| Tell Brak Nagar (ancient name) |
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Shown within Syria
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| Location | Syria |
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| Region | Al-Hasakah Governorate |
| Coordinates | |
| Type | tell |
| Area | 130 hectares (320 acres) |
| Height | 40 metres (130 ft) |
| History | |
| Periods | Halaf, Ubaid, Uruk, Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 1937–1938, 1976–2011 |
| Archaeologists | M.E.L. Mallowan, D. Oates, J. Oates |
| Public access | yes |
| Website | mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/projects/brak |
Tell Brak, ancient Nagar, is a tell, or settlement mound, in the Upper Khabur area in Al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria. The site was occupied between the sixth and second millennia BCE. At 40 metres (130 ft) in height, and an area of approximately 130 hectares (320 acres), it is one of the largest archaeological sites in northern Mesopotamia.
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Tell Brak was excavated by the British archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan in 1937 and 1938.[1] A team from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London and later from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research of the University of Cambridge led by David and Joan Oates worked there for 14 seasons between 1976 and 1993.[2][3][4] Following the Oates' team, the field director of the dig was Roger Matthews. In 1998, Geoff Emberling, who had dug with the Matthews team became co-field director (1998–2004) with Helen McDonald, the longtime registrar and draftsperson at Brak.[5][6] [7] This effort was co-sponsored by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Augusta McMahon, of the University of Cambridge, took over as field director in the spring of 2006. [8] A regional archaeological field survey in a 20 km (12 mi) radius around Brak was supervised by Henry T. Wright of the University of Michigan (2002–2005). The finds from the excavations at Tell Brak are on display in the Deir ez-Zor Museum.[9]
A small settlement existed at the site as early as 6000 BCE, and materials from the Late Neolithic Halaf culture have been found there.[10]
Occupation continued into the succeeding Ubaid and Uruk periods. Excavations and surface survey of the site and its surroundings reveal a city that developed from the early 4th millennium BCE (Late Chalcolithic 3 Period) contemporaneously with (or even slightly earlier than) better known cities of southern Mesopotamia, such as Uruk. Public buildings include the Eye Temple at the settlement's southern edge and an administrative building with attached workshops and kilns at its northern edge (Area TW). From ca 3500 BCE, Brak, along with many other settlements in northern Mesopotamia, was partly colonised by immigrants from Late Uruk southern Mesopotamia. Among extensive Late Uruk materials found at Brak/Nagar is a standard text for educated scribes (the "Standard Professions" text, known from Uruk IV), part of the standardized education taught in the 3rd millennium BCE over a wide area of Syria and Mesopotamia.[11]
The most famous of the Late Chalcolithic features is the 4th millennium BCE "Eye Temple", which was excavated in 1937–38. The temple, built around 3500–3300 BCE, was named for the hundreds of small alabaster "eye idol" figurines, which were incorporated into the mortar with which the mudbrick temple was constructed. The building's surfaces were richly decorated with clay cones, copper panels and gold work, in a style comparable to contemporary temples of Sumer. The most dramatic discoveries during recent excavations are a series of mass graves dating to circa 3800–3600 BCE, which suggest that the process of urbanization was accompanied by an increase in the organization of warfare.
Third millennium BCE cuneiform texts from the city of Ebla and from Brak itself identify Nagar (Brak's ancient name) as the major point of contact between the cities of the northern Levant, eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia. Nagar's active commercial and cultural interchanges with Ebla are also recorded, as its power over the intervening city of Nabada (Tell Beydar). A partially-burned administrative building or temple near the centre of Brak, destroyed around 2400 BCE (rediscovered in 1998) has a curved exterior wall reminiscent of the Khafajah Temple Oval in central Mesopotamia. Skeletal remains show that the city was a source for donkey-onager hybrids used for drawing wheeled carts before the introduction of the horse, about 2300 BCE.[12][13][14] In the late 3rd millennium BCE, Nagar lay at the northern edge of the Akkadian sphere of influence. To the north, the nearby city of Urkesh may have retained some form of independence. The palace-stronghold of Naram-Sin of the 22nd century BCE, built at a time when Nagar was a northern administrative center of the Akkadian Empire, was more of a depot for the storage of collected tribute and agricultural produce than a residential seat. The excavators do not credit the Akkadians with political control of the city, and the political significance of cuneiform administrative documents in Akkadian retrieved from the palace are open to interpretation.[15] At the end of the Early Bronze Age, the site shrank in size, contemporary with a region-wide settlement disruption that some scholars have attributed to dramatic climate change.
In its early 2nd millennium BCE strata (contemporary with the Old Babylonian Period and the local kingdom of Shamshi-Adad), the site remains relatively small, with at least two areas of houses restricted to the highest ridge of the mound.
In the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE, the still relatively small area occupied contained a Late Bronze Age monumental palace and Mitanni temple (circa 1500-1360 BCE) and a continuation of the sequence of domestic occupation. A "suburb" off the main mound to the north may have comprised additional houses but is now all-but-destroyed through modern agriculture.