From Hurrian Kingdom to Middle-Assyrian Provincial Capital: The History of Mardaman as Seen from the Archaeological Record

Peter Pfälzner has been invited by the Collège de France Assembly at the suggestion of Professor Dominique Charpin.

The lecture is in English.

Abstract

A team from the University of Tübingen has been conducting excavations at the site of Bassetki, located in Northern Iraq, in the autonomous Kurdistan Region. The discovery of a large cuneiform archive of the Middle-Assyrian period allowed to identify the site with the ancient city of Mardaman, known from the texts of Mari as a Hurrian kingdom in Northern Mesopotamia. This is an important puzzle piece for the reconstruction of the historical geography of Northern Mesopotamia. Excavations proved that the city reached its largest extension in the Middle Bronze Age, which is the period of the Hurrian kingdom. At this time, the city seems to have been directly connected to the important trade routes between Mesopotamia and Anatolia. At a later date, in the^13th century BC, the city was transformed into a provincial capital of the Middle Assyrian empire. Parts of the governor's residence were uncovered in the excavations. It yielded many interesting find objects hinting at the manifold activities of a governor in these days.