Naysān (also known as Jabal Khayabar and Naisān) is a tell and an

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...

site in

Basrah Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is han ...

, southern Iraq.

Identification

The site has been identified as the ruins of Charax Spasinu, once capital of the Messene Kingdom. This claim is based on the scale of the

ruins Ruins () are the remains of a civilization's architecture. The term refers to formerly intact structures that have fallen into a state of partial or total disrepair over time due to a variety of factors, such as lack of maintenance, deliberate ...

, the fact that the local name for the ruins is Naysān which is probably a corruption of the Parthian name for Mesene, Maysān, (from which Maysan Governorate also derives its name.) The location of the ruins is at the confluence of the

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 ...

and

Karkheh River The Karkheh or Karkhen کرخه (perhaps the river known as the Gihon—one of the four rivers of Eden/Paradise to the Bible and as the Choaspes in ancient times; also called Eulæus; Hebrew: אולי Ulai) is a river in Khūzestān Province, ...

s, as stated of Charax Spasinu, by

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ...

Archaeology

Initial Geophys for the Archaeological site of Naysan, Iraq

The tell was not excavated before 2016, due to ongoing conflict and instability in the area, however, a preliminary survey was conducted in 1965. That survey identified a series of impressive bastion walls of baked brick and significant

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and po ...

shard Shard or sherd is a sharp piece of glass, pottery or stone. Shard may also refer to: Places * Shard End, a place in Birmingham, United Kingdom Architecture * Dresden Shard, a redesign of the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germa ...

s on the surface. The shards that could be identified belonged to the

Sasanian The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...

or early

Islamic Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or ''Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the main ...

periods That preliminary survey in 1965 found the site was a town of

trapezoid A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a convex quadrilateral in Eucli ...

al shape, approximately . The 2016 excavations found the city was laid out on a grid pattern with housing block 185 by 85m, and numerous

late antiquity Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English has ...

coins. The report for the 2016 excavation and

geophys Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term ''geophysics'' some ...

survey reported that:

"The brick and earth ramparts that form the city limits of Charax still survive up to four metres high and are the dominant feature in the otherwise flat landscape. The northern rampart, 2.4km long, is the best preserved. Stretches of the eastern and western ramparts still survive, but the southern one is no longer visible. The limit of the city to the south is defined by a looping ancient bed of the Karun River"Vanessa M.A. Heyvaert, Jan Walstra, Peter Verkinderen, Henk J.T. Weerts, Bart Ooghe, The role of human interference on the channel shifting of the Karkheh River in the Lower Khuzestan plain (Mesopotamia, SW Iran),Quaternary International 251 (2012) 52-6
p60

Artifacts found include

bead A bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood, or pearl and with a small hole for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under ...

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

remnants,

glass Glass is a non-Crystallinity, crystalline, often transparency and translucency, transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most ...

ware,

, and

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in orde ...

s of

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 i ...

Seleucid The Seleucid Empire (; grc, Βασιλεία τῶν Σελευκιδῶν, ''Basileía tōn Seleukidōn'') was a Greek state in West Asia that existed during the Hellenistic period from 312 BC to 63 BC. The Seleucid Empire was founded by the M ...

kings and (possibly)

Parthia Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Mede ...

n as well.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Naysan (Iraq) Archaeological sites in Iraq