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Nuzi (or Nuzu; Akkadian
Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
 Gasur; modern Yorghan Tepe, Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
) was an ancient Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
n city southwest of Kirkuk
Kirkuk

Kirkuk , Kurdish language:????????, , , , is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate.It is located at 35.47?N, 44.41?E, in the Iraqi Governorates of Iraq of Kirkuk Governorate, 250 kilometres north of the capital, Baghdad....
 in modern Al-Tamin governorate of Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, located near the Tigris
Tigris

The Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates, which flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq....
 river. The site consists of one medium sized multiperiod tell and two small single period mounds.

town of Gasur was apparently founded during the Akkadian Empire in the late third millennium. In the middle second millennium Hurrians
Hurrians

The Hurrians were a people of the Ancient Near East, who lived in northern Mesopotamia and areas to the immediate east and west, beginning approximately 2500 BC....
 absorbed the town and renamed it Nuzi.






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Nuzi (or Nuzu; Akkadian
Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
 Gasur; modern Yorghan Tepe, Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
) was an ancient Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
n city southwest of Kirkuk
Kirkuk

Kirkuk , Kurdish language:????????, , , , is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate.It is located at 35.47?N, 44.41?E, in the Iraqi Governorates of Iraq of Kirkuk Governorate, 250 kilometres north of the capital, Baghdad....
 in modern Al-Tamin governorate of Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, located near the Tigris
Tigris

The Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates, which flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq....
 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
Hurrians

The Hurrians were a people of the Ancient Near East, who lived in northern Mesopotamia and areas to the immediate east and west, beginning approximately 2500 BC....
 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
Assur

Assur , was one of the capitals of ancient Assyria. The remains of the city are situated on the western bank of river Tigris, north of the confluence with the tributary Little Zab river, in modern day Iraq....
 was taking place. After the fall of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni
Mitanni

Mitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking Hittite vassal state in northern Syria from ca. 1500 BC-1300 BC."The Assyrians called the lands of Mitanni Hanigalbat while to the Hittites it was the land of the Hurrians....
 to the Hittites
Hittites

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a Hittite language of the Anatolian languages of the Indo-European languages family, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia ca....
, Nuzi fell to the Assyrians
Assyrians

Assyrians or Assyrian people may refer to :*the Ancient Assyrians*the modern Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac peopleSee also*Assyrian ...
 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. The history of Nuzi is closely interrelated with that of the nearby towns of Eshnunna
Eshnunna

Eshnunna was an ancient Sumerian city and city-state in lower Mesopotamia. Although situated in the Diyala River north-east of Sumer proper, the city nonetheless belonged securely within the Sumerian cultural milieu....
 and Khafajah
Khafajah

Khafajah or Khafaje was the ancient town of Tutub in the city-state of Eshnunna. The site lies sevenmiles east of Baghdad and 12 miles southwest of Eshnunna....
.

Archaeology

While tablets from Yorghan Tepe began appearing back as far as 1896, the first serious archaeological efforts began in 1925 after Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell CBE was a United Kingdom writer, traveller, political analyst, administrator in Arabia, and an archaeologist who mapped and identified Anatolian and Mesopotamian ruins....
 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
American Schools of Oriental Research

The American Schools of Oriental Research, founded in 1900, supports and encourages the study of the peoples and cultures of the Near East, from the earliest times to the present....
 and later the Harvard University
Harvard University

Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher learning in the United States....
 and Fogg Art Museum
Fogg Art Museum

The Fogg Art Museum is the oldest of Harvard University's art museums. It covers the history of western art from the Middle Ages to the present....
. 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.

To date, around 5000 tablets are known, mostly held at the Oriental Institute
Oriental Institute

Oriental Institute may refer to:United States* Oriental Institute, Chicago, part of the University of ChicagoEngland* Oriental Institute, Oxford, part of the University of Oxford...
, the Harvard Semitic Museum
Harvard Semitic Museum

The Semitic Museum at Harvard University was founded in 1889, and moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1903....
 and the Iraq Museum in Baghdad
Baghdad

Baghdad is the Capital of Iraq and of Baghdad Governorate, with which it is also coterminous. With a municipal population estimated at 6.5 million, it is the largest city in Iraq, and the second largest city in the Arab World....
. Many are routine legal and business documents and about one quarter concern the business transactions of a single family. 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.

See also

  • Cities of the ancient Near East
    Cities of the ancient Near East

    Uru was the Sumerian language term for a city or city state, written with the cuneiform ideogram URU .In Akkadian language and Hittite orthography, URU became a determinative sign denoting a city, or combined with KUR "land" the kingdom or territory controlled by a city, e.g....
  • Short chronology timeline
    Short chronology timeline

    The short chronology is one Chronology of the ancient Near East, which fixes the reign of Hammurabi to 1728 BC ? 1686 BC and the sack of Babylon to 1531 BC....


External links