Tell Uqair (Tell Uquair, Tell Aqair) is a tell or settlement mound northeast of Babylon and about south of

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

in modern

Babil Governorate Babil Governorate or Babylon Province ( ar, محافظة بابل ''Muḥāfaẓa Bābil'') is a governorate in central Iraq. It has an area of , with an estimated population of 2,065,042 people in 2018. The provincial capital is the city of Hill ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

History of archaeological research

The site of Tell Uqair was excavated during World War II, in 1941 and 1942, by an Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities team led by

Seton Lloyd Seton Howard Frederick Lloyd, CBE (30 May 1902, Birmingham, England – 7 January 1996, Faringdon, England), was an English archaeologist. He was President of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Director of the British Institute of Archaeo ...

, with

Taha Baqir Taha Baqir ( ar, طه باقر ') (born 1912 in Babylon, Ottoman Iraq – 28 February 1984) was an Iraqi Assyriologist, author, cuneiformist, linguist, historian, and former curator of the National Museum of Iraq. Baqir is considered one of Iraq' ...

and Fuad Safar. The buildings and artifacts discovered were primarily from the

Ubaid period The Ubaid period (c. 6500–3700 BC) is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The name derives from Tell al-'Ubaid where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period material was conducted initially in 1919 by Henry Hall and later by Leonard Wo ...

, the

Uruk period The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after ...

, and the

Jemdet Nasr period The Jemdet Nasr Period is an archaeological culture in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). It is generally dated from 3100 to 2900 BC. It is named after the type site Tell Jemdet Nasr, where the assemblage typical for this period was first r ...

and included four

Proto-Cuneiform The Proto-Cuneiform script was used in Mesopotamia from roughly 3300 BC to 2900 BC. It arose from the token based system used in the region for the preceding millennia and was replaced by the development of early Cuneiform script in the Early Dy ...

tablets. A sounding was done by a team from the

Heidelberg University } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, B ...

in 1978.

Tell Uqair and its environment

Tell Uqair is a small mound just north of Tell Ibrahim, the large mound marking the site of ancient

Kutha Kutha, Cuthah, Cuth or Cutha ( ar, كُوثَا, Sumerian: Gudua), modern Tell Ibrahim ( ar, تَلّ إِبْرَاهِيم), formerly known as Kutha Rabba ( ar, كُوثَىٰ رَبَّا), is an archaeological site in Babil Governorate, Iraq. ...

. The topography consists of two sub-mounds separated by what is apparently the bed of an ancient canal. At maximum the hills are above the terrain line.

Occupation history

The site of Tell Uqair first had significant occupation during the

, and grew to its greatest extent during the Jemdet Nasr and

Uruk Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...

periods. Some Early Dynastic graves and a scattering of

Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...

and Babylonian artifacts indicate the location continued in limited use up through the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Because of

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 found at the site, it is believed to be the ancient town of Urum. The toponym for Urum is written in cuneiform as ÚR×Ú.KI (cuneiform: 𒌱𒆠), URUM₄ = ÚR×ḪA (cuneiform: 𒌯), besides ÚR×A.ḪA.KI (cuneiform: 𒌬𒆠), from earlier (pre-

Ur III The Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Neo-Sumerian Empire, refers to a 22nd to 21st century BC ( middle chronology) Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state which some historians consider t ...

) ÚR.A.ḪA. The most prominent discovery at Tell Uquair was the "Painted Temple", a large complex similar in design to the "White Temple" found at

. Some of the original frescos were still visible at the time of the excavation and were copied. Several frescos were recovered intact and sent to the Baghdad Museum. The temple is believed to date to the Uruk or early Jemdet Nasr period. A small adjacent Jemdet Nasr temple was of somewhat later construction and contained large amounts of pottery from that period.Dermech, S. (2016). The Tell'Uqair temple (4th mill. BC): colours and iconography. In BAF-Online: Proceedings of the Berner Altorientalisches Forum (Vol. 1)

References

{{Reflist

External links

Legrain, Leon. "Tell ‘Uqair “Painted Temple”." Museum Bulletin X, no. 3-4 (June, 1944): pp. 39-39Digitized tablets from (and thought to be from) Tell Uqair at CDLI
1941 archaeological discoveries

Uqair Uqair (), alternatively spelled as al-'Uqair, Uqayr, and Ogair, is an ancient seaport city in the Al-Ahsa Governorate of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. It is the first seaport in the Persian Gulf and has been linked by some to the ancient ...

Ubaid period Jemdet Nasr period] Uruk period

History of archaeological research

Tell Uqair and its environment

Occupation history

See also

References

Further reading

External links