fifteenth Dynasty rulers are called Hyksos. The Greek name “Hyksos” was coined by Manetho to identify the Fifteenth Dynasty of Asiatic rulers of northern Egypt. In Egyptian Hyksos means “ruler(s) of foreign countries”, however, Josephus mistranslated Hyksos as “Shepherd Kings”.
Here is archeological evidence of the Caananite Hyksos people moving into and out of northern Egypt, though the relation of their dates to the biblical account is debated by scholars. The 2006 History Channel documentary The Exodus Decoded revived an idea first put forward by the 1st century CE Jewish historian Josephus, identifying the Israelites with the Hyksos.
Alaroidians – Establishment of the modern states:
Mitanni:
The Hittites continued expanding south after the defeat of Yamhad. The army of the Hittite king Mursili I made its way down to Babylon and sacked the city. The Hittite destruction of the Amorite Babylonian kingdom, a series of ineffectual Assyrian kings, as well as the kingdom of Yamhad, created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia and helped the rise of another Hurrian dynasty in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC.
In the 14th century BC numerous city-states in northern Syria and Canaan were ruled by persons with Hurrian and some Indo-Aryan names. If this can be taken to mean that the population of these states was Hurrian as well, then it is possible that these entities were a part of a larger polity with a shared Hurrian identity. Differences in dialect and regionally different pantheons (Hepat/Shawushka, Sharruma/Tilla etc.) point to the existence of several groups of Hurrian speakers.
Bearers of names in the Hurrian language are attested in wide areas of Syria and the northern Levant that are clearly outside the area of the political entity known to Assyria as Hanilgalbat. There is no indication that these persons owed allegiance to the political entity of Mitanni; although the German term Auslandshurriter (“Hurrian expatriates”) has been used by some authors.
Mitanni (Mi-ta-an-ni, also Mittani Mi-it-ta-ni) was an Hurrian-speaking state. Founded by an Indo-Aryan ruling class governing a predominately Hurrian population Mitanni came to be a regional power. The first ruler was a legendary king called Kirta who founded the kingdom of Mitanni around 1500 BC.
Mitanni gradually grew from the region around Khabur valley and became the most powerful kingdom of the Near East in 1450-1350 BC. Their sphere of influence is shown in Hurrian place names, personal names and the spread through Syria and the Levant of a distinct pottery type.
Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion.
In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni (between Suppiluliuma and Shattiwaza, ca. 1380 BC), the deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are invoked.
The Mitanni were closely associated with horses. A famous text discovered at Hattusa deals with the training of horses (circa 1400 BC). The man who was responsible for the horse-training was a Hurrian called Kikkuli.
Kikkuli’s horse training text includes technical terms. The terminology used in connection with horses contains many Indo-Aryan loan-words such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, round). The numeral aika “one” is of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has “aiva”) in general.
Another text has babru(-nnu) (babhru, brown), parita(-nnu) (palita, grey), and pinkara(-nnu) (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of the solstice (vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called marya (Hurrian: maria-nnu), the term for (young) warrior in Sanskrit as well; note mišta-nnu (= miẓḍha,~ Sanskrit mīḍha) “payment (for catching a fugitive)” (Mayrhofer II 358).
Sanskritic interpretations of Mitanni names render Artashumara (artaššumara) as Arta-smara “who thinks of Arta/Ṛta” (Mayrhofer II 780), Biridashva (biridašṷa, biriiašṷa) as Prītāśva “whose horse is dear” (Mayrhofer II 182), Priyamazda (priiamazda) as Priyamedha “whose wisdom is dear” (Mayrhofer II 189, II378), Citrarata as citraratha “whose chariot is shining” (Mayrhofer I 553), Indaruda/Endaruta as Indrota “helped by Indra” (Mayrhofer I 134), Shativaza (šattiṷaza) as Sātivāja “winning the race price” (Mayrhofer II 540, 696), Šubandhu as Subandhu ‘having good relatives” (a name in Palestine, Mayrhofer II 209, 735), Tushratta (tṷišeratta, tušratta, etc.) as *tṷaišaratha, Vedic Tveṣaratha “whose chariot is vehement” (Mayrhofer I 686, I 736).
“This kingdom was known as the Maryannu, Nahrin or Mitanni to the Egyptians, Hurri to the Hittites and Hanigalbat (Assyrian Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat cuneiform Ḫa-ni-gal-bat) to the Assyrians. All three names were equivalent and interchangeable”, asserted Michael C. Astour.
Hittite annals mention a people called Hurri (Ḫu-ur-ri), located in northeastern Syria. A Hittite fragment, probably from the time of Mursili I, mentions a “King of the Hurri”, or “Hurrians”. The Assyro-Akkadian version of the text renders “Hurri” as Hanigalbat. Tushratta, who styles himself “king of Mitanni” in his Akkadian Amarna letters, refers to his kingdom as Hanigalbat.
Egyptian sources call Mitanni “nhrn”, which is usually pronounced as Naharin/Naharina from the Assyro-Akkadian word for “river”, cf. Aram-Naharaim. The name Mitanni is first found in the “memoirs” of the Syrian wars (ca. 1480 BC) of the official astronomer and clockmaker Amememhet, who returned from the “foreign country called Me-ta-ni” at the time of Thutmose I. The expedition to the Naharina announced by Thutmosis I at the beginning of his reign may have actually taken place during the long previous reign of Amenhotep I Helck believes that this was the expedition mentioned by Amenhotep II.
Maryannu is an ancient word for the caste of chariot-mounted hereditary warrior nobility which dominated many of the societies of the Middle East during the Bronze Age. The term is attested in the Amarna letters written by Haapi. Robert Drews writes that the name ‘maryannu’ although plural takes the singular ‘marya’, which in Sanskrit means young warrior, and attaches a Hurrian suffix. Archaeologists have attested a striking parallel in the spread to Syria of a distinct pottery type associated with what they call the Kura-Araxes culture.
Drews suggests that at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age most would have spoken either Hurrian or Aryan but by the end of the 14th century most of the Levant maryannu had Semitic names.
Washukanni (or Waššukanni) was the capital of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, from c. 1500 BC to the 13th century BC. Its precise location is unknown, it may be however located under the so-far unexcavated mound of Tell el Fakhariya, near Tell Halaf in Syria, to the east of the Euphrates river.
At the beginning of its history, Mitanni’s major rival was Egypt under the Thutmosids. However, with the ascent of the Hittite empire, Mitanni and Egypt made an alliance to protect their mutual interests from the threat of Hittite domination. At the height of its power, during the 14th century BC, it had outposts centered around its capital, Washukanni, whose location has been determined by archaeologists to be on the headwaters of the Khabur River.
Another Hurrian kingdom also benefited from the demise of Babylonian power in 1600 century BC. Hurrians had inhabited the region northeast of river Tigris, around the modern Kirkuk. This was the kingdom of Arrapha. Excavations at Yorgan Tepe, ancient Nuzi, proved to be one of the most important sites for our knowledge about the Hurrians.
Arrapha or Arrapkha was an ancient city in what today is northeastern Iraq, on the site of the modern city of Kirkuk. It began as a city of the Gutian people, became Hurrian, and was an Assyrian city during most of its occupation.
The city was founded around 2000 BC by Hurrian-related Zagros Mountains–Taurus Mountains dwellers who were known as the Gutian people by lowland-dwellers of Southern Mesopotamia. Arraphkha was the capital of the Guti kingdom (Gutium), which is mentioned in cuneiform records about 2400 BC.
Arrapha was an important trading center in the 18th century BC. By the 14th century it was a largely Hurrian city, the capital of the small, Hurrian kingdom of Arrapkha, situated along the southeastern edge of the area under Mittani domination.
Hurrian kings such as Ithi-Teshup and Ithiya ruled over Arrapha, yet by the mid-fifteenth century BC they had become vassals of the Great King of Mitanni. Arrapha itself was destroyed by the Assyrians in the fourteenth century BC.
Nuzi (or Nuzu; Akkadian Gasur; modern Yorghan Tepe, Iraq) was a provincial town in the kingdom of Arrapha. Nuzi was an ancient Mesopotamian city southwest of Kirkuk in modern Al Ta’amim Governorate of Iraq, located near the Tigris river. The site consists of one medium sized multiperiod tell and two small single period mounds.
The town of Gasur was apparently founded during the Akkadian Empire in the late third millennium BC. In the middle second millennium Hurrians absorbed the town and renamed it Nuzi. The history of the site during the intervening period is unclear, though the presence of a few cuneiform tables from Old Assyria indicates that trade with nearby Assur was taking place.
The best-known period in the history of Yorghan Tepe is by far one of the city of Nuzi in the 15th-14th centuries BC. The tablets of this period indicate that Nuzi was a small provincial town of northern Mesopotamia at this time in an area populated mostly by Hurrians.
Eventually, Mitanni succumbed to Hittite and later Assyrian attacks, and was reduced to the status of a province of the Middle Assyrian Empire.
By the thirteenth century BC all of the Hurrian states had been vanquished by other peoples. The heart of the Hurrian lands, the Khabur river valley, became an Assyrian province. It is not clear what happened to the Hurrian people at the end of the Bronze Age. Some scholars have suggested Hurrians lived on in the country of Subartu north of Assyria during the early Iron Age.
The Hurrian population of Syria in the following centuries seems to have given up their language in favor of the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian or, more likely, Aramaic. This was around the same time that an aristocracy speaking Urartian, similar to old Hurrian, seems to have first imposed itself on the population around Lake Van, and formed the Kingdom of Urartu.
After the fall of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni to the Hittites, Nuzi fell to the Assyrians and went into decline. Note that while Hurrian period is well known because those levels of the site were fully excavated, the earlier history is less firm because of only scanty digging. The history of Nuzi is closely interrelated with that of the nearby towns of Eshnunna and Khafajah.
The Arameans
The Arameans were a Northwest Semitic semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who originated in what is now modern Syria (Biblical Aram) during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Large groups migrated to Mesopotamia where they intermingled with the native Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) population. A large proportion of Syriac Christians in modern Syria still espouse an Aramean identity to this day, though few now speak the Western Aramaic language.
The Arameans never had a unified nation; they were divided into small independent kingdoms across parts of the Near East, particularly in what is now modern Syria. After the Bronze Age collapse, their political influence was confined to a number of Syro-Hittite states, which were entirely absorbed into the Neo-Assyrian Empire by the 8th century BC.
By contrast, the Aramaic language came to be the lingua franca of the entire Fertile Crescent, by Late Antiquity developing into the literary languages such as Syriac and Mandaic. Scholars have used the term “Aramaization” for the process by which the Akkadian/Assyro-Babylonian peoples became Aramaic-speaking during the later Iron Age.
The Arameans were, in the 11th century BC, established in Syria. The Bible tells us that Saul, David and Solomon (late 11th to 10th centuries) fought against the Arameans kingdoms across the northern frontier of Israel: Aram-Sôvah in the Beq’a, Aram-Bêt-Rehob and Aram-Ma’akah around Mount Hermon, Geshur in the Hauran, and Aram-Damascus.
An Arameans king’s account dating at least two centuries later, the Tel Dan Stele, was discovered in northern Israel, and is famous for being perhaps the earliest non-Israelite extra-biblical historical reference to the Israelite royal dynasty, the House of David. Farther north, the Arameans were in possession of Hamath on the Orontes and were soon to become strong enough to dissociate with the Neo-Hittite block.
The origin of the Arameans is still uncertain, arising from the limited amount of evidence regarding the mention of Arameans in Mesopotamian inscriptions.
The toponym A-ra-mu appears in an inscription at Ebla listing geographical names, and the term Armi, which is the Eblaite term for nearby Aleppo, occurs frequently in the Ebla tablets (ca. 2300 BC). One of the annals of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2250 BC) mentions that he captured “Dubul, the ensi of A-ra-me” (Arame is seemingly a genitive form), in the course of a campaign against Simurrum in the northern mountains.
Other early references to a place or people of “Aram” have appeared at the archives of Mari (c. 1900 BC) and at Ugarit (c. 1300 BC). There is little agreement concerning what, if any, relationship there was between these places, or if the Aramu were actually Arameans; the earliest undisputed mention of Arameans as a people is in the inscriptions of Tiglath Pileser I (c. 1100 BC).
Nomadic pastoralists have always been a feature of the Middle East, but their numbers seem to vary according to climatic conditions and the force of neighbouring states inducing permanent settlement. The period of the Late Bronze Age seems to have been one of increasing aridity, weakening neighbouring states, and inducing transhumance pastoralists to spend longer and longer periods with their flocks. Urban settlements diminished in size, until eventually fully nomadic pastoralist lifestyles came to dominate the region. These highly mobile, competitive tribesmen with their sudden raids were a continued threat to long distance trade and interfered with the collection of taxes and tribute.
In the early 14th century BC, much of Israel was under Arameans rule for eight years according to the Biblical Book of Judges, until Othniel defeated the forces led by Chushan-Rishathaim, the King of Aram-Naharaim. Other entities mentioned in the Hebrew Bible include Aram Damascus and Aram Rehob.
The Ahlamû (= wanderers) (connections to Allah?) are first mentioned in the el-Amarna letters alluding to the king of Babylon; the presence of the Ahlamû are also attested in Assyria, Nippur and even at Dilmun (Bahrain); Shalmaneser I (1274-1245 BC) defeated the Shattuara, King of Mitanni and his Hittite and Ahlamû mercenaries are mentioned in the Jazirah.
The term appears equivalent to the Egyptian term Shasu (Shsw = wanderer), who replaced the outlaw ‘Apiru (cuneiform SA.GAZ) as the major source of instability in the Egyptian Levantine empire from the reign of Tutankhamun onwards.
In the following century, the Ahlamû cut the road from Babylon to Hattusas, and Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 BC) claims that he conquered Mari, Hana and Rapiqum on the Euphrates and “the mountain of the Ahlamû”, apparently the region of Jebel Bishri.
For the first time, an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1077 BC) refers to the “Ahlamû-Aramaeans” (Ahlame Armaia) and shortly after, the Ahlamû rapidly disappear from Assyrian annals, to be replaced by the Aramaeans (Aramu, Arimi).
“Ahlamû-Aramaeans” would consider the Arameans as an important and in time dominant faction of the Ahlamû tribes, however it is possible that the two peoples had nothing in common, but operated in the same area.
Nairi:
Nairi was the Assyrian name for a loose confederation of small Hurrian kingdoms and tribal states in Armenian Highland, roughly corresponding to the modern Van and Hakkâri provinces of modern Turkey, in the 13th–11th centuries BC. It was the successor of the state of Mitanni. Egyptian sources call Mitanni “nhrn”, which is usually pronounced as Naharin/Naharina from the Assyro-Akkadian word for “river”, cf. Aram-Naharaim.
During the Bronze Age collapse (13th to 12th centuries BC), the Nairi tribes were considered a force strong enough to contend with both Assyria and Hatti. The Battle of Nihriya, the culminating point of the hostilities between Hittites and Assyrians for control over the remnants of the former empire of Mitanni, took place there, circa 1230.
The names of twenty-three Nairi lands were recorded by Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 BC). Their southernmost point was Tumme, known to have been south-west of Lake Urmia, and their northern one Daiaeni. It is believed that Nairi extended from the Tur-Abdin mountains in the south to the mountainous area southwest of Lake Van in the north.
The Nairi states were repeatedly subjected to further attacks and invasions by the Assyrians, especially under Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1240 BC), Tiglath-Pileser I (c. 1100 BC), Ashur-bel-kala (c. 1070 BC), Adad-nirari II (c. 900), Tukulti-Ninurta II (c. 890), and Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC).
Urartu:
The name Urartu (Armenian: Urartu, Assyrian: māt Urarṭu; Babylonian: Urashtu), corresponding to Kingdom of Ararat or Kingdom of Van (Urartian: Biai, Biainili – from which is derived the Armenian toponym “Van”), comes from Assyrian sources.
The Assyrian King Shalmaneser I (1274–1245 BC or 1263–1234 BC) recorded a campaign in which he subdued the entire territory of “Uruatri” in 1274 BC. Uruartri itself was in the region centred around Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands.
The Shalmaneser text uses the name Uratri to refer to a geographical region, not a kingdom. The Assyrian inscriptions mention Uruartri as one of the states of Nairi which he conquered and names eight “lands” contained within Urartu (which at the time of the campaign were still disunited).
Urartu re-emerged in Assyrian inscriptions in the 9th century BC as a powerful northern Iron Age rival of Assyria at the headwaters of the river Tigris. Living at the time of King Shalmaneser III of Assyria (ruled 859–824 BC), the Uratian king Arame (860–843 BC) united the Nairi states and tribes into one kingdom against the threat of the Assyrian Empire.
Arzashkun, the capital of the early kingdom of Urartu in the 9th century BC, had double walls and towers, and was hidden and protected from attack by a dense forest almost impassable to a regular army, but was captured by Shalmaneser III in the 840s BC.
Shalmaneser regarded the unification and establishment of the Urartian state as so menacing to Assyria’s interest that he undertook an expedition in 857, claimed to have destroyed the capital Arzashkun, penetrated as far as Lake Van, and left his inscription on Mount Irritia. In 832 BC Sarduri I moved the capital to Tushpa.
From cuneiform sources is known that in Urartu grew wheat, barley, sesame, millet and emmer, and cultivated gardens and vineyards. Many regions of the Urartu state required artificial irrigation, which has successfully been organized by the rulers of Urartu in the heyday of the state.
In several regions remain ancient irrigation canals, constructed by Urartu, mainly during the Argishti I (785-763 BC), who founded the citadel of Erebuni in 782 BC, which is the present capital of Armenia, Yerevan, and Menua (810-786 BC) period, some of them are still used for irrigation.
The economic structure of Urartu was similar to other states of the Ancient World, especially to Assyria. The state was heavily dependent on agriculture, which required a centralized effort to irrigation. These works managed by kings, in their implementation participated the free inhabitants, and perhaps the prisoners as slaves.
Royal governors, influent people and, perhaps, free peoples had their own allotments. Individual territories within the state had to pay taxes the central government in form of grain, horses, bulls, etc. In peacetime, Urartu probably led an active trade with Assyria, providing there cattle, horses, iron and wine.
With the expansion of Urartian territory, many of the gods worshiped by conquered peoples were incorporated into the Urartian pantheon, as a mean to confirm the annexation of territories and promote political stability. However, although the Urartians incorporated many deities into their pantheon, they appeared to be selective in their choices.
Although many different Urartian kings made conquests in the North, such as the Sevan region, many of those peoples’ gods remain excluded. This was most likely the case because Urartians considered the people in the North to be barbaric, and disliked their deities as much as they did them.
Good examples of incorporated deities however are the goddesses Bagvarti (Bagmashtu) and Selardi. On Mheri-Dur, or Meher-Tur (the “Gate of Mehr”), overlooking modern Van, an inscription lists a total of 79 deities, and what type of sacrificial offerings should be made to each; goats, sheep, cattle, and other animals served as the sacrificial offerings.
The pantheon was headed by a triad made up of Khaldi (the supreme god), Theispas (Teisheba) god of thunder and storms, as well as sometimes war, and Shivini a solar god. Their king was also the chief-priest or envoy of Khaldi. Some temples to Khaldi were part of the royal palace complex while others were independent structures.
Scholars such as Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt (1910) believed that the people of Urartu called themselves Khaldini after their god Khaldi. The Nairi, an Iron Age people of the Van area, are sometimes considered related or identical.
In 714 BC, the Urartu kingdom suffered heavily from Cimmerian raids and the campaigns of Sargon II. The main temple at Mushashir was sacked, and the Urartian king Rusa I was crushingly defeated by Sargon II at Lake Urmia. He subsequently committed suicide in shame.
Rusa’s son Argishti II (714 – 685 BC) restored Urartu’s position against the Cimmerians, however it was no longer a threat to Assyria and peace was made with the new king of Assyria Sennacherib in 705 BC. This in turn helped Urartu enter a long period of development and prosperity, which continued through the reign of Argishti’s son Rusa II (685–645 BC).
After Rusa II, however, the Urartu grew weaker under constant attacks from Cimmerian and Scythian invaders. As a result it became dependent on Assyria, as evidenced by Rusa II’s son Sardur III (645–635 BC) referring to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal as his “father.”
Late during the 600s BC (during or after Sardur III’s reign), Urartu was invaded by Scythians and their allies – the Medes. In 612 BC, the Median king Cyaxares the Great together with Nabopolassar of Babylon and the Scythians conquered Assyria after it had been badly weakened by civil war.
Many Urartian ruins of the period show evidence of destruction by fire. This would indicate two scenarios – either Media subsequently conquered Urartu, bringing about its subsequent demise, or Urartu maintained its independence and power, going through a mere dynastic change, as a local Armenian dynasty (later to be called the Orontids) overthrew the ruling family with the help of the Median army.
Ancient sources support the latter version: Xenophon, for example, states that Armenia, ruled by an Orontid king, was not conquered until the reign of Median king Astyages (585– 550 BC) – long after Median invasion of the late 7th century BC. Similarly, Strabo (1st c. BC – 1st c AD) wrote that “[i]n ancient times Greater Armenia ruled the whole of Asia, after it broke up the empire of the Syrians, but later, in the time of Astyages, it was deprived of that great authority …”
Medieval Armenian chronicles corroborate the Greek and Hebrew sources. In particular, Movses Khorenatsi writes that Armenian prince Paruyr Skayordi helped the Median king Cyaxares and his allies conquer Assyria, for which Cyaxares recognized him as the king of Armenia, while Media conquered Armenia only much later – under Astyages. It is possible that the last Urartian king, Rusa IV, had connections to the future incoming Armenian Orontids dynasty.
Urartu was destroyed in either 590 BC or 585 BC. By the late 6th century, Urartu had certainly been replaced by Armenia. In the early 6th century BC, the Urartian Kingdom was replaced by the Armenian Orontid dynasty.
Medieval Armenian chronicles corroborate the Greek and Hebrew sources. In particular, Movses Khorenatsi writes that Armenian prince Paruyr Skayordi helped the Median king Cyaxares and his allies conquer Assyria, for which Cyaxares recognized him as the king of Armenia, while Media conquered Armenia only much later – under Astyages. It is possible that the last Urartian king, Rusa IV, had connections to the future incoming Armenian Orontids dynasty.
In the early 6th century BC, the Urartian Kingdom was replaced by the Armenian Orontid dynasty. In the famous trilingual Behistun inscription, carved in 521 BC by the order of Darius I the Great of Persia, the country referred to as «Urashtu/Urartu» in Assyrian is called “Armina/Armenia” in Old Persian and “Harminuia” in Elamite, clearly equating the two, suggesting that both are somewhat part of a same continuous entity. As the Armenian identity developed in the region, the memory of Urartu faded and finally disappeared.
The Chaldeans:
Haldi, or Khaldi, was one of the three chief deities of Ararat (Urartu). His shrine was at Ardini. Of all the gods of Ararat (Urartu) panthenon, the most inscriptions are dedicated to him. His wife was the goddess Arubani. He is portrayed as a man with or without a beard, standing on a lion.
Khaldi was a warrior god whom the kings of Urartu would pray to for victories in battle. The temples dedicated to Khaldi were adorned with weapons, such as swords, spears, bow and arrows, and shields hung off the walls and were sometimes known as ‘the house of weapons’.
Scholars such as Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt (1910) believed that the people of Urartu called themselves Khaldini after their god Khaldi. The Nairi, an Iron Age people of the Van area, are sometimes considered related or identical.
Chaldea or Chaldaea, (Akkadian: māt Ḫaldu; Hebrew: Kaśdim; Aramaic: Kaldo) was a marshy land located in south eastern Mesopotamia which came to rule Babylon briefly. Tribes of Semitic settlers who arrived in the region from the 10th Century BC became known as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. The Hebrew Bible uses the term kaśdim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Septuagint.
The Chaldeans, like the rest of Mesopotamia and much of the ancient Near East and Asia Minor, from the 10th to late 7th centuries BC, came to be dominated by the Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia.
The Chaldeans first came to prominence in the late 8th Century BC. The Chaldean king Merodach-Baladan allied with the Elamites during the 8th century BC in numerous failed attempts to wrest Babylon from the Assyrians.
In 626 BC, following the death of Ashurbanipal, a series of bitter wars broke out in the Assyrian Empire over who should rule. These wars greatly weakened the empire. Sensing this weakness, the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians formed a coalition and attacked the Assyrian Empire in 616 BC. In 612 BC they destroyed Nineveh, Harran fell in 609 BC, and the last Assyrian army at Carchemish in 605 BC.
The short-lived 11th dynasty of the Kings of Babylon (6th century BC) is conventionally known to historians as the Chaldean Dynasty, although only the first four rulers of this dynasty were known to be Chaldeans, and the last ruler, Nabonidus (and his son and regent Belshazzar) was known to be from Assyria.
The region in which the Chaldeans settled was in the southern portion of Babylonia, lying chiefly on the right bank of the Euphrates. Though the name came to be commonly used to refer to the whole of southern Mesopotamia, Chaldea proper was in fact the vast plain in the far south east formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris, extending to about four hundred miles along the course of these rivers, and about a hundred miles in average width.
The language used by the Chaldeans was the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, the same Semitic language, save for slight peculiarities in sound and in characters, as Assyrian Akkadian. In late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian ceased to be spoken, and Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, and remains the mother tongue of the Assyrian (also known as Chaldo-Assyrian) Christians of Iraq and its surrounds to this day. One form of this widespread language is used in Daniel and Ezra, but the use of the name “Chaldee” to describe it, first introduced by Jerome, is incorrect and a misnomer.
The homeland of the Semitic Chaldean people was in the far south east of Mesopotamia. It is not certain when they migrated at an unknown period into the country of the Mesopotamian sea-lands about the head of the Persian Gulf. They seem to have appeared there at about the same time that other new Semitic peoples, the Arameans and the Sutu appeared in Babylonia, c. 1000 BC. This was a period of weakness in Babylonia, and its ineffectual kings were unable to prevent new waves of peoples invading and settling in the land.
Though belonging to the same Semitic ethnic group, they are to be differentiated from the Aramean stock; and the Assyrian king Sennacherib, for example, is careful in his inscriptions to distinguish them. When they came to possess the whole of southern Mesopotamia, the name “Chaldean” became synonymous with “Babylonian”, particularly to the Greeks and Jews.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or the Chaldean Empire was a period of Mesopotamian history which began in 626 BC and ended in 539 BC. During the preceding three centuries, Babylonia had been ruled by their fellow Akkadian speakers and northern neighbours, Assyria. Throughout that time Babylonia enjoyed a prominent status.
The Assyrians had managed to maintain Babylonian loyalty through the Neo-Assyrian period, whether through granting of increased privileges, or militarily, but that finally changed in 627 BC with the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler, Assurbanipal, and Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar the Chaldean the following year.
In alliance with the Medes, the city of Nineveh was sacked in 612 BC, and the seat of empire was again transferred to Babylonia. This period witnessed a great flourishing of architectural projects, the arts and science.
Neo-Babylonian rulers were deeply conscious of the antiquity of their heritage, and pursued an arch-traditionalist policy, reviving much of their ancient Sumero-Akkadian culture. Even though Aramaic had become the everyday tongue, Akkadian was restored as the language of administration and culture. Archaic expressions from 1,500 years earlier were reintroduced in Akkadian inscriptions, along with words in the now-long-unspoken Sumerian language. Neo-Babylonian cuneiform script was also modified to make it look like the old 3rd-millennium BC script of Akkad.
Ancient artworks from the heyday of Babylonia’s imperial glory were treated with near-religious reverence and were painstakingly preserved. For example, when a statue of Sargon the Great was found during construction work, a temple was built for it—and it was given offerings.
The story is told of how Nebuchadnezzar in his efforts to restore the Temple at Sippar, had to make repeated excavations until he found the foundation deposit of Naram-Suen, the discovery of which then allowed him to rebuild the temple properly. Neo-Babylonians also revived the ancient Sargonid practice of appointing a royal daughter to serve as priestess of the moon-god Sin.
We are much better informed about Mesopotamian culture and economic life under the Neo-Babylonians than we are about the structure and mechanics of imperial administration. It is clear that for Mesopotamia the Neo-Babylonian period was a renaissance. Large tracts of land were opened to cultivation.
Peace and imperial power made resources available to expand the irrigation systems and to build an extensive canal system. The Babylonian countryside was dominated by large estates, which were given to government officials as a form of pay. These estates were usually managed through local entrepreneurs, who took a cut of the profits. Rural folk were bound to these estates, providing both labor and rents to their landowners.
Urban life flourished under the Neo-Babylonians. Cities had local autonomy and received special privileges from the kings. Centered on their temples; the cities had their own law courts, and cases were often decided in assemblies. Temples dominated urban social structure, just as they did the legal system, and a person’s social status and political rights were determined by where they stood in relation to the religious hierarchy. Free laborers like craftsmen enjoyed high status, and a sort of guild system came into existence that gave them collective bargaining power.
Though conquerors, the Chaldeans were rapidly and completely assimilated into the dominant Semitic Akkadian Babylonian culture, as the Amorites before them had been, and after the fall of Babylon in 539 BC the term “Chaldean” was no longer used to describe a specific ethnicity, but rather a socio-economic class.
The language used by the Chaldeans was the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, the same Semitic language, save for slight peculiarities in sound and in characters, as Assyrian Akkadian. In late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian ceased to be spoken, and Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, and remains the mother tongue of the Assyrian (also known as Chaldo-Assyrian) Christians of Iraq and its surrounds to this day. One form of this widespread language is used in Daniel and Ezra, but the use of the name “Chaldee” to describe it, first introduced by Jerome, is incorrect and a misnomer.
Abraham:
In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Abraham is stated to have originally been from “Ur of the Chaldees” (Ur Kasdim); if this city is to be identified with the Sumerian Ur, it would be within the original Chaldean homeland south of the Euphrates, although Chaldeans were not extant in Mesopotamia at the time of Abraham.
On the other hand, the traditional identification with a site in Assyria would then imply the later sense of “Babylonia”, and a few interpreters have additionally tried to identify Abraham’s birthplace with Chaldia, a distinct region in Asia Minor on the Black Sea. According to the Book of Jubilees, Ur Kasdim (and Chaldea) took their name from Ura and Kesed, descendants of Arpachshad.
American archaeologists uncovered the Nuzi tablets during a dig in Iraq between 1925 and 1933. Over 5,000 records were found at the site, most dated from some time before 1400 BC. The tablets are an extensive record of the culture and norms of the time. Written in cuneiform, the records cover important aspects of marriage law, rituals for the end of life, inheritance, and other items concerning daily life.
The archives of Nuzi in Yorgan Tepe, fifteen kilometres south west of Kirkuk cast a light not only on the ancient laws of the Hurrians, but also on the legal practices of the Biblical patriarchs which agree to an amazing degree with the Biblical texts.
Taken together there is a striking conformity between the Bible and the Nuzi texts. Of particular interest in this case are the laws concerning inheritance and marriage. Three examples will suffice as illustrations:
Abraham laments the fact that he will die without a son and that a certain Eliezer will inherit from him (Gen. 15:2). From the Nuzi tablets we know that it was customary for a childless couple to adopt a “son” who looked after his foster-parents and in return inherited from them. This arrangement could be reversed to a certain degree if an heir was subsequently born.
If a marriage remained childless, the wife had to provide a “substitute wife.” This is what Sarah did when she presented Hagar to Abraham (1. Gen. 16:2) and in the same way Rachel at a later time gave her husband Jacob her maid Bilhah (1. Gen. 30:3). The custom was precisely the same in Nuzi.
Jacob’s wife Rachel stole the “images” of her father Laban (1. Gen. 31:3 ff) and Laban moved heaven and earth to get these “images” back. The Nuzi tablets tell us why. The person who was in possession of these domestic images (teraphim) also had the rights to the inheritance.
According to the Nuzi tablets, the heir was a very important part of culture; what would happen if a man’s first wife produced no heir? There were two options. The heir could be adopted (either from inside the family or outside, and slaves were also acceptable) or the man could take his wife’s personal slave as a wife. (Having multiple wives has been an accepted part of Middle Eastern societies for thousands of years.)
The slave-wife who produced an heir would remain only under the husband’s authority, just like the first wife. Her son would be considered the rightful heir to the husband’s estate. However, if the slave-wife caused problems in the family, she could be placed back under the authority of the first wife. Not surprisingly, if the first wife had a male child, that one would be considered the man’s heir. The slave-wife’s son could not be disinherited and would receive something from his father, even though he would not be considered the heir.
Armenia:
The Orontids established their supremacy over Armenia around the time of the Scythian and Median invasion in the 6th century BC. Its founder was Orontes I Sakavakyats (Armenian, Yervand I Sakavakyats). His son Tigranes Orontid united his forces with Cyrus the Great and killed Media’s king. Moses of Chorene calls him “the wisest, most powerful and bravest of Armenian Kings.”
From 553 BC to 521 BC, Armenia was Achaemenid Empire’s ally, but during Darius I’s reign, he decided to conquer Armenia. He sent an Armenian named Dâdarši to suffocate the revolt, later substituting him for the Persian Vaumisa who defeated the Armenians on May 20, 521 BC.
In 521/0 Darius I the Great of Persia, in his famous trilingual Behistun Inscription carved BC by his order, calls the region referred to as «Urashtu/Urartu» in Assyrian Armina/Armenia in Old Persian and «Harminuia» in Elamite, clearly equating the two, suggesting that both are somewhat part of a same continuous entity. As the Armenian identity developed in the region, the memory of Urartu faded and finally disappeared.
Around the same time, another Armenian by the name of Arakha, son of Haldita, claimed to be the son of the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, and renamed himself Nebuchadnezzar IV. His rebellion was short lived and was suppressed by Intaphrenes, Darius’ bow carrier. After five raids Armenia resisted.
The Satrapy of Armenia (Armenian: Hayastani Satrap; Old Persian: Armina or Arminiya), also known as Orontid Armenia (Armenian: Yervanduni Hayastan) after the ruling Orontid Dynasty, was one of the satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC, which later became an independent kingdom. Its capitals were Armavir and Yervandashat.
Urartu did not give birth to a direct successor, however, the Satrapy of Armina, as an entity which emerged immediately after its fall, inherited its cultural, traditional, geographical and some linguistic aspects.
The Orontid Dynasty, or known by their native name, Yervanduni, was a hereditary Armenian dynasty and the rulers of the successor state to the Iron Age kingdom of Ararat (Urartu). Of probable Iranian origin, members of the dynasty ruled Armenia intermittently during the period spanning the 6th to at least the 2nd century BC, first as client kings or satraps of the Median and Achaemenid empires who established an independent kingdom after the collapse of the Achaemenid empire, and later as kings of Sophene and Commagene who eventually succumbed to the Roman Empire.
Greek cmomander and historian Xenophon provided important information on the Orontid Armenia. After Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC) Orontes III restored independence in Armenia. But in 201 BC, Armenia was conquered by Artashes, an Armenian commander in Seleucid Empire, who was also a descendant of the Orontid dynasty.
The last Orontid king Orontes IV was killed, but the Orontids continued to rule in Sophene and Commagene until the 1st century BC. In two inscriptions of king Antiochus I of Commagene on his monument at Nemrut an Orontes, called Aroandes (son of Artasouras and husband of Artaxerxes’s daughter Rhodogoune), is reckoned, among others, as an ancestor of the Orontids ruling over Commagene, who traced back their family to Darius I.
The presence of a Proto-Armenian population in the area already during Urartian rule is subject to speculation: It is generally assumed that Proto-Armenian speakers entered Anatolia from around 1200 BC, ultimately deriving from a Paleo-Balkans context, and over the following centuries spread east to the Armenian Highland.
A competing theory suggested by Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov in 1984 places the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Armenian Highland, see Armenian hypothesis, which would entail the presence of Proto-Armenians in the area during the entire lifetime of the Urartian state.
After the disappearance of Urartu as a political entity, the Armenians dominated the highlands, absorbing portions of the previous Urartian culture in the process. The Armenians became, thus, the direct successors of the kingdom of Urartu and inherited their domain. Urartu is to Armenians what ancient Britons are to the English, and Gauls are to the French.
While the Urartian language was spoken by the royal elite, the population they ruled may have been multi-ethnic, and in late Urartian times largely (pre-Proto-) Armenian-speaking. Under this theory, the Armenian-speaking population were the descendants of the proto-Armenians who migrated to the Armenian Highland in c. the 12th century BC, mixing with the local Hurrian-speaking population (i.e. the “Phrygian theory,” first suggested by Herodotus).
A minority belief, advocated primarily by the official historiography of Armenia, but also supported by experts in Assyrian and Urartian studies such as Igor Diakonov, Giorgi Melikishvili, Mikhail Nikolsky Ivan Mestchaninov, suggests that Urartian was solely the formal written language of the state, while its inhabitants, including the royal family, spoke Armenian.
The theory primarily hinges on the language the Urartian cuneiform inscriptions being very repetitive and scant in vocabulary (having as little as 350–400 roots). Furthermore, over 250 years of usage, it shows no development, which is taken to indicate that the language had ceased to be spoken before the time of the inscriptions or was used only for official purposes.
This belief is compatible with the “Armenian hypothesis” suggested by Vyacheslav Ivanov and Tamaz Gamkrelidze (1984), postulating the Armenian language as an in situ development of a 3rd millennium BC Proto-Indo-European language.
According to the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture: «The Armenians according to Diakonoff, are then an amalgam of the Hurrian (and Urartians), Luvians and the Proto-Armenian Mushki who carried their IE language eastwards across Anatolia. After arriving in its historical territory, Proto-Armenian would appear to have undergone massive influence on part the languages it eventually replaced. Armenian phonology, for instance, appears to have been greatly affected by Urartian, which may suggest a long period of bilingualism.»
Little is known of what happened to the region of Urartu under the foreign rule following its fall. The most widely accepted theory is that settlers related to Phrygians, or more specifically tribes speaking a proto-Armenian language conventionally named Armeno-Phrygians, who had already settled in the western parts of the region prior to the establishment of Urartu, had become the ruling elite under the Medes, followed by the Achaemenid Persians.
These Armeno-Phrygians, referred to as Armenians as of now, would have mingled with the disparate peoples of Urartu, resulting a fusion of languages and cultures. The Armenians multiplied in numbers and spread their language throughout the territory of Urartu. The Urartians, during its dominance, had amalgamated disparate tribes, each of which had its own culture and traditions.
Thus, when the political structure was destroyed, little remained that could be identified as one unified Urartian culture. The region formerly known as Urartu became an Achaemenid satrapy called Armina, which later became an independent kingdom called Armenia. The Urartians who were in the satrapy were then assimilated, becoming part of the Armenian ethnogenesis.
However, other Urartians might have kept their former identity. According to Herodotus, the Alarodians (Alarodioi) – believed to be Urartian remnants – were part of the 18th Satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire and formed a special contingent in the grand army of Xerxes I.
Some Urartian traditions, such as architecture and dam constructions, were absorbed in the following Persianates, and most probably persisted in the Satrapy of Armina.
The language spoken in Urartu is now extinct. Little is known of what was spoken in the geopolitical region from the time of Urartu’s fall in the 6th century BC, to the creation of the Armenian alphabet in the 4th century AD.
In ancient Persian inscriptions, references to Armina (Armenia) indicate that Urartian was still spoken, or was in a transitional period into being replaced with the Armenian language. In fact, the ethnonym “Armina” itself and all other names attested with reference to the rebellions against Darius in Armina (the proper names Araxa, Haldita, and Dādṛšiš, the toponyms Zūzahya, Tigra, and Uyamā, and the district name Autiyāra) are not connected with Armenian linguistic and onomastic material attested later in native Armenian sources. They are also not Iranian, but seem related to Urartian.
The name of the province of Ayrarat in the Kingdom of Armenia is believed to be a continuum of the Urartu toponym (or Biblical Ararat). The modern name of Mount Ararat is derived from the Biblical Mountains of Ararat (or Mountains of Urartu), and the Ararat Province of modern Armenia is in turn named after the mountain.
Armenia is described by Xenophon as a vast and rich country, with Orondas (Orontes) (Erouand, Ervanduni) ruling as satrap and Tiribaz as uparkos or vice-governor. In Xenophon’s time the Armens had not yet occupied the plain of Ararat, which was then inhabited by Saspeirs, Alarodians (Urarteans) and the oldest native tribes.
The Kartuchi (Korduq of the Armenian geography), living in the south of the Centries, were a warlike people, not subjects of the Persians. They and the Armens were in almost continuous conflict, which, says Xenophon, explains why there were no villages in existence on the right bank of the Centrides, in the vicinity of modern Serd.
The Kartuchi were a sedentary people, with a comparatively high degree of civilization. Their dwellings were described by the Greek soldiers as elegant and furnished with many copper utensils.
They had plenty of provisions and wine kept in cemented cisterns. According to Strabo, they were skilled architects, experts in the tactics of besieging fortresses. Their arms consisted of bows and slings. The bows were one and a half yards long, and the arrows more than a yard.
This mode of life does not harmonize with cattle-growing nomadic people, such as the Kurds. The Armens therefore, thinks Marquart, must have been kindred of the Khald-Urarteans. The army of Orondas, says Xenophon, besides Armens, included Mards and Khaldian mercenaries. The latter were a doughty people, noted for their long shields and spears.
The Khaldian soldiers of Orondas are considered to have been the inhabitants of Sassoun and the Khoyt Mountains, who maintained their independence until their assimilation with the Armens. As to the mercenary Mards, they were, according to Herodotus, an Iranian nomadic tribe, to be identified, in Marquart’s opinion, with the modern Kurds.
The 10th century Arabian historian Masoudi states that the Kurds acknowledged as their ancestor the chieftain Kurd, the son of Mard. In Armenian history the Kurds have been known as the “Mar people.”
The district of Mardistan, in historic Armenia, corresponds to Artaz, west of the modern Maku, South Iran. The district of Mardali (Mardaghi) must have been located to the south of Erzerum, north of the Bingöl sources. The Mards of this section of the country were evidently immigrants from the South, says Adontz.
The bulk of the tribe occupied one of the southern areas of Vaspurakan (Van), near the upper course of the Centrides River. Xenophon mentioned particularly the extremely fierce and hardy Chalyb tribe, called Chaldaioi by Strabo, living in the Pontic Mountains, and mostly engaged in iron mining and forging.
Several authors classify this people as being of the same stock as the Khaldi-Urarteans. The Taochi and the Phasian tribes, neighbors of the Chalybs, who likewise offered stiff resistance to the Greeks, are represented in the Taiq and Pasian districts of Armenia.
The above-mentioned tribes and several others, including the Kimmerian-Scythian settlers from southern Russia, dating from the 8th century BC, were all independent of Persia. Scythian tribes, the Saspeirs of Herodotus, had occupied considerable areas extending from Colchis to Media – around modern Nakhjavan and as far as Kars, Leninakan and the plain of Ararat.
Alongside the Kimmerians and Scythians should be listed the Sarmatian tribe, which includes the Siraqs and the Gogs, after whom the Armenian provinces of Shirak and Gougarq seem to have been named.
The Mesoch-Mushkians, the Outians and the Pactians were also among the inhabitants of the Armenian plateau, each having its own language or dialect, and particular kind of social life and culture. They were all eventually assimilated with the Armens, adding their numbers to the larger elements from the Khaldi and the Hittites.
Besides plenty of wheat, barley and cereals, the Armen villages had in store raisins, perfumed wine, sesame, fragrant oil of almonds and turpentine. The people were both cattle-breeders and agriculturists. They exported many horses. Herodotus calls the Armens polyprobatoi, “rich in animals.”
Distinction should be made, however, between the civilization in the different parts of the country. Stately houses with towers on the banks of the Centrides River were in striking contrast to the underground dwellings near the sources of the Euphrates.
The rural life of the Armens was indicative of a patriarchal or family character. A group of villages was surrounded with barricades and was governed by a village chief or Komarch (archon tes komes) representing the satrap.
Payment of taxes to the Persian king was made collectively. The absence of cities was noticeable.
Various clans, settled in villages under local chiefs, supplied a specified number of soldiers to the army of the nearest petty king. A general of Darius was one of these kings.
By the large numbers of the Armenian army serving under the Great Persian monarch – recruited from one section of the Armenian plateau – we are led to believe that all of the comparatively small number of new settlers were soldiers. The same was true in the Georgian and Albanian lands of the Caucasus, as pointed out by the Georgian historian, J. Tchavakhishvili.
The word eri in the ancient Iberian (Georgian) language meant both people and soldiers. The Medes, after subduing the kingdom of Urartu, utilized the Armens in keeping that turbulent people under subjection. Marquart notes that the settling of the warlike Armen colonists in the strategic places in the Armenian highlands was because of their military capacity.
From all this, Manandian reaches the conclusion that, as the ancient Slavons, so the ancient Armens were in the period of “warring democracy.” The same may be said of the Medes and the Persians of old, whose democratic organization and public assemblies point to their having a soldier population.
Hence the destruction in the ancient East, even as in the medieval West, of the cultural great powers, had been mainly achieved by the so called “barbarian” new peoples, such as the Medes, Persians and Armens.
Applying the principle to the Armens, Prof. Marr has remarked, “And now there succeeded, one after the other, warlike Aryan peoples, just as in later times came inrushing masses of Turks. These Aryan races who, at that time, were certainly savages by comparison with the natives, were nevertheless strong in their military organization, and subdued the culturally higher races, intermixed with them and created a new world.”
Attention is called by Manandian to the fact that the commercial intercourse between Babylon and Armenia was carried on for the most part by the Assyrians. Business transactions, limited in Armenia in those days, were principally in the hands of the Semitic peoples, while the Armenians were essentially farmers and cattle-breeders.
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