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Part II. Brak and Chagar Bazar: Buildings and Stratification. Section 2.–Chagar Bazar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

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The position of Chagar Bazar may be seen on the map in Text Fig. 8, p. 48, lying just over 40 kilometres south-west of Nisibin, not far distant from Brak. Mr. Gadd has shown that there is evidence on the tablets discovered in the course of the excavations, that the site in antiquity was called Til-sha-annim, a place otherwise unknown. There was nothing to suggest that Til-sha-annim was of greater importance than any of the hundreds of other small towns which studded the Khabur steppe between the fourth and the second millennia B.C. The quality and quantity of the objects discovered in the excavations are therefore an impressive testimony to the general level of prosperity attained by the inhabitants of these parts of Syria in ancient times.

The account of the first two campaigns has been fully described in Iraq, III, Pt. 1, and IV, Pt. 2, and Mr. Gadd has given a complete account of the tablets in Iraq, IV, 178 ff., and in VII, Pt. 1. There is therefore very little to add to what has been said before. The following pages describe the archaeological material discovered in the course of about a fortnight's work in the Spring of 1937, when we excavated a portion of a building which belonged to the earliest phase of level 1, see the rqoms marked 100-108 on Plate LXXXIII. This building was well dated by the tablets found in room 106, and Mr. Gadd has described their contents in Iraq, VII, Pt. 1. In addition, we excavated another fifteen graves which are marked on the plan in Plate LXXXIII; notes on their contents are given below. The principal objects found in the graves are discussed in the catalogue, and a detailed list of the graves will be found in an appendix to the catalogue. Two of these graves, G.200, G.206, are. of special interest because they contained the fine bronze (?) battleaxe, and carnelian cylinder seal with gold caps illustrated on Plate XLI, No. 1 and Plate XLII, No. 1, respectively. The remainder of the graves produced material which was typical of the last phases of occupation at Chagar Bazar and added no fresh information to what had already been obtained. One other grave, produced a fine copper pin surmounted by the head of a goat, see Plate XLII, No. 8; it belonged to the period known as Ninevite 5, c. 3000 B.C.

Type
Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar
Information
IRAQ , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 1947 , pp. 81 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1947

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References

page 83 note 1 See footnote i on p. 25.

page 86 note 1 B.A.S.O.R., Nos. 88, 99. I have throughout followed Sidney Smith, who has treated this subject exhaustively in Alalakh and Chronology and again in A.J.A., XLIX 1945, pp. 1–24 Google Scholar. Moreover it seems improbable that the considerable depth of accumulated debris in Chagar Bazar level 1 which comprises three distinct building-periods, numerous rises in pavements, changes in orientation of buildings, and a continuous series of burials, can represent a period of less than three centuries. If c. 1450 B.C. be accepted as a mean date for the Nuzu level, then the mean date of the early phase of level 1 can hardly be later than c. 1750 B.C. A reduction of the date of Khammurabi's accession to 1728 B.C. is therefore in my opinion hardly compatible with the stratigraphic evidence.