Ancient Kanesh: a merchant colony in Bronze Age Anatolia
2016; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 53; Issue: 08 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5860/choice.195751
ISSN1943-5975
Tópico(s)Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
ResumoASSURI n his angry letter to the wayward son in Anatolia which I quoted in Chapter 1 , Assur-idi wrote about the warnings conveyed to him by the gods Assur and Assuritum , the two main deities in his home city.His direct contact with the gods probably took place at night, in his dreams, but he undoubtedly visited their temples regularly and obviously felt that he was in very close contact with them both.We know something about these temples from the excavations carried out at Assur during the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, although unfortunately not nearly enough to provide us with a clear impression of the buildings that Assur-idi would have seen.Contrary to what Julius Lewy assumed, there was no Assyria at the time of the settlement at Kanesh , only a relatively small city-state called Assur, but in later centuries it was to give name to the land, the kingdom and eventually the empire of Assyria : ma t Assur , or "Assur-land".Its ruins are located at a site called Qala Shergat , on a rocky spur that overlooks the river Tigris some 100 kilometres south of the modern Iraqi city of Mosul.The ruins within the walls and a deep moat measure about 700 by 600 metres plus an extension to the south, the "New Town", which stretches another ca.700 metres along the river.When it was most alive and successful, it probably had more than fi fteen thousand inhabitants, but in the Old Assyrian period it was presumably somewhat smaller. 1 Today Assur is a desolate place and it is hard to visualise it as a vibrant, lively city full of activity and noise.In the springtime the waters of two branches of the river join below the tip of the rock on which sat the temple to the god Assur.From here one looks out over the water and the plain that stretches toward the east, where it meets the foothills of the Zagros Mountains .When the water in the river is high, there is a constant rippling murmur as the water rushes past the city, and the fi elds on the other bank are green and lush.In the fall the river shrinks to a much smaller, slower stream,
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