Tell es-Sweyhat

Tell es-Sweyhat is a Bronze Age town on the east bank of the Euphrates, now on the east shore of Lake Assad. It was lived in from 3100 to 1900 BC. It covered about 45 hectares. A central hill rising 15 metres above the plain is surrounded by a broad, low mound enclosed by the remains of an earth rampart: the Kranzhügel, or ring-mound, form typical of northern Mesopotamia. The Tabqa Dam put many of the area’s excavation sites under water; Sweyhat is one of the large towns that stayed above it.

Where it is and getting there

The town lies about 95 kilometres north-east of Aleppo and 60 kilometres south of Carchemish. On the far shore are Jebel Aruda, a settlement of the Uruk period, and Tell Hadidi. It belongs to Raqqa province, in the Jarniyah subdistrict of Tabqa district. Access today, and whether there is a guard, could not be confirmed; ask in Tabqa before setting out.

What there is to see

Sweyhat is best known for two things. The first is its fortifications from the middle and end of the 3rd millennium BC, found in good condition. The second is a late 3rd-millennium temple on the hilltop. The height difference between the central hill and the low ring around it makes the town plan easy to read from above. How much of the trenches remains open today could not be confirmed.

Do not miss: the cemetery on the low mound

In 1993 a team from the University of Pennsylvania found a large cemetery on the low mound, dating to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. The graves are shaft-and-chamber tombs. A vertical shaft leads down to a burial chamber that opens off its side. Most visitors head for the central hill, but the town buried its dead in the low ring around it.

How the town ended

Sweyhat burned down at the end of the Ur III period and lay abandoned until the Hellenistic period, when the hill was settled again. One suggestion for its ancient name is Burman. It is not certain.

Excavation history

Thomas Holland of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford carried out the first excavations in 1973-1975, with support from Syria, UNESCO and Britain. Teams from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and from the University of Pennsylvania followed, with Zettler and Danti among the directors. The results appeared in the Oriental Institute Publications series in Chicago: Wilkinson’s study of settlement and land use in 2004, and Holland’s excavation report in 2006.