Tushhan (alternatively spelled as Tushan or Tušḫan) was a Neo-Assyrian provincial capital in the upper

Tigris The Tigris ( ; see #Etymology, below) is the eastern of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian Desert, Syrian and Arabia ...

region. It was rebuilt by the ruler

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 survived until the end of the Neo-Assyrian period around 611 BC. It is generally thought to be located at the site of the archaeological site Ziyaret Tepe (),

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 though Üçtepe Höyük has also been proposed.
�evket 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
aylor, 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

History of Tušḫan

In the Middle Iron Age the second tier provincial capitol was built/rebuilt by Neo-Assyrian ruler Ashurnasirpal II. From one of his texts:

Site History

The site of Ziyaret Tepe was occupied as early as the

Early Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

. Most of the urban development uncovered to date is from the Middle Iron Age, when the city was rebuilt after its collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age. In Neo-Assyrian times it is thought to have been known as Tushhan, until to 605 BC, when that empire fell. The site was also occupied in a much smaller scale in the

Hellenistic 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 ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

Medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

and Ottoman periods.

Archaeology

The site covers an area of 32 hectares, composed of a 3 hectare upper mound and a 29 hectare lower town extending to the eastern, southern, and western sides. In the Neo-Assyrian period the site had a 4 meter wide fortification wall with a fortified gate. The site has been damaged by iron irrigation piping supporting cotton farming area and the lower town degraded by wheat farming. The southeastern part of the main mound is covered by a modern shrine and grave area used by locals. The site was identified in the 1990s for rescue archaeology as it was expected to be inundated by the Ilısu Dam which was scheduled for completion in 2016 but has only recently reached operational levels. Work at the location began with 3 years of surface survey and remote sensing in 1997. Work included magnetometry, resistivity analysis, and a limited use of ground penetrating radar. From 2000 until 2014 the site was being excavated by a team directed by Timothy Matney of the

University of Akron The University of Akron is a public university, public research university in Akron, Ohio, United States. It is part of the University System of Ohio. As a STEM fields, STEM-focused institution, it focuses on industries such as polymers, advance ...

and John Macginnis of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge University. A Neo-Assyrian period monumental building was found on the main mound, termed a palace by the excavators. It was destroyed by fire c. 800 BC though later occupation occurred in the area. The number of bronze vessels found led the excavators to name it the Bronze Palace. Under the floor were found five cremation burials with grave goods including bronze vessels, stone bowls, ivory and a stamp seal. Small finds at the site included various military paraphernalia of that period including armor scales, and bronze and iron arrowheads and spearheads. In the Lower Town barrack, high status residences, and an administrative building were found. Thirty five late Neo-Assyrian period

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

clay tablet In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian language, Akkadian ) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay t ...

s, mostly fragmentary, were found at the site, along with clay sealings and hundreds of clay tokens.S. Parpola, "Cuneiform Texts From Ziyaret Tepe (Ancient Tushan) 2002-2003", State Archives of Assyria Bulletin, vol. 16, 2006 One tablet, thought to be from the final days, read: One damaged Neo-Assyrian period cuneiform tablet originally contained a list of 169 names of which 59 were still legible. For some of the names the original language, Akkadian etc, could be identified but for the rest this was not the case. The epigrapher speculated that the unknown language might be Shubrian, a little known language of that region.John MacGinnis, "Evidence for a Peripheral Language in a Neo-Assyrian Tablet from the Governor’s Palace in Tušhan", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 13-20, April 2012

References

*Bartl, P. V., "The Middle Bronze Age on the Upper Tigris: New Evidence from the Excavations at Gricano and Ziyaret Tepe", in: Marro, C. – Özfırat, A. (eds.) Mountains and Valleys: A Symposium on Highland/Lowland Interaction in the Bronze Age Settlement Systems of Eastern Anatolia, Transcaucasia and Northwestern Iran. 9.–13. August 2004, Van, Turkey, Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iranund Turan 37, pp. 53–62, 2005 *Matney, T. – Roaf, M. – McGinnis, J. – McDonald, H., "Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe, 2001", in: Tuna, N. –Öztürk, J. – Velibeyog ̆lu, J. (eds.), Salvage Project of the Archaeological Heritage of the Ilısu and Carchemish Dam Reservoirs Activities in 2001, Ankara, pp. 387–423, 2004 *Timothy Matney el al, "Ziyaret Tepe Exploring the Anatolian frontier of the Assyrian Empire", Cornucopia Books, September 2017 *Timothy Matney and Ann Donkin, "Mapping the Past: An Archaeogeophysical Case Study from Southeastern Turkey", Near Eastern Archaeology, vol. 69, pp. 12–26, 2006 *Timothy, Matney et al., "Eighteen years on the frontiers of Assyria: the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project", EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020 e *MacGinnis, J.D.A. & T. Matney, "Ziyaret Tepe: digging the frontier of the Assyrian empire", Current World Archaeology 37, pp. 30–40, 2009 *Matney, T., J.D.A. MacGinnis, D. Wicke & K. Köroğlu, "Uncovering a provincial capital of the Assyrian Empire: The Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition 1997–2100", in Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 12 April–16 April 2010, the British Museum and UCL, London, vol. 3: Field work & Recent Research and Posters, eds. R.J. Mathews & J. Curtis. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 313–24, 2012 *Wicke, D., "Operation A/N (The ‘Bronze Palace’)", Anatolica 35, pp. 38–49, 2009 *Wicke, D. & T. Greenield, "The ‘Bronze Palace’ at Ziyaret Tepe. Preliminary remarks on the architecture and faunal analysis", in Assyrian Provincial Palaces, eds. D. Kertai & P.A. Miglus. (Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 15.) Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, pp. 63–82, 2013

External links

Tablets from Ziyaret Tepe - CDLIA mound with a story - Cambridge UniversityEnd of Empire: The Archaeological Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe - Popular Archaeology - Dec 13, 2017Archaeologists unearth record of ancient Assyria’s demise - Popular Archaeology - Fri, Jan 19, 2024How archaeologists discovered an ancient Assyrian city – and lost it again
The Guardian 7 Feb 2018 {{Authority control Archaeological sites in Southeastern Anatolia Ancient Assyrian cities Former populated places in Turkey History of Diyarbakır Province Geography of Diyarbakır Province

History of Tušḫan

Site History

Archaeology

See also

References

Further reading

External links