Sultantepe(Huzirina?),[1] a tell with a temple complex from theLate Assyrian, an archeological site at the edge of theNeo-Assyrian empire, now inŞanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Sultantepe is about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south ofUrfa on the road toHarran. The modern village of Sultantepe Köyü lies at the base of the tell.
Excavations have revealed anAssyrian city, with eighth to seventh century levels that were rebuilt after ca 648 BCE,[2] containing ahoard ofcuneiform tablets, including versions of theEpic of Gilgamesh and school texts including exercise tablets of literary compositions full of misspellings. The complete library of some 600 unfired clay tablets was found outside a priestly family house. Contracts also found at the site consistently recordAramaean names, J. J. Finkelstein has remarked[3] The writings end suddenly simultaneously with the fall of nearbyHarran in 610 BCE, two years after the fall ofNineveh. The tablets from Sultantepe now form the Assyrian library in the Archaeological Museum atAnkara. The site remained unoccupied during the subsequentNeo-Babylonian andAchaemenid periods, to be re-occupied byHellenistic and Roman times.[4]The modern village lies in an arc round the base of the mound on the north and east.
Sultantepe is a steep-sided mound over 50 m. high, with a flat top measuring 100 by 50 m.. Erosion on one side had exposed giant basalt column-bases, apparently belonging to a monumental gateway, which established the Assyrian level, at which, on another face of the mound, massive wall-ends projected, standing on the same level, some 7 m. below the top surface of the mound.[5] The temple was eventually identified as dedicated toSin by a well-carvedstele bearing his symbol of a crescent moon with its horns upwards on a pedestal in relief.[6]
A brief preliminary campaign at Sultantepe in May–June 1951 was followed by a series of soundings made in 1952 bySeton Lloyd of the British Institute or Archaeology at Ankara with Nuri Gökçe, of the Archaeological Museum, Ankara. Further work at the site was precluded by the seven-meter layer of Hellenistic and Roman era debris covering the remainder of the site.[7]
A series of publications ofThe Sultantepe Tablets have been edited and published inAnatolian Studies (British Institute at Ankara) from 1953 onwards by O. R. Gurney and others. The texts range widely. Some of the highlights are:
A series of tablets record theeponyms, orlimmu officials, whose names were used by the Assyrians for dating their years, and so provide support for the standardAssyrian chronology during the period 911—648 BCE in the "Eponym Canon"
Forty lines of the Creation Epic,Enuma Elish, which were missing from the texts recovered in Assyria proper
A long section of theEpic of Gilgamesh apparently copied by a schoolboy from dictation, full of errors. There is also a fragmentary abraded and bent unfired tablet of the feverish dream ofEnkidu.[8]
Sections of the composition calledThe Righteous Sufferer or by its incipitLudlul bēl nēmeqi, with strong parallels in theBook of Job. The Sultantepe library furnished for the first time text of Tablet I, narrating the Righteous Sufferer's tribulations at the hands of men,[9]
Thenarû text (complete in 175 lines), a literary genre composed as if it were a transcription from an engraved royal stele, introducing the king by his titles, followed by a first-person narrative of his reign, concluding with imprecations against defacing the inscription and blessings for preserving it; in this case thenarû text is the "Legend ofNaram-Sin", associated to the famous Akkadian king's name but in no degree historical; the Sultantepe text completes and revises the interpretation of long-known fragmentary texts fromAssurbanipal's library at Nineveh andHittite archives atHattusa and includes the fragment[10] previously known as "The Legend of the King ofCuthah".[11]
The complete text of a newAkkadian literary text, an example of a new genre,ThePoor Man of Nippur (complete in 160 lines), a tale which originated no doubt atNippur and in the mid-second millennium BCE, represented in a seventh-century recension that was published inAnatolian Studies6 (145ff) and7 (135f).[12]
Other texts of importance include rituals, incantations, omen readings, contracts[13] and vocabulary lists.
^Huzirina is indirectly attested in cuneiform tablets at the site, and in the annals ofTukulti-Ninurta II, butO. R. Gurney pointed out that Huzirina in the royal annals was situated not more than a day's march west ofNisibis, whereas Sultantepe is some 130 miles farther west (Gurney, inAnatolian Studies2 p. 30f).
^Based on eponymous datings bylimmu officials after the "Canon" that ends in 648 BCE. (Lloyd and Gokçe 1953:42).
^J. J. Finkelstein, "Assyrian Contracts from Sultantepe"Anatolian Studies7 (1957:137-145) p. 138, notes thatTell Halaf records also consistently bear Aramaean names at this period.
^Seton Lloyd, Sultantepe. Part II. Post-Assyrian Pottery and Small Objects Found by the Anglo Turkish Joint Expedition in 1952, Anatolian Studies, vol. 4, pp. 101-110, 1954
^The description of Sultantepe as it was in 1952 is Seton Lloyd's, inAnatolian Studies24 (1974):197-220) p. 203.
^Illustrated in Seton Lloyd and Nurı Gokçe, "Sultantepe: Anglo-Turkish Joint Excavations, 1952"Anatolian Studies3 (1953:27-47) p. 40 fig. 6.
^Seton Lloyd and Nuri Gokçe, Sultantepe: Anglo-Turkish Joint Excavations, 1952,Anatolian Studies,3, 1953:27-47; Lloyd, inAnatolian Studies,24 (1974):197-220 p. 203.
^O. R. Gurney, "Two Fragments of the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sultantepe"Journal of Cuneiform Studies8.3 (1954: 87-95).
^W. G. Lambert and O. R. Gurney, '"The Sultantepe Tablets (Continued). III. The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer"Anatolian Studies4 (1954:65-99).
^O. R. Gurney, "The Sultantepe Tablets (Continued). IV. The Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin'Anatolian Studies5 (1955:93-113).
^O. R. Gurney, "The Tale of the Poor Man of Nippur and Its Folktale Parallels'Anatolian Studies22, Special Number in Honour of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor Seton Lloyd (1972:149-158).
