Kurdish and German archaeologists have uncovered evidence of ancient civilizations stretching back almost 5,000 years at a site near the town of Bassetki, Duhok province. 

It was only in May this year that the joint Kurdish-German team, which has been working at the site since 2013, learned the name of the once flourishing city - Mardaman - which for millennia straddled the major trade routes of ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia. 

A pottery vessel, deliberately hidden under a mound of clay, was found to contain a collection of 92 cuneiform tablets. This ancient Assyrian archive, dating from around 1,200 BC, finally confessed the city’s identity. 

A succession of empires built, conquered, rebuilt, and abandoned this site through antiquity. A Kurdish village most recently sat atop these layered ruins, only to be flattened by a latter day conqueror, Saddam Hussein, to make way for a private helipad. 

Now scientists from Duhok’s Directorate of Antiquities and Germany’s University of Tübingen have carved several great gouges into the side of the mound, revealing the complex, overlapping sediment of civilizations. 

The oldest of these layers reveals a sprawling Akkadian kingdom, which set root here in the Early Bronze Age, some 5,000 years ago. 

Sections of a city wall, believed to date from around 2,800 BC, have emerged around the base of the mound. Beyond this, a lower city is thought to stretch outward to the edge of the highway, which - like in ancient times - links modern-day Iraq and Turkey. 

The kingdom is thought to have thrived for 1,000 years. 

After the Akkadians, the city appears to have shrunk, becoming the seat of Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian governors. They in turn were following by the vast empires of Alexander the Great and later the Ottomans - each leaving its own mark in stone, brick, and bone. 

Two skeletons, exhumed just a day before Rudaw visited the site, are from Alexander’s time - the Hellenistic Period. One, possibly a child, is buried inside a large clay egg. The other, an adult, lies unceremoniously at the bottom of a nearby pit, alongside the remains of at least one animal.

 

Read more: Ancient lost city of Mardaman slowly gives up its secrets