Search for Musasir capital resumes at Rabat Tepe next week
In its higher strata, Rabat Tepe dates back to some time around 1000 BC. Archaeologists had estimated the site covered only a four-hectare area, but last year’s studies have extended the area to 25 hectares.
The operation will begin with studies on the unique cobblestones unearthed during the previous excavations.
“An in-depth-study will be carried out on the cobblestones and the tepe will be precisely dated during this phase of excavations,” team director Reza Heidari told the Persian service of CHN on Saturday.
The cobblestones have been made of riverbed rounded stones with baked brick framing, a style which had previously only been observed in ancient Rome and Persia. The archaeologists will also survey how the people became acquainted with this art in their new studies, he added.
“We want to find more evidence to prove that the site was the capital of the Musasir state,” Heidari noted.
Musasir was a semi-independent buffer state bordering Mannai between Assyria and Urartu. It was a vassal state of Assyria yet Urartu had some claim over it.
Experts believe that it was an ancient city probably located near the upper Great Zab River between Lake Urmia and Lake Van, in present-day Turkey. Musasir was particularly important during the first half of the 1st millennium BC and is known primarily from bas-reliefs and inscriptions of the Assyrian king Sargon II, who captured it in 714.
According to the inscription, Sargon first plundered the palace and storerooms that belonged to Urzana, the king of Musasir, and then seized the even richer contents of the temple of Haldi, the god of the ancient kingdom of Urartu.
The archaeological team excavating Rabat Tepe also made a totally unique find last year when they discovered bricks bearing bas-reliefs of naked winged goddesses.