Tall al-Hamidiya 2.

• Author: Astour, Michael C.

The first volume of this work was reviewed in JAOS 108 (1988): 304-6, where brief information was given on the location and character of the site and on the organization and purpose of the archaeological expedition. The present volume is as attractively produced and as rich in contents as the previous one, and it is similarly divided into two parts.

The first part, preceded by a preface and an introduction, is entitled "Symposion: Recent Excavations in the Upper Khabur Region, Berne, December 9-11, 1986." It consists of twelve papers, all of them in English, which have lost nothing of their interest because of the delay in publication. As stated in the introduction, they were "enriched with the fruits of the informal discussions," and at least some of them were revised and augmented for publication. Adnan Bounni reported on "The Khabur and Haseke Dam Projects and the Protection of Threatened Antiquities in the Region." Diederik J. W. Meijer's "An Archaeological Surface Survey: Some Assumptions and Ideas" summarizes and supplements his detailed report, A Survey in Northeastern Syria (1986), reviewed in JAOS 109 (1989): 506-8. Of course, his survey covers only a wedge of north Mesopotamian territory south of Syria's border with Turkey and east of the Gaggag River, but it includes some of the largest mounds of the entire region, four of which--Leilan, Hamidi, Barri, and (on the other bank of the river) Brak--are currently being excavated. These, together with Farfara, Sarisi, and Id, are considered by Meijer from the point of view of their spatial relationship as reflecting the integration of the area, mainly in the Middle Bronze Age.

Paolo Emilio Pecorella reported on "The Italian Excavations at Tell Barri (Kahat), 1980-1985." The paper is well supplied with plans, profiles, crosscuts, and a stratigraphic scheme of the site's occupational sequence, "based," in the author's words, "on the data of the excavations as well as textual data and the pottery." This brings to mind a problem that is not limited to Tell Barri. Its occupancy in the Neo-Assyrian period is attested by the mention of Kahat in several records of that time, including an inscription of Tukulti-Ninurta II found in situ. But neither the survey of Tell Barri by Meijer nor its excavation by Pecorella found there any sherds of what is called Iron Age pottery (a broad term which encompasses everything produced during the almost thousand years between the end of the Late Bronze Age and the Hellenistic period). In the zone surveyed by Meijer, only 23 sites out of over 250 explored showed a presence of Iron Age pottery. Of these 23, three (the tells Farfara, al-Hadi, and Rumeylan) are large mounds; four have an area from 4 to 6 hectares; the rest are small or minuscule; none is medium size. This creates a very lopsided picture of the population pattern in northeastern Mesopotamia of the Neo-Assyrian period. It is known from a late ninth-century eponym stele (RLA 2:439, no. 41) that four Assyrian districts existed on or near the Gaggag: Nasibina, Urakka, Kahat, and Masaka (from which the Gaggag received its Syriac name Masak, cf. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of Governors, 1:cxxv). The role of administrative centers is confirmed for all of them but Masaka by subsequent Neo-Assyrian documents. The preserved part of the tablet ND 2618 (B. Parker, Iraq 23 |1961~: 37-38, pl. XIX) enumerates sixteen towns (URU) and two rural estates (URU.SE) in only one district; its name has been lost, but it must have been that of Kahat, which is listed among its towns. Moreover, ADD 950--a list of sakintu, manageresses of local palace harems (cf. CAD S, 1:166)--includes, after uruKa-hat, two cities known from the Mari texts: uruSu-ne-e = Mari Su-na-|a.sup.ki~ and uruTup-ha-an = Mari Tup-ha-|am.sup.ki~, both located on, or very near, the Gaggag (the former according to its position in the Old Babylonian Urbana-Yale Itinerary, the latter by...