Khafajah

Khafajah or Khafaje, ancient Tutub, is an archaeological site in Diyala Governorate, Iraq east of Baghdad. Khafajah lies on the Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris. Occupied from the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods through the end of the Old Babylonian Empire, it was under the control of the Akkadian Empire and then the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 3rd millennium BC. It then became part of the empire of the city-state of Eshnunna lying southwest of that city, about from the ancient city of Shaduppum, and near Tell Ishchali, both which Eshnunna also controlled. It then fell to Babylonia before falling into disuse.
Archaeology
Khafajah was excavated for 7 seasons between 1930 and 1937 by an Oriental Institute of Chicago team led by Henri Frankfort with Thorkild Jacobsen, Conrad Preusser and Pinhas Delougaz. For two seasons, in 1937 and 1938, the site was worked by a joint team of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the University of Pennsylvania led by Delougaz. They worked primarily in the Nintu temple on mound A (along with the cemetery to the east and northeast of the temple) and with soundings on mound B. Among the small finds at the site was an Akkadian period die. and a terracotta incantation bowl written in "typical Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Sasanian period".
The site consists of four mounds, labeled A through D.
The main one, Mound A, extends back as far as the Uruk period and contained a large oval temple, a temple of the god Sin, and a small temple of Nintu (where a bearded cow statue was found), dating back to the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. An early radiocarbon date for the first level of the Sin Temple returned a corrected date of 4963 BC which is thought to be somewhat too early and possibly contaminated. The mound was occupied through the Akkadian Empire period and then abandoned. Its name, Tutub, is not known before the Akkadian times. A number of vaulted tombs made out of plano-convex bricks were found. About 70 Akkadian Period cuneiform tablets were found there. Most of the tablets were administrative in nature and were apportioned half to the Oriental Institute and half to the Baghdad Museum. The other 3 mounds lie about half a mile west of Mound A.
The Babylonian Dur-Samsuiluna fort, built during the reign of ruler Samsu-iluna (c. 1750–1712 BC), was found on mound B with signs of Hurrian occupation also found there. The fort is around 1000 square meters in area and is surrounded by a 4.7 meter wide fortification wall (with 6 meter wide buttresses every 10 to 12 meters) and was identified based on an inscribed cylinder found there. It is yet unclear if there was earlier occupation.
Only soundings were done on Mound C, which dates to the Uruk Period with a scattering of Old Babylonian and Kassite remains.
Mound D was surrounded by a 6.5 meter thick fortification wall (buttressed to 12 meters) with towers at inflection points and a fortified gate. A large number of baked clay mace heads were found in front of the gate. It is unknown if the mound was occupied before the Isin-Larsa period. It contained a temple for the god Sin where the Old Babylonian archive tablets where found in two heaps. The temple had two building periods. The first being 45 by 75 meters and the later 28 by 45 meters within the earlier construction. It is not known if the newer construction replaced the earlier or was used simultaneously.
History
Khafajah was occupied beginning in the Jemdet Nasr period and Early Dynastic Period. Naram-Sin of Akkad named his son Nabi-Ulmash governor of Tutub. A fragment of a statue of the Akkadian ruler Manishtushu was found there. Two stone bowl fragments with the name of the Akkadian ruler Rimush were found near the Temple of Sin.
Some point after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, "Awal, Kismar, Maskan-sarrum, the [la]nd of Esnunna, the [la]nd of Tutub, the [lan]d of Simudar, the [lan]d of Akkad" briefly came under the control of Puzur-Inshushinak of Elam as the first Third Dynasty ruler, Ur-Nammu, reports liberating those cities. was also reported to captured by ruler Shulgi (c. 2094 – 2046 BC) of the Third Dynasty in his 30th year. It then came under the control of Eshnunna in the Isin-Larsa period. The fifth year name for Eshnunna ruler Nūraḫum was "Year Tutub was seized". This was considered a significant event as the following year was named "Year after the year Tutub was seized".
A later ruler of Eshnunna, Warassa, had the cryptic year name "Year Tutub was restored". Later, after Eshnunna was captured by Babylon, a fort was built at the site by Samsu-iluna in his 24th year of rule (c. 1726 BC) of the Old Babylonian Empire and named Dur-Samsuiluna, his year name saying "he erected Dur-Samsu-iluna in the land of Warum on the banks of the canal (called) 'Turran (Diyala)'".
The history of Khafajah is known in somewhat more detail for a period of several decades as a result of the discovery of 112 clay tablets (one now lost) in a temple of Sin. The recovered portion of the temple archive dates from roughly 1820 BC to about 1780 BC (based on rulers named) when Tutub was for the most part controlled by Eshnunna. The tablets constitute part of an official archive and include mostly loan (generally of barley or silver) and legal documents. The temple also purchased slaves, including self slaves and sales of children, as a result of loan defaults.
The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the Oriental Institute of Chicago) holds 57 of the tablets with the remainder being in the Iraq Museum.
Gallery
The Iraq Museum's Sumerian Gallery displays several Sumerian statues from the Temple of Sin and the Temple of Nintu (V and VI), including part of a hoard found at the Nintu Temple. Some finds are also housed at the Sulaymaniyah Museum.
See also
Tell Ishchali
Cities of the ancient Near East
References
Further reading
Ch. P., "Les Fouilles de Khafaje", Revue Archéologique, vol. 11, pp. 90–90, 1938
Ch. P., "Fouilles de Khafaje", Revue Archéologique, vol. 13, pp. 262–262, 1939
Pinhas Delougaz, "Pottery from the Diyala Region", Oriental Institute Publications 63, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952,
Edzard, D. O., "ITU-Tubki = Tutub", Archiv Für Orientforschung, vol. 20, pp. 152–152, 1963
Evans, J., "Thinking through assemblages: donors and the Sin Temple at Khafajah", in Ancient Near Eastern Temple Inventories in the Third and Second Millennia BCE: Integrating Archaeological, Textual, and Visual Sources (Münchener Abhandlungen zum Alten Orient 4), Gladbeck, pp. 13-26, 2019
Henrickson, Elizabeth F., "Functional Analysis of Elite Residences in the Late Early Dynastic of the Diyala Region: House D and the Walled Quarter at Khafajah and the Palaces at Tell Asmar", Mesopotamia Torino 17, pp. 5-33, 1982
Pinhas Delougaz and Seton Lloyd with chapters by Henri Frankfort and Thorkild Jacobsen, "Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala Region", Oriental Institute Publications 58, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1942
Henri Frankfort, "Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region", Oriental Institute Publications 72, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955
Henri Frankfort., "More Sculpture from the Diyala Region", Oriental Institute Publications 60, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1943
Henri Frankfort, "Sculpture of the Third Millennium B.C. from Tell Asmar and Khafajah'', Oriental Institute Publication 44, 1939
Henri Frankfort, "The Oldest Stone Statuette Ever Found in Western Asia, and Other Relics of Ancient Sumerian Culture of a Period Probably before 3000 B.c.: Earliest Temple at Khafaje", The Illustrated London News, pp. 524-526 and col. pl. I, September 26 1936
Henri Frankfort, "Two Iraq Sites over 5000 Years Old: Fresh Discoveries at Tell Asmar, Source Of First-known Sumerian Cult-Statues, and at Khafaje, Which Later Yielded Similar Types of Early Religious Sculpture", The Illustrated London News, pp. 726-32 and col. pl. I, September 14 1935
Henri Frankfort, ""A Moon-God's Temple with Art Relics of about 3000 BC : New Discoveries at Khafaje, Mesopotamia", The Illustrated London News, pp. 840-841, November 13 1937
Kempinski, A., "The Sin Temple at Khafaje and the En-Gedi Temple", Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 10–15, 1972
Luce, Stephen B., and Elizabeth Pierce Blegen, "Archaeological News and Discussions", American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 310–45, 1939
Margueron, Jean-Claude, "Notes d’archéologie et d’architecture orientales 16. De la strate à la couche architecturale : réexamen de la stratigraphie de Tuttub/KhafajéI - L’architecture civile", Syria, vol. 89, pp. 59–84, 2012
Meijer, Diederik J.W., "The Khafaje Sin Temple Sequence: Social Divisions at Work?", in Of Pots and Plans: Papers on the Archaeology and History of Mesopotamia and Syria Presented to David Oates in Honour of His 75th Birthday, ed. L. al-Gailani Werr, J.Curtis, H.Martin,A.McMahon, J.Oates and J.Reade. London: NABU, pp. 218–26, 2002
Quenet, Philippe, "Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah. Insight into the Emergence of Multi-Stepped Terraces", in The Old Babylonian Diyala: Research since the 1930s ans Prospects, 2018.
A. Skaist, "The Sale Contracts from Khafajah", in Bar-Ilan Studies in Assyriology (ed. J. Klein and A. Skaist; Ramat Gan), Bar-Ilan University Press, pp. 255–58 and 263, 1990
External links
Plaque decorated with three registers of relief, showing banquet scene with musicians - ca. 2600 B.C at Oriental Institute
Sumerian Temple Architecture in Early Mesopotamia. Rice University (OpenStax Project)
1930s archaeological discoveries
Archaeological sites in Iraq
Former populated places in Iraq
Diyala Governorate
Early Dynastic Period (Mesopotamia)
Uruk period