Rediscovering Old Babylonian societies: The excavation project at Tell Muhammad (Baghdad)

In 2022, a team from the University of Catania resumed the archaeological work at the site of Tell Muhammad, a 2^nd millennium BCE settlement located in the southern suburbs of the modern city of Baghdad, marked by the presence of a sacred area dated to the Old Babylonian period. Tell Muhammad has a long stratigraphic sequence that starts during the Ur III period, at the end of the 3^rd millennium BCE, and ends during the Kassite period (ca. XVI^th-XIII^th century BCE). 

The long history of research started in the middle of the XIX^th century when F. Jones and A. H. Layard dicovered a series of objects among which the two copper-alloy hollowed mace-heads with the inscription "E.GAL ha-am-mu-ra-bi" (i.e., the palace of Hammurabi). These finds confer to the site a probable Old Babylonian presence during Hammurabi's kingdom. Excavations carried out by the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage between 1978 and 1985 brought to light a sacred area, as well as hundreds of cuneiform tablets probably dated to the end of the Old Babylonian period. Included in this collection are tablets with chronological references to the ‘Fall of Babylon’, dated to 1595 BCE.

The aims of this presentation will be to present a preliminary analysis of the architecture and the material culture discovered during the first two seasons of excavation, as well as to reconsider the archaeological results from the previous excavations carried out at this important site.

Zoom Access: 

https://zoom.us/j/98801030722?pwd=NmtWS3JVa0Y5TnM4OWRocjlrK1BKQT09