Is it posible to have de supossed founding time of every city on the list? These are the first cities, it will show a nice pattern. Best regards, -- 2001:4C50:21D:F400:F992:6A7D:FDC5:CE4C ( talk) 08:15, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Dur-Katlimmu - Tell Sheikh Hamad. The French wikipedia page is quite nice i.e. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Sheikh_Hamad
Tall Munbaqa - Ekalte - Dittmar Machule led the DOG excavation and there
is a good article on the German wikipedia and some info on the DOG
dig page (off the main DOG dig map)
Nemrik
Tell Haddad - Me-Turan. Somehow these are both linked to
Eshnunna, which is totally wrong.
Ploversegg ( talk) 22:09, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Hey now, what about this page? Nobody filling it up? Cush 21:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I have recently created the Sumerian city articles Kuara, Kisurra, Dilbat, and Marad and have checked and moved all coordinates to their appropriate pages. Thus I have removed the coordinates from the list to look better soon. Thank you. - Kain Nihil 13:45, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Is there a reason for the cities to be listed from North to South? In Mesopotamia, the order of settlement and spread of civilization was from South to North. I'd like to reverse the order of the Mesopotamian cities, if no one minds. Sumerophile ( talk) 18:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
- SNIP*
OK, I have updated my
user page.
My table for Mesopotamia now looks like this (I still have to edit some entries) :
<<SNIP>> (see my user page)
ok, I had ordered all cities from north to south (so finding the places in the maps might be easier), but I see that the order has been changed again. so what should be the consensus for all the cities in the lists? also, it seems my edits of the Lower Mesopotamia section have been reverted by Sumerophile/IansAwesomePizza to their former incomplete version. Cush ( talk) 21:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I think we should use these: [2], with all due respect, they need to be verifiable. -- Doug Weller ( talk) 15:38, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
Phoenicia is the name given to the the Canaanites traders by the Greeks, due to a purple dye they used to trade. Genetically the Lebanese and the current Palestinians have the same ancestory. The Lebanese are known to be Phoenicians, the Palestinians are known to be Canaanites. Religon wise, the Phoenician's religion was the same of the Canaanites. same with Language. According to the Amarna tablets, The Phoenicians are knowns as Canaanites! So I believe the Canaanites and the Phoenicians cities need to be under the same sub heading Canaan/Phoenicia! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael1408 ( talk • contribs) 23:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Phoenicians are not Arabs, Israelis, or sub-Saharan (black) Africans;
Canaanites are Phoenician Canaanites, Punic (North African & Spain Phoenicians)
The Canaanites were already oriented to the sea with an economy based on navigation and trade by 1550 BCE. Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos (now all in Lebanon) are their major ports, and they have established colonies on the island of Cyprus. They carry on trade with their old patron Egypt, the Mittani in Mesopotamia, and the Hittite Empire in what is now Turkey. The term "Phoenician" is used by scholars to distinguish the Iron Age from the Bronze Age in the Levant, although the culture is essentially the same as the Canaanite and the people never referred to themselves as "Phoenicians," a Greek term. We do know that the Phoenicians essentially continue Canaanite religion, culture, and language. When they recover from the invasions of "the Sea Peoples" from the west, Israelites from the south-east, and Aramaeans from the north-east, their territory becomes limited to a narrow strip of land along the coast extending from Syria to Israel. In response to this, they become among the greatest sailors and traders of any age. Another internet source
And if you believe in the bible:
According to Strong's Concordance the word Canaan means "trader or merchant" and the Phoenicians, as Canaanites, are derived from Ham's incestuous relationship with Naamah the sister of Tubalcain, the wife Noah took with him in the Ark (Genesis 9:18-27; 10:6, 15-19).
biblebelivers
--Michael1408 04:48, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Alright then, no one is aruging, I am changing it back --Michael1408 04:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael1408 ( talk • contribs)
Who is arguing? --Michael1408 05:12, 19 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael1408 ( talk • contribs)
Ploversegg ( talk) 19:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Cool! I notice that the coords on the Harran page are slightly different than the ones listed here. Is any attempt being made to standardize on a coord for the various sites with whats on their article? Ploversegg ( talk) 23:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Hm, didn't know about Tell Arbid. Cool, a large site without a city name, always interesting. http://www.siwaiwa.pl/TellArbid/
According to a google earth file, the coordinates of Tell Arbid are
<coordinates>41.02151894615545,36.8733006058363,0</coordinates>
Additions look good. :-) Ploversegg ( talk) 21:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Thats reasonable. Sure, someone could make a claim for "syria" in several cases or even "anatolia" in one case, but if you look far enough back, Mesopotamia pretty well covers this whole area. Ploversegg ( talk) 22:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
1) There are some sites for which I don't see any available information on in the "literature" upon which to do an article. So what makes sense is to pull them off into a special section at the top of the Talk page entitled "Articles Needed". Then, if articles are created, the entry can be added back to the main page. The lines to be moved are
Two others I haven't quite given up on doind an article for are
2) The seperation of Upper and Lower Mesopotamia into Babylonian versus Assyrian versus Mitanni seems awkward. Pretty much everybody ruled everywhere at some time or another. Anyway, seems like those sections need to be flattened out and reorganized to be more useful. Ploversegg ( talk) 21:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
So we agree on the flat layout for Upper and Lower sections. Note that there are differences between the entries on you personal list of sites and the entries in Cities of the Ancient Near East. Some have been added (Khafajah etc) and some existing ones wikilinked to new articles. Might want to digest the article entries back into your personal space before creating a final flat list. I seem to remember doing a few new/linked changes on some other sections too. Elam for example.
As for moving un-articled entries to the Talk page. It was just a thought. :-) Ploversegg ( talk) 01:27, 11 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Hm a couple changes might be missing from your list, like
Qatara or Karana (Tell al-Rimah)
where I did a new article for Rimah and reflected the uncertainty on the name
But on the other hand, your list has some things missing from the article like Guzana, which is a good thing. :-)
We probably need to do a line by line comparison. Ploversegg ( talk) 17:31, 11 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
My point was that the line in you personal list is
while in the COTANE article, it is
which reflect a) I wrote an article for Tell al-Rimah and b)the current consensus on RImah is divided between Qatara and Karana. The actual formating can be whatever. Ploversegg ( talk) 23:50, 11 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Is it raining? :-) Officially the line is at the point where south of that there's not enough rainfall to grow crops without irrigation. Usually, that is taken somewhere around Hit Iraq, but given that the amount of rain changes over the years (and centuries), anywhere in that ballpark is not going to get a major argument. Ploversegg ( talk) 23:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Just about finished. Ploversegg ( talk) 22:08, 17 December 2008 (UTC)ploveresegg
Since the coord template does not work properly (cf. Wikipedia_talk:GEO#Glitch_in_coord_template), it would be preferable to leave this page as it is. Mass edits that do not improve anything but actually damage the article should be avoided. Cush ( talk) 12:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Hey folks, I would like to remove the coordinates from this page. Or at least those that I have contributed. Would that be too drastic? Cush ( talk) 20:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Hm ... it looks better this way. I'll think about how to reformat the article now that it's so clean. First, I'll do a quick look to see if anything is blatantly off, like I see that Melid points to Malatya which then points to the article for Arslantepe which seems awkward. I know one thing, those maps really suck and have to go. Ploversegg ( talk) 15:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
This maps are fine, they just don't match up well with the article. Maybe it's just a matter of not having the right submaps. It'd be nice to have an set of submaps to devide the locations up better, like there should be a Assyria section where Ebla can go (instead of the Levant where it is now). The maps at https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/lab/map/site.html are pretty nice btw, but trying to seperate the ancient sites by modern countries on Wikipedia would attract those with Cultural Penis Envy, never a good thing. But no, your maps are nice. Ploversegg ( talk) 21:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
section | west | east | north | south |
---|---|---|---|---|
Anatolia | 26 | 40 | 42 | 35 |
Mesopotamia | 37 | 48 | 39 | 30 |
Iran | 42 | 62 | 39 | 28 |
Syria | 33 | 39 | 38 | 28 |
Egypt | 29 | 34 | 32 | 21 |
Kush | 30 | 39 | 23 | 13 |
Cush ( talk) 12:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I'll work on this Question and report back shortly.
Ploversegg (
talk) 23:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
I was thinking of the following proposal, which splits up the cities into reasonable sized chunks and matches history more or less. What do you think?
ANATOLIA
Anatolia is basically modern Turkey. If you look at the map on the Urkesh page, the border would run more or less along the line through below Carchemesh, and Harran and above Alalakh.
ANCIENT SYRIA (or Assyria perhaps)
To the border with Anatolia in the north, Akkad in the south, Elam in the east, and a line just west of Alepo in the west
AKKAD (or Upper Mesopotamia)
Usual definition with the lower border above Eshnunna.
SUMER (or Lower Mesopotamia)
Usual definition with the upper border below Eshnunna.
UPPER LEVANT
From Alalakh in the north, to just below Sidon in the south,
LOWER LEVANT
From below Sidon in the north to the Suez Canal in the south.
The later split breaks up the zillion Levant sites and avoids the use of the the controversial Canaan designation.
Darnit, you're right. I hate when I screw up. There should
also be a map/section for Elam (or Iranian Plateau or Iran).
As for Assyria, it is usually considered to end at the top of Akkad, which would be somewhere around just below Assur, maybe below Nuzi/Mari if that make a better map. Ploversegg ( talk) 21:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
let us please remain clear on the scope of this article: it is supposed to discuss cities of the Ancient Near East, i.e. Sumer to Assyrian Empire. Mountains shouldn't be listed, nor should Archaemenid or Roman era cities, or Chalcolithic settlements.
Also, the de facto nature of this article as a list is circumstantial, not intentional. I hope the article will some day evolve into an actual encyclopedic discussion, in prose, of the cities of the Ancient Near East. -- dab (𒁳) 16:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that the sites that have clarification tags be removed from the article. When there were still coordinates included their presence was ok, but now they have neither coordinates nor a related article. I think they should be deleted. Cush ( talk) 11:09, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity: which periods are covered by this list and why? Which sites are covered by this list and why? If not all sites that satisfy the chronological and geographical criteria are listed, then based on what criterium are they included or excluded? In other words: how is a "city" distinguished from a site that is not a "city"? Because if there are no identifiable, RS supported criteria, this seems just very much a subjective listing of interesting places... -- Zoeperkoe ( talk) 19:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
1. KI is NOT the Sumerian determinative for a city, but is a general determinative indicating that the term is a place. URU or perhaps rather IRI is the Sumerian word for city, sometimes used as determinative. KUR literally means mountain, but was also used to denote foreign lands. Later on the sign was used for various purposes. It is better not to conflate different writing practices (different regions and different periods) in one sentence.
2. We do know the name of Jemdet Nasr, or better we know how it was written but don't know how it was pronounced. The name of the town at the site of Jemdet Nasr was NI.RU (see for example Steinkeller 2002. Archaic City Seals and the Question of Early Babylonian Unity).
3. If you are going to write the original Akkadian name of Babylon, then do it correctly ... it was Babilim (or Bab ilim, meaning the gate of the god, so with ilum in the genitive ilim).
4. Zabalam is usually used, not Zabala
5. Nabada (Tell Beydar) is in North Mesopotamia, not South!
6. You are missing several cities with known and unknown locations from the South .. there is Tutub (Khafajah), Ninna, Kesh (NOT the same as Kish!), Urum (Tell Uqair), ...
7. Nuzi is the same as Gasur, so better to write Nuzi/Gasur (Yorghan Tepe)
8. Tutub (Khafajah) should be put with the southern cities, technically the area is referred to as Central Mesopotamia often, but culturally it fits better with the south and you already put Eshnunna with the south, which is in the same vicinity as Tutub (even further upstream the Diyala river!). Same for Tell Agrab, it should be included with the southern cities, as it is in the Lower Diyala area together with Tutub (Khafajah) and Eshnunna (Tell Asmar).
9. Sippar Amnanum (Tell ed-Der) is also in the south .. it is an Old-Babylonian section of Sippar.
10. Urum (Tell Uqair) is in the south! (I suspect some of you got confused .. on the one hand there is Northern Mesopotamia versus Southern Mesopotamia, on the other hand you also sometimes find north vs south when talking within the Southern Mesopotamian part, the north being Akkad, the south Sumer, both part of Southern Mesopotamia, sometimes called Babylonia)
11. You are at least missing Tutul for Northern Mesopotamia, and undoubtedly many others.
12. I would put Ebla and Umm el-Marra, and Aleppo and such sites with Northern Mesopotamia .. they are basically in a region connecting the Levant proper with Mesopotamia proper
13. What about consistency in the Iranian section? If you write Tepe Yahya, then also write Tepe Sialk.
14. Zagros/Elam is not an appropriate name for that section, you are including sites which are not in the Zagros and not part of Elam (Shahr-i Sokhta is on the border with Afghanistan!, Konar Sandal and Tepe Yahya are in Central Iran, east of Elam).
15. You are missing many sites from the Iranian section .. what about Tepe Hissar? Shahdad? ... Perhaps you should also add Pashime (Tell Abu Sheeja, see Hussein et al. 2010 in the journal Akkadica 131), which is actually in Iraq and kind of a border zone of Elam. And what about the sites in the Deh Luran valley, one of the few researched areas of the Western Zagros Piedmont ...
16. Where will you put the sites from the Hamrin valley which are on the Diyala river east of Eshnunna ... they are not Northern Mesopotamia, not Southern Mesopotamia, not Zagros .. they are in the Piedmont zone, or the Trans-Tigridian Corridor.
17. Finally, back to the introduction .. Ur was a main center in the EARLY Bronze Age, NOT in the Middle Bronze Age as I have recently corrected on the wikipedia site for Ur. This disrupts the entire first paragraph ... and furthermore all those estimates are extremely inaccurate as there is no good way to calculate the populations of those urban centers without much more extensive excavations at those sites. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srenette ( talk • contribs) 02:53, 26 April 2011 (UTC) Srenette ( talk) 02:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)srenette
One appreciates your thoughtful views on the article. You appear to have inadvertantly deleted the Tell Agrab link and broken the Zabalam link. I fixed them. It will take me a bit to digest the rest of your sugesstions, but they have some good points. Ploversegg ( talk) 02:39, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
to Ploversegg .. why did you delete Shahdad from the list? Yes the site contains Parthian occupation, but it is also one of the most important Bronze Age sites in Iran (see for example the recent conference about it http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/shahdad/). Also, many of the sites on the list do not fit the category Zagros or Elam. Tepe Yahya for example is not in the Zagros and is not an Elamite site. The Zagros is only the western part of Iran, while Elam only covers the soutwestern part of Iran.
so Ploversegg, can you from now on justify your decisions? They seem rather questionable if you don't even know the importance of Shahdad during the Bronze Age ... or when you say Ecbatana is post-Classical, while in reality it is supposed to be a Median site in origin, so it predates Persian sites which you do keep in the list ... Kutik-Inshushinak ( talk) 03:33, 16 August 2011 (UTC)Kutik-Inshushinak
It seems best to me to use the term which is used in the academic literature, which is the "Iranian highlands". This site aims to include a large span of time anyway, so preclassical polities changed. Elam was definitely a major one, but there was Marhashi for a long time, and tons of local ones (which have not been successfully located yet), but then in the first millennium (so within the scope of this site) polities changed completely and included the Median territory and of course Persia. The term "Iranian highlands" covers all of present day Iran and is what is used in the literature to denote the lands to the east of Mesopotamia in ancient times. Technically Susa and all the sites in Khuzistan are not part of the highlands (they are part of the same landscape as the Mesopotamian lowlands, but further east), but that is a minor detail for this issue. I suppose the Shahdad article is so limited because it is hard to find and process information about it. I don't have time to do it. But you had said with the edit that you deleted it because it is only a Parthian site, which is not true, and it is one of the most important Bronze Age centers in the Iranian highlands. It should have a proper article, but then again, most of what you can find on the Ancient Near East on wikipedia is extremely limited and often of very questionable quality. Kutik-Inshushinak ( talk) 19:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)Kutik-Inshushinak
Shouldn't Ethiopia be somewhere in SA? What's it doing here? Cheers, Λuα ( Operibus anteire) 23:10, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
Hi, though it's labour-saving benefits are obvious, the transclusion of the List of ancient Egyptian sites causes confusion. Many of these are not cities and it also makes for very odd referencing and categorisation of the article. Is there an efficient way of fixing this? Thoughts? PatHadley ( talk) 17:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Suggest to move this article to Ancient cities of the Middle East. According to Near East, the term Middle East has meanwhile replaced the term Near East. Also this way it becomes consistent with Category:Ancient cities of the Middle East. Marcocapelle ( talk) 12:30, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
Why do the categories of this list say Egypt? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech ( talk) 01:52, 24 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Since I last looked at it a large number of places have appeared on the list that are either tiny, mythical, or don't actually exist. We've always been flexible about things. Like having Akkad even though it's location isn't unknown. Same thing on the size. Etc. At some point though maybe the thing to do is change the name of the article. Ploversegg ( talk) 04:15, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Zenobia (Halabiye) and Zalabiye were both built in the third century AD/CE. Barely classical much less ancient. I'll let this sit here for comments for a bit first. If anyone seriously cares about them staying then that's fine with me. Ploversegg ( talk) 03:01, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
A number of entries have crept onto the list that have no articles which doesn't seem to make sense. Unless someone has some objection I plan to move them onto their own section on the talk page for safekeeping, so that if anyone in the future wants to create an article for them they can. Note that I am not making any judgement on the locations belonging or not belonging on the list, just saying that they need actual article. Ploversegg ( talk) 17:28, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
Ploversegg ( talk) 05:30, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Some sites founded by the Sasanian Empire which dates from roughly 250 - 650 AD/CE have made their way onto the list by well intentioned good faith edits. The list specifies a cuttoff date of 450 BC/BCE. Certainly there is a bit of slack there for historic or interesting sites, but not 700+ years worth of slack. So, if no objection arises, I'm going to move those entries to the Talk page, in case someone want to someday create a list of sasanian cities or whatever. Oh, there is a Palmyian town there too. Same deal. Ploversegg ( talk) 00:39, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
Some entries from much later periods (700+ years after the end of the list range) were added in good faith edits. I am moving them here for safekeeping. Perhaps someday someone will want to start a new list with them or somesuch. If I miss one, or move one in error, feel free to let me know or fix it, as you prefer.
Note - there were a number of towns that CLAIMED origins in ancient times. Claims I was pretty certain were groundless. Didn't remove them. Maybe another day.
Note - I did remove four kingdoms/provinces and two "cultures" along the way. Ploversegg ( talk) 02:13, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
Ploversegg ( talk) 01:04, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
Anything that cannot be established as predating 550 BC has no place in a list dedicated to the ANE.
The original purpose of this list was to present city names known from Bronze Age records, not the names of archaeological sites. I.e., list by ancient name, and if possible give one or several candidates for the site.
This should definitely not turn into a list of Neolithic to Bronze Age sites in the general area of the Middle East.
Even less should it become a list of random "ancient" cities, established any time between the Achaemenid to early Islamic period.
It is perfectly respectable to invest time into lists on such topics (e.g.
Ancient towns in Saudi Arabia), but please do this under separate titles, if relevant these can still be linked by "see also"
--
dab
(𒁳) 07:46, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Excavations are on at Tell Zurghul , site of Nigin, but not enough info is yet available for a proper article. This is a placeholder so maybe someone will do one when more is published. (Koldewy dug there for 2 months in 1885 but I don't see anything published)
http://www.tellsurghul.org/History.html
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH9zwZBC7NEXL-zFZZTql3g
Ploversegg ( talk) 00:27, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
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Just a few observations - is it not time to break this list out by country? Petra is in Jordan which isn't really in the Arabian Peninsula (you could argue it's in the Levant), while the UAE has several noteable and major settlements distinct from Madain Saleh in Saudi for instance. As does Oman... Oh, and Julfar is a C14th settlement, so not really 'ancient Near East' or is it? What's the ancient criteria... Alexandermcnabb ( talk) 09:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
I pulled out a slew of entries that were clearly too late but left the ones that "claimed" to be much earlier in date (whether I believed that or not). Low hanging fruit. The Julfar article says "Ras al-Khaimah has been the site of human habitation for several millennia and there are many historical and archaeological sites throughout the emirate - local sources cite 1,000[4] - dating from different time periods, including remnants of the Umm an-Nar Culture (3rd millennium BC)".
On the country by country thing I'm ok with whatever the consensus is. Only issues I can see are a) some countries parts will be really long because of where historically archaeology happened and b) the ownership of some sites might be "contested" between countries (I'm thinking mainly the Levant here).
As for what the ancient critera are (glad you didn't ask what a "city" was), I've always favored 333BC as the cutoff ie the end of the Persian Empire. I also consider this the beginning of the Classical Period. Practically speaking for the list, Alexander and his generals created a slew of cites didn't amount to something til later and cloud the issue and by using this date you eliminate those. YMMV Note that I agree that exceptions should be allowed for notable places that are close to the line. Ploversegg ( talk) 16:40, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this page has deteriorated completely. It was never intended as a "list of archaeological sites by country". It is intended as a list of cities known from the historical record in the Bronze Age. People have started to add random archaeological sites "by country", as well as cities founded in classica antiquity. If people want to create a list of archaeological sites in Jordan, they are perfectly welcome to do that, but this shouldn't interfere with this list article dedicated to the ANE. I do not think Achaemenid to Hellenistic foundations have a place here. It is very easy for interested parties to create lists such as List of Hellenistic cities or List of archaeological sites in Iran. The "Ancient Near East" proper ends with the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (in Egypt arguably somewhat later, with the fall of the 26th dynasty). Anything that comes later is "classical antiquity", "ancient Iran" etc. -- dab (𒁳) 07:24, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Is it posible to have de supossed founding time of every city on the list? These are the first cities, it will show a nice pattern. Best regards, -- 2001:4C50:21D:F400:F992:6A7D:FDC5:CE4C ( talk) 08:15, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Dur-Katlimmu - Tell Sheikh Hamad. The French wikipedia page is quite nice i.e. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Sheikh_Hamad
Tall Munbaqa - Ekalte - Dittmar Machule led the DOG excavation and there
is a good article on the German wikipedia and some info on the DOG
dig page (off the main DOG dig map)
Nemrik
Tell Haddad - Me-Turan. Somehow these are both linked to
Eshnunna, which is totally wrong.
Ploversegg ( talk) 22:09, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Hey now, what about this page? Nobody filling it up? Cush 21:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I have recently created the Sumerian city articles Kuara, Kisurra, Dilbat, and Marad and have checked and moved all coordinates to their appropriate pages. Thus I have removed the coordinates from the list to look better soon. Thank you. - Kain Nihil 13:45, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Is there a reason for the cities to be listed from North to South? In Mesopotamia, the order of settlement and spread of civilization was from South to North. I'd like to reverse the order of the Mesopotamian cities, if no one minds. Sumerophile ( talk) 18:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
- SNIP*
OK, I have updated my
user page.
My table for Mesopotamia now looks like this (I still have to edit some entries) :
<<SNIP>> (see my user page)
ok, I had ordered all cities from north to south (so finding the places in the maps might be easier), but I see that the order has been changed again. so what should be the consensus for all the cities in the lists? also, it seems my edits of the Lower Mesopotamia section have been reverted by Sumerophile/IansAwesomePizza to their former incomplete version. Cush ( talk) 21:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I think we should use these: [2], with all due respect, they need to be verifiable. -- Doug Weller ( talk) 15:38, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
Phoenicia is the name given to the the Canaanites traders by the Greeks, due to a purple dye they used to trade. Genetically the Lebanese and the current Palestinians have the same ancestory. The Lebanese are known to be Phoenicians, the Palestinians are known to be Canaanites. Religon wise, the Phoenician's religion was the same of the Canaanites. same with Language. According to the Amarna tablets, The Phoenicians are knowns as Canaanites! So I believe the Canaanites and the Phoenicians cities need to be under the same sub heading Canaan/Phoenicia! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael1408 ( talk • contribs) 23:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Phoenicians are not Arabs, Israelis, or sub-Saharan (black) Africans;
Canaanites are Phoenician Canaanites, Punic (North African & Spain Phoenicians)
The Canaanites were already oriented to the sea with an economy based on navigation and trade by 1550 BCE. Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos (now all in Lebanon) are their major ports, and they have established colonies on the island of Cyprus. They carry on trade with their old patron Egypt, the Mittani in Mesopotamia, and the Hittite Empire in what is now Turkey. The term "Phoenician" is used by scholars to distinguish the Iron Age from the Bronze Age in the Levant, although the culture is essentially the same as the Canaanite and the people never referred to themselves as "Phoenicians," a Greek term. We do know that the Phoenicians essentially continue Canaanite religion, culture, and language. When they recover from the invasions of "the Sea Peoples" from the west, Israelites from the south-east, and Aramaeans from the north-east, their territory becomes limited to a narrow strip of land along the coast extending from Syria to Israel. In response to this, they become among the greatest sailors and traders of any age. Another internet source
And if you believe in the bible:
According to Strong's Concordance the word Canaan means "trader or merchant" and the Phoenicians, as Canaanites, are derived from Ham's incestuous relationship with Naamah the sister of Tubalcain, the wife Noah took with him in the Ark (Genesis 9:18-27; 10:6, 15-19).
biblebelivers
--Michael1408 04:48, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Alright then, no one is aruging, I am changing it back --Michael1408 04:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael1408 ( talk • contribs)
Who is arguing? --Michael1408 05:12, 19 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael1408 ( talk • contribs)
Ploversegg ( talk) 19:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Cool! I notice that the coords on the Harran page are slightly different than the ones listed here. Is any attempt being made to standardize on a coord for the various sites with whats on their article? Ploversegg ( talk) 23:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Hm, didn't know about Tell Arbid. Cool, a large site without a city name, always interesting. http://www.siwaiwa.pl/TellArbid/
According to a google earth file, the coordinates of Tell Arbid are
<coordinates>41.02151894615545,36.8733006058363,0</coordinates>
Additions look good. :-) Ploversegg ( talk) 21:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Thats reasonable. Sure, someone could make a claim for "syria" in several cases or even "anatolia" in one case, but if you look far enough back, Mesopotamia pretty well covers this whole area. Ploversegg ( talk) 22:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
1) There are some sites for which I don't see any available information on in the "literature" upon which to do an article. So what makes sense is to pull them off into a special section at the top of the Talk page entitled "Articles Needed". Then, if articles are created, the entry can be added back to the main page. The lines to be moved are
Two others I haven't quite given up on doind an article for are
2) The seperation of Upper and Lower Mesopotamia into Babylonian versus Assyrian versus Mitanni seems awkward. Pretty much everybody ruled everywhere at some time or another. Anyway, seems like those sections need to be flattened out and reorganized to be more useful. Ploversegg ( talk) 21:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
So we agree on the flat layout for Upper and Lower sections. Note that there are differences between the entries on you personal list of sites and the entries in Cities of the Ancient Near East. Some have been added (Khafajah etc) and some existing ones wikilinked to new articles. Might want to digest the article entries back into your personal space before creating a final flat list. I seem to remember doing a few new/linked changes on some other sections too. Elam for example.
As for moving un-articled entries to the Talk page. It was just a thought. :-) Ploversegg ( talk) 01:27, 11 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Hm a couple changes might be missing from your list, like
Qatara or Karana (Tell al-Rimah)
where I did a new article for Rimah and reflected the uncertainty on the name
But on the other hand, your list has some things missing from the article like Guzana, which is a good thing. :-)
We probably need to do a line by line comparison. Ploversegg ( talk) 17:31, 11 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
My point was that the line in you personal list is
while in the COTANE article, it is
which reflect a) I wrote an article for Tell al-Rimah and b)the current consensus on RImah is divided between Qatara and Karana. The actual formating can be whatever. Ploversegg ( talk) 23:50, 11 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Is it raining? :-) Officially the line is at the point where south of that there's not enough rainfall to grow crops without irrigation. Usually, that is taken somewhere around Hit Iraq, but given that the amount of rain changes over the years (and centuries), anywhere in that ballpark is not going to get a major argument. Ploversegg ( talk) 23:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)ploversegg
Just about finished. Ploversegg ( talk) 22:08, 17 December 2008 (UTC)ploveresegg
Since the coord template does not work properly (cf. Wikipedia_talk:GEO#Glitch_in_coord_template), it would be preferable to leave this page as it is. Mass edits that do not improve anything but actually damage the article should be avoided. Cush ( talk) 12:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Hey folks, I would like to remove the coordinates from this page. Or at least those that I have contributed. Would that be too drastic? Cush ( talk) 20:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Hm ... it looks better this way. I'll think about how to reformat the article now that it's so clean. First, I'll do a quick look to see if anything is blatantly off, like I see that Melid points to Malatya which then points to the article for Arslantepe which seems awkward. I know one thing, those maps really suck and have to go. Ploversegg ( talk) 15:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
This maps are fine, they just don't match up well with the article. Maybe it's just a matter of not having the right submaps. It'd be nice to have an set of submaps to devide the locations up better, like there should be a Assyria section where Ebla can go (instead of the Levant where it is now). The maps at https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/lab/map/site.html are pretty nice btw, but trying to seperate the ancient sites by modern countries on Wikipedia would attract those with Cultural Penis Envy, never a good thing. But no, your maps are nice. Ploversegg ( talk) 21:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
section | west | east | north | south |
---|---|---|---|---|
Anatolia | 26 | 40 | 42 | 35 |
Mesopotamia | 37 | 48 | 39 | 30 |
Iran | 42 | 62 | 39 | 28 |
Syria | 33 | 39 | 38 | 28 |
Egypt | 29 | 34 | 32 | 21 |
Kush | 30 | 39 | 23 | 13 |
Cush ( talk) 12:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I'll work on this Question and report back shortly.
Ploversegg (
talk) 23:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
I was thinking of the following proposal, which splits up the cities into reasonable sized chunks and matches history more or less. What do you think?
ANATOLIA
Anatolia is basically modern Turkey. If you look at the map on the Urkesh page, the border would run more or less along the line through below Carchemesh, and Harran and above Alalakh.
ANCIENT SYRIA (or Assyria perhaps)
To the border with Anatolia in the north, Akkad in the south, Elam in the east, and a line just west of Alepo in the west
AKKAD (or Upper Mesopotamia)
Usual definition with the lower border above Eshnunna.
SUMER (or Lower Mesopotamia)
Usual definition with the upper border below Eshnunna.
UPPER LEVANT
From Alalakh in the north, to just below Sidon in the south,
LOWER LEVANT
From below Sidon in the north to the Suez Canal in the south.
The later split breaks up the zillion Levant sites and avoids the use of the the controversial Canaan designation.
Darnit, you're right. I hate when I screw up. There should
also be a map/section for Elam (or Iranian Plateau or Iran).
As for Assyria, it is usually considered to end at the top of Akkad, which would be somewhere around just below Assur, maybe below Nuzi/Mari if that make a better map. Ploversegg ( talk) 21:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)ploversegg
let us please remain clear on the scope of this article: it is supposed to discuss cities of the Ancient Near East, i.e. Sumer to Assyrian Empire. Mountains shouldn't be listed, nor should Archaemenid or Roman era cities, or Chalcolithic settlements.
Also, the de facto nature of this article as a list is circumstantial, not intentional. I hope the article will some day evolve into an actual encyclopedic discussion, in prose, of the cities of the Ancient Near East. -- dab (𒁳) 16:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that the sites that have clarification tags be removed from the article. When there were still coordinates included their presence was ok, but now they have neither coordinates nor a related article. I think they should be deleted. Cush ( talk) 11:09, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity: which periods are covered by this list and why? Which sites are covered by this list and why? If not all sites that satisfy the chronological and geographical criteria are listed, then based on what criterium are they included or excluded? In other words: how is a "city" distinguished from a site that is not a "city"? Because if there are no identifiable, RS supported criteria, this seems just very much a subjective listing of interesting places... -- Zoeperkoe ( talk) 19:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
1. KI is NOT the Sumerian determinative for a city, but is a general determinative indicating that the term is a place. URU or perhaps rather IRI is the Sumerian word for city, sometimes used as determinative. KUR literally means mountain, but was also used to denote foreign lands. Later on the sign was used for various purposes. It is better not to conflate different writing practices (different regions and different periods) in one sentence.
2. We do know the name of Jemdet Nasr, or better we know how it was written but don't know how it was pronounced. The name of the town at the site of Jemdet Nasr was NI.RU (see for example Steinkeller 2002. Archaic City Seals and the Question of Early Babylonian Unity).
3. If you are going to write the original Akkadian name of Babylon, then do it correctly ... it was Babilim (or Bab ilim, meaning the gate of the god, so with ilum in the genitive ilim).
4. Zabalam is usually used, not Zabala
5. Nabada (Tell Beydar) is in North Mesopotamia, not South!
6. You are missing several cities with known and unknown locations from the South .. there is Tutub (Khafajah), Ninna, Kesh (NOT the same as Kish!), Urum (Tell Uqair), ...
7. Nuzi is the same as Gasur, so better to write Nuzi/Gasur (Yorghan Tepe)
8. Tutub (Khafajah) should be put with the southern cities, technically the area is referred to as Central Mesopotamia often, but culturally it fits better with the south and you already put Eshnunna with the south, which is in the same vicinity as Tutub (even further upstream the Diyala river!). Same for Tell Agrab, it should be included with the southern cities, as it is in the Lower Diyala area together with Tutub (Khafajah) and Eshnunna (Tell Asmar).
9. Sippar Amnanum (Tell ed-Der) is also in the south .. it is an Old-Babylonian section of Sippar.
10. Urum (Tell Uqair) is in the south! (I suspect some of you got confused .. on the one hand there is Northern Mesopotamia versus Southern Mesopotamia, on the other hand you also sometimes find north vs south when talking within the Southern Mesopotamian part, the north being Akkad, the south Sumer, both part of Southern Mesopotamia, sometimes called Babylonia)
11. You are at least missing Tutul for Northern Mesopotamia, and undoubtedly many others.
12. I would put Ebla and Umm el-Marra, and Aleppo and such sites with Northern Mesopotamia .. they are basically in a region connecting the Levant proper with Mesopotamia proper
13. What about consistency in the Iranian section? If you write Tepe Yahya, then also write Tepe Sialk.
14. Zagros/Elam is not an appropriate name for that section, you are including sites which are not in the Zagros and not part of Elam (Shahr-i Sokhta is on the border with Afghanistan!, Konar Sandal and Tepe Yahya are in Central Iran, east of Elam).
15. You are missing many sites from the Iranian section .. what about Tepe Hissar? Shahdad? ... Perhaps you should also add Pashime (Tell Abu Sheeja, see Hussein et al. 2010 in the journal Akkadica 131), which is actually in Iraq and kind of a border zone of Elam. And what about the sites in the Deh Luran valley, one of the few researched areas of the Western Zagros Piedmont ...
16. Where will you put the sites from the Hamrin valley which are on the Diyala river east of Eshnunna ... they are not Northern Mesopotamia, not Southern Mesopotamia, not Zagros .. they are in the Piedmont zone, or the Trans-Tigridian Corridor.
17. Finally, back to the introduction .. Ur was a main center in the EARLY Bronze Age, NOT in the Middle Bronze Age as I have recently corrected on the wikipedia site for Ur. This disrupts the entire first paragraph ... and furthermore all those estimates are extremely inaccurate as there is no good way to calculate the populations of those urban centers without much more extensive excavations at those sites. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srenette ( talk • contribs) 02:53, 26 April 2011 (UTC) Srenette ( talk) 02:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)srenette
One appreciates your thoughtful views on the article. You appear to have inadvertantly deleted the Tell Agrab link and broken the Zabalam link. I fixed them. It will take me a bit to digest the rest of your sugesstions, but they have some good points. Ploversegg ( talk) 02:39, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
to Ploversegg .. why did you delete Shahdad from the list? Yes the site contains Parthian occupation, but it is also one of the most important Bronze Age sites in Iran (see for example the recent conference about it http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/shahdad/). Also, many of the sites on the list do not fit the category Zagros or Elam. Tepe Yahya for example is not in the Zagros and is not an Elamite site. The Zagros is only the western part of Iran, while Elam only covers the soutwestern part of Iran.
so Ploversegg, can you from now on justify your decisions? They seem rather questionable if you don't even know the importance of Shahdad during the Bronze Age ... or when you say Ecbatana is post-Classical, while in reality it is supposed to be a Median site in origin, so it predates Persian sites which you do keep in the list ... Kutik-Inshushinak ( talk) 03:33, 16 August 2011 (UTC)Kutik-Inshushinak
It seems best to me to use the term which is used in the academic literature, which is the "Iranian highlands". This site aims to include a large span of time anyway, so preclassical polities changed. Elam was definitely a major one, but there was Marhashi for a long time, and tons of local ones (which have not been successfully located yet), but then in the first millennium (so within the scope of this site) polities changed completely and included the Median territory and of course Persia. The term "Iranian highlands" covers all of present day Iran and is what is used in the literature to denote the lands to the east of Mesopotamia in ancient times. Technically Susa and all the sites in Khuzistan are not part of the highlands (they are part of the same landscape as the Mesopotamian lowlands, but further east), but that is a minor detail for this issue. I suppose the Shahdad article is so limited because it is hard to find and process information about it. I don't have time to do it. But you had said with the edit that you deleted it because it is only a Parthian site, which is not true, and it is one of the most important Bronze Age centers in the Iranian highlands. It should have a proper article, but then again, most of what you can find on the Ancient Near East on wikipedia is extremely limited and often of very questionable quality. Kutik-Inshushinak ( talk) 19:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)Kutik-Inshushinak
Shouldn't Ethiopia be somewhere in SA? What's it doing here? Cheers, Λuα ( Operibus anteire) 23:10, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
Hi, though it's labour-saving benefits are obvious, the transclusion of the List of ancient Egyptian sites causes confusion. Many of these are not cities and it also makes for very odd referencing and categorisation of the article. Is there an efficient way of fixing this? Thoughts? PatHadley ( talk) 17:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Suggest to move this article to Ancient cities of the Middle East. According to Near East, the term Middle East has meanwhile replaced the term Near East. Also this way it becomes consistent with Category:Ancient cities of the Middle East. Marcocapelle ( talk) 12:30, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
Why do the categories of this list say Egypt? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech ( talk) 01:52, 24 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me
Since I last looked at it a large number of places have appeared on the list that are either tiny, mythical, or don't actually exist. We've always been flexible about things. Like having Akkad even though it's location isn't unknown. Same thing on the size. Etc. At some point though maybe the thing to do is change the name of the article. Ploversegg ( talk) 04:15, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Zenobia (Halabiye) and Zalabiye were both built in the third century AD/CE. Barely classical much less ancient. I'll let this sit here for comments for a bit first. If anyone seriously cares about them staying then that's fine with me. Ploversegg ( talk) 03:01, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
A number of entries have crept onto the list that have no articles which doesn't seem to make sense. Unless someone has some objection I plan to move them onto their own section on the talk page for safekeeping, so that if anyone in the future wants to create an article for them they can. Note that I am not making any judgement on the locations belonging or not belonging on the list, just saying that they need actual article. Ploversegg ( talk) 17:28, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
Ploversegg ( talk) 05:30, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Some sites founded by the Sasanian Empire which dates from roughly 250 - 650 AD/CE have made their way onto the list by well intentioned good faith edits. The list specifies a cuttoff date of 450 BC/BCE. Certainly there is a bit of slack there for historic or interesting sites, but not 700+ years worth of slack. So, if no objection arises, I'm going to move those entries to the Talk page, in case someone want to someday create a list of sasanian cities or whatever. Oh, there is a Palmyian town there too. Same deal. Ploversegg ( talk) 00:39, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
Some entries from much later periods (700+ years after the end of the list range) were added in good faith edits. I am moving them here for safekeeping. Perhaps someday someone will want to start a new list with them or somesuch. If I miss one, or move one in error, feel free to let me know or fix it, as you prefer.
Note - there were a number of towns that CLAIMED origins in ancient times. Claims I was pretty certain were groundless. Didn't remove them. Maybe another day.
Note - I did remove four kingdoms/provinces and two "cultures" along the way. Ploversegg ( talk) 02:13, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
Ploversegg ( talk) 01:04, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
Anything that cannot be established as predating 550 BC has no place in a list dedicated to the ANE.
The original purpose of this list was to present city names known from Bronze Age records, not the names of archaeological sites. I.e., list by ancient name, and if possible give one or several candidates for the site.
This should definitely not turn into a list of Neolithic to Bronze Age sites in the general area of the Middle East.
Even less should it become a list of random "ancient" cities, established any time between the Achaemenid to early Islamic period.
It is perfectly respectable to invest time into lists on such topics (e.g.
Ancient towns in Saudi Arabia), but please do this under separate titles, if relevant these can still be linked by "see also"
--
dab
(𒁳) 07:46, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Excavations are on at Tell Zurghul , site of Nigin, but not enough info is yet available for a proper article. This is a placeholder so maybe someone will do one when more is published. (Koldewy dug there for 2 months in 1885 but I don't see anything published)
http://www.tellsurghul.org/History.html
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH9zwZBC7NEXL-zFZZTql3g
Ploversegg ( talk) 00:27, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
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Just a few observations - is it not time to break this list out by country? Petra is in Jordan which isn't really in the Arabian Peninsula (you could argue it's in the Levant), while the UAE has several noteable and major settlements distinct from Madain Saleh in Saudi for instance. As does Oman... Oh, and Julfar is a C14th settlement, so not really 'ancient Near East' or is it? What's the ancient criteria... Alexandermcnabb ( talk) 09:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
I pulled out a slew of entries that were clearly too late but left the ones that "claimed" to be much earlier in date (whether I believed that or not). Low hanging fruit. The Julfar article says "Ras al-Khaimah has been the site of human habitation for several millennia and there are many historical and archaeological sites throughout the emirate - local sources cite 1,000[4] - dating from different time periods, including remnants of the Umm an-Nar Culture (3rd millennium BC)".
On the country by country thing I'm ok with whatever the consensus is. Only issues I can see are a) some countries parts will be really long because of where historically archaeology happened and b) the ownership of some sites might be "contested" between countries (I'm thinking mainly the Levant here).
As for what the ancient critera are (glad you didn't ask what a "city" was), I've always favored 333BC as the cutoff ie the end of the Persian Empire. I also consider this the beginning of the Classical Period. Practically speaking for the list, Alexander and his generals created a slew of cites didn't amount to something til later and cloud the issue and by using this date you eliminate those. YMMV Note that I agree that exceptions should be allowed for notable places that are close to the line. Ploversegg ( talk) 16:40, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this page has deteriorated completely. It was never intended as a "list of archaeological sites by country". It is intended as a list of cities known from the historical record in the Bronze Age. People have started to add random archaeological sites "by country", as well as cities founded in classica antiquity. If people want to create a list of archaeological sites in Jordan, they are perfectly welcome to do that, but this shouldn't interfere with this list article dedicated to the ANE. I do not think Achaemenid to Hellenistic foundations have a place here. It is very easy for interested parties to create lists such as List of Hellenistic cities or List of archaeological sites in Iran. The "Ancient Near East" proper ends with the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (in Egypt arguably somewhat later, with the fall of the 26th dynasty). Anything that comes later is "classical antiquity", "ancient Iran" etc. -- dab (𒁳) 07:24, 10 September 2018 (UTC)