PART-03

Read the text and answer Questions 28–40.

How archaeologists made some exciting discoveries in southeast Turkey

28

A It’s a sad fact of archaeological life that we can often only find things when they’re about to be lost forever. Construction of the Ilisu Dam, on the river Tigris in southeast Turkey, is now complete, and the flooding of 300 km² of land behind it has begun. The dam will provide much needed water and electricity to the local region, but it will flood up to 500 archaeological sites. However, its construction has also provided a great opportunity to learn about the past of this region, because when the dam was proposed in the early 1990s, the government invited teams of local and international archaeologists to work in the Tigris valley upstream of Ilisu to recover as much as they could before the dam was completed. The result was a series of intensive survey projects, followed by more than twenty excavations, which amazingly came across places with archaeological remains ranging from deep prehistory to the Ottoman period. The area to be flooded is now the best-studied archaeological landscape in eastern Turkey.

29

B One of the biggest Ilisu Dam salvage excavations was at the site of Ziyaret Tepe, an imposing mound rising 22 metres above the plain, within which lies the ancient Assyrian city of Tušhan.

Tušhan was a provincial centre which guarded the northern border of the mighty Assyrian Empire for almost 300 years (882–611 BCE). It never approached the grandeur of the Assyrian capital Nineveh, but it was part of the Assyrian network of imperial control which imposed authority over conquered regions. Tušhan was home not just to Assyrian settlers, but to deportees from all over the empire, who had been uprooted from their homelands as a further means of subjugation.

30

C Archaeological work at Ziyaret Tepe began in 1997 and ran for eighteen years. The results of all those long hot summers in the field are now finally ready to be presented, with the publication of the project’s first book. It provides the most complete picture of an Assyrian imperial town yet known. It includes a mass of information on the governor’s palace at Tušhan, which sat on the eastern side of the high mound. It was built under King Ashurnasirpal II, who boasted about its construction in an inscription found not far away. Unlike Ashurnasirpal’s magnificent palace at Nimrud, Tušhan’s provincial palace had no raised stone carvings of historical figures. Instead, its white plastered walls were decorated with finely painted geometric patterns in blue, red, orange and black. The reception suite was equipped with a trackway for a moveable heating brazier and with neatly tiled bathrooms, giving it a touch of luxury.

The remains of some of the governors themselves may have been found. Under the paving of the palace, five intact burials of human ashes were excavated. Whether or not these were the governors of Tušhan, they were certainly important people, whose bodies had been burnt on beds with ivory fittings, and provided with bronze bowls, lamps and ornaments. Intriguingly, cremation was not an Assyrian practice and these burials suggest that Tušhan’s ruling elite had either adopted local customs, or were not themselves Assyrians.

31

D To the south of the high mound, Tušhan had a substantial lower town and this is where the real work of the city took place. Over many seasons, the excavation team uncovered a series of sizeable structures, all set around large courtyards paved with beautiful black and white mosaics made of thousands of small, plain black or white pebbles collected from local river beds. Most were high-status homes but one had more complex functions. The entrance chamber to this building yielded hundreds of tiny tokens in a range of forms standing for different numbers and commodities. These are thought to have been used for keeping records as merchandise and people passed in and out. The administrative function of the building was confirmed when an archive of 28 tablets with cuneiform writing was found. These include lists of different personnel, but most concern the movement of barley. These transactions are visible throughout the building in the form of standardised weights and huge jars to keep it in. This building was the commercial and administrative centre of Tušhan.

32

E The frontier character of the city, which stood on the border with hostile Shubria, is clear from the massive fortifications which surrounded both the high mound and the lower town. The mudbrick city wall was two kilometres long and almost three metres thick, with a substantial ditch in front of it. Despite these precautions, Tušhan fell with the rest of the Assyrian Empire. The imperial capital at Nineveh fell after a dramatic siege in 612 BCE, after which the remaining Assyrian forces retreated steadily north-westward towards the site of the empire’s last stand at the city of Harran. In the path of the army of Medes and Babylonians as they marched up the Tigris river lay Tušhan.

33

F Now Tušhan faces another threat, as the water from the Ilisu Dam advances along the same route as that used by the Medes and Babylonians 2,600 years ago. It remains to be seen to what extent the site will eventually be flooded, but even though its physical remains may be lost, along with the other Ilisu sites, there is some consolation in the fact that a rich record of the town of Tušhan, some of its history, its people and way of life, is now preserved in the archives and publications of the Ziyaret Tepe project.