Tushhan

Ziyaret Tepe
Ziyaret Tepe

Location in Turkey

Coordinates: 37°47′37″N 40°47′035″E / 37.79361°N 40.79306°E / 37.79361; 40.79306

Tushhan (also Tushan, or Tušhan) is a Kurdish village known as (Kurdish: Behramki‎) or (Kurdish: Tepe-i Barava‎)[1] by residents and It was an ancient city that Assyrian have ruled for some time in Mesopotamia. It was a provincial capital in the upper Tigris river valley, on the south bank and inhabited since the Mitanni period, and mainly during the Neo-Assyrian period during the Iron Age.

It is now believed to be located at the site of the modern Ziyaret Tepe (Kurdish: Tepa Barava‎), Diyarbakır Province, Turkey.

History

The site of Ziyaret Tepe was occupied as early as the Early Bronze Age. Most of the urban development uncovered to date is from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. In late Assyrian times it was known as Tushhan, until circa 612 BC to 605 BC, when that empire fell. The site is expected to be inundated by the Ilısu Dam around 2014.

Archaeology

Work at the location began with 3 years of surface survey and remote sensing in 1997 [2][3][4] Since 2000, site has been excavated by a team directed by Timothy Matney of the University of Akron.[5][6][7][8][9]

An important assemblage of cuneiform clay tablets was found there, translated by Simo Parpola of Helsinki University.[10]

Spurious "language"

A cuneiform tablet was discovered in 2009 at Ziyaret Tepe that contained a list of around 60 names. It was a list of women deported from an unknown location around 800 BC, during the Neo Assyrian Empire period. According to John MacGinnis of the University of Cambridge McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, these women may have come from around the Zagros Mountains.[11] He said that the most likely possibility was that these names belonged to Shubrians, a people speaking a language isolate.[12] However, nearly all of the names can be identified with known languages,[13] and the supposed language of the "Tushan names" is spurious.[14]

Ziyaret Tepe is quite close to the town of Üçtepe, Bismil (in Turkish), located near Bismil, where in 1861 John George Taylor found the famous Kurkh Monoliths, Assyrian monuments that contain a description of the Battle of Qarqar — of interest to biblical and Ancient Near East studies.[15] In fact, Üçtepe was believed to have been the location of Tushan by some scholars in the past. Today the monoliths are located at the British Museum.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ BİSMİL'İ TANIYALIM bismilhaber - Jan 07, 2016
  2. ↑ Timothy Matney, The First Season of Excavation at Ziyaret Tepe in the Diyarbakir Province, Anatolica, vol. 24, pp. 7-30, 1998
  3. ↑ Timothy Matney and Lewis Somers, The Second Season of Excavation at Ziyaret Tepe in the Diyarbakir Province, Anatolica, vol. 25, pp. 203-219, 1999
  4. ↑ Timothy Matney and A. Bauer, The Third Season of Archaeological Survey at Ziyaret Tepe in Diyarbakir Province, Anatolica, vol. 26, pp. 119-128, 2000
  5. ↑ Timothy Matney et al.,Archaeological Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe: 2000 and 2001, Anatolica, vol. 28, pp. 47-89, 2002
  6. ↑ Timothy Matney et al.,Archaeological Investigations at Ziyaret Tepe: 2002, Anatolica, vol. 29, pp. 175-221, 2003
  7. ↑ Timothy Matney and L. Rainville, Archaeological Investigations at Ziyaret Tepe: 2003 and 2004, Anatolica, vol. 31, pp. 19-68, 2005
  8. ↑ Timothy, Matney et al., Report on Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe, 2006 Season, Anatolica, vol. 33, pp. 23-73, 2007
  9. ↑ Timothy, Matney et al., Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe 2007-2008, Anatolica, vol. 35, pp. 37-84, 2009
  10. ↑ S. Parpola, Cuneiform Texts From Ziyaret Tepe (Ancient Tushan) 2002-2003, State Archives of Assyria Bulletin, vol. 16, 2006
  11. ↑ Lost language’s discovery opens window into Tigris’ threatened richness todayszaman - May 27, 2012
  12. ↑ Mysterious tablet’s secrets revealed hurriyetdailynews August/27/2012
  13. ↑
  14. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Tushan Names". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  15. ↑ Nadav Naʼaman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction : Collected Essays, Eisenbrauns, 2005. p. 2 ISBN 1575061082

References

Coordinates: 37°47′36″N 40°47′35″E / 37.793470°N 40.793047°E / 37.793470; 40.793047

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/20/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.