 Tell Brak as seen from a distance with several excavation areas visible | |
  Shown within Near East  Tell Brak (Syria) | |
| Alternative name | Nagar, Nawar |
|---|---|
| Location | Al-Hasakah Governorate, Syria |
| Coordinates | 36°40′03.42″N 41°03′31.12″E / 36.6676167°N 41.0586444°E |
| Type | Settlement |
| Area | 60 hectares (150 acres).[1] |
| Height | 40 metres (130 ft).[2] |
| History | |
| Founded | 6500 BC |
| Periods | Neolithic, Bronze Age |
| Cultures | Halaf culture, Northern Ubaid, Uruk, Kish civilization, Hurrian |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 1937–1938, 1976–2011 |
| Archaeologists | Max Mallowan, David Oates, Joan Oates |
| Public access | yes |
| Website | tellbrak.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk |
Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; it is one the earliest known cities in the world.[3] Its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city's original name is unknown. During the second half of the third millennium BC, the city was known as Nagar and later on, Nawar.
Starting as a small settlement in the seventh millennium BC, Tell Brak's urbanization began in the late 5th millennium BCE and evolved during the fourth millennium BC into one of the biggest cities in Upper Mesopotamia, and interacted with the cultures of southern Mesopotamia.[4][5] The city shrank in size at the beginning of the third millennium BC with the end of Uruk period, before expanding again around c. 2600 BC, when it became known as Nagar, and was the capital of a regional kingdom that controlled the Khabur river valley. Nagar was destroyed around c. 2300 BC, and came under the rule of the Akkadian Empire, followed by a period of independence as a Hurrian city-state, before contracting at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Nagar prospered again by the 19th century BC, and came under the rule of different regional powers. In c. 1500 BC, Tell Brak was a center of Mitanni before being destroyed by Assyria c. 1300 BC. The city never regained its former importance, remaining as a small settlement, and abandoned at some points of its history, until disappearing from records during the early Abbasid era.
Different peoples inhabited the city, including the Halafians, Semites and the Hurrians. Tell Brak was a religious center from its earliest periods; its famous Eye Temple is unique in the Fertile Crescent, and its main deity, Belet Nagar, was revered in the entire Khabur region, making the city a pilgrimage site. The culture of Tell Brak was defined by the different civilizations that inhabited it, and it was famous for its glyptic style, equids and glass. When independent, the city was ruled by a local assembly or by a monarch. Tell Brak was a trade center due to its location between Anatolia, the Levant and southern Mesopotamia. It was excavated by Max Mallowan in 1937, then regularly by different teams between 1979 and 2011, when the work stopped due to the Syrian Civil War.
- ^ Oates 2009, pp. 1.
- ^ Bowden 2012, p. 48.
- ^ Andrea (2019-07-31). "Tell Brak". www.arch.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-14.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:0was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Sołtysiak, Arkadiusz (2015-04-01). "Early urbanization and mobility at Tell Brak, NE Syria: the evidence from femoral and tibial external shaft shape". HOMO. 66 (2): 101–117. doi:10.1016/j.jchb.2014.09.003. ISSN 0018-442X. PMID 25511782.