Dūr-Katlimmu

Ruins of the «Red House» of Tell Sheikh Hamad exposed by excavations 6th Century CE

Tell Sheikh Hamad (Arabic: تل الشيخ حمد) is an archeological site in western Syria on the lower Khabur River.[1] It is the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Dūr-Katlimmu, which bore the Syriac-Assyrian Neo-Aramaic name Magdalu after the fall of the Assyrian Empire (7C BCE).[2] The town may have been founded during the reign of Shalmaneser I and the name Dur-Katlimmu may refer to the limmu (an appointed royal official) Ina-Aššur-šuma-asbat son of Aššur-nadin-šume.

During the fall of the Assyrian Empire (911-605 BC), sections of the Assyrian army retreated to the western corner of Assyria after the fall of Nineveh, Harran and Carchemish, and a number of Assyrian imperial records survive between 604 BC and 599 BC in and around Dur-Katlimmu, and so it is possible that remnants of the Assyrian administration and army still continued to hold out in the region for a few years.[3]

Excavations have recovered 550 cuneiform Akkadian and 40 Aramaic texts belonging to a senior guard of Ashurbanipal.

References

River Khabur at Sheikh Hamad.
  1. ↑ Magdalu / Magdala: Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad von der postassyrischen Zeit bis ...: Volume 1 Hartmut Kühne, Reinhard Bernbeck - 2005
  2. ↑ The future of biblical archaeology: reassessing methodologies Page 105 James Karl Hoffmeier, Alan Ralph Millard - 2004 "All of this is especially instructive because there were Magdalus in several other Amarna letters as well as other ... There is a Magdalu near Tripoli in EA 69 and 70. There is also a Magdalu in Amqu (modern Lebanon) in EA 185 and 186."
  3. ↑ Ibid; also Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project / Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995.

Coordinates: 35°38′36″N 40°44′25″E / 35.64333°N 40.74028°E / 35.64333; 40.74028

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