Syria - Tell Ashara Terqa

The tell of Ashara, in the right bank of the Syrian Middle Euphrates, around eighty km north of the Iraqi border, has been identified as the site of the third and second millennium B. C. city of Terqa since the beginning of XXth century. A first sounding, made by a French team in 1923, revealed already the importance of this Mesopotamian town during the Bronze Age, but a real program of excavations started only later, in 1975, with the work of the University of California- Los Angeles Mission, under the direction of Profs. G. and M. Buccellati. Since 1987 a French team, guided by Prof. O. Rouault, has continued the researches in this site and in its area.

The excavations have uncovered, in the parts of the tell free from modern houses, the remains of the third millennium city walls. During the Middle Bronze II, Terqa is supposed to be under the political control of her powerful neighbor, Mari, following her history until this city was destroyed by Hammurabi of Babylon. A large building area has been excavated corresponding to this period, with many texts and other kind of documents. After Mari, Terqa became the political and economic center of the Middle Euphrates almost until the end of the Bronze Age, as capital of the kingdom of Khana, controlled, finally, by the Mitannian power.

The contemporary remains of this period in Ashara - houses, a temple, some workshops, and extensive archives - are most important, illustrating a "Dark Age" in the rest of Syro-Mesopotamia. Later, during the Iron Age, the town seems to know a period of crisis and abandonment, but in the ninth century B.C. Terqa, now called Sirqu, is again described by the Assyrian royal inscriptions as a political regional center, to become part of the Neo-assyrian empire. Only a basalt stela with a cuneiform inscription, and some tombs, document this period.

The archaeological research in this site and its area can give us a new insight of the relationship between human, and urban society, with the natural milieu of the steppe around the Euphrates Valley. Through the history of Terqa we can see the structure and the development of an local society and culture, its original characters and its relationship - of resistance or of assimilation - with the greatest powers and civilizations, like Sumer, Babylonia or Assyria.