Portal:Tells (archaeology)
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
In archaeology, a tell, or tel (derived from Arabic: تَل, tall, 'hill' or 'mound'), is an artificial mound formed from the accumulated refuse of people living on the same site for hundreds or thousands of years. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with sloping sides and can be up to 30 metres high.
Tells are most commonly associated with the archaeology of the ancient Near East, but they are also found elsewhere, such as Central Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa and Greece. Within the Near East, they are concentrated in less arid regions, including Upper Mesopotamia, the Southern Levant, Anatolia and Iran.
Selected general articles
Tell Aqab is an ancient Mesopotamian settlement located in northeastern Syria, occupied from the early Halaf period (c. 6000 BCE) to c. 3800 BCE. It is situated at the northern edge of the Khabur Plain near the headwaters of the Khabur tributary of the Euphrates, 6 km north of the town of Amuda in Jazira Canton. It is one of the few sites that contain material relating to the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period, c. 5500–5000 BCE. Read more...Tell Aqab Lua error in Module:Location_map at line 419: No value was provided for longitude. Location Al-Hasakah Governorate, Syria Region Northern Mesopotamia Type Tell
Qatna (modern: Arabic: تل المشرفة, Tell al-Mishrifeh) is an ancient city located in Homs Governorate, Syria. Its remains constitute a tell situated about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Homs near the village of al-Mishrifeh. The city was an important center throughout most of the second millennium BC and in the first half of the first millennium BC. It contained one of the largest royal palaces of Bronze Age Syria and an intact royal tomb that has provided a great amount of archaeological evidence on the funerary habits of that period.
First inhabited for a short period in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, it was repopulated around 2800 BC and continued to grow. By 2000 BC, it became the capital of a regional kingdom that spread its authority over large swathes of the central and southern Levant. The kingdom enjoyed good relations with Mari, but was engaged in constant warfare against Yamhad. By the 15th century BC, Qatna lost its hegemony and came under the authority of Mitanni. It later changed hands between the former and Egypt, until it was conquered and sacked by the Hittites in the late 14th century BC. Following its destruction, the city was reduced in size before being abandoned by the 13th century BC. It was resettled in the 10th century BC, becoming a center of the kingdoms of Palistin then Hamath until it was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BC, which reduced it to a small village that eventually disappeared in the 6th century BC. In the 19th century AD, the site was populated by villagers who were evacuated into the newly built village of al-Mishrifeh in 1982. The site has been excavated since the 1920s. Read more...
The ruins of the ancient Canaanite city of Kedesh (alternate spellings: Cadesh, Cydessa) are located 3 km northeast of the modern Kibbutz Malkiya in Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Read more...
Kültepe (Turkish: "Ash Hill") is an archaeological site in Kayseri Province, Turkey. The nearest modern city to Kültepe is Kayseri, about 20 km southwest. It consists of a tell, the actual Kültepe, and a lower town, where an Assyrian settlement was found. Its name in Assyrian texts from the 20th century BC was Kaneš; the later Hittites mostly called it Neša, occasionally Aniša. In 2014 the archaeological site was inscribed in the Tentative list of World Heritage Sites in Turkey. It is also the site of discovery of the earliest traces of the Hittite language, and the earliest attestation of any Indo-European language, written in Old Assyrian, dated to the 20th century BC. Read more...
Avaris (/ˈævərɪs/; Egyptian: ḥw.t wꜥr.t, sometimes transcribed Hut-waret in works for a popular audience, Greek: Αὔαρις, Auaris) was the capital of Egypt under the Hyksos. It was located at modern Tell el-Dab'a in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta, at the juncture of the 8th, 14th, 19th and 20th Nomes. As the main course of the Nile migrated eastward, its position at the hub of Egypt's delta emporia made it a major administrative capital of the Hyksos and other traders. It was occupied from about 1783 to 1550 BC, or from the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt through the second intermediate period until its destruction by Ahmose I, the first Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. The name in the Egyptian language of the 2nd millennium BC was probably pronounced *Ḥaʔat-Wūrat 'Great House' and denotes the capital of an administrative division of the land. Today, the name Hawara survives, referring to the site at the entrance to Faiyum. Alternatively, Clement of Alexandria referred to the name of this city as "Athyria". Read more...- Jemdet Nasr (Arabic: جمدة نصر) is a tell or settlement mound in Babil Governorate (Iraq) that is best known as the eponymous type site for the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC). The site was first excavated in 1926 by Stephen Langdon, who found proto-cuneiform clay tablets in a large mudbrick building thought to be the ancient administrative centre of the site.
A second season took place in 1928, but this season was very poorly recorded. Subsequent excavations in the 1980s under British archaeologist Roger Matthews were, among other things, undertaken to relocate the building excavated by Langdon. These excavations have shown that the site was also occupied during the Ubaid, Uruk and Early Dynastic I periods. Read more... - Tell El Kebir (Arabic: التل الكبير lit."the great mound") is 110 km north-north-east of Cairo and 75 kilometres south of Port Said on the edge of the Egyptian desert at the altitude of 29 m. Administratively, it is a part of the Ismailia Governorate.
In the ancient times the city of On (modern Matariyah) mentioned in Genesis 41:45 was identified by some as located south-west of the mound, which according to the Egyptian legend was the first place where cotton was cultivated. Read more...
Tell Ta'yinat is a low-lying ancient tell on the east bank at the bend of the ancient Orontes river, in the Hatay province of southeastern Turkey about 25 kilometers south east of Antakya (ancient Antioch). It is located along the southwestern edge of the Amuq valley. The site lies some 800 meters from Tell Atchana, the site of the ancient city of Alalakh. It is a possible site of the city of Calneh mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Read more...
Tel Dor (Hebrew: דוֹר or דאר, meaning "generation", "habitation"; Arabic: Khirbet el-Burj), is an archeological site located on Israel's Mediterranean coast next to modern moshav Dor, about 30 kilometers (19 mi) south of Haifa, and 2.5 kilometers (1.6 mi) west of Hadera. Lying on a small headland at the north side of a protected inlet, it is identified with D-jr of Egyptian sources, Biblical Dor, and with Dor/Dora of Greek and Roman sources.
The documented history of the site begins in the Late Bronze Age (though the town itself was founded in the Middle Bronze Age, c. 2000 BCE), and ends in the Crusader period. The port dominated the fortunes of the town throughout its 3000-old year history. Its primary role in all these diverse cultures was that of a commercial entrepot and a gateway between East and West. The remains of the Arab village of Tantura lie a few hundred meters south of the archaeological site, as does the modern kibbutz and resort of Nahsholim. Read more...
Tell Maghzaliyah (Tell Maghzalia) is a prehistoric aceramic Mesolithic and Neolithic site located approximately 7.5 km northwest of Yarim Tepe, with which it shows some similarities. Tell Maghzaliyah shows the development of pre-Hassuna culture. There are also numerous connections to the Jarmo culture going back to 7000 BCE. Read more...- Tell Zeidan is an archaeological site of the Ubaid culture in northern Syria, from about 5500 to 4000 BC. The dig consists of three large mounds on the east bank of the Balikh River, slightly north of its confluence with the Euphrates River, and is located about 5 km (3.1 mi) east of the modern Syrian city of Raqqa (or Raqqa). This site is included within the historical region known as Mesopotamia and the Tigris-Euphrates river system, often called the Cradle of Civilization.
An international archaeological project, the Joint Syrian-American Archaeological Research Project at Tell Zeidan, is surveying and excavating the Tell Zeidan site. The project started in 2008, two seasons are completed, and the third season is scheduled to start in July 2010.
Muhammad Sarhan, director of the Raqqa Museum, and Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, are co-directors of the project. Read more... - Tell Ishchali is an archaeological site in Diyala Province (Iraq). It is thought to be ancient Nerebtum or Kiti and was part of the city-state of Eshnunna. It was occupied during the Old Babylonian period. Read more...
Tell Tuneinir (also spelled Tunaynir or Touneynir) is an archaeological site in northeastern Syria. It dates to the early third millennium BC and shows signs of continuous habitation lasting until the beginning of the 15th century AD with epochs during the Byzantine empire, when it was known as the city of Thannuris (Thannourios), and during the Ayyubid period. Read more...- Tell Abraq was an ancient Near Eastern city. Located on the border between Sharjah and Umm al-Qawain in the United Arab Emirates, the city was originally on the coastline of the Persian Gulf but changing sea levels have placed the remains of the city inland. It is located on the main road from Umm Al Qawain to Falaj Al Moalla.
The mound containing the ruins of Tell Abraq was originally excavated by a team from the University of Copenhagen working on the extensive remains of the city of Ed-Dur, a few kilometres to the north. Their original intention was to confirm the time sequence prior to Ed-Dur's primacy, around 1000 BCE. However, they were surprised to find extensive indications of much earlier settlement, dating back to the Umm Al Nar period, including a 3rd millennium monumental fortification. Read more... - Tell Hammeh (Arabic: تل حمة) is a relatively small tell in the central Jordan Valley, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, located where the Zarqa River valley opens into the Jordan Valley.
It is the site of the earliest bloomery smelting of iron, from around 930 BC.
It is close to several of the larger tells in this part of the Jordan Valley (e.g. Tell Deir 'Alla, Tell al-Sa'idiyeh) as well as to the natural resources desirable in metal production: access to water, outcrops of marly clays (see Veldhuijzen 2005b, 297), and above all the only iron ore deposit of the wider region at Mugharet al-Warda (Abu-Ajamieh et al. 1988; Pigott 1983; Pigott et al. 1982; Bender 1968, 149-151; van den Boom and Lahloub 1962). Read more... - Leontopolis was an Ancient Egyptian city located in the Nile Delta, Lower Egypt. It served as a provincial capital and Metropolitan Archbishopric, which remains a Latin Catholic titular see. The archaeological site and settlement are known today as Kafr Al Muqdam. Read more...
- Tell es-Sultan (Sultan's Hill) is a UNESCO-listed archaeological site in the West Bank, located two kilometres north of the centre of Jericho. The tell was inhabited from the 10th millennium BCE, and has been called "the oldest town in the world", with many significant archaeological finds; the site is also notable for its role in the history of Levantine archaeology. Read more...
- Tell Keisan, تل كيسون (Arabic name meaning “the mound of treachery”) or Tel Kisson, תל כיסון (Hebrew name), is an archaeological site located 8 km from the Mediterranean coast in the Galilee region of Israel between Haifa and Akko. The tell is approximately 15 acres in size and is composed of the accumulated ruins of many large cities dating back to the Chalcolithic period. Read more...
The ziggurat of Dur-Kurigalzu in 2010
Dur-Kurigalzu (modern `Aqar-Qūf عقرقوف in Baghdad Governorate, Iraq) was a city in southern Mesopotamia near the confluence of the Tigris and Diyala rivers about 30 kilometres (19 mi) west of the center of Baghdad. It was founded by a Kassite king of Babylon, Kurigalzu I, some time in the 14th century BC, and was abandoned after the fall of the Kassite dynasty. The prefix Dur- is an Akkadian term meaning "fortress of", while the Kassite royal name Kurigalzu, since it is repeated in the Kassite king list, may have a descriptive meaning as an epithet, such as "herder of the folk (or of the Kassites)". The city contained a ziggurat and temples dedicated to Sumerian gods, as well as a royal palace. The ziggurat was unusually well-preserved, standing to a height of about 52 metres (171 ft). Read more...- Tell Neba'a Litani or Neba'a Litani is a medium size tell 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) west of Baalbek in the northern Beqaa Valley of Lebanon. I It is located near the spring which is the main source of the Litani River at a height of 1,002 metres (3,287 ft). It was first studied by Lorraine Copeland and Peter Wescombe in 1965-1966 and is accessible via a road which turns from Hoch Barada to the left. Materials recovered included flint tools such as scrapers and the blade from a segmented sickle. Pottery included burnished, painted and red washed shards, some with incised decoration or lattice patterns. The material resembled finds from Byblos and Ard Tlaili leading Copeland and Wescombe to suggest a late Neolithic occupation for the tell that extended into the Bronze Age. Read more...
- Tell Begum is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in Iraq. It is located near Said Sadiq in the Shahrizor Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan. The archaeological site consists of a steep conical mound 9 metres (30 ft) high, and a lower mound. It covers an area of 5 hectares (12 acres). The site was first investigated in 1960 by a team of Iraqi archaeologists. In 2013, a new excavation was carried out by archaeologists from Leiden University. This project restudied the older excavations and also conducted limited new excavations.
The oldest excavated layers date to Late Halaf period. After an apparent hiatus in occupation, the site was resettled in the Late Chalcolithic 1 (LC1) period and continued to be in use into the Late Chalcolithic 3 (LC3) period (4300-3600 BC). Medieval occupation has also been attested. Read more... - Tel Yokneam seen from the Mount Carmel with the modern city of Yokneam Illit on the right and the modern town of Yokneam Moshava on the left.
Tel Yokneam is a tell located between the modern city of Yokneam Illit and the town of Yokneam Moshava. In Arabic, and for most part of history the place was known as a variation of the name Qamun or Tell Qamun. It is believed to be a corruption Hebrew name. The site spans around 40 dunams, rising steeply to a height of 60 meters.
Yokneam was settled, with short breaks, from the Early Bronze Age, to the Mamluk Sultanate era, i.e, close to 4,000 years. The city is first mentioned in Egyptian scripts as a city conquered by Pharaoh Thutmose III and later in the Hebrew Bible as a city defeated by Israelite leader Joshua, setted by the Israelite Tribe of Levi. It is mentioned twice in Roman scripts and the remains of a church from the Byzantine era is found there. During the Crusader period the settlement was called Caymont and was for a while, the center of a Seignory, the smallest of all in the history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the 13th century the settlement was captured by the Muslim Mamluks. It is possible that during the Ottoman period, a fort was built was built in the site, but this is not fully confirmed. Read more... - Rapiqum was a city of Ancient Mesopotamia during the second millennium BC. The city was located in the north of Babylon, probably on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, somewhere in the vicinity of today's Ramadi in Iraq; the exact location remains unknown. Read more...
Tel Abel Beth Maacah, Arabic name: Tell Abil el-Qameḥ, is a large archaeological site consisting of a mound with a small upper northern section and a large lower southern one, connected by a saddle. It is located on the northern border of present-day Israel, about 2 km south of the town of Metulla and about 6.5 km west of Tel Dan.
The survey and excavations conducted so far (2012-2016) have shown that the site had been inhabited during the Bronze and Iron Ages, as well as the Persian, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods. However, the lower mound was not occupied after the Iron Age I (late 11th/early 10th centuries BCE), when occupation seems to have concentrated on the upper mound. Read more...- Tell Sabi Abyad (Arabic: تل صبي أبيض) is an archaeological site in the Balikh River valley in northern Syria. The site consists of four prehistoric mounds that are numbered Tell Sabi Abyad I to IV. Extensive excavations showed that these sites were inhabited already around 7500 to 5500 BC, although not always at the same time; the settlement shifted back and forth between these four sites.
The earliest pottery of Syria was discovered here; it dates at ca. 6900-6800 BC, and consists of mineral-tempered, and sometimes painted wares. Read more...
Gezer, or Tel Gezer (Hebrew: גֶּזֶר)(also Tell el-Jezer) is an archaeological site in the foothills of the Judaean Mountains at the border of the Shfela region roughly midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It is now an Israeli national park. In the Hebrew Bible, Gezer is associated with Joshua and Solomon.
It became a major fortified Canaanite city-state in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. It was later destroyed by fire and rebuilt. The Amarna letters mention kings of Gezer swearing loyalty to the Egyptian Pharaoh. Its importance was due in part to the strategic position it held at the crossroads of the ancient coastal trade route linking Egypt with Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia, and the road to Jerusalem and Jericho, both important trade routes. Read more...
Antipatris /ænˈtɪpətrɪs/ (Hebrew: אנטיפטריס, Ancient Greek: Αντιπατρίς) was a city built during the first century BC by Herod the Great, who named it in honour of his father, Antipater. The site, now a national park in central Israel, was inhabited from the Chalcolithic Period to the late Roman Period. The remains of Antipatris are known today as Tel Afek (Hebrew: תל אפק). It has been identified as biblical Aphek, best known from the story of the Battle of Aphek. During the Crusader Period the site was known as Surdi fontes, "Silent springs". The Ottoman fortress known as Binar Bashi was built there in the 16th century.
Antipatris/Tel Afek lies at the strong perennial springs of the Yarkon River, which throughout history has created an obstacle between the hill country to the east and the Mediterranean to the west, forcing travellers and armies to pass through the narrow pass between the springs and the foothills of Samaria. This gave the location of Antipatris/Tel Afek its strategic importance. Read more...
Small Temple of the Aten at Akhetaten
Amarna (/əˈmɑːrnə/; Arabic: العمارنة, translit. al-ʿamārnah) is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site that represents the remains of the capital city newly established (1346 BC) and built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten of the late Eighteenth Dynasty, and abandoned shortly after his death (1332 BC). The name for the city employed by the ancient Egyptians is written as Akhetaten (or Akhetaton—transliterations vary) in English transliteration. Akhetaten means "Horizon of the Aten".
The area is located on the east bank of the Nile River in the modern Egyptian province of Minya, some 58 km (36 mi) south of the city of al-Minya, 312 km (194 mi) south of the Egyptian capital Cairo and 402 km (250 mi) north of Luxor. The city of Deir Mawas lies directly west across from the site of Amarna. Amarna, on the east side, includes several modern villages, chief of which are el-Till in the north and el-Hagg Qandil in the south. Read more...- Al-Rawda (Arabic: الروضة) is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in the Syrian steppe, east of Hama. It was a large urban site with city walls and several temples, occupied between 2400–2000 BC. A French–Syrian mission has been excavating the site since 2002. Read more...
- Tell Hassuna is a tell, or settlement mound, in the Nineveh Province (Iraq), about 35km south-west of Nineveh. It is the type site for the Hassuna culture (early sixth millennium BCE). Read more...
- This type of Chocolate-on-white ware is commonly found at the site
Tell Abu al-Kharaz ('Mound of the Father of Beads') is a Bronze and Iron Age archaeological site in Gilead in the eastern Jordan Valley. This ancient settlement was identified with the biblical Jabesh Gilead (Judges 21:8-15, 1 Samuel 11:1-11, 31:11-13, 2 Samuel 2:4-5, 21:12, 1 Chronicles 10:11-12). It was also identified with the burial site of King Saul. Read more... - Hurrian incense container from Tell Bazmusian, Sulaymaniyah Museum
Tell Bazmusian is an archaeological site on the right bank of the Little Zab in the Ranya Plain (Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraq). The site was excavated between 1956 and 1958 by Iraqi archaeologists as part of a salvage operation to document cultural remains that would be flooded by Lake Dukan, the reservoir created by the Dukan Dam which was being built at that time. Apart from Tell Bazmusian, four other sites were excavated during this operation: ed-Dem, Kamarian, Qarashina and Tell Shemshara. Bazmusian is a tell, or settlement mound, with a circumference of 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) and a height of 23 metres (75 ft). Together with Tell Shemshara, it is one of the largest archaeological sites in the Ranya Plain. When the excavations started, the southeast flank of the mound was occupied by a village that was only established at the beginning of the 20th century. The site is now submerged under Lake Dukan.
The excavations have revealed 16 occupation layers, ranging from the Samarra culture (sixth millennium BCE) up to the ninth century CE. The finds of level I consisted of a fragmented pebble foundations, ninth-century CE pottery and mudbricks. Level II also contained Islamic material. Level III, to be dated to the late second millennium BCE, contained a single-room temple with thick mudbrick walls. Pottery dated to the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. In a pit outside of this temple, several clay tablet fragments were found. Although they were too damaged to be read, based on stylistic details they could be dated to the Middle Assyrian period. An earlier version of this temple was uncovered in level IV. In level V, plastered mudbrick walls were found. Levels VI–XVI contained material dating to the third millennium BCE, the Uruk period and of the Samarra and Halaf cultures but this has not yet been published. Read more...
Beit She'an (Hebrew: בֵּית שְׁאָן
Beth Šəān (help·info);
Beesān (help·info), Beisan or Bisan) is a city in the Northern District of Israel which has played an important role in history due to its geographical location at the junction of the Jordan River Valley and the Jezreel Valley. In the Biblical account of the battle of the Israelites against the Philistines on Mount Gilboa, the bodies of King Saul and three of his sons were hung on the walls of Beit She'an (1 Samuel 31:10-12). In Roman times, Beit She'an was the leading city of the Decapolis. In modern times, Beit She'an serves as a regional center for the settlements in the Beit She'an Valley.
The ancient city ruins are now protected within the Beit She'an National Park. Read more...
Jezreel (Hebrew: יִזְרְעֶאל Yizre'el, "God will sow") was an ancient Israelite city and fortress originally within the boundaries of the Tribe of Issachar, and later within the northern Kingdom of Israel. Prior to the division of the United Kingdom of Israel, the city was the hometown of Ahinoam, third wife of King David, Michal, Saul's daughter being the first and Abigail, widow of Nabal being his second. According to the First Book of Kings, the royal palace of King Ahab, "one of the most famous of the royal residences of the kings of Israel", was in Jezreel, adjacent to the vineyard of Naboth. Ahab's capital remained in Samaria.
The modern archaeological site is located on a low hill on the southern edge of the Jezreel Valley's eastern edge in northern Israel. Archaeologists David Ussishkin and John Woodhead believe that Jezreel was a fortress that served as a cavalry base for King Ahab. Read more...
Shiloh (/ˈʃaɪloʊ/; Hebrew: שִׁלוֹ ,שִׁילֹה ,שִׁלֹה, and שִׁילוֹ variably) was an ancient city in Samaria mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It has been positively identified with modern Khirbet Seilun, a tell or archaeological mound, called in Modern Hebrew Tel Shiloh. It is located to the west of the modern town of Shilo in the West Bank, south of ancient Lebonah and 16 kilometres (10 mi) north of Beth El.
Shiloh was the major Israelite worship centre before the first Temple was built in Jerusalem. Read more...
Tell Arbid is an ancient Near East archaeological site in the Khabur River Basin region of Al-Hasakah Governorate, Syria. It is located 45 km south of Tell Mozan, the site of ancient Urkesh. Read more...- Balawat (Classical Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܠܒܬ, beṯ labat) is an archaeological site of the ancient Assyrian city of Imgur-Enlil, and modern village in Nineveh Province (Iraq). It lies 25 kilometres (16 mi) southeast from the city of Mosul and 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to the south of the modern Assyrian town of Bakhdida. Read more...
Khirbet et-Tibbâneh (Hurvat Tibneh / Kh. Tibna)(Arabic: خربة التبانة), sometimes referred to by historical geographers as the Timnah of Judah (Hebrew: תמנה), is a small ruin situated on a high ridge in the Judaean mountains, in the Sansan Nature Reserve, 622 metres (2,041 ft) above sea level, about 3 kilometers east of Aviezer and ca. 7 kilometers southeast of Bayt Nattif. The site is thought to have formerly borne the name Timnath, distinct from the Tel Batash-Timnah site associated with the biblical story of Samson in the lower foothills of Judea along the Sorek valley. Kh. et-Tibbaneh (Timnah) is perched upon a high mountain ridge rising up from the Elah valley and is where the episode of Judah and Tamar is thought to have taken place. Read more...- Tepe Gawra on the map of Uruk period archaeological sites in Upper Mesopotamia and Anatolia
Tepe Gawra (in Kurdish meaning "Great Mound") is an ancient Mesopotamian settlement located in the Mosul region of northwest Iraq, that was occupied between 5000 and 1500 BC. It contains the remains from the Halaf period, then the Ubaid period, and then from the Uruk period (4000–3100 BC). Tepe Gawra is one of the few sites that contain material relating to the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period c. 5,500-5,000 BC.
Tell Arpachiyah is also a contemporary neolithic site nearby. Read more...
:This article is about the ancient city called Athribis in Lower Egypt; for the ancient city called Athribis in Upper Egypt, see Athribis (Upper Egypt)
Athribis (Arabic: أتريب; Greek: Ἄθλιβις, from the original Egyptian Hut-heryib, Coptic: Ⲁⲑⲣⲏⲃⲓ) was an ancient city in Lower Egypt. It is located in present-day Tell Atrib, just northeast of Benha on the hill of Kom Sidi Yusuf. The town lies around 40 km north of Cairo, on the eastern bank of the Damietta branch of the Nile. It was mainly occupied during the Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine eras. Read more...
Göbekli Tepe (pronounced [ɟøbekˈli teˈpe]), Turkish for "Potbelly Hill", is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m (980 ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760 m (2,490 ft) above sea level.
The tell includes two phases of use believed to be of a social or ritual nature dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected – the world's oldest known megaliths. More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and weighs up to 10 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock. In the second phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB. Younger structures date to classical times. Read more...- Tell Judaidah (Tell al-Judaidah, Tell Judeideh) is an archaeological site in south-eastern Turkey, in the province of Hatay. It is one of the largest excavated ancient sites in the Amuq valley, in the plain of Antioch. Settlement at this site ranges from the Neolithic (6000 BC) through the Byzantine Period. Read more...
- Tell en-Nasbeh, likely the biblical city of Mizpah in Benjamin, is a 3.2 hectare (8 acre) tell located on a low plateau 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) northwest of Jerusalem in the West Bank. The site lies adjacent to an ancient roadway connecting Jerusalem with the northern hill country, which is how Tell en-Nasbeh gained importance as Judah's northern border fortress during its prime phase of occupation in the Iron Age (Strata 3A-C; 1000-586 BCE). There are also archaeological remains at the site and in surrounding cave tombs that have been dated to the Early Bronze I (Stratum 5; 3500-3300 BCE), Iron I (Stratum 4; 1200-1000 BCE), Babylonian and Persian (Stratum 2; 586-323 BCE), Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods (Stratum 1; 323 BCE-630 CE). Read more...
Qatna (modern: Arabic: تل المشرفة, Tell al-Mishrifeh) is an ancient city located in Homs Governorate, Syria. Its remains constitute a tell situated about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Homs near the village of al-Mishrifeh. The city was an important center throughout most of the second millennium BC and in the first half of the first millennium BC. It contained one of the largest royal palaces of Bronze Age Syria and an intact royal tomb that has provided a great amount of archaeological evidence on the funerary habits of that period.
First inhabited for a short period in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, it was repopulated around 2800 BC and continued to grow. By 2000 BC, it became the capital of a regional kingdom that spread its authority over large swathes of the central and southern Levant. The kingdom enjoyed good relations with Mari, but was engaged in constant warfare against Yamhad. By the 15th century BC, Qatna lost its hegemony and came under the authority of Mitanni. It later changed hands between the former and Egypt, until it was conquered and sacked by the Hittites in the late 14th century BC. Following its destruction, the city was reduced in size before being abandoned by the 13th century BC. It was resettled in the 10th century BC, becoming a center of the kingdoms of Palistin then Hamath until it was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BC, which reduced it to a small village that eventually disappeared in the 6th century BC. In the 19th century AD, the site was populated by villagers who were evacuated into the newly built village of al-Mishrifeh in 1982. The site has been excavated since the 1920s. Read more...
Tell Leilan is an archaeological site situated near the Wadi Jarrah in the Khabur River basin in Al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria, a region formerly a part of ancient Assyria. The site has been occupied since the 5th millennium BC. During the late third millennium, the site was known as Shekhna.
During that time it was under control of the Akkadian Empire.
Around 1800 BC, the site was renamed "Shubat-Enlil" by the Assyrian king, Shamshi-Adad I and it became the capital of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia. Shubat-Enlil was abandoned around 1700 BC. Read more...- Hajji Firuz Tepe is an archaeological site located in West Azarbaijan province in north-western Iran. The site was excavated between 1958 and 1968 by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The excavations revealed a Neolithic village that was occupied in the second half of the sixth millennium BC where some of the oldest archaeological evidence of grape-based wine was discovered in the form of organic residue in a pottery jar. Read more...
- Tel Abib (Hebrew: תל-אביב, Tel Aviv ("the hill of (the season) Spring"), from Akkadian Tel Abûbi ("The Tel of the flood") is the season of the year) is an unidentified tell (hill city) on the Kebar Canal, near Nippur in what is now Iraq. Tel Abib is mentioned in Ezekiel 3:15:
Nahum Sokolow adopted the biblical place-name as the title for his Hebrew translation of Theodor Herzl's novel Altneuland ("Old New Land"). It later gave its name to the modern Israeli city of Tel Aviv (the Hebrew letter ב without dagesh represents a sound like [v], but archaic English translations of the Bible traditionally transcribe it as "b"). Read more...
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Selected images
View of the Citadel of Aleppo (northern Syria), built on top of a tell occupied since at least the third millennium BC
View of an excavation area at Tell Barri (northeastern Syria). Note the person standing in the middle for scale.
View of Tell Barri (northeastern Syria) from the west
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