Mesopotamia in 2nd millennium BC

Nuzi (or Nuzu; Akkadian Gasur; modern Yorghan Tepe, Iraq) was an ancient Mesopotamian city southwest of Kirkuk in modern Iraq, located near the Tigris river. The site consists of one medium sized multiperiod tell and two small single period mounds.

History

The town of Gasur was apparently founded during the Akkadian Empire in the late third millennium. In the middle second millennium Hurrians absorbed the town and renamed it Nuzi. The history of the site during the intervening period is unclear, though the presence of a few cuneiform tables from Old Assyria indicates that trade with nearby Assur was taking place. After the fall of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni to the Hittites, Nuzi fell to the Assyrians and went into decline. Note that while Hurrian period is well known because those levels of the site were fully excavated, the earlier history is less firm because of only scanty digging.^[1]

Archaeology

While tablets from Yorghan Tepe began appearing back as far as 1896, the first serious archaeological efforts began in 1925 after Gertrude Bell noticed tablets appearing in the markets of Bagdad. The dig was mainly worked by Edward Chiera, Robert Pfeiffer, and Richard Starr under the auspices of the Iraq Museum and the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research and later the Harvard University and Fogg Art Museum. ^{[2] [3]} Excavations continued through 1931. The site has 15 occupation levels. The hundreds of tablets and other finds recovered were published in a series of volumes. More finds continue to be published to this day. ^[4]

To date, around 4000 tablets are known. Many are routine legal and business documents and about one quarter concern the business transactions of a single family. ^[5] The vast majority of finds are from the Hurrian period during the second millennium BC with the remainder dating back to the towns founding during the Akkadian Empire. Perhaps the most famous item found is a map of the local region dated to the Akkadian period.

Notes

See also

Cities of the ancient Near East

External links

• The Semitic Museum at Harvard
• On archeological discoveries in Nuzi
• History of the Baghdad School of ASOR 1923-1969

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