Üçtepe Höyük, is an ancient Near East archaeological site in

Diyarbakır Province Diyarbakır Province (; ; ) is a province and metropolitan municipality in southeastern Turkey. Its area is 15,101 km2, and its population is 1,804,880 (2022). The provincial capital is the city of Diyarbakır. The Kurdish majority province ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

about 40 kilometers southeast of the modern city of

Diyarbakır Diyarbakır is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is ...

and about 10 kilometers southwest of modern

Bismil Bismil () is a municipality and Districts of Turkey, district of Diyarbakır Province, Turkey. Its area is 1,679 km2, and its population is 118,698 (2022). The district was established on 4 January 1936. Neighborhoods There are 122 mahalle ...

. The village of Üçtepe is nearby. It was occupied from the Late Early Bronze Age until the Roman period and is notable as the discovery location of the

Kurkh Monoliths The Kurkh Monoliths are two Assyrian stelae of and 879 BC that contain a description of the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and his son Shalmaneser III. The Monoliths were discovered in 1861 by a British archaeologist John George Taylor, who was ...

. The ancient site of Ziyaret Tepe lies 22 kilometers to the west. Other archaeological sites in the area include Pir Hüseyin,

Kenan Tepe Kenan Tepe is an ancient Near East archaeological site located within the Diyarbakır Province in the Ilisu dam upper Tigris River region in the southeast of modern Turkey near the borders of modern Syria and Iraq, about 12 kilometers east of the ...

, Hirbemerdon Tepe, Salat Tepe, Giricano, and Sahin Tepe (Müslüman Tepe).

Archaeology

Üçtepe Höyük covers an area about 400 meters in diameter with a height of about 44 meters, about 12.5 hectares in total. The main mound is about 200 meters by 189 meters in extent. The site (at that time called Kurkh) was first excavated by

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

in 1861 to 1863 and again in 1866 observing "a high mound and a cluster of lower heaps about its base, situated at the eastern end of an elevated platform evidently the site of a large town on the right bank of the Tigris" with the high mound topped by a large Parthian fort "about a mile in circumference". In the soil by the fort Taylor found the two Neo-Assyrian period

, dating to the reigns of

Ashurnasirpal II Ashur-nasir-pal II (transliteration: ''Aššur-nāṣir-apli'', meaning " Ashur is guardian of the heir") was the third king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 883 to 859 BC. Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II. His son and s ...

(883–859 BC) and his son

Shalmaneser III Shalmaneser III (''Šulmānu-ašarēdu'', "the god Shulmanu is pre-eminent") was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 859 BC to 824 BC. His long reign was a constant series of campaigns against the eastern tribes, the Babylonians, the nations o ...

.
Taylor, J. G., "Travels in Kurdistan, with Notices of the Sources of the Eastern and Western Tigris, and Ancient Ruins in their Neighbourhood", Journal of Royal Geographical Society 35, pp. 21-58, 1865 The site (referred to as Kirkh) was next examined, during an area survey, by Albert T. Olmstead in 1907. The Üçtepe Höyük was excavated between 1988 and 1992 by a joint Diyarbakır Archaeological Museum and

Istanbul University Istanbul University, also known as University of Istanbul (), is a Public university, public research university located in Istanbul, Turkey. Founded by Mehmed II on May 30, 1453, a day after Fall of Constantinople, the conquest of Constantinop ...

team led by Veli Sevin. Using step trench excavation on the east side of the main mound they found that the top 7 to 8 meters of the mound dated to the Roman and

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

s and the next lowest 4 meter layer dated to the Neo-Assyrian period. One Middle-Assyrian (Stratum 9) grave was found bearing grave goods including eight gold earrings and an engraved cylindrical bone box. In total 12 trenches were excavated on the mound, 3 on the northwest, 1 on the north, 6 on the southeast, 1 on the south, and 1 on the west. The main focus of the excavation was on the Neo-Assyrian period. During the excavations 23 Classical period coins were found. A cuneiform tablet, from the reign of

Shalmaneser I Shalmaneser I (𒁹𒀭𒁲𒈠𒉡𒊕 md''sál-ma-nu-SAG'' ''Salmanu-ašared''; 1273–1244 BC or 1265–1235 BC) was a king of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian Empire. He was the son and successor of Adad-nirari I. Reign Year 1: According ...

(c. 1273–1244 BC), was also discovered.

History

Üçtepe Höyük was occupied from the Late Early Bronze Age until the Roman Imperial period. The excavators defined 13 stratigraphic layers. Virgin soil was not reached and

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

(4th millennium BC) pottery sherds were found on the surface. Excavation area of the Early Bronze layers was very small while for the Middle Bronze the area was 17.5 meters by 7.5 meters permitting the identification of monumental construction with 2 meter wide walls and wide corridors.
Özfırat, A., "Üçtepe and Diyarbakır Area During the Early-Middle Bronze Ages", Looking North: The Socio-economic Dynamics of the Northern Mesopotamian and Anatolian Regions during the Late Third and Early Second Millenium BC, Proceedings of the Workshop organized at 6th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE), (Rome, 05-10 May 2008), (Eds. N. Laneri, P. Pfälzner, S. Valentini), Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, pp. 117-126, 2012 *Stratum 13 – Early Bronze Age III *Stratum 12 – Early Bronze Age IV *Stratum 11 – Middle Bronze Age. Monumental building. *Stratum 10 – Late Bronze Age. Domestic occupation only *Stratum 9 – Middle Assyrian. Single building with 2 floor levels. *Stratum 8 – Early

Neo-Assyrian The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of South Caucasus, Nort ...

*Stratum 7 – Late Neo-Assyrian. Substantial building. *Stratum 5-6 –

*Stratum 1-4 –

Roman Imperial The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

Ancient name

Initially, in 1865, the Üçtepe Höyük was identified by Henry Rawlinson as the Neo-Assyrian city of Tooskan ( Tushhan). The modern excavators of the site supported that identification.
Şevket Dönmez, "An Overview on the Excavations at Üçtepe Höyük (Ancient Tušḫan). The 1988-1992 Excavations Seasons", Proceedings of the 61e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Geneva and Bern, 22–26 June 2015 (Eds. P. Attinger/A. Cavigneaux/C. Mittermayer/M. Novak). Leuven, pp. 139-146, 2018 At one point the site was proposed to be Tidu, a Neo-Assyrian satellite of Tušḫan and with the Mitanni period Ta’idu. This was later disproved. The Mitanni capitols of Washukanni and

Taite Taite (called ''Ta'idu'' in Assyrian sources) was one of the capitals of the Mitanni Empire. Its exact location is still unknown, although it is speculated to be in the Khabur region. The site of Tall Al-Hamidiya has recently been proposed as th ...

have also been proposed. Based on a cuneiform tablet found at the site it has been proposed that Üçtepe Höyük was Šināmum in the Middle Assyrian period and Sinābu in the Neo-Assyrian period. Genç, B. and J. MacGinnis, "A text of Shalmaneser I from Üçtepe and the location of Šinamu", Anatolian Studies 72, pp. 1-17, 2022Edmonds, Alexander Johannes and Creamer, Petra M., "More to Tell About Billa!: Asimānum/Šimānum and the Early and Middle Bronze Ages at Baˁšīqā, Iraq", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 113, no. 1, pp. 34-50, 2023 One of the few textual references to Šināmum was found in an Old Babylonian period text at

Tell Shemshara Tell Shemshāra (ancient Shusharra) (also Tell Shimshara) is an archaeological site located along the Little Zab in Sulaymaniyah Governorate, in the Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous administrative division of Iraq. The site was inundated by Lake Dukan ...

Archaeology

History

Ancient name

See also

References

Further reading