Sittace or Sittake or Sittakê (
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
: ,
Ptol. vi. 1. § 6;
Akkadian Sattagū
[Kessler, K. 2002, "Sittake, Sittakene, Sattagū" in ''Altorientalische Forschungen'' 29, 238-248]), was an ancient city, the capital of ancient
Sittacene, in
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...
, at the southern end of this province, on the road between
Artemita and
Susa
Susa ( ) was an ancient city in the lower Zagros Mountains about east of the Tigris, between the Karkheh River, Karkheh and Dez River, Dez Rivers in Iran. One of the most important cities of the Ancient Near East, Susa served as the capital o ...
. (
Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...
xvi. p. 744.) It is called Sitta () by
Diodorus
Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (; 1st century BC) was an ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental universal history '' Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which survive intact, b ...
(xvii. 110).
William Smith believed that Diodorus's
Sambana also referred to Sittace.
The origin of the city's name may be found in
Babylon
Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...
ian tablets referring to the polity "URU.Sattagû" which may be a translation or approximation of "people of
Sattagydia", a
Persian satrapy
The district of Sittacene appears to have been called in later times "Apolloniatis" (Strab. xi. p. 524).
Notes
References
*
Sittacene
Ancient Assyrian cities
Former populated places in Iraq
{{Iraq-stub