Operation 2

In Operation 2 we cleared Middle Assyrian walls exposed during the season 1990. This area was extended to the north and to the south and the whole trench is now 40 m long. In the south extension where a new 10 x 10 m square was opened, the upper levels were added to the older horizon resulting in the continuous sequence of nine building levels: – one Parthian level – three Late Assyrian levels – a level from the turn of the 2nd to 1st millennium B.C. – four Middle Assyrian building levels. We have not reached the Old Assyrian deposits yet, but from the surface of the street on the north side came painted sherds of the ‘old Habur ware’.

In the upper Late Assyrian level in the south extension there is a street of 2.6 m width running in a SW–NO direction which was also cut by Andrae in the trial trench ‘cD9I’. The mud brick walls of the houses on both sides of this street were built on stone foundations. Between the stones and the brick superstructure was a thin layer of sherds and brick pieces, which served to make the foundation level. Their floors were of mud or of stones and pebbles, in the doorways were thresholds of limestone. The structure in the fifth level exposed in the north extension had extended pavements of backed bricks. In the fill of the Assyrian destruction level were some burials of the post-Assyrian period.

In the central part of the trench stood a Middle Assyrian house with a brick tomb which had already been excavated in 1990. The baked bricks of the pavement were signed with finger marks and with private stamps of a person named Usur-Enlil. In the destroyed vault we now found bricks with a second Name: Adad-etir (after S. M. Maul).