Picturing Ancient Nabada

Abstract

The steppes of northern Mesopotamia near the Khabur River in present-day Syria are home to the ruins Of numerous ancient cities. One city, Nabada, excavated by a Syrian-European mission under the direction of Antoine Suleiman and Marc Lebeau, close to the modern village of Tell Beydar, reached its peak of prosperity around the mid-third millennium BCE. During this time, political and economic power in the region was concentrated in a few large urban centers including Kish, Lagash, Umma, Ur, and Uruk in modem Iraq and Chuera, Ebla, Mari, Nagar, Urkesh, Nabada, and Tuttul in Syria. Nabada and nearby cities probably served as relay stations for caravans traveling the ancient trade routes between Anatolia and southern Mesopotamia. In the first half of the third millennium BCE, Nabada's earliest inhabitants constructed a circular settlement six hundred meters in diameter enclosing an area of roughly twenty-eight hectares. A wall five meters thick built on a raised embankment protected the town. Even before the tell was excavated, the remains of the city's outer walls and the central mound were easily visible. An inner wall three hundred meters in diameter protected Nabada's palace and temples on a twenty-meter-high mound.