Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos science journalist
Ancient artefacts unearthed from a Bronze Age city in modern-day Iraq could help shed light on the history of Mesopotamia.
The objects date to about 1800 BCE and include a game board, large structural remains and clay tablets with cuneiform writing unlike anything found in the region. They are described in fieldwork summary published on the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) website.
Mesopotamia was critical to the development of human society. It is often considered the birthplace of ancient civilisation.
Today, the region encompasses eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and most of Iraq. Its name comes from the Greek for “between rivers” referring to the area between the Tigris River and the Euphrates.
The fieldwork led by UCF historian Tiffany Earley-Spadoni was at the Kurd Qaburstan site in northeast Iraq.
Studying the clay tablets may help historians understand the ancient city’s relationship to neighbouring cities in the Middle Bronze Age – a period of northern Iraq’s history which is poorly understood.
“We hope to find even more historical records that will help us tell the story of [the city] from the perspective of its own people rather than relying only on accounts written by their enemies,” Earley-Spadoni says. “While we know a great deal about the development of writing in southern Iraq, far less is known about literacy in northern Mesopotamian cities, especially near Erbil where Kurd Qaburstan is located.”
“We know quite a bit about Mesopotamian cities in the south, and that’s considered the traditional heartland of cities,” adds Earley-Spadoni. “When people think about where cities first arose, they imagine cities in southern Iraq, like Uruk. We seek to fill in this gap in the scholarship by investigating a large urban site, one of the few that’s ever been investigated in northern Iraq.”
The Kurd Qaburstan city is from around the same time that Babylonian King Hammurabi who established a law code which served as a model for civilisations for hundreds of years.
“So, this is about that same time, almost 4,000 years ago,” Earley-Spadoni says. “We decided that this would be an interesting place to investigate what it was like to be an everyday person in a city during the Middle Bronze Age, which has been an understudied topic. People like to excavate palaces and temples, and very few residential areas have been excavated.”
Monumental architecture and human remains were found in the palace. There was also evidence of destruction, suggesting a significant historical event.
Digging in the northwest neighbourhoods revealed exterior courtyards, clay drainpipes, cups, plates, bowls and storage jars. Fine details on the pottery, and animal remains which include both game and domesticated animals suggest that there was a greater degree of wealth among ordinary residents than previously assumed for ancient Mesopotamian cities.
“We’re studying this ancient city to learn very specific things about the ancient inhabitants,” Earley-Spadoni says. “First, to what degree did they plan their environment, or was it just the result of an organic process? We also want to know how social inequality worked in this ancient city. Were there very poor people and very rich people? Or was there possibly a middle class?”
It is possible that the 4,000-year-old city is the hidden city of Qabra, referenced in Old Babylonian monuments.
“Kurd Qaburstan is believed to be ancient Qabra, an important regional center mentioned in the records of other city-states,” Earley-Spadoni says. “The presence of writing, monumental architecture, and other administrative artifacts in the lower town palace further supports this identification since the site must have been an important city of its time.”
