Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar

Abstract

I saw the great mound of Brak for the first time on a hot afternoon in November, 1934, when, together with my wife and Mr. Macartney, I was examining the ancient sites in the Khabur and Jaghjagha valleys of northern Syria. As we walked up the steep slopes of the tall we kicked aside countless fragments of potsherds and other ancient debris, and parched as we were it seemed tedious to speculate on what periods of history lay buried within. To us no less than to others bent on the same quest who had passed that way before, it was clear that here was a site of great historical importance. Layard, von Oppenheim, Dunand and Poidebard had in turn marked it down, but had been deflected by other objectives. Only Father Poidebard had stopped long enough to excavate a Roman camp on the plain near by, and after driving a trench into the upper slopes of the tall had satisfied himself that it had been an important Assyrian settlement. For my own part, I noted that this was a magnificent site which would be well worth digging, provided that sufficient funds were available for the purpose. But before attempting to come to grips with so formidable a mound it was obviously desirable to find out more about the general sequence of stratification elsewhere in the district. We therefore continued to look for a smaller site which would yield results more quickly, and after completing our survey in December, 1934, we decided to start on Chagar Bazar about 20 miles N.N.W. of Brak as the crow flies, where we dug for two successive seasons in the Spring of 1935 and 1936. The results obtained during these two campaigns I have already described in previous numbers of Iraq.