Tell Sakka, a Bronze Age Palace near Damascus

A mound (tell, a hill built up from layers of settlement) in the village of Sakka on the edge of the Ghouta, the farmland around Damascus, 25 km southeast of the city and 5 km northwest of the international airport. Excavations that began in 1989 exposed four layers; the deepest holds a palace with painted walls dated to 1800-1500 BC. The first cuneiform tablet found in the Damascus region also came from here. It is an excavation site: what is visible on the surface today, whether the dig is protected and where the finds are displayed could not be confirmed. Do not confuse it with Shaqqa in the Hauran.

Who excavated it

The Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums started the dig in 1989 to train archaeology students in the field. Ahmad Taraqji led the team, and the work ran for at least 11 seasons. Over the years the mound was encroached upon; two and a half hectares of its original area remain.

What the layers show

• At the top, graves from the Mamluk and Ottoman periods.
• Below them, classical graves from 300 BC to the 5th century AD; some held glass and clay bottles placed at funerals to collect tears.
• The third layer has Late Bronze Age farmhouses from 1500-1300 BC: rooms of 16 square metres, weaving workshops and seals.
• At the bottom, a Middle Bronze Age palace from 1800-1500 BC.

The palace and its wall paintings

The palace’s mudbrick walls are 180 cm thick. Its courtyard measures fourteen and a half by twenty-two and a half metres. There is a columned entrance on the south and four large columns set in a square in the middle. The inner walls were coated with white plaster and painted in colour. The male and female figures are compared to the paintings of Zimri-Lim’s palace at Mari, and the technique to the frescoes of Egyptian temples and tombs; it is also set beside the work at Qatna. Egyptian-style seals turned up in the same layer. Together they point to links between the Damascus region and the Nile valley in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC.

Do not miss

The tablet. The first cuneiform document found in the Damascus region is written in the style of the Mari archives and opens with “to my brother Zimri-Lim”. Zimri-Lim was king of Mari on the Euphrates. The dig also produced a sphinx carved from a cow’s shoulder blade. Where either is displayed today could not be confirmed; the National Museum in Damascus is the first place to ask.

Getting there

From Damascus, head towards the airport to the village of Sakka, in the al-Ghizlaniyah subdistrict of the Douma district. The mound has no marker of its own on the map, and whether there is a sign or path on site could not be confirmed; ask for it in the village.