Tell Hamidiya (Tall al-Hamidiya)

Tell Hamidiya is a large site on a bend of the Jaghjagh river, just north of Tell Barri. In the Old Babylonian period it was small but locally important. Under Mitanni, the Hurrian empire of the second millennium BC, it grew into a 245-hectare city ringed by a wall and a ditch, first a provincial capital and later a royal residence. It has been proposed as the Mitanni city of Taite, called Ta’idu in the Mari and Ebla texts. The case is strong but not settled, and other sites have been suggested. Locally the mound is also known as Tell Hamidi.

Where it is

North-east of Hasakah on the Upper Khabur plain: 20 kilometres north of Tell Brak and immediately north of Tell Barri (ancient Kahat). The sources disagree on the exact point of the site, so this page carries no map. The reliable approach is to go to Tell Barri and ask the way in the village there.

How long it takes

A little over an hour. The site is spread out: the high citadel mound, the terrace to its south and the traces of a lower town across the plain. Most of the time goes on climbing the mound.

What to see

The city was laid out on three levels. At the top is a citadel mound of close to 18 hectares, where excavators found a monumental palace of nearly 4 hectares and a smaller second palace. To the south, more than 5 metres lower, lies a walled terrace. The terrace wall is 21 metres thick, and three ramps connect the terrace to the lower town below. After the Mitanni city was destroyed, a Middle Assyrian palace was built over the ruins of the old one. The surface of the citadel has been badly cut up by pits dug in later periods.

The names of Assyrian kings turned up here too: stela fragments naming Shalmaneser I and Tukulti-Ninurta I, and inscribed bricks of Shalmaneser III. If this really is Taite, the destruction described by Adad-nirari I early in the 13th century BC is the destruction of this city.

What not to miss

The beer tablets. In 2007, 17 tablets and 94 dockets stamped with Mitanni seals were found in the rubble of the south-west palace. Every tablet is a list of beer rations. Among the people receiving them were men and women from Egypt, Cyprus, Ugarit and Arrapha: a record of beer handed out in a Mitanni palace to people from four different lands. The tablets are in the Deir ez-Zor Museum; what the mound offers is the place where the palace stood.

The site today

Maurice Dunand and Antoine Poidebard recorded the Roman and Byzantine walls here in 1926. In the early 1930s Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie paid a visit. A University of Bern team led by Markus Wäfler and Oskar Kaelin excavated from 1984 to 2011 and completed a geophysical survey of 41 hectares in 2010. In 1998 an army attempt to build a missile position damaged part of the site. There has been no excavation since 2011. We could not confirm the current state of the site: whether there is a guard, signage or any visiting arrangement is unknown. Before going, ask about the road and the site in Hasakah or in the village of Tell Brak.