Tell Fecheriye
Coordinates: 36 ° 50 ′ 4 ″ N , 40 ° 4 ′ 4 ″ E
Tell Fecheriye is an archaeological site in the Chabur Basin in northeast Syria , in the immediate vicinity of today's city of Raʾs al-ʿAin and the site of Tell Halaf . The Tell shows traces of settlement that can be assigned to the pre-ceramic Neolithic , the Mitanni Empire , the Central Assyrian Empire , late antiquity and the early Islamic period. It is believed that Tell Fecheriye can be identified with the historical Waššukanni , the capital of the Mitanni empire. Archaeological excavations have therefore taken place in Tell Fecheriye again and again, but due to political difficulties these have always been of short duration.
Research history
The exploration of Tell Fecheriye was started by the German traveler Max Freiherr von Oppenheim , who between 1911 and 1927 carried out several excavations on the nearby Tell Halaf . He also arranged for the Tell Fecheriye to be measured, which was to serve as the basis for excavations planned by him - but these excavations did not take place because of the Second World War .
The excavation story therefore began with Calvin McEwan from the Oriental Institute of Chicago in cooperation with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . However, it remained with a single excavation campaign in 1940, as McEwan died shortly after the end of the war. Nevertheless, in this short period of time, the remains of a Roman fort within a city wall were uncovered, which was identified as the ancient Resaina / Theodosiopolis . In addition, the foundations of a Neo-Assyrian palace, which was built using the bit hilani method, came to light during a probe . In another test trench a building found from mittelassyrischer time on its premises even clay tablets from the period of the Kings Salmānu-ašarēd I. and Tukulti-Ninurta I lay. After the war it was again a German, Anton Moortgat , who dealt with Tell Fecheriye. He performed several test cuts in search of Hurrian remains . In the process, fragments of the Nuzi and abur goods as well as architectural remains came to light, which clearly indicated a settlement of the tell during the period in question. Nevertheless, Moortgat decided in 1956 to give up the excavations and instead work on Tell Chuera, 60 km away .
The chance discovery of the statue of Hadad-yis'i in 1979 brought Tell Fecheriye back into the consciousness of archaeological science. The statue, which was provided with an Akkadian and an Aramaic inscription, again led to speculation about the identification of the tell with Waššukanni. Another chance find was made in 1996, this time a Roman statue exhibited today in the Deir ez-Zor museum.
Regular excavations were only resumed in 2001 by the University of Halle-Wittenberg under the direction of Alexander Pruss and 'Abd al-Masih Bagdo , but had to be stopped due to financial problems. After a survey in 2005, excavations of the Institute for Near Eastern Archeology at the Free University of Berlin took place under the direction of Dominik Bonatz in cooperation with the local authorities. Among other things, almost 100 new clay tablets or fragments from the Central Assyrian period were recovered.
literature
- Ali Abou-Assaf, Pierre Bordreuil, Alan R. Millard: La statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-araméenne (= Recherche sur les civilizations. Cahier 10 = Etudes Assyriologiques. ). Éditions Recherche sur les Civilizations, Paris 1982, ISBN 2-86538-036-X .
- Dominik Bonatz , Peter Bartl, Alessandra Gilibert, Carolin Jauß: Report on the first and second excavation campaigns in Tell Feḫerīye 2006 and 2007. In: Messages from the German Orient Society in Berlin . 140, 2008, pp. 89-135.
- Barthel Hrouda : Waššukanni, Urkiš, Šubat-Enlil. In: Communications from the German Orient Society in Berlin. 90, 1958, pp. 22-35.
- Calvin W. McEwan et al .: Soundings at Tell Fakhariyah (= Oriental Institute Publications. 79, ISSN 0069-3367 ). University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1958, ( digital copy (PDF; 42.7 MB) ).
- Alexander Pruss, ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Bagdo: Tell Fecheriye. Report on the first campaign of the German-Syrian excavations in 2001. In: Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin. 134, 2002, pp. 311-329.