Amorites

The Conquest of the Amorites

Semitic peoples and their languages, in ancient historic times (between the 30th and 20th centuries BC), covered a broad area which encompassed what are today the modern states and regions of Iraq, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Lebannon, Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Sinai and Malta, as well as parts of southern Turkey, before spreading to Tunisia in the 9th century BC, Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 8th century BC, and into Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, Morocco, Mauritania and Khuzestan (south western Iran) from the 7th century AD.

By the late 3rd millennium BC, East Semitic languages, such as Akkadian and Eblaite, were dominant 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 people to be South Semitic despite the sparsity of data.

The Akkadian language of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia had become the dominant literary language of the Fertile Crescent, using the cuneiform script that was adapted from the Sumerians. The Middle Assyrian Empire, which originated 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.

The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia) circa the 30th century BC, an area encompassing the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern Iraq), followed by historical written evidence from the Levant, Canaan, Sinai Peninsula southern Asia Minor and the Arabian peninsula.

Later historical Semitic languages also spread into North Africa in two widely separated periods. The first expansion occurred with the ancient Phoenicians from around the 9th century BC, along the southern Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Atlantic Ocean (Phoenician colonies which included ancient Rome’s nemesis Carthage), followed by migrations of South Semites from Yemen to Ethiopia and Eritrea a century or so later.

The second, a millennium later, was the expansion of the Muslim armies and Arabic in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, which, at their height, controlled the Iberian Peninsula (until 1492) and Sicily.

Arab Muslim expansion is also responsible for modern Arabic’s presence from Mauritania, on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, to the Red Sea in the northeastern corner of Africa, and its reach south along the Nile River as far as the northern half of Sudan, where, as the national language, non-Arab Sudanese even farther south must learn it.

Some recent genetic studies have found (by analysis of the DNA of Semitic-speaking peoples) that they have some common ancestry. Genetic studies indicate that modern Jews, Assyrians, Samaritans, Syriacs-Arameans, Maronites, Druze, Mandeans, Mhallami and Arabs from the regions north of the Arabian Peninsula all have an ancient indigenous common Near Eastern heritage which can be genetically mapped back to the ancient Fertile Crescent, but often also display genetic profiles distinct from one another, indicating the different histories of these peoples.

They were found to be far more closely related to both each other and the non-Semitic speaking Near Easterners, such as Iranians, Anatolians, and Caucasians, than to the Semitic-speakers of the Arabian peninsula (Gulf Arabs), Ethiopian Semites (Falasha, Beta Israel, Amharic and Tigrean speakers), and the Arabic speakers of North Africa.

The Encyclopedia Britannia states that by the mid-3rd millennium BC, various Semitic peoples had migrated into Syria-Palestine and Babylonia. Knowledge of this period was enormously enhanced by the excavations at Tall Mard Ykh, ancient Ebla, south of Aleppo (northern Syria). The palace yielded more than 17,000 inscribed clay tablets, dated to about 2600–2500 BC, which detail the social, religious, economic, and political life of this thriving and powerful Syrian kingdom. The language of Ebla has been identified as Northwest Semitic.

The Amorites are normally regarded by historians as a Semitic people; they certainly seem to have spoken a Semitic language. The term Amurru in Akkadian and Sumerian texts refers to them, as well as to their principal deity. They appear as nomadic people in the Mesopotamian sources, and they are especially connected with the mountainous region of Jebel Bishri in Syria called the “mountain of the Amorites”.

However, our evidence for all population affinities at that remote time is really quite thin; and there are plenty of historical cases of peoples adopting the languages around them. The Amorites’ original home seems to have been in Syria, rather than the Arabian desert, and it is quite likely that that part of western Asia had experienced immigration from the north-east tip of Africa.

At the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennia BC, civilization in the Fertile Crescent went through a sticky patch. The numerous city-states in Mesopotamia, Syria and Canaan were attacked by nomadic peoples they called “Amorites”. It was a time when tribes were on the loose, wandering from one area to another; it was one of those unsettled periods which have periodically occurred in the Middle East, when desert nomads seem to have the upper hand and settled farmers are on the defensive.

Ancient writers help us understand the geographic designation for Syria, one of the locales for the Amorites. Homer (Iliad ii.785) and Hesiod (Theog. 304) called the inhabitants of that district Arimoi. Compare the cuneiform Arimu or Assyrian Aramu for Aramaeans. The earliest Assyrian name was Martu, which Hommel regards as a contraction of Amartu, the land of the Amurru or Amorites.

Here we see a confusion between two different Semitic words, found in the Old Testament texts:

Hebrew amoree = Amorite, from amar, a verb, to be or make prominent, and

Hebrew aramee = Aramean, from aram, a noun.

However, both are used to designate people who occupied the same geographical area, and had similar histories. Aram is described as one of the ancestors of Abraham and the Hebrew people, Gen 10:22.

Note that the two words demonstrate metathesis, or the switching of two consonants. All Semitic words derived from a verb base; this linguistic confusion may be the reason the word aram has no verbal foundation in Hebrew. Refer to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Brown, Driver, and Briggs.

However, there is considerable doubt concerning their origins. This doubt may be due to the fact that they were troublesome nomads who roamed freely around the Near East. They penetrated deep into Sumeria and were believed to be one of the causes of the downfall of the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2112–c. 2004 BC).

We should keep in mind that different human groups, speaking different dialects of the same language, and related genetically, may be sharply separated by modern scholarship in order to distinguish them historically. This process then blurs and obscures the biological origins and relationship among people.

Amorite (Sumerian; Mar.tu) refers to an ancient Semitic-speaking people from ancient Syria who also occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC. In the earliest Sumerian texts, beginning about 2400 BC, all western lands beyond the Euphrates, including Syria and Canaan, were known as “the land of the MAR.TU (Amorites).

The term Martu also appears in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, which describes it in the time of Enmerkar as one of the regions inhabited by speakers of a different language. Another text known as Lugalbanda and the Anzud bird describes how, fifty years into Enmerkar’s reign, the Martu people arose in Sumer and Akkad, necessitating the building of a wall to protect Uruk.

Known Amorites (mostly those of Mari) wrote in a dialect of Akkadian found on tablets at Mari dating from 1800–1750 BC; since the language shows many northwest Semitic forms and constructions, the Amorite language was presumably a northwest Semitic dialect, as opposed to the east Semitic Akkadian language of the native Mesopotamians. The main sources for our extremely limited knowledge about the language are proper names, not Akkadian in style, that are preserved in such texts.

These Amorites appear as nomadic clans ruled by fierce tribal chiefs, who forced themselves into lands they needed to graze their herds. Some of the Akkadian literature of this era speaks disparagingly of the Amorites, and implies that the Akkadians and Sumerians viewed their nomadic way of life with disgust and contempt.

There are also sparse mentions in tablets from Ebla, dating from 2500 BC to the destruction of the city ca. 2250 BC: from the perspective of Ebla, the Amorites were a rural group living in the narrow basin of the middle and upper Euphrates. For the Akkadian kings of central Mesopotamia Mar.tu was one of the “Four Quarters” surrounding Akkad, along with Subartu/Assyria, Sumer, and Elam. The Akkadian king Naram-Sin records successful campaigns against them in northern Syria ca. 2240 BC, and his successor Shar-Kali-Sharri followed suit.

By the time of the last days of the Sumerian Ur III empire, immigrating Amorites had become such a force that kings such as Shu-Sin were obliged to construct a 170 miles (270 km) long wall from the Tigris to the Euphrates to hold them off.

During the 2nd millennium the term Amurru referred not only to an ethnic group but also to a language and to a geographic and political unit spread throughout Syria and Palestine. At the beginning of the millennium, a large-scale migration of great tribal federations resulted in the occupation of Babylonia proper, the mid-Euphrates region, and Syria-Palestine.

They set up a mosaic of small kingdoms and rapidly assimilated the Sumero-Akkadian culture. Some scholars prefer to call this second group Canaanites. Between about 2000 and 1800 BC they covered both Syria and Mesopotamia with a multitude of small principalities and cities, mostly governed by rulers bearing some name characteristic of the Semitic dialect that the Amorites spoke.

Almost all of the local kings in Babylonia (such as Hammurabi of Babylon) belonged to this stock. One capital was at Mari (modern Tall al-Sar YrY, Syria). Farther west, the political center was Aleppo; in that area, as well as in Palestine, the newcomers were thoroughly mixed with the Hurrians.

From the 21st century BC and likely triggered by the 22nd century BC drought, a large-scale migration of Amorite tribes infiltrated southern Mesopotamia. They were one of the instruments of the downfall of the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur, and acquired a series of powerful kingdoms, including the founding of Babylon as a state and usurping the thrones of the Sumero-Akkadian states of Isin, Larsa and Kish among others, culminating in the triumph under Hammurabi of one of them,that of Babylon.

The era of the Amorite kingdoms, ca. 2000–1595 BC, is sometimes known as the “Amorite period” in Mesopotamian history. The principal Amorite dynasties arose in Mari, Yamkhad, Qatna, Assyria (under Shamshi-Adad I), Isin, Larsa, and also Babylon, which was founded as an independent state by an Amorite named Sumuabum in 1894 BC. This era ended in northern Mesopotamia with the defeat and expulsion of the Amorite dominated Babylonians from Assyria by king Adasi circa 1730 BC, and in the south with the Hittite sack of Babylon (c. 1595 BC) which brought new ethnic groups — particularly Kassites — to the forefront in southern Mesopotamia.

From the 15th century BC onward, the term Amurru is usually applied to the region extending north of Canaan as far as Kadesh on the Orontes. The terms Amorite and Canaanite seem to be used more or less interchangeably, Canaan being more general and Amorite a specific component among the Canaanites who inhabited the land.

After their expulsion from Mesopotamia, the Amorites of Syria came under the domination of first the Hittite Empire and from the 14th century BC, the Middle Assyrian Empire. They appear to have been displaced or absorbed by a new wave of semi nomadic Semites, the Arameans, from circa 1200 BC onwards. And from this period the region they had inhabited became known as Aram (Aramea).

From about 1100 BC Assyrian inscriptions use the term Amurru to designate parts of Syria and all of Phoenicia and Palestine but no longer refer to any specific kingdom, language, or population. This shows how the various people had blended and mixed to blur ethnic identifications. The Amorite-Canaanite-Phoenician-Aramean-Hebrew people came all from a common Semitic stock. Since the Egyptian tomb paintings show them with blue eyes, we certainly have a genetic affinity to the blue eyes illustrated by Rahotep, Nofret, and King Hor.

The difficulty with these classifications is that Phoenician and Hebrew were almost identical to one another, with only minor inflectional differences, not more than we find among modern English speakers around the world. Since Phoenicians and Canaanites were essentially the same people this further reduces the language classes. The Amorites was also closely related; using the mother tongue of Abraham. This reduces the classes still farther. Then substantial differences exist only with Ugaritic and Aramaic, but even those are closely related.

The Bible’s internal chronology places Abraham around 2000 BC, but the stories in Genesis cannot be definitively related to the known history of that time. Most historians think that, if Abraham actually existed, then this was probably when he lived – his tale can be interpreted as a classic case of migration by a group of desert pastoralists.

Abraham is confirmed from the archives of Nuzi in Yorgan Tepe, fifteen kilometres south west of Kirkuk. The written documents from this Hurrian city of the kingdom of Mitanni (c. 1500 BC.) 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.

Abrahams clan came from Hurrian country, the region between Ur-kesh (the biblical Ur-kashdim, in north-east Syria on the present Turkish border) and Harran which is west of Ur-kesh. These migrating Hurrians were known to adopt the local languages of the lands they settled in, and so Abrahams clan adopted the Phoenician language as their own, now popularly known as Hebrew.

Whatever the correct date for Abraham may be, he represents the beginning of the nation to the Hebrews. Yahweh’s promise to the patriarch and his successors is considered to be the guarantee of national existence (Num. 32:11).

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) 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.

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.

In the Old Babylonian period, Aleppo’s name appears as Ḥalab (Ḥalba) for the first time. Aleppo was the capital of the important Amorite dynasty of Yamḥad. The 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.

Yamhad (also written Yamkhad or Jamhad) was an ancient Amorite kingdom centered at Ḥalab (or Ḥalba, modern day Aleppo). The ancient name of the city, Halab, is also its Arabic name in the modern day. It is of obscure origin. Some have proposed that Halab means ‘iron’ or ‘copper’ in Amorite languages since it was a major source of these metals in antiquity. Halaba in Aramaic means white, referring to the colour of soil and marble abundant in the area.

A substantial Hurrian population also settled in the kingdom, and the Hurrian culture influenced the area. The kingdom was powerful during the Middle Bronze Age, ca. 1800-1600 BC. Its biggest rival was Qatna further south. Yamḥad was finally 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 discovery of a sophisticated city with monumental architecture, plumbing, stonework, and a large population contradicts the idea that Hurrians were a roving mountain people in a strange land. Far from being yet another rough nomadic tribe, such as the Amorites or Kassites who were latecomers to the Mesopotamian party, the Hurrians and their unique language, music, deities, and rituals may have played a key role in shaping the first cities, empires, and states.

Taking advantage of the power vacuum in the region, Parshatatar, king of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, conquered Aleppo in the 15th century BC. Subsequently, Aleppo found itself on the frontline in the struggle between the Mitanni and the Hittites and Egypt.[22] The Hittite Suppiluliumas I permanently defeated Mitanni and conquered Aleppo in the 14th century BC. Aleppo had cultic importance to the Hittites for being the center of worship of the Storm-God.

When the Hittite kingdom collapsed in the 12th century BC, Aleppo became part of the Aramaean Syro-Hittite kingdom of Arpad (also known as the state of Bit Agusi) at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, and later it became the capital of the Aramaean Syro-Hittite kingdom of Hatarikka-Luhuti. Aleppo itself was known as Halman, and this changed over time to Hatarikka (or Hadrach, in the Old Testament). While the Iron Age Aleppo may initially have been independent, it quickly became a south-eastern province within another Aramean Syro-Hittite state known as Pattin (or Unqi), before falling into the hands of Hamath.

In the 9th century BC, Aleppo was conquered by the Assyrians and became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire until the late 7th century BC, before passing through the hands of the Neo-Babylonians and the Achamenid Persians.

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.

Cuneiform texts from Mari mention rulers of city-states in upper Mesopotamia with both Amurru (Amorite) and Hurrian names. Rulers with Hurrian names are also attested for Urshum and Hashshum, and tablets from Alalakh (layer VII, from the later part of the old-Babylonian period) mention people with Hurrian names at the mouth of the Orontes. There is no evidence for any invasion from the North-east. Generally, these onomastic sources have been taken as evidence for a Hurrian expansion to the South and the West.

Mitanni (Hittite cuneiform KUR URUMi-ta-an-ni, also Mittani Mi-it-ta-ni) or Hanigalbat (Assyrian Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat cuneiform Ḫa-ni-gal-bat) was an Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC. Founded by an Indo-Aryan ruling class governing a predominately Hurrian population, Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Amorite Babylon and a series of ineffectual Assyrian kings created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia.

The land of Mitanni in northern Syria extended from the Taurus mountains to its west and as far east as Nuzi (modern Kirkuk) and the river Tigris in the east. In the south, it extended from Aleppo across (Nuhashshe) to Mari on the Euphrates in the east. Its centre was in the Khabur River valley, with two capitals: Taite and Washshukanni called Taidu and Ushshukana respectively in Assyrian sources. The whole area allows agriculture without artificial irrigation; cattle, sheep and goats were raised. It is very similar to Assyria in climate, and was settled by both indigenous Hurrian and Amoritic-speaking (Amurru) populations.

Amorite

Abraham

Abraham is commanded to sacrifice Isaac, his son—Both father and son yield to the will of God—Abraham’s seed will be as the stars and the sand in number—In his seed, all nations will be blessed—Rebekah is born to Bethuel.

Genesis – Chapter 22

The Bible’s internal chronology places Abraham around 2000 BC, but the stories in Genesis cannot be definitively related to the known history of that time. Most historians think that, if Abraham actually existed, then this was probably when he lived – his tale can be interpreted as a classic case of migration by a group of desert pastoralists.

Abraham is confirmed from the archives of Nuzi in Yorgan Tepe, fifteen kilometres south west of Kirkuk. The written documents from this Hurrian city of the kingdom of Mitanni (c. 1500 BC.) 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.

Abrahams clan came from Hurrian country, the region between Ur-kesh (the biblical Ur-kashdim, in north-east Syria on the present Turkish border) and Harran which is west of Ur-kesh. These migrating Hurrians were known to adopt the local languages of the lands they settled in, and so Abrahams clan adopted the Phoenician language as their own, now popularly known as Hebrew.

Whatever the correct date for Abraham may be, he represents the beginning of the nation to the Hebrews. Yahweh’s promise to the patriarch and his successors is considered to be the guarantee of national existence (Num. 32:11).

Who Were the Hebrews?

Abraham’s Ur

Nuzi Archives

The Uruk period

Female statuette, Samarra, 6000 BC

The Samarra bowl, at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Uruk

Uruk

Uruk

Uruk

Uruk

The 52-metre (170-foot) Malwiya tower in City of Samarra has been Damaged – 2003/4

The tell Halaf and the Ubaid period

The Ubaid period (ca. 6500 to 3800 BC) is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The name derives from the tell (mound) of al-Ubaid west of nearby Ur in southern Iraq’s Dhi Qar Governorate where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period material was conducted initially by Henry Hall and later by Leonard Woolley.

In South Mesopotamia the period is the earliest known period on the alluvium although it is likely earlier periods exist obscured under the alluvium. In the south it has a very long duration between about 6500 and 3800 BC when it is replaced by the Uruk period.

The Samarra culture (ca 5500–4800 BC), 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, is primarily known for 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.

The Samarran culture was the precursor to the Mesopotamian culture of the Ubaid period. 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 shows clear connection to the Samarra culture to the north.

The Ubaid 1 phase 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.

In North Mesopotamia the period runs only between about 5300 and 4300 BC. It is preceded by the Halaf period, a prehistoric period which lasted between about 6100 and 5500 BC, and the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period (ca. 5500/5400 to 5200/5000 BC) and succeeded by the Late Chalcolithic period.

The Halaf culture is a continuous development out of the earlier Pottery Neolithic and is located primarily in south-eastern Turkey, Syria, and northern Iraq, although Halaf-influenced material is found throughout Greater Mesopotamia. The most important site for the Halaf tradition was the site of Tell Arpachiyah, now located in the suburbs of Mosul, Iraq. Dryland farming was practiced by the population. This type of farming was based on exploiting natural rainfall without the help of irrigation.

The best known, most characteristic pottery of Tell Halaf, called Halaf ware, produced by specialist potters, can be painted, sometimes using more than two colors (called polychrome) with geometric and animal motifs. Other types of Halaf pottery are known, including unpainted, cooking ware and ware with burnished surfaces. There are many theories about why the distinctive pottery style developed.

The theory is that the pottery came about due to regional copying and that it was exchanged as a prestige item between local elites is now disputed. The polychrome painted Halaf pottery has been proposed to be a “trade pottery” – pottery produced for export – however, the predominance of locally produced painted pottery in all areas of Halaf sites including potters settlement questions that theory.

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. 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.

In the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period, which chronologically lies between the Halaf period and the Ubaid period, there is a gradual change from Halaf style pottery to Ubaid style pottery in North Mesopotamia.

Hassuna or Tell Hassuna is an ancient Mesopotamian site situated in what was to become ancient Assyria, and is now in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq west of the Tigris river, south of Mosul and about 35 km southwest of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh.

By around 6000 BC people had moved into the foothills (piedmont) of northernmost Mesopotamia where there was enough rainfall to allow for “dry” agriculture in some places. These were the first farmers in northernmost Mesopotamia. They made Hassuna style pottery (cream slip with reddish paint in linear designs). Hassuna people lived in small villages or hamlets ranging from 2 to 8 acres (32,000 m2).

At Tell Hassuna, adobe dwellings built around open central courts with fine painted pottery replace earlier levels with crude pottery. Hand axes, sickles, grinding stones, bins, baking ovens and numerous bones of domesticated animals reflect settled agricultural life. Female figurines have been related to worship and jar burials within which food was placed related to belief in afterlife. The relationship of Hassuna pottery to that of Jericho suggests that village culture was becoming widespread.

Shulaveri-Shomu culture is a Late Neolithic/Eneolithic culture that existed on the territory of present-day Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Armenian Highlands. The culture is dated to mid-6th or early-5th millennia BC and is thought to be one of the earliest known Neolithic cultures. The Shulaveri-Shomu culture begins after the 8.2 kiloyear event which was a sudden decrease in global temperatures starting ca. 6200 BC and which lasted for about two to four centuries.

Shulaveri culture predates the Kura-Araxes culture and surrounding areas, which is assigned to the period of ca. 4000 – 2200 BC, and had close relation with the middle Bronze Age culture called Trialeti culture (ca. 3000 – 1500 BC). Sioni culture of Eastern Georgia possibly represents a transition from the Shulaveri to the Kura-Arax cultural complex.

In around ca. 6000–4200 B.C the Shulaveri-Shomu and other Neolithic/Chalcolithic cultures of the Southern Caucasus use local obsidian for tools, raise animals such as cattle and pigs, and grow crops, including grapes. Many of the characteristic traits of the Shulaverian material culture (circular mudbrick architecture, pottery decorated by plastic design, anthropomorphic female figurines, obsidian industry with an emphasis on production of long prismatic blades) are believed to have their origin in the Near Eastern Neolithic (Hassuna, Halaf).

The Sumerian city of Eridu, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, was the world’s first city, where three separate cultures fused – that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practicing irrigation; that of mobile nomadic Semitic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats; and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands, who may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians.

Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear connections to earlier cultures in the region of middle Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to the origins of Sumerian civilisation.

Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts.

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.

A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions.

Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oikumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period.

During the Ubaid Period (5000 BC.– 4000 BC), 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.

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 archaeological record shows that Arabian Bifacial/Ubaid period came to an abrupt end in eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BC, just after the phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation.

At this time, increased aridity led to an end in semi-desert nomadism, and there is no evidence of human presence in the area for approximately 1000 years, the so-called “Dark Millennium”. This might be due to the 5.9 kiloyear event at the end of the Older Peron.

During the 3rd millennium BC, a close cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians (who spoke a Language Isolate) and the Semitic Akkadian speakers, which included widespread bilingualism.

The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a sprachbund.

Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC (short chronology), but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Third Dynasty of Ur (Sumerian Renaissance) of the 21st to 20th centuries BC, but the Akkadian language also remained in use.

The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. During this time, the first settlement in southern Mesopotamia was established at Eridu, ca. 5300 BC, by farmers who brought with them the Hadji Muhammed culture, which first pioneered irrigation agriculture. It appears this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia.

Irrigation agriculture, which seem to have developed first at Choga Mami (4700–4600 BC.), a Samarra ware archaeological site of Southern Iraq in the Mandali region, and rapidly spread elsewhere, from the first required collective effort and centralised coordination of labour. Buildings were of wattle and daub or mud brick.

It is no longer clear which way cultural developments were flowing in the 6500 to 4500 BC. period. 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, 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.

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.

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.

Uruk

Uruk gave its name to the Uruk period, the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia spanning ca. 4000 – 3100 BC, succeeded by the Jemdet Nasr period of Sumer proper.

Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC), continuing from the protohistoric Chalcolithic and into the Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, in the Jemdat Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. It followed the Ubaid period and succeeded by the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia. It was followed by the Sumerian civilization.

The archaeological transition from the Ubaid period to the Uruk period is marked by a gradual shift from painted pottery domestically produced on a slow wheel to a great variety of unpainted pottery mass-produced by specialists on fast wheels.

Artifacts, and even colonies of this Uruk civilization have been found over a wide area—from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and as far east as Central Iran.

By the time of the Uruk period (ca. 4100–2900 BC calibrated), the volume of trade goods transported along the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rise of many large, stratified, temple-centered cities (with populations of over 10,000 people) where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. It is fairly certain that it was during the Uruk period that Sumerian cities began to make use of slave labor captured from the hill country, and there is ample evidence for captured slaves as workers in the earliest texts.

The late Uruk period (34th to 32nd centuries) saw the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script and corresponds to the Early Bronze Age; it may also be called the Protoliterate period. It was during this period that pottery painting declined as copper started to become popular, along with cylinder seals.

The Uruk period civilization, exported by Sumerian traders and colonists (like that found at Tell Brak), had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually evolved their own comparable, competing economies and cultures. The cities of Sumer could not maintain remote, long-distance colonies by military force.

The end of the Uruk period coincided with the Piora oscillation, a dry period from c. 3200–2900 BC that marked the end of a long wetter, warmer climate period from about 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, called the Holocene climatic optimum.

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 Dynastic period begins ca. 2900 BC and includes such legendary figures as Enmerkar and Gilgamesh, who are supposed to have reigned shortly before the historic record opens ca. 2700 BC, when the now deciphered syllabic writing started to develop from the early pictograms.

The center of Sumerian culture remained in southern Mesopotamia, even though rulers soon began expanding into neighboring areas, and neighboring Semitic groups adopted much of Sumerian culture for their own.

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: e-anna) 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.

The character of Lugalbanda is introduced as one of Enmerkar’s war chiefs. According to the Sumerian king list, it was this Lugalbanda “the shepherd” who eventually succeeded Enmerkar to the throne of Uruk. Lugalbanda is also named as the father of Gilgamesh, a later king of Uruk, in both Sumerian and Akkadian versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

David Rohl has claimed parallels between Enmerkar, builder of Uruk, and Nimrod, ruler of biblical Erech (Uruk) and architect of the Tower of Babel in extra-biblical legends. One parallel Rohl noted is the description “Nimrod the Hunter”, and the -kar in Enmerkar also meaning “hunter”. Rohl has also suggested that Eridu near Ur is the original site of Babel, and that the incomplete ziggurat found there – by far the oldest and largest of its kind – is none other than the remnants of the Biblical tower.

In a legend related by Aelian (ca. AD 200), the king of Babylon, Euechoros or Seuechoros (also appearing in many variants as Sevekhoros, earlier Sacchoras, etc.), is said to be the grandfather of Gilgamos, who later becomes king of Babylon (i.e., Gilgamesh of Uruk). Several recent scholars have suggested that this “Seuechoros” or “Euechoros” is moreover to be identified with Enmerkar of Uruk, as well as the Euechous named by Berossus as being the first king of Chaldea and Assyria. This last name Euechous (also appearing as Evechius, and in many other variants) has long been identified with Nimrod.

Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta is a legendary Sumerian account, of preserved, early post-Sumerian copies, composed in the Neo-Sumerian period (ca. 21st century BC). It is one of a series of accounts describing the conflicts between Enmerkar, king of Unug-Kulaba (Uruk), and the unnamed king of Aratta (probably somewhere in modern Iran or Armenia).

Aside from founding Uruk, Enmerkar is said here to have had a temple built at Eridu, and is even credited with the invention of writing on clay tablets, for the purpose of threatening Aratta into submission.

In the hymn Incantation of Nudimmud furthermore seeks implore Enki to restore the disrupted linguistic unity of the inhabited regions around Uruk, listed as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (the region around Akkad), and the Martu land.

In the legendary Sumerian account Lugalbanda and the Anzu Bird it is mentioned that fifty years into Enmerkar’s reign, the Martu people had arisen in all of Sumer and Akkad, necessitating the building of a wall in the desert to protect Uruk.

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 Anatolian highland. 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 land of Subartu (Akkadian Šubartum/Subartum/ina Šú-ba-ri, Assyrian mât Šubarri) or Subar (Sumerian Su-bir4/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.

Shupria (Shubria) or Arme-Shupria (Akkadian: Armani-Subartu from the 3rd millennium BC) was a Hurrian-speaking 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. The capital was called Ubbumu. 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 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 (Hurri-Mitanni), Hayasa-Azzi and other populations of the region such as the Nairi fell under Urartian (Kingdom of Ararat) rule in the 9th century BC, and their descendants, according to most scholars, later contributed to the ethnogenesis of the early Armenians.

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.

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 marked the northern geographical horizon, just as Martu, Elam and Sumer marked “west”, “east” and “south”, respectively.

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), among the lands under his control. Ishbi-Erra of Isin and Hammurabi also claimed victories over Subar.

Because it gives a Sumerian account of the “confusion of tongues”, and also involves Enmerkar constructing ziggurats at Eridu and Uruk, it has, been compared with the Tower of Babel narrative in the Book of Genesis.

Near the beginning of the account, the following background is provided: “In those days of yore, when the destinies were determined, the great princes allowed Unug Kulaba’s E-ana to lift its head high. Plenty, and carp floods and the rain which brings forth dappled barley were then increased in Unug Kulaba. Before the land of Dilmun yet existed, the E-ana of Unug Kulaba was well founded.”

Mother Godess

The king list adds that Enmerkar brought the official kingship with him from the city of E-ana after his father Mesh-ki-ang-gasher, a Sumerian ruler and the founder of the First Dynasty of Uruk and son of Utu, had “entered the sea and disappeared.”

E-ana (“house of heaven”) was the name of the temple to Inanna at Uruk. The entry thus has Mesh-ki-ang-gasher ruling the fortress or castle around which his son would build the city of Uruk, and which was to become the main temple to its patron goddess.

E-ana was a ziggurat in Uruk built in honour of the goddess Inanna, the “lady of all the lands”–(E-ana is ‘house of ana’, or ‘Temple of Ana’). Similarly, the lord of Aratta has himself crowned in Inanna’s name, but she does not find this as pleasing as her brick temple in Uruk.

Enmerkar, thus “chosen by Inanna in her holy heart from the bright mountain”, then asks Inanna to let him subject Aratta and make the people of Aratta deliver a tribute of precious metals and gemstones, for constructing the lofty Abzu ziggurat of Enki at Eridu, as well as for embellishing her own E-ana sanctuary at Uruk. Inanna accordingly advises Enmerkar to dispatch a herald across the mountains of Susin and Anshan to the lord of Aratta, to demand his submission and his tribute.

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 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.

Along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were many shrines and temples dedicated to Inanna. The House of Heaven (Sumerian: e-anna) temple in Uruk was the greatest of these, where sacred prostitution was a common practice. In addition, according to Leick (1994) persons of asexual or hermaphroditic bodies and feminine men were particularly involved in the worship and ritual practices of Inanna’s temples.

The deity of this fourth-millennium city was probably originally An. After its dedication to Inanna the temple seems to have housed priestesses of the goddess. The high priestess would choose for her bed a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year) ceremony, at the spring Equinox.

According to Samuel Noah Kramer in The Sacred Marriage Rite, in late Sumerian history (end of the third millennium) kings established their legitimacy by taking the place of Dumuzi in the temple for one night on the tenth day of the New Year festival. A Sacred Marriage to Inanna may have conferred legitimacy on a number of rulers of Uruk. Gilgamesh is reputed to have refused marriage to Inanna, on the grounds of her misalliance with such kings as Lugalbanda and Damuzi.

Inanna’s symbol is an eight-pointed star or a rosette. She was associated with lions – even then a symbol of power – and was frequently depicted standing on the backs of two lionesses. Her cuneiform ideogram was a hook-shaped twisted knot of reeds, representing the doorpost of the storehouse (and thus fertility and plenty).

Hannahannah (from Hittite hannas “grandmother”) is a Hurrian Mother Goddess related to or influenced by the pre-Sumerian goddess Inanna. Hannahannah was also identified with the Hurrian mother goddess Hebat, also transcribed Kheba or Khepat, known as “the mother of all living” and Queen of the gods. Hebat is the wife of Teshub and the mother of Sarruma and Alanzu, as well mother-in-law of the daughter of the dragon Illuyanka.

The name can be transliterated in different versions – Khebat with the feminine ending -t is primarily the Syrian and Ugaritic version. In the Hurrian language Hepa is the most likely pronunciation of the name of the goddess. The sound /h/ in cuneiform is in the modern literature sometimes transliterated as kh. In Aramaean times she appears to have become identified with the Goddess Hawwah.

With Hebat was later assimilated the Hittite sun goddess Arinniti. A prayer of Queen Puduhepa makes this explicit: “To the Sun-goddess of Arinna, my lady, the mistress of the Hatti lands, the queen of Heaven and Earth. Sun-goddess of Arinna, thou art Queen of all countries! In the Hatti country thou bearest the name of the Sun-goddess of Arinna; but in the land which thou madest the cedar land thou bearest the name Hebat.”

Hebat was venerated all over the ancient Near East. Her name appears in many theophoric personal names. The Third Dynasty of Kish, as was a later king of Jerusalem mentioned in the Amarna letters was named Abdi-Heba, possibly meaning “Servant of Hebat”.

Hebat is likely to have had a later counterpart in the Phrygian goddess Cybele (Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya “Kubeleyan Mother”, perhaps “Mountain Mother”), who originally was an Anatolian mother goddess.

Cybele may have evolved from an Anatolian Mother Goddess of a type found at Çatalhöyük, dated to the 6th millennium BCE. This corpulent, fertile Mother Goddess appears to be giving birth on her throne, which has two feline-headed hand rests.

Little is known of her oldest Anatolian cults, other than her association with mountains, hawks and lions. Her name, and the development of religious practices associated with her, may have been influenced by cult to the deified Sumerian queen Kubaba.

She may have been Phrygia’s state deity. She is ancient Phrygia’s only known goddess, and was probably the highest deity of the Phrygian State. In Phrygian art of the 8th century BCE, the cult attributes of the Phrygian mother-goddess include attendant lions, a bird of prey, and a small vase for her libations or other offerings.

The inscription matar kubileya at a Phrygian rock-cut shrine, dated to the first half of the 6th century BCE, is usually read as “Mother of the mountain”, a reading supported by ancient Classical sources, and consistent with Cybele as any of several similar tutelary goddesses, each known as “mother” and associated with specific Anatolian mountains or other localities: a goddess thus “born from stone”.

Her Phrygian cult was adopted and adapted by Greek colonists of Asia Minor and spread from there to mainland Greece and its more distant western colonies from around the 6th century BCE. In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She was partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, her Minoan equivalent Rhea, and the Corn-Mother goddess Demeter.

Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following.

Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a transgender or eunuch mendicant priesthood. Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention. In Greece, Cybele is associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions. In Rome, Cybele was known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”).

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. Discoveries have been made here that have never been seen before, including materials from Hellenistic and Islamic civilizations.

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.

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 ziggurat that dominates the site today was built around 2000 BC. by Ur-Nammu, but by that time the site was already in decline. Although Babylonian and Assyrian rulers maintained the Eanna temples down into the 600 BC. or beyond, the city had lost its position. The final occupants of the site were the Parthians who built a small temple to Gareus around 100 AD.

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.

Uruk expansion

With the Uruk period in ancient Mesopotamia we see the very beginnings of writing and are, therefore, almost into a historical period! How exciting! I’m sure that’s how the ancient Mesopotamians felt about it.

Much as there was an “Ubaid expansion” in the previous period, there was an “Uruk expansion”: a period in the middle to late Uruk in which characteristic Uruk artifacts are found in western Iran, northern Mesopotamia, northern Syria, and parts of Anatolia. It is not clear what type of interaction this “expansion” represents.

The most prominent theory, promoted by Guillermo Algaze, is that the Uruk expansion represents a Marxist-style World System. According to this theory, the Uruk enclaves represented by the Uruk material culture were trading colonies intended to ensure access to foreign resources for Mesopotamian cities. The Uruk peoples dominated the regions they touched through economic means rather than through military or political might.

There are, as you might imagine, a number of objections to this theory. First, there is no evidence of power asymmetry between the Mesopotamian “core” and the Anatolian (for example) “periphery”: the Anatolians controlled production of Anatolian traded goods and their side of the exchange. The terms of the exchange were not set by the Mesopotamian side of things.

Second, the Marxist model suggests that long-distance trade would have fundamentally changed the societies it touched, re-forming them along the lines dictated by the needs of the “core” entity. But this has not been established, as Algaze himself concedes.

Finally, the model assumes the existence of a political entity with the level of organization and resources needed to control a far-flung region. But Mesopotamia was not unified at this period, rather it consisted of several competing city-states. Algaze suggests the existence of several “cores” controlling parts of the “periphery,’ but this is a theory for which we will probably never have enough documentation to prove its truth or falsity.

The Uruk period

Uruk

Malwiya – “Today’s barbaric occupiers display Mongol-like disrespect for their imperial prize.”

The 52-metre (170-foot) Malwiya tower in City of Samarra has been Damaged

“U.S. forces subdued the city [Samarra] on the Tigris last October [2004], but some of the city’s resistance fighters regrouped in Fallujah, the City of Mosques, which was of course destroyed by a ferocious attack in November. Samarra itself has been a site of ongoing military action, so the U.S. troops who now own it have naturally sought to employ its highest buildings as lookout posts.

Appropriating everything they wished, they established a lookout atop the minaret, and posted snipers there. According to Reuters, “Crouched behind sandbags, U.S. snipers sometimes fired at militants from the minaret.” Local people wrote letters of protest about this abuse of the holy place. (added emphasis)

According to al-Jazeera, U.S. forces left the post two weeks ago, but Iraqi police report that after their departure the top floor was blasted by insurgents. The Boston Globe reported that two men were observed entering the structure and that they placed a bomb that produced the explosion before fleeing the premises. Debris of crumbled brick and clay was blown down onto the ramps, and Agence France Press reported a jagged hole on the top level.

It’s hard to understand why any insurgent faction would target the mosque. It is a Sunni mosque, but respected by the Shiites, and Shiites haven’t been attacking Sunni mosques anyway. A colleague in Middle Eastern history suggests that insurgents might have wanted to prevent it from being used as a sniper position in future.

… What I was raised to consider “Judeo-Christian ethics” are conspicuously absent in occupied Mesopotamia. U.S. troops have tortured and sexually abused innocent civilians, and killed tens of thousands. From the bizarre killing of the Baghdad Zoo’s prized Bengal tiger to the contamination of land, rivers and atmosphere, to the doubling of child malnutrition, the invasion piles up crime upon crime. It is as though it were seeking to so impress the subject population with arbitrary cruelty that it will be terrorized into submission (added emphasis).

Indeed, Iraqis compare this occupation with the Mongol invasion led by Hulegu Khan in the 1250s, which destroyed Baghdad’s canal network, sacked the library, and slaughtered 80,000 men, women and children. Hulegu (grandson of Genghis Khan) had demanded that the last Abbasid caliph, al-Mutasim, recognize Mongol sovereignty, rather like George W. Bush demanded Saddam grovel before U.S. imperial demands. Al-Mutasim refused, thinking the Muslim world would rally to his side should the Mongols invade. He miscalculated.

Today’s barbaric occupiers display Mongol-like disrespect for their imperial prize. “Let’s take over the minaret,” they reason, and if that usage makes a precious monument a target, and it gets damaged, well, it’s the Iraqis’ just desserts. (added emphasis) The foot soldiers of the new Golden Horde are encouraged to believe that Iraqis must be subdued in order to protect the U.S. from more 9-11s.

Better their buildings get blown up than ours, even those of theirs that have been there for hundreds or thousands of years. History doesn’t matter. Like Bush told CBS’s 60 Minutes last April: “History? We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” And what will the dead (or the “raptured” (added reference)) care about Iraq’s National Library or the Ishtar Gate or the Malwiya Minaret?”

The Bombing of the Malwiya Minaret April 4, 2005

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. Discoveries have been made here that have never been seen before, including materials from Hellenistic and Islamic civilizations.

Excavation work undertaken in 2005 and 2006 has shown that this city was destroyed by warfare by around 3500 BC., before writing was even invented, 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.

They were assaulted by a force armed with slingshots and clay balls. The attackers, possibly from a city named Uruk and perhaps motivated by Hamoukar’s access to copper, succeeded in taking the city, destroying part of it through fire.

Eye Idols made of alabaster or bone have been found in Tell Hamoukar. The eye is a recurrent and symbolic motif in the art forms from the pre-dynastic to neo-assyrian periods. However it is not possible to decide whether it is a decorative, magical or religious talisman. Eye symbols are found in nearly all ancient cultures, from the far flung corners of the globe. The emphasis of the all seeing eye, seems to portray in nearly all cultures, a sign of divinity and holiness.

The image of an eye has always been a powerful amulet in Mesopotamia and thousands of these eye idols, schematised humanoid figures have been found in and around the now called ‘Eye Temple’ at Tell Brak, the biggest settlement from Syria’s Late Chalcolithic period, dating to the late Uruk period.

These anthropomorphic lithic sculptures are fashioned from various materials, such as lime stone, soap stone, alabaster and baked clay. The simplest form of these graven images, is a flat trapezoid body, with a thin elongated neck, supporting an oversized pair of eyes. Other examples have multiple sets of eyes, some three eyes in a row, two pairs of eyes one above the other, and on occasions a smaller eye figure of a similar style is engraved within the trapezoid body. Family groups have also come to light. There are also more three dimensional versions which display a set of pierced eye forms on top of a conical body. This type are composed of natural stone and baked clay, and their broad bases enable them to stand upright unsupported.

Other eye talismans have been found depicting models of eyes cut into semi precious stones, these are known to date from Sumerian down to Neo-Assyrian periods. These artefacts are known as the ‘Eyes of Ningal’. The goddess Ningal was the wife of the god Nanna, also known as Sin and she was the mother of the sun god Shammash, who was worshiped at Ur. Her cult developed independently in Syria as early as the second millennium BC, where her name was changed to Nikkal. This form of her name was also used in Babylonia.

Other statuettes and figurines have been found, which depict worshipers, rather than Gods, looking into the heavens with wide staring eyes, at various other temple sites scattered across the Mesopotamian planes, throughout most periods. Although there is no evidence from any excavated materials that eye idols were made of perishable materials such as tamarisk wood, dough, bitumen or wax, this may have been done if the eye idols were votive offerings. However this practice is documented in cylinder seals and ritual inscriptions for other votive objects at other temple sites.

Note that eye idols of the form shown in figure 4 (below), would appear to display the horned cap denoting divinity. This form of head gear is seen on god figures from the early third millennium BC onwards. Originally it was a general indication of a divine status, its use as a symbol of a particular major deity was never consistent. The Kassite kudurrus contains an inscription that names this symbol as that of the supreme God Anu (An). However in Neo-Assyrian art it was transferred to the new national God Assur.

The style of the devine cap has changed from time to time according to fashion, it could be domed or flat topped as in the below examples, or may be depicted trimmed with feathers, surmounted by a knob or a fleur-de-lys. Caps today still seem to represent holiness and divinity, still worn by the pope and the cardinals of Rome, the Jewish scull cap and the turban, which are all modern day examples. It is hard to argue that they are not connected in some way to antiquity and mythology.

The basic iconography of the horned cap of divinity may be  linked to the Bull of heaven the destroyer of worlds (a mythological Titan, given to ishtar/inanna by her father the great god Anu/An). Read “the epic of gilgamesh” for more details. Or linked to Bos primigenius (a wild species of beast) that roamed the planes of Mesopotamia, standing six feet at the shoulder, with enormous horns, hunted by the Assyrian Kings is probably where the mythology of the heavenly Bull first originated, also ‘the zodiac sign Torus’ ? the Apis Bull of Egyptian mythology.

There are no concrete theories as to the purpose of the eye temple and the reason for the numerous graven eye images that were found there and therefore they appeal to a very broad section of mankind. Some because they collect antiquities, some because they believe that these idols may be indicative of alien activity on the earth in ancient times

It is clear why collectors of antiquities, especially those whose interest is centred around the cradle of civilisation would like to have a decent specimen for their collection as they are truly both fascinating and mysterious.

In the eyes of a forger, they appear to be easy to manufacture and as they exchange hands for quite sizable sums in the ebay community. But there seems to be a big problem! I have spoken to the BM regarding eye idols. The man there told me that as far as he was aware, these idols did not come with the horned cap of divinty. The reason why there are so many idols with hair dos or caps of divinity presenting to the market is any ones guess.

Tell Hamoukar

Tell Hamoukar is an interesting site, dated to 3500 B.C., in eastern Syria near the border of Iraq and Turkey. With a central city covering 16 hectares, it is as highly developed as sites in southern Iraq such as Uruk and Nippur and seems to debunk the theories that ancient civilization developed in southern Iraq and spread northward and westward. Instead Tell Hamoukar is offered as proof that several advanced ancient civilizations developed simultaneously in different parts of the Middle East. [Source: Natural History magazine, Clemens Reichel of the Oriental Institute of Chicago]

Excavations indicate that Tell Hamoukar was first inhabited around 4000 B.C. perhaps as early as 4500 B.C. By around 3700 B.C. is covered at least 13 hectares and displayed signs of an advanced civilization: a 2.5-meter-high, 3.4 -meter-wide defensive wall, large scale bread making and meat cooking, a wide array of cylinder seals, presumably used to mark goods. Many seals were used to secure baskets and other containers of commodities.

The simplest seals had only simple markings. More elaborate ones had kissing bears, ducks and a leopard with 13 spots. Scholars believed that more elaborate seals were used by people of high status and indicate a hierarchically-ordered society. But as advanced as Tell Hamoukar and other places in the area were they are not regarded as advanced as those in southern Iraq, where writing developed.

Tell Hamoukar contains a 500-acre site with buildings with huge ovens, which offer evidence that people were making food for other people. The city seems to have been a manufacturing center for tools and blades that utilized obsidian supplies further north and supplied the tools throughout Mesopotamia to the south. Other sites being excavated in northern Syria include Tell Brak and Habuba Kabira, both of which appear ro be much larger than previously thought.

The oldest known example of large scale warfare is from a fierce battle that took place at Tell Hamoukar around 3500 B.C. Evidence of intense fighting include collapsed mud walls that had undergone heavy bombardment; the presence of 1,200 oval-sapped “bullets” flung from slings and 120 large round balls. Graves held skeletons of likely battle victims. Reichel told the New York Times the clash appeared to have been a swift, rapid attack: “buildings collapse, burning out of control, burying everything in them under a vast pile of rubble.”

No one knows who the attacker of Tell Hamoukar was but circumstantial evidence points to Mesopotamia cultures to the south. The battle may have been between northern and southern Near Eastern cultures when the two cultures were relative equally, with the victory by the south giving them an edge and paving the way for them to dominate the region. Large amount of Uruk pottery was found on layers just above the battle. Reichel told the New York Times,“If the Uruk people weren’t the ones firing the sling bullets, they certainly benefitted from it. They are all over this place right after its destruction.”

Discoveries at Tell Hamoukar have changed thinking about the evolution of civilization in Mesopotamia. It was previously though that civilization developed in Sumerian cities like Ur and Uruk and radiated outward in the form of trade, conquest and colonization. But findings in Tell Hamoukar show that many indicators of civilization were present in northern places like Tell Hamoukar as well as in Mesopotamia and around 4000 B.C. to 3000 B.C. the two placed were pretty equal.

Artifacts from Hamoukar

The Eye Idols of Tell Brak

Hamoukar

 

Armenia – In the Center of Civilization

“The site of Shengavit in the hills above the Ararat Plain is one set of remains of an ancient culture called variously Kura Araxes, Early Transcaucasian, Karaz, Pulur, Shengavitian, etc.  Its full time period is still much under debate, but probably it starts somewhere around 3500 BC and ends 2500-2200 BC.  The homeland of this culture is in the Southern Caucasus, the current countries of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, along with a section of current northeastern Turkey from Erzurum through Kars provinces.  To fully understand the importance of this culture, its place in its contemporary world is essential to comprehend.  Its beginning is co-terminus with the establishment of the first states in southern Mesopotamia and the founding of the first international trading system, which covered an area from the Persian Gulf to the North Caucasus from modern western Iran to the Mediterranean Sea… “

– Dr. Mitchell Rothman, Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at Widener University in Pennsylvania

The Kura Araxes Culture is a unique culture of the 4th and early 3rd millennia BC in the Transcaucasian area. Originally thought to be a minor village culture, it is now clear that it was part of an ancient globalization stretching from the Persian Gulf to the plains of the North Caucasus opening into eastern Europe and western China. Peoples from the Transcaucasus migrated into the Taurus and Zagros Mountains all the way to the north Jordan valley of modern Israel in the early 3rd millennium creating a unique blending of cultures.

The Shengavit Settlement is an archaeological site in present day Yerevan, Armenia located on a hill south-east of Lake Yerevan. It was inhabited during a series of settlement phases from approximately 3200 BC cal to 2500 BC cal in the Kura Araxes (Shengavitian) Period of the Early Bronze Age and irregularly re-used in the Middle Bronze Age until 2200 BC cal.

Excavations at Shengavit reveal at least 4 layers of civilization during a period extending up to 2,000 years. At the site are foundations for dwellings, some of them round, with hearths, pottery, remains of seeds, and animal bones, as well as tombs. Meanwhile, the amount of revealed horse bones at the territory has exceeded all expectations of the researchers. There has not been observed such a quantity of horses in the entire Ancient East.

A group of archaeologists studying the ancient city concluded that 4000-3000 BC Armenia was a highly developed state with exclusive culture. The work at Shengavit in the Aragats area, and of teams in neighboring countries, is just beginning to unravel the changes in social structure and inter-regional relationships that occurred over the span of the Kura Araxes Period.

Unique discoveries revealed as a result of excavations at Shengavit (4000-3000 BC) confirm that Armenia is the motherland of metallurgy, jeweler’s art, wine-making and horse breeding. Director of the Scientific and Research Institute of Historical and Cultural Heritage of the RA Ministry of Culture Simonyan said that for example, the glass beads discovered at the territory of Shengavit are of a higher quality than the Egypt samples.

Archaeologists so far have uncovered large cyclopean walls with towers that surrounded the settlement. Within these walls were circular and square multi-dwelling buildings constructed of stone and mud-brick. Inside some of the residential structures were ritual hearths and household pits, while large silos located nearby stored wheat and barley for the residents of the town. There was also an underground passage that led to the river from the town. Earlier excavations had uncovered burial mounds outside the settlement walls towards the south-east and south-west. More ancient graves still remain in the same vicinity.

A great number of stone tools have been found in workrooms. While the discovered evidences of copper production prove that a systematized iron production was established in Armenia. Amongst the finds during archaeological excavations at Shengavit were chert and obsidian stone tools, mace heads, hoes, hammers, grinders, spindle whorls, spearheads, flakers, needles, pottery, and crucibles (which could hold 10 kg of smelted metal). Storage containers for smelted metal were found as well that held far greater amounts than the town should have required. Large quantities of debris from flint and obsidian knapping, pottery making, metallurgy, and weapons manufacture indicate that the town had organized guilds which performed such tasks.

Its pottery makes it a type site of the Kura-Araxes or Early Transcaucasian Period and the Shengavitian culture area. Pottery found at the town typically has a characteristic black burnished exterior and reddish interior with either incised or raised designs. This style defines the period, and is found across the mountainous Early Transcaucasian territories. One of the larger styles of pottery has been identified as a wine vat but residue tests will confirm this notion.

A large stone obelisk was discovered in one of the structures during earlier excavations. A similar obelisk was uncovered at the site of Mokhrablur four km south of Ejmiatsin. It is thought that this, and the numerous statuettes made of clay that have been found are part of a central ritualistic practice in Shengavit.

The oldest archaeological layer at Shengavit is from the Stone Age in the 4th millennium BC. This was before the formation of Armenia and other nations in the region, although it is widely believed the society living there at the time must have played a part in the genesis of the Armenian people. Urartian tombs from a later period were found not far from the Shengavit site in Yerevan.

The area has been continuously inhabited since then. Later layers present a record of social and technological development from stone implements, to copper and bronze, after which Armenia became part of the Urartu Empire. The site presents a view of social development from tribal society to the development of a large organized community.

The site of Shengavit in the hills above the Ararat Plain is one set of remains of an ancient culture called variously Kura Araxes, Early Transcaucasian, Karaz, Pulur, Shengavitian, etc., and was the first site that exhibited what is often called Kura-Arax culture. This culture had contacts throughout much of the Middle East, as far as Mesopotamia and Palestine, and as far west as Malatia in western Armenia (Anatolia).

The homeland of this culture is in the southern Caucasus, the current countries of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, along with a section of current northeastern Turkey from Erzurum through Kars provinces. Its beginning is co-terminus with the establishment of the first states in southern Mesopotamia and the founding of the first international trading system, which covered an area from the Persian Gulf to the north Caucasus from modern western Iran to the Mediterranean Sea. In the north Caucasus this is the time of the earliest Maikop Cultures.

Its end is near the time of the founding of the first territorial empire of the northern Mesopotamian Akkadians, and the dominance of mobile pastoralist societies known for their kurgans (stone tombs) in Eurasia. This culture shared strong traditions, represented in part by unique black burnished, handmade pottery, often bearing incised or raised designs.

First at about 3500 BC., migrants bearing these markers of identity appeared in the Upper Euphrates River valley (Malatya), and after approximately 3000 B.C. spread across the Taurus and Zagros mountain fronts and down into the North Jordan Valley in modern Israel. The nature of the Kura Araxes societies are unique and different from either the Mesopotamian or Western Iranian ones to the south or the Maikop ones of the north.”

A popular press source unfortunately has been cited misstating information from a 2010 press conference in Yerevan. In that conference Mitchell S. Rothman, a Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology and founder of the Anthropology Department at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, said that all the discoveries prove that around 6,000 years ago the culture of Shengavit has spread over the ancient world.

He described the Uruk Expansion trading network, and the likelihood that raw materials and technologies from the South Caucasus had reached the Mesopotamian homeland, which somehow was misinterpreted to say that Armenian culture was a source of Mesopototamian culture, which is not true. The Kura Araxes (Shengavitian) cultures and societies are a unique mountain phenomenon, evolved parallel to but not the same as Mesopotamian cultures.

“All that was known in Mesopotamia came from Armenia. Armenia is the absent fragment in the entire mosaics of the ancient world’s civilizations construction. Shengavit has supplemented the lacking chains, that we had been facing while studying the ancient culture of Mesopotamia,” concluded Rothman.

At the end of the fourth into the third millennia BC, people carrying Early Transcaucasian cultural traditions migrated over a wide mountain arc from western Iran to Eastern Turkey and down into the Jordan Valley. Tracing the movement of people from specific areas then becomes possible, especially if a larger, more comprehensive and well excavated comparative sample of ceramics were available.

The cultural developments at Shengavit were contemporary with similar developments as far away as Mesopotamia, Malatia in Western Armenia, and southern Russia. In sites to which Early Transcaucasian peoples migrated in highland Eastern Turkey and Western Iran, clearly southern Armenian forms are quite common both in pottery and architectural style, although both are classified as Early Transcaucasian.

Shengavit’s population traded with these areas and was at the geometric center of these cultural developments. The population was likely making wine and stored tons of grain. Estimates of the maximum population inhabiting the Shengavit settlement range from 2,000 to 6,000 individuals.

The Kura–Araxes culture or the early trans-Caucasian culture was a civilization that existed from 3400 BC until about 2000 BC, which has traditionally been regarded as the date of its end, but it may have disappeared as early as 2600 or 2700 BC. The earliest evidence for this culture is found on the Ararat plain; thence it spread to Georgia by 3000 BC (but never reaching Colchis), and during the next millennium it proceeded westward to the Erzurum plain, southwest to Cilicia, and to the southeast into an area below the Urmia basin and Lake Van, and finally down to the borders of present day Syria. Altogether, the early Trans-Caucasian culture, at its greatest spread, enveloped a vast area approximately 1,000 km by 500 km.

The name of the culture is derived from the Kura and Araxes river valleys. Its territory corresponds to parts of modern Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Georgia, Ingushetia and North Ossetia. It may have given rise to the later Khirbet Kerak ware culture found in Syria and Canaan after the fall of the Akkadian Empire.

The earliest kurgans occur in the northwestern and southern Caucasus and precede by several centuries those of the Pit-Grave (Yamnaya) cultures of the western Eurasian steppes (cf. Chernykh and Orlovskaya 2004a and b). The Maikop ‘culture’ seems to have had a formative influence on steppe kurgan burial rituals and the later development of the Pit-Grave (Yamnaya) culture on the Eurasian steppes (Chernykh and Orlovskaya 2004a: 97).

The archaeological record seems to document a movement of peoples north to south across a very extensive part of the Ancient Near East from the end of the 4th to the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Although migrations are notoriously difficult to document on archaeological evidence, these materials constitute one of the best examples of prehistoric movements of peoples available for the Early Bronze Age.

The spread of this pottery, along with archaeological evidence of invasions, suggests that the Kura-Araxes people may have spread outward from their original homes, and most certainly, had extensive trade contacts. Jaimoukha believes that its southern expanse is attributable primarily to Mitanni and the Hurrians.

Hurrian and Urartian elements are quite probable, as are Northeast Caucasian ones. Some authors subsume Hurrians and Urartians under Northeast Caucasian as well as part of the Alarodian theory. The presence of Kartvelian languages was also highly probable. Influences of Semitic languages and Indo-European languages are also highly possible, though the presence of the languages on the lands of the Kura–Araxes culture is more controversial. It might be the homeland of the Indo-European languages, with Armenian language remaining.

Shengavit Settlement

U.S. Archaeologists Return to Shengavit Preserve

Shengavit: Archaeology, Renovations Progressing

Shengavit – a Kura Araxes Culture Site in Yerevan on the Ararat hills, Republic of Armenia

Shengavit – Armenia

The Great Musasir Temple of Armenia – Proignitor of the Greco-Roman Temples

Muṣaṣir (Assyrian; Mu-ṣa-ṣir and variants, including Mutsatsir, 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 a semi-independent buffer state bordering Mannai between Assyria and Urartu. It was a vassal state of Assyria yet Urartu had some claim over it. It was acquired by the Urartian King Ishpuini ca. 800 BC.

The city’s location is not known with certainty, although there are a number of hypotheses, all in the general area in the Zagros south of Lake Urmia. A team of archaeologists has discovered a brick bearing bas-reliefs of four winged goddesses at the 3000-year-old site of Rabat near the town of Sardasht in Iran’s West Azarbaijan Province. The upper parts of the goddesses resemble a woman and the lower parts are similar to an animal like a deer or cow with wings on both their sides.

The bas-reliefs are very unique. Similar bas-reliefs depicting winged goddesses have not been found, even at Persepolis with all its grandeur. Such bas-reliefs have never been seen in any ancient site of the county so far.

In its higher strata, Rabat dates back to some time around 1000 BC. It is one of the richest archaeological sites of northwestern Iran. Archaeologists had estimated the site covered only a four-hectare area, but new studies have extended the area to 25 hectares. The team of archaeologists working in the region believes that Rabat Tepe was the seat of government of Musasir about 3000 years ago.

Experts believe that it was an ancient city probably located near the upper Great Zab River between Lake Urmia and Lake Van, the present Turkey. Musasir was particularly important during the first half of the 1st millennium BC and is known primarily from reliefs and inscriptions obtained during the reign of the Assyrian king Sargon II, who captured it in 714 BC. According to the inscriptions, Sargon seized the contents of the temple of Haldi, the god of the ancient kingdom of Urartu.

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 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 the known source of information about the oldest cultures of Van predating the founding of Tushpa.

Khaldi (also known as Hayk) was one of the three chief deities of 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, the Urartian’s goddess of fertility and art. He is portrayed as a man with or without a beard, standing on a lion. The other two chief deities in the triad were Theispas of Kumenu, and Shivini of Tushpa.

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. Chaldea or Chaldæa (Akkadian: māt Ḫaldu, 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.

At the height of its power, during the 14th century BC, Mitanni had outposts centered around its capital, Washukanni, whose location has been determined by archaeologists to be on the headwaters of the Khabur River. Eventually, Mitanni succumbed to Hittite and later Assyrian attacks, and was reduced to the status of a province of the Middle Assyrian Empire.

In the time of Ashur-nirari III (ca. 1200 BC, the beginning Bronze Age collapse), the Phrygians and others invaded and destroyed the Hittite Empire, already weakened by defeats against Assyria. Some parts of Assyrian ruled Hanilgalbat was temporarily lost to the Phrygians also, however the Assyrians defeated the Phrygians and regained these colonies . The Hurrians still held Katmuhu and Paphu. In the transitional period to the Early Iron Age, Mitanni was settled by invading Semitic Aramaean tribes.

Within a few centuries of the fall of Washshukanni to Assyria, Mitanni became fully Assyrianized and linguistically Aramaized, and use of the Hurrian language began to be discouraged throughout the Neo-Assyrian Empire. However, Urartean, a dialect closely related to Hurrian seems to have survived in the new state of Urartu, in the mountainous areas to the north. In the 10th to 9th century BC inscriptions of Adad-nirari II and Shalmaneser III, Hanigalbat is still used as a geographical term.

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 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 origin of the Arameans remains uncertain, with limited mention of Arameans in Mesopotamian inscriptions supplemented by a few descriptive incidents associated with Rebekah from Aram-Naharaim in the book of Genesis in the Bible.

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 appears in the inscriptions of Tiglath Pileser I (c. 1100 BC).

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. It is conceivable that the name “Aramaeans” was a more accurate form of the earlier ethnonym Martu (Amorites, westerners) in the Assyrian tablets.

The Arameans conquered, during the 11th and the 10th centuries, Sam’al (Zenjirli), also known as Yaudi, the region from Arpad to Aleppo which they renamed Bît-Agushi, and Til Barsip, which became the chief town of Bît-Adini, also known as Beth Eden.

At the same time, Arameans moved to the east of the Euphrates, where they settled in such numbers that the whole region became known as Aram-Naharaim or “Aram of the two rivers”. One of their earliest kingdoms in Mesopotamia was Bît-bahiâni (Tell Halaf).

North of Sam’al was the Arameans state of Bit-Gabari, sandwiched between the Neo-Hittite states of Carchemish, Gurgum, Tabal, Khattina and Unqi. Whilst these later states maintained a Neo-Hittite hieroglyphic for official communication, it would seem that the population of these small states was progressively Aramaeanised.

Boris Piotrovsky wrote that “the Urartians first appear in history in the 13th century BC. as a league of tribes or countries which did not yet constitute a unitary state. In the Assyrian annals the term Uruatri (Urartu) as a name for this league was superseded during a considerable period of years by the term “land of Nairi”.

Shupria (Shubria) or Arme-Shupria (Akkadian: Armani-Subartu from the 3rd millennium BC) was part of the Urartu confederation. It was a Hurrian-speaking 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. The capital was called Ubbumu. Later, there is reference to a district in the area called Arme or Urme, which some scholars have linked to the name Armenia.

Weidner interpreted textual evidence to indicate that after the 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 (Hurri-Mitanni), Hayasa-Azzi and other populations of the region such as the Nairi fell under Urartian (Kingdom of Ararat) rule in the 9th century BC, and their descendants, according to most scholars, later contributed to the ethnogenesis of the early Armenians.

In the early 6th century BC, the Urartian Kingdom was replaced by the Armenian Orontid dynasty. In the trilingual Behistun inscription, carved in 521/0 BC by the order of Darius the Great of Persia, the country referred to as Urartu in Assyrian is called Arminiya in Old Persian and Harminuia in Elamite.

Theispas of Kumenu was the Urartian weather-god, notably the god of storms and thunder. He was also sometimes the god of war. He is a counterpart to the Assyrian god Adad, and the Hurrian god, Teshub. He was often depicted as a man standing on a bull, holding a handful of thunderbolts. His wife was the goddess Huba, who was the counterpart of the Hurrian goddess Hebat.

Shivini or Artinis (the present form of the name is Artin, meaning “sun rising” or to “awake”, and it persists in Armenian names to this day) was a solar god in the mythology of the Urartu. The Assyrian god Shamash is a counterpart to Shivini. He is cognate with the Hindu deity Shiva.

He was depicted as a man on his knees, holding up a solar disc. His wife was most likely a goddess called Tushpuea who is listed as the third goddess on the Mheri-Dur inscription. Shivini is generally considered a good god, like that of the Egyptian solar god, Aten, and unlike the solar god of the Assyrians, Ashur to whom sometimes human sacrifices were made.

The Musasir temple was an important Urartian temple in Musasir, the holy city of Urartu, and was built in 825 BC. The Temple appears in an Assyrian bas-relief which adorned the palace of King Sargon II at Khorsapat, to commemorate his victory over “the seven kings of Ararat” in 714 BC.

During this period of Assyrian campaigns, the northern Urartian regions were governed by Sardur, and later by his son Rusa, with the capital at Tushpa located near the great city and the capital of the mighty Kingdom of Urartu, Van (Biaina) on the eastern shore of Lake Van. Sardur placed Urzana as the governor of the spiritual center, the temple of Khaldi, the city’s tutelary deity.

During the early 1850s, the British Assyrian Excavation Fund entered the field under William Kennett Loftus and many antiquities and accurate drawings of wall sculptures were apportioned between the British Museum and the Louvre. However, a convoy of antiquities was attacked by Arab robbers while being shipped down the Tigris River, and today lies buried somewhere in the bed of that river. Fortunately that particular bas-relief was copied at its original location in the palace onto a drawing by Eugene Flandin as Botta’s chief artist.

The Kelashin Stele (also Kelishin Stele) found in Kelashin, Iraq, bears an important Urartian-Assyrian bilingual text dating to ca. 800 BC, first described by Friedrich Eduard Schulz in 1827. The inscription describes the acquisition of the city of Musasir (Ardini) by the Urartian king Ishpuini.

Part of Schulz’s notes were lost when he was killed by Kurdish bandits, and later expeditions were either prevented by weather conditions or the brigands, so that a copy (latex squeeze) of the inscription could only be made in 1951 by G. Cameron, and again in 1976 by an Italian party under heavy military protection.

The historic significance of the Urartian era Musasir Temple is fundamentally this: the Greco-Roman looking architecture preceded the earliest Greco-Roman style constructions by hundreds of years. The Musasir Temple is yet another clear indicator that the advanced culture of the Armenian Highlands radiated far beyond its boundaries. Ancient civilizations such as the Minoans, who germinated Greek culture, and the Etruscans, who germinated Roman culture, trace their origin to within the vicinity of the Armenian Highlands.

The Great Musasir Temple of Armenia

Musasir temple

Musasir

Garni

Garni Temple

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