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<< Text Pages >> Ziyaret Tepe - Ancient Village or Settlement in Turkey

Submitted by AlexHunger on Sunday, 27 August 2006  Page Views: 4832

Multi-periodSite Name: Ziyaret Tepe Alternative Name: Tushhan
Country: Turkey Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Bismil  Nearest Village: Tepe
Latitude: 37.793260N  Longitude: 40.793272E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4
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Ancient Settlement in Diyarbakır Province, Turkey.

Occupied nearly continuously for 2,400 years from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3,000 BCE), during the late Iron Age (c. 900-600 BCE) Ziyaret Tepe was an important urban centre on the northern edge of the Assyrian Empire. Contemporary cuneiform texts suggest that during this time Ziyaret Tepe was the Assyrian provincial capital of Tushhan.

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 4.6km WNW 284° Hakemi Use Tepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 10.8km ENE 62° Salat Tepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 11.3km ENE 78° Müslümantepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 16.9km E 82° Körtik Tepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 34.7km ENE 57° Demircitepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 55.2km E 99° Hasankeyf* Ancient Village or Settlement
 56.5km E 98° Hasankeyf Hoyuk Ancient Village or Settlement
 62.1km NE 39° Hallan Cemi Tepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 69.1km ENE 78° Ayngerm Yani Ancient Village or Settlement
 80.0km NW 310° Fortress Egil Ancient Temple
 80.6km WNW 299° Girikihaciyan Ancient Village or Settlement
 83.8km SSE 168° Urkesh* Ancient Village or Settlement
 84.6km NNW 346° Birkleyn Caves Cave or Rock Shelter
 85.7km SSE 153° Girnavaz* Ancient Village or Settlement
 90.8km E 94° Güzir Höyük Ancient Village or Settlement
 94.8km ESE 107° Zeviya Tivilki Ancient Village or Settlement
 96.1km ESE 107° Boncuklu Tarla* Ancient Temple
 97.0km ESE 108° Cemka Hoyugu* Ancient Village or Settlement
 102.1km WNW 298° Yayvantepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 102.8km WNW 303° Kötekan Ancient Village or Settlement
 104.8km WNW 297° Cayonu Ancient Village or Settlement
 105.1km WNW 302° Gölbent Mevkii Ancient Village or Settlement
 107.1km WNW 301° Papazgölü Ancient Village or Settlement
 108.4km WNW 296° Kikan Harabesi Ancient Village or Settlement
 110.7km WNW 296° Gri Havsarik Ancient Village or Settlement
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"Ziyaret Tepe" | Login/Create an Account | 4 News and Comments
  
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Mysterious tablet’s secrets revealed at Assyrian provincial capitol by bat400 on Saturday, 21 September 2013
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A tablet found at the Ziyarettepe excavation area has stirred excitement among scientists and archaeologists. The tablet, which belongs to eighth century BC has writings in unknown language.
The translator of the tablet, Dr. John MacGinnis of Cambridge University, says the tablet was written in Assyrian cuneiform and was very significant for historians.

“The tablet in Ziyarettepe is quite important. The first evaluations and translation of the tablet were done in England. However, the first announcements are being made at our museum in Turkey,” said Nevin Soyukaya, director of the Diyarbakır Museum, which is supervising the excavation.

Soyukaya said the Ziyarettepe excavation had revealed a lot of knowledge. “Human history repeats with every excavation, as scientists say. The region provides important knowledge, and these important findings are brought to the Diyarbakır Museum.”

Dr. Timothy Matney, a professor at Akron University in the United States, said the settlement at Ziyarettepe, consisting of 32 hectares near the Tigris River (Dicle River), dated from the third century BC to 700 BC, making it one of the oldest settlements. “It was an important center for the Assyrians. It was an accommodation and state center for the Assyrian military, so there was a big palace where the state governor resided on the mound. We uncovered it, and the tablet was found in the burnt ruins of the throne room of the palace in the Assyrian state center Tuşhan.”

The translation of the tablet took a very long time, Dr. John MacGinnis said. “We finally realized that women’s names were listed in the text. It is highly probable that these are the names of women who once worked in Tuşhan.”

He said the most surprising thing was that the names on the tablet were not Assyrian. “To figure that out, we were in contact with many specialist colleagues and compared it with many languages in the Middle East. But they said this language did not match any of them. For example it is not Persian, Elam, Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew or Aramaic.”

He said the most likely possibility was that the names belonged to Shubrians. “Shubria was one of the names of this region before the Assyrians came here.” Another possibility, MacGinnis said, was that the women had been relocated to the area from the Zagros Mountains on the Iraqi-Iranian border.
MacGinnis said the tablet was important because it showed a new language. He said the tablet listed the names Impane, Ninuaya, Sasimi, Bisunume, Malinayasi and Pinda. “Our work in the region will provide new data on this topic. All those findings indicate that it is the known state center called ‘Tuşhan’ in Ziyarettepe.”

Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com
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University of Akron archaelogist leads expedition to 3,000 year old find by Andy B on Wednesday, 16 December 2009
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Dr. Timothy Matney, University of Akron associate professor of archaeology, led an international team of archaeologists who last summer discovered the remains of a palace from the ancient Assyrian Empire.

The discovery was made at the site of Ziyaret Tepe, along the banks of the Tigris River in the Diyarbakir Province of southeastern Turkey. Ziyaret Tepe was an important urban center during the late Iron Age, from 882 to 611 BC, and has been identified as the Assyrian Provincial capital of Tushan. Here, Matney discovered clay tablets with cuneiform script written and stored in the palace archives 3,000 years ago.

“This is one of the most important archaeological discoveries anywhere in the world this year,” says Dr. Michael Shott, UA professor of archaeology and chair of the university’s Department of Classical Studies, Anthropology and Archaeology.

Matney says his discovery of the cuneiform tablets, written in the Late Assyrian dialect, includes a list of women’s names. “Because the tablet was found in the reception room of the palace, we are possibly looking at a list of women who were employed by the palace as agricultural workers,” Matney says, adding that surprisingly none of the names on the tablets are Assyrian, but may represent another ethnic group in the area.

“This means that these women belonged either to the original indigenous population subordinated by the Assyrians in the 9th century BC, or to a group of foreigners who had been deported to Tushan. The precise identification of their linguistic background awaits detailed analysis and the results will shed an important light on the ethnic composition of this corner of the Assyrian Empire,” writes epigrapher and expedition team member Dr. John MacGinnis, a University of Cambridge archaeologist.

A joint undertaking of UA, Cambridge (UK), the University of Mainz (Germany) and Marmara University (Turkey) Ziyaret Tepe draws scholars and students from all corners of the globe each summer for excavations of both the citadel, or high mound, and lower suburbs. On its most recent expedition, the research team’s excavation at the citadel revealed a major reception room, which likely served as the governor's throne room. Another of the team’s discoveries —cremation burials furnished with bronze and stone vessels, painted and carved ivory furniture fittings and intricately carved stones used to seal documents — were cut into the palace courtyard.

With major federal research program funding support, Matney has directed excavations at Tepe Ziyaret for the past 13 years. The current stage of his work is funded, in part, by a National Endowment for the Humanities.

Source:
http://www.thesuburbanite.com/news/x884487122/Local-archaelogist-leads-expedition-to-3-000-year-old-find
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Desperate plea for help came too late for ancient Assyrian leader by coldrum on Thursday, 01 October 2009
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Desperate plea for help came too late for ancient Assyrian leader

A letter scratched into a clay tablet reveals a desperate plea for reinforcements that came just too late. Alone, petrified and facing almost certain death, the ancient Assyrian leader Mannu-ki-Libbali scrawled a call for help to his commander, but his cry for extra troops came too late.

Soon after it was sent, the ancient city of Tushan was overrun by Babylonian invaders, its temples and palaces pillaged, then torn down or set aflame.

The letter, scratched into a clay tablet in 630BC, may never have reached its intended recipient. But more than 2,500 years later it has been unearthed almost intact by archaeologists, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the downfall of the one of the most powerful empires of the ancient world.

In the 30-line letter, the author despairs that he lacks the necessary equipment and manpower to stave off the enemy, suggesting that the issue of military resources may be as old as warfare itself.

Archaeologists have identified the author as a city treasurer who had been charged with building up an army to defend Tushan against a coalition of foreign forces, led by the Babylonians.

At its height, in 668-627BC, the Assyrian Empire spanned from Egypt to Iran, and encompassed most of modern Turkey. Tushan, a bustling trade centre and the regional capital, would have been one the empire’s richest cities.

But in its latter years, the empire, mired in corruption and too large to sustain, ultimately fell to an aggressive enemy campaign. The invasion of Tushan is believed to have marked a tipping point in its dissolution.

The letter, found during the excavation of an Assyrian acropolis in southeastern Turkey, gives a remarkable insight into the final collapse of the empire and suggests that the Assyrians may have been militarily unprepared and put up a feeble resistance.

John MacGinnis, an archaeologist from the University of Cambridge who led the excavation, said: “The letter is written during the process of downfall. The chances of finding something like this are unbelievably small.” Mannu-ki-Libbali laments that he has neither the equipment nor the troops needed for the onerous task ahead. He lists cohort commanders, craftsmen, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, bow makers and arrow makers as essential to building a resistance.

It is apparent that all of the above have already fled the city and that he has been left with a near-impossible task. “Nobody mentioned in this letter, not one of them is there!” he writes. “How can I command?”

He also lacked horses, containers, bandage boxes and chariots.

Expecting the imminent arrival of the Babylonians, armed with arrows, spears, boulders and battle rams, the letter ends with the despairing declaration: “Death will come out of it! No one will escape. I am done!”

Irving Finkel, a British Museum specialist in Assyrian history, said that the tablet captured an epic event. “It has almost a Hollywood quality, this sense of the enemy are coming. I can hear their hooves,” he said.

After the invasion, the Assyrian territory was carved up between the Babylonians, and their allies the Medes and the Cimmerians. Half a century later it would be absorbed into the Persian Empire, under Cyrus the Great.

The letter is written on a clay tablet in ancient Assyrian, using a script called cuneiform based purely on lines and triangles. It was written by jabbing a quill with a triangular-shaped nib into wet clay. Different letters were formed by superimposing identical triangles in different combinations.

Dr MacGinnis said: “A complex character might involve around 13 triangles.”

The researchers believe that Mannu-ki-Libbali would have written the letter himself, although there would have been professional scribes at the time. The tablet, whic

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Re: Ziyaret Tepe by coldrum on Thursday, 01 October 2009
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Link:

http://www3.uakron.edu/ziyaret/
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