Tell Chuera

Tell Chuera is a large Bronze Age city between the Balikh and Khabur rivers, about 5 kilometres south of the Turkish border. At 65 hectares it counts as the largest tell in the region. It is close to a kilometre across and 18 metres high. A high upper town sits in the middle and a walled circular lower town surrounds it. A deep ditch runs in front. Archaeologists call this form a Kranzhügel, or ring mound, and Chuera is one of its best-excavated examples. The city was founded around 2800 BC and abandoned around 2350 BC.

Where it is and getting there

The mound lies 4 kilometres south of the road between Suluk and Ras al-Ain, midway along the stretch where the two rivers cross the border. It belongs to Raqqa province, Tell Abyad district, and is also close to routes coming from Hasakah. The area fell inside the strip taken by Turkey and the Syrian National Army in 2019. Who controls it today, and whether it can be reached, could not be confirmed; ask locally about the road before setting out.

What a ring mound means

The name comes from Max von Oppenheim, who toured the region in 1913 and called hills of this type Kranzhügel, wreath hills. At Chuera it is more than a shape. It is the skeleton of a planned city. In the upper town streets radiate from the centre; in the lower town they cross at right angles, with a main street running through the middle. The result is a city laid out in advance, in northern Mesopotamia, in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC.

What was found

The upper town has three buildings of undressed stone (Steinbau I-III) and a small mud-brick temple at its centre. French sources count it among the oldest known temples in antis in Syria: its entrance is framed by the projecting ends of the side walls. A processional way leads to the temple, lined with rough megalithic stelae 2-3 metres high.

Fragments of alabaster votive statuettes came to light too: men with long wigs and square-cut beards, in Sumerian style, the largest 35 centimetres tall. Steinbau I held bronze vessels and copper pins like those from the royal cemetery at Ur. A copper statue is reported to be in the National Museum of Damascus. The city was abandoned around 2350 BC without leaving a destruction layer, and there is renewed activity on the hill in the Ur III period (2112-2004 BC).

Do not miss: the governor’s house at Harbe

The hill did not stay empty after the Bronze Age city was left. After a Mitanni settlement, a town called Harbe stood here in the Middle Assyrian period. The governor’s residence, about 30 by 30 metres, has been excavated; two towers flanked its entrance. Horse bones of the period came from the same layer. An earlier name, Abarsal, has also been proposed. It is not proven.

Excavation history

Max von Oppenheim described the mound in 1913. In 1958 Anton Moortgat of the Free University of Berlin began digging, and Ursula Moortgat-Correns continued in 1973, 1974 and 1976. From 1982 to 1998 Winfried Orthmann of Halle and Moortgat-Correns led the work, and from 1998 to 2005 Jan-Waalke Meyer of Frankfurt. The state of the site since the war could not be confirmed.