Tushhan (also Tushan, or Tušhan) is a Kurdish village known as ( ku, Behramki) or ( ku, Tepe-i Barava) by residents. It was an ancient city in

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...

and was a provincial capital in the upper

Tigris The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...

river valley, on the south bank and inhabited since the

Mitanni Mitanni (; Hittite cuneiform ; ''Mittani'' '), c. 1550–1260 BC, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat (''Hanikalbat'', ''Khanigalbat'', cuneiform ') in Assyrian records, or '' Naharin'' ...

period, and mainly during the

Neo-Assyrian The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...

period during the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly ...

. It is now believed to be located at the site of the modern Ziyaret Tepe ( ku, Tepa Barava),

Diyarbakır Province Diyarbakır Province ( tr, Diyarbakır ili, Zazaki: Suke Diyarbekır ku, Parêzgeha Amedê) is a province in southeastern Turkey. The province covers an area of 15,355 km2 and its population is 1,528,958. The provincial capital is the cit ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

History

The site of Ziyaret Tepe was occupied as early as the

Early Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

. Most of the urban development uncovered to date is from the Middle Iron Age, when the city was rebuilt after its collapse at the end of the Middle Assyrian period. In late Assyrian times it was known as Tushhan, until circa 612 BC to 605 BC, when that empire fell. The site was also occupied in a much smaller scale in the

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

Medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

and Ottoman periods. The site is expected to be inundated by the

Ilısu Dam The Ilısu Dam () is a concrete-face rock-fill dam on the Tigris near the village of Ilısu and along the border of Mardin and Şırnak Provinces in Turkey. It is one of the 22 dams of the Southeastern Anatolia Project and its purpose is hydroelec ...

around 2014.

Archaeology

Work at the location began with 3 years of surface survey and remote sensing in 1997 From 2000 until 2014 the site was being excavated by a team directed by Timothy Matney of the

University of Akron The University of Akron is a public research university in Akron, Ohio. It is part of the University System of Ohio. As a STEM-focused institution, it focuses on industries such as polymers, advanced materials, and engineering. It is classifie ...

. An important assemblage of

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge- ...

clay tablet In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian ) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a sty ...

s was found there, translated by

Simo Parpola Simo Kaarlo Antero Parpola (born 4 July 1943) is a Finnish Assyriologist specializing in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki (retired fall 2009). Career Simo Parpola studied Assyriology, ...

Helsinki University The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

Controversial Neo-Assyrian tablet

A cuneiform tablet was discovered in 2009 at Ziyaret Tepe that contained a list of around 60 names. It was a list of women deported from an unknown location around 800 BC, during the

Neo Assyrian Empire The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...

period. According to John MacGinnis of the University of Cambridge McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, these women may have come from around the

Zagros Mountains The Zagros Mountains ( ar, جبال زاغروس, translit=Jibal Zaghrus; fa, کوه‌های زاگرس, Kuh hā-ye Zāgros; ku, چیاکانی زاگرۆس, translit=Çiyakani Zagros; Turkish: ''Zagros Dağları''; Luri: ''Kuh hā-ye Zāgr ...

. He said that the most likely possibility was that these names belonged to Shubrians, a people speaking a dialect of Hurrian. This contention received little support.

Üçtepe

Ziyaret Tepe is quite close to the town of Üçtepe, located near

Bismil Bismil ( ku, Bismil) is a district of Diyarbakır Province of Turkey. The population is 117,674 (as of 2018) and most of the people are Kurds. Location In order to settle the influx of migrants from Konya in 1936, a new district of Diyarbakir ...

, where in 1861

John George Taylor John George Taylor (active 1851–1861; also known as J E Taylor and J G Taylor) was a British official of the Foreign Office, and also an important early archaeologist investigating the antiquities of the Middle East. He was one of the first ar ...

found the famous

Kurkh Monoliths The Kurkh Monoliths are two Assyrian stelae that contain a description of the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and his son Shalmaneser III. The Monoliths were discovered in 1861 by a British archaeologist John George Taylor, who was the British Consu ...

, Assyrian monuments that contain a description of the

Battle of Qarqar The Battle of Qarqar (or Ḳarḳar) was fought in 853 BC when the army of the Neo-Assyrian Empire led by Emperor Shalmaneser III encountered an allied army of eleven kings at Qarqar led by Hadadezer, called in Assyrian ''Adad-idir'' and possi ...

— of interest to biblical and Ancient Near East studies.Nadav Naʼaman
''Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction : Collected Essays''
Eisenbrauns, 2005. p. 2 In fact, Üçtepe was believed to have been the location of Tushan by some scholars in the past. Today the monoliths are located at the British Museum.

Notes

References

*Timothy Matney and Ann Donkin, Mapping the Past: An Archaeogeophysical Case Study from Southeastern Turkey, Near Eastern Archaeology, vol. 69, pp. 12–26, 2006 *Timothy, Matney et al., Eighteen years on the frontiers of Assyria: the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020 e

External links

Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project websiteZiyaret Tepe page at CambridgeHow archaeologists discovered an ancient Assyrian city – and lost it again
The Guardian 7 Feb 2018 {{coord, 37.793470, N, 40.793047, E, display=title Archaeological sites in Southeastern Anatolia Ancient Assyrian cities Former populated places in Turkey History of Diyarbakır Province Geography of Diyarbakır Province