Archaeologists discover 3,400-year-old sunken city in Iraq after extreme drought

A sprawling 3,400-year-old city emerged in Iraq after the water level in a reservoir dropped rapidly due to extreme drought.

Kurdish and German archaeologists excavated the settlement in the Mosul Reservoir along the Tigris River in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq in January and February.

The project was carried out in partnership with the Duhok Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage to preserve the region’s cultural heritage for future generations.

The archaeological site, Kemune, is believed to be the Bronze Age city of Zakhiku, an important center of the Mittani Empire that reigned from 1550 to 1350 BC

The kingdom’s territory stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to northern Iraq, according to Ivana Puljiz, a junior professor in the department of archeology and Assyriology of the Near East at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany, and one of the directors of the project.

A race against time

Zakhiku was submerged after the Iraqi government built the Mosul Dam in the 1980s and has rarely seen the light of day since.

After Puljiz learned that the city had resurfaced, his team rushed to excavate the site because it was unknown when water levels would rise again.

“Due to enormous weather pressure, we dug in freezing temperatures, snow, hail, rain, even thunderstorms, as well as the occasional sunny day, not knowing when the water would rise again and how long we would have,” Puljiz said.

The ancient city is now underwater, but researchers have managed to catalog much of the site.

A palace had already been documented when the city briefly emerged in 2018, but several additional structures were documented during the latest excavation. Some of the discoveries include a fortification complete with towers and walls and a multi-story storage building.

Many of the structures were made of sun-dried mud bricks, which would normally not hold up well underwater, the researchers said. However, Zakhiku suffered an earthquake around 1350 BC, and parts of the upper walls collapsed and covered the buildings.

preserving the past

Little is known about the ancient Mittani people who built the city, largely due to the fact that researchers have not identified the empire’s capital or uncovered its archives, Puljiz said. However, certain artifacts unearthed during the last excavation may help provide information.

Archaeologists have found five ceramic vessels containing more than 100 clay cuneiform tablets, which date back closely to the earthquake event. They are believed to be from the Middle Assyrian period, which lasted from 1350 to 1100 BC, and could pave the way for research into the city’s demise and the rise of Assyrian rule in the area, according to a press release.

“It is almost a miracle that cuneiform (written) tablets made of raw clay have survived so many decades underwater,” Peter Pfälzner, professor of Near Eastern archeology at the University of Tübingen and one of the directors of the excavation, said in a statement.

The tablets have not yet been deciphered, but Puljiz assumed they belonged to a private archive.

“I am curious to see what studying the cuneiform texts will reveal about the fate of the city and its inhabitants after the devastating earthquake,” she said.

All the artifacts that have been excavated, including the tablets, are housed in the National Museum in Duhok.

Before the city once again disappeared underwater, researchers covered the ruins in tight plastic sheets held together with rocks and gravel. Puljiz hopes these measures will protect the former site from water erosion and prevent it from disappearing completely.