Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; it is one of the earliest known cities in the world. Its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city's original name is unknown. During the second half of the third millennium BC, the city was known as Nagar and later on, Nawar.
Starting as a small settlement in the seventh millennium BC, Tell Brak's urbanization began in the late 5th millennium BCE and evolved during the fourth millennium BC into one of the biggest cities in Upper Mesopotamia, and interacted with the cultures of southern Mesopotamia. The city shrank in size at the beginning of the third millennium BC with the end of Uruk period, before expanding again around 2600 BC, when it became known as Nagar, and was the capital of a regional kingdom that controlled the Khabur river valley. Nagar was destroyed around 2300 BC, and came under the rule of the Akkadian Empire, followed by a period of independence as a Hurrian city-state, before contracting at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Nagar prospered again by the 19th century BC, and came under the rule of different regional powers. In c. 1500 BC, Tell Brak was a center of Mitanni before being destroyed by Assyria around 1300 BC. The city never regained its former importance, remaining as a small settlement, and abandoned at some points of its history, until disappearing from records during the early Abbasid era.
Different peoples inhabited the city, including the Halafians, Semites and the Hurrians. Tell Brak was a religious center from its earliest periods; its famous Eye Temple is unique in the Fertile Crescent, and its main deity, Belet Nagar, was revered in the entire Khabur region, making the city a pilgrimage site. The culture of Tell Brak was defined by the different civilizations that inhabited it, and it was famous for its glyptic style, equids and glass. When independent, the city was ruled by a local assembly or by a monarch. Tell Brak was a trade center due to its location between Anatolia, the Levant and southern Mesopotamia. It was excavated by Max Mallowan in 1937, then regularly by different teams between 1979 and 2011, when the work stopped due to the Syrian Civil War.
Name
The original name of the city is unknown; Tell Brak is the current name of the tell. East of the mound lies a dried lake named "Khatuniah" which was recorded as "Lacus Beberaci" (the lake of Brak) in the Roman map Tabula Peutingeriana. The lake was probably named after Tell Brak which was the nearest camp in the area. The name "Brak" might therefore be an echo of the most ancient name.
During the third millennium BC, the city was known as "Nagar", which might be of Semitic origin and mean a "cultivated place". The name "Nagar" ceased occurring following the Old Babylonian period, however, the city continued to exist as Nawar, under the control of Hurrian state of Mitanni. Hurrian kings of Urkesh took the title "King of Urkesh and Nawar" in the third millennium BC.
Alternative theories Although there is general view that the third millennium BC Nawar is identical with Nagar, some scholars, such as Jesper Eidem, doubt this. Those scholars opt for a city closer to Urkesh which was also called Nawala/Nabula as the intended Nawar.
History Dates (BC)Brak periodPeriod designation in northern Mesopotamia6500–5900AProto-Hassuna/Pre-Halaf (Samarra-related)5900–5200BHalaf5200–4400CNorthern Ubaid4400–4200DTerminal Ubaid/Late Chalcolithic 1/LC14200–3900ENorthern Early Uruk/Late Chalcolithic 2/LC23900–3600FNorthern Middle Uruk/Late Chalcolithic 3/LC33600–3200Northern Middle Uruk/Late Chalcolithic 4/LC43200–3000GNorthern Middle Uruk/Late Chalcolithic 5/LC53000–2900HPost-Uruk2900–2600JNinevite 52600–2400K2400–2300LPost-Ninevite 52300–2100MAkkadian2100–2000NPost-Akkadian2000–1850Middle Bronze I1850–1500PMiddle Bronze II/Khabur1500–1275QMitanni1275–900RMiddle Assyrian 900–600SNeo-Assyrian/Iron II600–330Post-Assyrian320–150Seleuicid/Hellenistic150–224TParthian/Roman
Early settlement In Brak Period A (c. 6500–5900 BC), the earliest small settlement is dated to the proto Halaf culture c. 6500 BC. Many objects dated to that period were discovered including the Halaf pottery.
In Brak Period B (c. 5900–5200 BC), the Halaf Culture Halaf culture transformed into Period C (c. 5200–4400 BC) Northern Ubaid, and many Ubaid materials were found in Tell Brak including coba bowls, diagnostic pottery for the Terminal Ubaid period. Oates, Joan, "The Terminal Ubaid (LC 1) Level at Tell Brak", Publications de l'Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes 27.1, pp. 65-86, 2012 Excavations and surface survey of the site and its surroundings, unearthed a large platform of patzen bricks that dates to late Ubaid, and revealed that Tell Brak developed as an urban center slightly earlier than better known cities of southern Mesopotamia, such as Uruk.
Late Chalcolithic The first city
In southern Mesopotamia, the original Ubaid culture evolved into the Uruk period. The people of the southern Uruk period used military and commercial means to expand the civilization. In Northern Mesopotamia, the post Ubaid period is designated Late Chalcolithic / Northern Uruk period, during which, Tell Brak started to expand.
Brak Period E Tell Brak Period E (c. 4200–3900 BC; Late Chalcolithic 2; Northern Early Uruk Period) witnessed the building of the City's Walls, and expansion beyond the mound to form a Lower Town, becoming a proto-urban city with a size of c. 55 hectares.
Comparison can be made with Hamoukar in LC1-2 period, where the early urban settlement has been described as "a vast low or flat scatter of pottery and obsidian". The population density at both settlements was very low at that stage, so they appeared more like a scattering of various small sites in the same area: "... new indicators of social complexity appeared simultaneously with dramatic settlement expansion at Brak and Khirbat al-Fakhar [Hamoukar], although not in the form known from later periods of northern Mesopotamian history. Both were extensive "proto-urban" settlements of low or variable density, with few other parallels elsewhere in the Near East." Another example is, Khirbat al-Fakhar already reached a massive size of 300 ha, or larger than the contemporary Uruk, itself.
Area TW of the tell (Archaeologists divided Tell Brak into areas designated with Alphabetic letters. See the map for Tell Brak's areas) revealed the remains of a monumental building with two meters thick walls and a basalt threshold. In front of the building, a sherd paved street was discovered, leading to the northern entrance of the city. Area TW covered an area of nearly 600 square meters up to a depth of 10 meters. A number of beveled rim bowls diagnostic of the Uruk period were found in the TW area.Oates, Joan, "Tell Brak: Uruk Pottery from the 1984 Season", Iraq, vol. 47, pp. 175–86, 1985 Fragnoli, P., et al., "Pottery production, early urbanization and the Uruk phenomenon at Tell Brak in Upper Mesopotamia", Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 17.9, pp. 1-25, 2025
Brak Period F Tell Brak Period F can be subdivided into two phases early (c. 3800–3600 BC; Late Chaltolihic 3) and late (c. 3600–3000 BC; Late Chaltolihic 4).
In the Early Brak Period F (c. 3800–3600 BC; LC3), the early city-state continued to expand and reached the size of 130 hectares. Four mass graves, mainly sub-adults and young adults were discovered in the submound, Tell Majnuna, 600 meters north-east of the main mound (built entirely of rubbish over two centuries), and they suggest that the process of urbanization was accompanied by internal social stress, and an increase in the organization of warfare.Sołtysiak, Arkadiusz, "Tell Majnuna (Syria), season 2006", Bioarchaeology of the Near East 2, pp. 77-94, 2008Sołtysiak, Arkadiusz, and Agata Chilińska-Drapella, "Tell Majnuna (Syria), seasons 2007-2008", Bioarchaeology of the Near East 3, pp. 53-58, 2009Sołtysiak, Arkadiusz, "Death and decay at the dawn of the city. Interpretation of human bone deposits at Tell Majnuna, areas MTW, EM and EMS.", Instytut Archeologii UW, Warszawa, 2010McMahon, Augusta, et al., "Late Chalcolithic Mass Graves at Tell Brak, Syria, and Violent Conflict during the Growth of Early City-States", Journal of Field Archaeology, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 201–20, 2011 The first half of period F (designated LC3), saw the erection of the Eye Temple, which was named for the thousands of small alabaster "Eye idols" and "Spectacle-topped idols" figurines discovered in it. Those idols were also found in area TW.
In Late Brak Period F (c. 3600–3000 BC; LC4) interaction with Southern Mesopotamia increased, and an Urukean colony was established in the city. With the end of Uruk culture c 3000 BC, Tell Brak's Urukean colony was abandoned and deliberately leveled by its occupants.
Brak Period G & H The Brak Period G (c. 3200–3000 BC; LC5), saw the site contracting during the following periods H and J, and became limited to the mound. In the Brak Period H (c. 3000–2900 BC; Post-Uruk), evidence exists for an interaction with the Mesopotamian south, represented by the existence of materials similar to the ones produced during the southern Jemdet Nasr period.
Early Bronze Brak Period J & K During the Brak Period J (2900–2600 BC) and K (2600–2400 BC) the city remained a small settlement during the Ninevite 5 period, with a small temple and associated sealing activities.
Kingdom of Nagar Around c. 2600 BC, a large administrative building was built and the city expanded out of the tell again. The revival is connected with the Kish civilization, and the city was named "Nagar". Amongst the important buildings dated to the kingdom, is an administrative building or temple named the "Brak Oval", located in area TC. The building had a curved exterior wall reminiscent of the Khafajah "Oval Temple" in central Mesopotamia. However, aside from the wall, the comparison between the two buildings in terms of architecture is difficult, as each building follows a different plan.
The oldest references to Nagar comes from Mari and tablets discovered at Nabada. However, the most important source on Nagar comes from the archives of Ebla. Most of the texts record the ruler of Nagar using his title "En", without mentioning a name. However a text from Ebla mentions Mara-Il, a king of Nagar; thus, he is the only ruler known by name for pre-Akkadian Nagar and ruled a little more than a generation before the kingdom's destruction.
At its height, Nagar encompassed most of the southwestern half of the Khabur Basin, and was a diplomatic and political equal of the Eblaite and Mariote states. The kingdom included at least 17 subordinate cities, such as Hazna, and most importantly Nabada, which was a city-state annexed by Nagar, and served as a provincial capital. Nagar was involved in the wide diplomatic network of Ebla, and the relations between the two kingdoms involved both confrontations and alliances. A text from Ebla mentions a victory of Ebla's king (perhaps Irkab-Damu) over Nagar. However, a few years later, a treaty was concluded, and the relations progressed toward a dynastic marriage between princess Tagrish-Damu of Ebla, and prince Ultum-Huhu, Nagar's monarch's son.