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Introduction |
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Site and Setting |
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Early Excavations |
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New Discoveries |
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Research Goals |
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Acknowledgments |
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Early Excavations |
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From 1888 to 1902, a team of archaeologists led by Felix von Luschan and Robert Koldewey conducted five seasons of excavation at Zincirli on behalf of the German Orient-Comité and the Berlin Museum. Their results were published in a prompt and admirably detailed manner in four large volumes entitled Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli (F. von Luschan et al.; Berlin, 1893–1911), which deal with the architecture, sculpture, and inscriptions found at the site. A fifth volume describing the most important small finds—selected pottery and hundreds of artifacts made of stone, ivory, bronze, iron, and other materials—was published some years later, in 1943, by Walter Andrae. The German expedition is described in detail, with many archival photographs and drawings, in a recent book by Ralf-B. Wartke entitled Sam’al: Ein aramäischer Stadstaat des 10. bis 8. Jhs. v. Chr. und die Geschichte seiner Erforschung (Mainz am Rhein, 2005).
The German expedition delineated the city walls and gates of Iron Age Sam’al and exposed several palaces and other large structures on the 8-hectare (20-acre) upper mound—the original Bronze Age settlement which later became the Iron Age royal citadel—that lies in the middle of the 40-hectare (100-acre) site and rises 15 meters (50 feet) above the surrounding plain. Dozens of sculpted stone pieces were recovered and are now in museums in Istanbul and Berlin, including statues of lions and sphinxes that had guarded the entrances of important buildings, decorated column bases from the porticoes of royal palaces, and rows of relief-carved basalt orthostats (rectangular standing slabs) that had lined the walls of the principal gateways into the city. Several royal inscriptions carved in stone were also found. They were written in Phoenician or Aramaic (or a local dialect called “Sam’alian”) using a West Semitic alphabetic script to record the deeds of various kings of Sam’al. The German expedition also found an imperial Assyrian inscription written in Akkadian cuneiform on a large stone monument—the famous Esarhaddon Stele, which celebrates the conquest of Egypt in 671 b.c. by Esarhaddon, ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and overlord of Sam’al.
Although the methods of these early excavators were quite good by the standards of the day, and their detailed architectural plans are a valuable resource for modern archaeologists, they excavated rapidly on a massive scale, with a staff of only a few archaeologists managing hundreds of workmen. They had a very limited understanding of debris-layer stratigraphy and of the use of pottery to date layers. As a result, many details concerning the dating and function of the structures they unearthed are unclear and it is difficult to associate the artifacts they found with their original findspots. Moreover, they focused their efforts on the palaces and other monumental architecture in the center of the site, neglecting to excavate any ordinary dwellings in the large lower town, which constitutes 80 percent of the site.
Subsequent study by Gunnar Lehmann of the pottery collected by the German expedition indicates that the site of Zincirli was originally settled around 2500 b.c. and existed as a small, 8-hectare (20-acre) walled town for a thousand years, during the late Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age, from about 2500 to 1500 b.c. During the Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, from about 1500 to 900 b.c., occupation at the site seems to have been scanty—perhaps only a small village.
But then the settlement was dramatically expanded and heavily fortified by a new Iron Age ruling dynasty founded by a man named Gabbār, who is mentioned in the inscriptions of his dynastic successors in the ninth and eighth centuries b.c. The original 8-hectare (20-acre) settlement mound was turned into a royal citadel with its own massive gate, walls, and stone-faced rampart, while a circular outer wall—actually two concentric walls separated by a 7-meter (23-foot) gap—was constructed on empty farmland to encompass a large lower town with an urban area totaling 40 hectares (100 acres).
The massive outer wall, 3 meters (10 feet) wide, had stone foundations more than 3 meters high and, on top of these foundations, a mudbrick superstructure (now eroded away) that would have risen to a height of at least 10 meters (33 feet). This wall ran for a distance of 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) in a perfect circle around the site. It had a hundred projecting towers, evenly spaced, which served as firing platforms for archers and spearmen defending the city.
A concentric wall of the same dimensions, with a hundred towers precisely aligned with the outer wall’s towers, was built 7 meters (23 feet) inside the outer wall, forming a unique double-walled fortification system—a formidable obstacle to any attacker, who, having captured the outermost wall, would have been trapped in the gap between the walls and subjected to withering fire from defenders who had fallen back to man the inner wall.
Settlement History The expansion and fortification of Sam’al in the tenth century b.c. is attributed by many scholars (e.g., P.-E. Dion, E. Lipiński, H. Sader) to the migration of Arameans from their putative homeland in the Euphrates River region to the southeast. Various Neo-Assyrian and West Semitic inscriptions reveal that Aramaic-speaking warlords managed to establish small kingdoms throughout Syria in this period, often at the expense of the Luwian-speaking “Neo-Hittite” rulers of Anatolian extraction who had previously dominated the area.
The Luwian elite had themselves inherited power from the Hittite Empire, based far to the northwest in central Anatolia, which conquered the region south of the Taurus Mountains in 1340 b.c. and ruled North Syria for more than a century until its collapse around 1180. Luwian, an Indo-European language closely related to the Hittite royal dialect, was the language of the Anatolian people who entered the region in the wake of the Hittite Empire. Luwian inscriptions written in a distinctive hieroglyphic script—several of which have been found near Zincirli—attest to the dominance of this group in the post-Hittite period. It is such Luwian-speaking rulers who were replaced in the Zincirli region by a new dynasty who spoke a West Semitic dialect.
Subsequent cuneiform texts (e.g., the annals of Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria) and local alphabetic inscriptions show that Sam’al, like the other independent kingdoms in the region, was later incorporated into the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire during the ninth and eighth centuries b.c. and paid tribute to Assyria. It was initially ruled by the Assyrians through native vassal kings, who continued the dynasty of Gabbār (a Semitic name that means “hero” or “mighty”—perhaps originally a title or nickname of a successful military commander).
At the end of the eighth century, Sam’al was “provincialized,” with the removal of the native dynasty and the installation of an Assyrian governor. We know the name of one such governor of Sam’al, who is mentioned in several Assyrian texts: Nabû-ahhē-ēreš, the eponym of the year 681 b.c. (see Millard 1994, p. 102). It was during this period that the monumental inscribed stele of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, was installed inside the citadel gate of Sam’al to commemorate his conquest of Egypt in 671 b.c.
When the Assyrian Empire retreated several decades later, in the latter part of the seventh century, the city was abandoned—it was not violently destroyed, but was apparently evacuated in an orderly manner, leaving no people or goods behind. Thus in the entire lower town and in most places on the citadel mound, seventh-century remains of the late Assyrian Empire period form the final phase and are easily accessible for excavation.
There is a small area of subsequent occupation on the highest point of the citadel mound—probably a Persian-period villa or small fort. But even there, no ceramic evidence was found of occupation after the Greek conquest under Alexander the Great in the late fourth century b.c. A new Greek city called Nikopolis (modern İslahiye) was built in the Amanus foothills 10 kilometers (6 miles) to the south; and the mound of Zincirli, the former capital of the region, lay unoccupied until a modern village grew up on its northwestern side during the past century and a half.
[Last revised on May 10, 2009.] |
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The Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli
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Excavation of the citadel gate at the base of the upper mound of Zincirli during the first season of work in 1888. The carved stone orthostats that lined the gateway were still standing in their original location. |
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Above: The German expedition’s 1894 plan of the double-wall fortification of Iron Age Sam’al and the royal citadel in the middle of the city. The city had three gates: on the south, the west, and the northeast. The royal citadel had its own fortification walls, with a gate on its south side aligned with the outer south gate of the city. |
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Below: Koldewey’s reconstruction of the royal citadel (left) and of the elaborate south gate (right)—the main entrance to the city. |
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Right: The outer and inner city walls, drawn by Koldewey in plan view and cross-section. He was probably correct to assume that the inner wall rose higher than the outer wall so that the inner bowmen could fire over the bowmen on the outer wall, and could fire down upon any attackers who managed to scale the outer wall. |
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View from the south gate towards the upper mound (the Iron Age citadel) during the excavation season of 1888. The German expedition’s large debris dump is visible on the right, and their dig house can be seen on the summit of the mound. |
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The German archaeologist Otto Puchstein examining a carved stone orthostat at Zincirli in May 1883. Depicted on the orthostat are a seated man and woman enjoying a feast. The discovery of such orthostats prompted the excavation of the site, which commenced in 1888 with the personal financial support and encouragement of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. |
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The 1894 excavation of two sculpted stone column bases depicting pairs of winged sphinxes with female human heads (akin to the biblical cherubim). These column bases supported massive pillars in the portico of the late eighth-century b.c. palace of King Barrākib, which was built in the bīt hilāni style that was popular in this period. A reconstruction of this palace by W. Orthmann is shown below. |
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Felix von Luschan, director of the German excavations at Zincirli, and his wife Emma, the expedition’s registrar and photographer |
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Robert Koldewey, architect for the German expedition, who later excavated Babylon in Mesopotamia |
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Stele of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, engraved with a lengthy Akkadian cuneiform inscription and installed near the citadel gate of Sam’al to commemorate the Assyrian conquest of Egypt in 671 b.c. (height 3.22 meters = 10 feet) |
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Phoenician inscription of King Kulamuwa (ca. 830 b.c.), unearthed on the citadel mound in 1902 |
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Monumental statue of the storm-god Hadad with an inscription by King Panamuwa I (ca. 750 b.c.), found at the royal cult-site of Gerçin located 7 kilometers (4 miles) northeast of Zincirli—itself an impressive walled settlement perched atop a steep basalt outcrop that juts up from the flat plain and is easily visible from the citadel of Sam’al |
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Torso of a large statue of King Panamuwa II (preserved height 1.9 m) with a 23-line inscription by his son Barrākib (ca. 730 b.c.), found near the spring of Tahtalı Pınarı, 2 km northeast of Zincirli |
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Sources |
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Contact: |
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Dr. David Schloen Associate Professor University of Chicago 1155 East 58th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 |
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Aramaic inscription and portrait of King Barrākib of Sam’al, who reigned as an Assyrian vassal from 733 to ca. 720 b.c. and is the last attested native king before Sam’al became a directly ruled Assyrian province; it was found in the ruins of his palace on the upper mound of Zincirli and is now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum |
