A Rediscovered Akkadian City

Abstract

A newly recovered inscription of Manistūsu records the building of a temple of Ninhursaa at a city whose name is written HA.A KI. The text is inscribed on a stone door-socket (now in private hands) found in situ and excavated, probably in the 1930s, at Kharā'ib Ghḍairīfe. Ghḍairīfe is a large mound on the right bank of the 'Aḍaim close to its confluence with the Tigris. There are several other tells in the immediate vicinity, such as Tell al-Dhuhūbe and Tell 'Uṣaimī, and it is likely that together these form the remains of one ancient site. The locations can be identified in the Atlas of the archaeological sites in Iraq, map 21: sites nos. 2 Kharā’ib Ghḍairīfe 3 Tell al-Dhuhūbe 4 Tell ‘Uṣaimī A nineteenth-century map of the Turkish Empire marks ‘ruin’ at exactly this spot. Information about the sites in the immediate vicinity is currently limited to the details recorded in Archaeological sites in Iraq, pp. 76f., which gives all of them as Islamic in date, with the exception of site 1, Tell Abū Ḫalīj (Hassuna and Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian), and site 9, Khirbet Shahāb al-Aḫmad (Neo-Babylonian). However, there are indications of earlier periods at Ghḍairīfe also, especially Akkadian ceramic remains and small metal figurines. Also found there were several silver Islamic coins, including an Umayyad coin dated 16 A.H.