Nagar (modern
Tell Brak,
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
) was an ancient late Neolithic,
SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
ian and Akkadian city on the
Khabur RiverThe Khabur River is the largest perennial tributary to the Euphrates in Syrian territory. Although the Khabur originates in Turkey, the karstic springs around Ra's al-'Ayn are the river's main source of water. Several important wadis join the Khabur north of Al-Hasakah, together creating what is...
. At 40m in height, one of the tallest
archaeologicalArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
mounds in the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, and about a kilometer long, it forms the remains of one of the largest urban sites in northern
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
.
A small settlement existed at the site as early as 6000 BCE (Oates), and materials from the late Neolithic
Halaf cultureTell Halaf is an archaeological site in the Al Hasakah governorate of northeastern Syria, near the Turkish border, just opposite Ceylanpınar. It was the first find of a Neolithic culture, subsequently dubbed the Halaf culture, characterized by glazed pottery painted with geometric and animal designs...
.
Then the succeeding Ubaid culture followed.
Nagar (modern
Tell Brak,
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
) was an ancient late Neolithic,
SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
ian and Akkadian city on the
Khabur RiverThe Khabur River is the largest perennial tributary to the Euphrates in Syrian territory. Although the Khabur originates in Turkey, the karstic springs around Ra's al-'Ayn are the river's main source of water. Several important wadis join the Khabur north of Al-Hasakah, together creating what is...
. At 40m in height, one of the tallest
archaeologicalArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
mounds in the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, and about a kilometer long, it forms the remains of one of the largest urban sites in northern
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
.
Halaf Culture
A small settlement existed at the site as early as 6000 BCE (Oates), and materials from the late Neolithic
Halaf cultureTell Halaf is an archaeological site in the Al Hasakah governorate of northeastern Syria, near the Turkish border, just opposite Ceylanpınar. It was the first find of a Neolithic culture, subsequently dubbed the Halaf culture, characterized by glazed pottery painted with geometric and animal designs...
.
Ubaid Culture
Then the succeeding Ubaid culture followed. Earlier stages at the Nagar site reveal a city that developed from the early 4th millennium BCE contemporaneously with (or even slightly earlier than) better known cities of southern Mesopotamia, such as
UrukUruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā,...
; among extensive Uruk materials found at Brak/Nagar is a standard text for educated scribes (the "Standard Professions" text, known from Uruk IV), part of the standardized education taught in the 3rd millennium BCE over a wide area of Syria and Mesopotamia.
Early Bronze Age
3rd millennium
cuneiformCuneiform script is the earliest known writing system in the world. Cuneiform writing emerged in the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq around the 34th century BC during the middle Uruk period, beginning as a pictographic system of writing...
texts identify Nagar as the major point of contact between the cities of the
LevantThe Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by...
(and routes into the
Taurus MountainsTaurus Mountains are a mountain complex in southern Turkey, from which the Euphrates and Tigris descend into Iraq. It divides the Mediterranean coastal region of southern Turkey from the central Anatolian Plateau....
of eastern
AnatoliaAnatolia is a geographic region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Iranian plateau to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west...
) and those of northern Mesopotamia. Nagar's burned-out temple, destroyed about 2400 BCE (and rediscovered in 1998) was the earliest of its kind north of central
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
.
In the 3rd millennium, Nagar lay at the edge of the Akkadian cultural sphere, in a region of imperially-organized dry farming. To the west along the plain, the nearby city of
UrkeshUrkesh or Urkish, was a city situated at the base of the Taurus Mountains in what is now northern Syria near the modern city of Qamishli...
preserved cultural independence (Bucellati). The palace-stronghold of Naram-Sin of the 22nd century BCE, built at a time when Nagar was a northern administrative center of the Akkadian Empire, was more of a depot for the storage of collected tribute and agricultural produce than a residential seat. The excavators do not credit the Akkadians with political control of the city, and the political significance of cuneiform administrative documents in Akkadian retrieved from the palace (Milano 1991) are open to interpretation. Brak/Nagar's active commercial and cultural interchanges with the city of
EblaEbla was an ancient city about southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC....
are recorded in the Ebla texts, if the city may be identified with the
Brakigo of Ebla texts.
Middle Bronze Age
Later, in its 2nd millennium strata, the site provides the most extensive and best-dated
MitanniMitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria from ca. 1500 BC-1300 BC...
material yet known.
Late Bronze Age
In the latter half of the 2nd millennium, the somewhat smaller area occupied contained a Late Bronze Age monumental palace and Mitannian temple (c. 1500-1360 BC) within a sequence of domestic occupation dating from 1700-1200 BC.
Archaeology
The site sometimes referred to as
Brak/Nagar was excavated by the British archaeologist Sir
Max MallowanSir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, CBE was a prominent British archaeologist, specialising in ancient Middle Eastern history, and the second husband of 'Queen of Crime' Agatha Christie.- Life and work :...
in the 1930s
and reopened by David and Joan Oates, 1976–93.
A house of ca 3700 BCE would have had a long narrow courtyard with a domed oven, large enough for a gathering that would have tightly packed the space. Skeletal remains show that the city was a source for donkey-onager mules used for drawing wheeled carts before the introduction of the horse, about 2300 BCE. Most famous of the pre-Akkadian features is the 4th millennium "Eye Temple", which was excavated in 1937–38. The temple, built ca 3500–3300 BCE, was named for the hundreds of small
alabasterAlabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals: gypsum and calcite . The former is the alabaster of the present day; the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients....
"eye idol" figurines, which were incorporated into the mortar with which the mudbrick temple was constructed. The building's surfaces were richly decorated with clay cones, copper panels and gold work, in a style comparable to contemporary temples of
SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
. The most dramatic discoveries during recent excavations are two mass graves dating to c 3800 BC, which suggest that the process of urbanization was accompanied by warfare.
Following the Oates' team, the Field Director of the dig was Roger Matthews. In 1998, Geoff Emberling, who had dug with the Matthews team became Co-Field Director (1998-2004) with Helen McDonald, the longtime registrar and draftsperson at Brak. Augusta McMahon took over as Field Director in the spring of 2006.
A regional survey in a 20 km radius of Brak was supervised by Henry Wright of the University of Michigan (2002-2005).
External links