Tell Shemshara

Tell Shemshāra (ancient Šušarra) (also Tell Shimshara, Tall Šimšārah, and Tall Šamšāra) is an archaeological site located on the right bank of Little Zab in Sulaymaniyah Governorate, in the Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous administrative division of Iraq. The site was inundated by Lake Dukan until recently.

The site was occupied, although not continuously, from the Hassuna period (early sixth millennium BCE) until the 14th century CE. A small archive recovered from the Middle Bronze Age layers (early second millennium BCE) revealed that, at least in that period, the site was called Shusharra and was the capital of a small, semi-independent Turukkean polity called māt Utêm or "land of the gatekeeper" ruled by a man called Kuwari acting as governor under a larger Hurrian state.

Archaeology

The site of Tell Shemshāra consists of four adjacent natural hills:

Main Hill (SH 1), excavated in 1950s by Danish and Iraqi teams

Camp Hill (SH 2), oval, northwest of Main Hill, Iraqi team found Mitanni remains and a small Islamic cemetery

North Hill A (SH 3), north of Main Hill, extensive Islamic cemetery on southern slope

North Hill B (SH 4), north of North Hill A, 1st millennium BC graves which are heavily robbed out

The site was first recorded in 1955 during an archaeological survey of the Ranya Plain, which was to be flooded by the reservoir of the planned Dukan Dam. In 1957, a Danish team of archaeologists started a rescue excavation because the site would be flooded by Lake Dukan once the Dukan Dam would be finished. The Danish excavation was directed by Professors Harold Ingholt, who also excavated the citadel mound of Hama, and Jørgen Læssøe. It was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Government Foundation for the Promotion of Research. About 146 cuneiform tablets were found, mostly letters and most in one location, believed to have been stored in a pot on excavation level V. The excavations were continued in 1958 and 1959 by Iraqi archaeologists of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) under the direction of Abd al-Qadir at-Tekrîti. The work was never published but about 103 cuneiform tablets (45 well preserved and the rest in poor condition) tablets were found during the 1958 excavations in rooms near the findspot of the earlier tablets but in loose soil above excavation level V. They are all administrative texts. The excavations have revealed that the site was occupied at least from the Hassuna period onward and the latest occupation phase dates to the 12th–14th centuries CE. The objects found during the Danish excavation were divided between the National Museum of Iraq and the National Museum of Denmark.