The Baliḫ Area

External information supplementing our understanding of the Hittite empire arrives from archives found in or near the Baliḫ area, at the time in control of the Middle Assyrian kingdom. The archives are those from Harbe, Dur-Katlimmu, and Tell Sabi Abyad.

The ruins of Harbe (today Tell Chuera) lie ca. 50 km east of the Baliḫ, on the way to the Habur river. It had a strategic location on the route from Hatti to Waššukanni via Karkemiš (Tenu 2009, Postgate 2013). The archive found at Tell Chuera (Jakob 2009) includes directives from Dur-Katlimmu (below) and Waššukanni concerning the passage of merchants and emissaries from Hatti, Amurru, or Sidon.

Dur-Katlimmu (modern Tell Sheikh Hammad) was the seat of the Chief Chancellor, who oversaw the land of Hanigalbat, now under Assyrian rule. The letters found at Dur-Katlimmu (Cancik-Kirschbaum 1996), contemporary with those from Harbe, provide similar information on the diplomatic, administrative, and economic contexts to that of the Tell Chuera texts.

Excavations at Tell Sabi Abyad found ca. 300 tablets, all of which are yet to be published (Wiggermann, forthcoming). Among them, a remarkable group of letters inform of affairs at the border zone in the final days of Hittite rule (early 12th century BC).

Beyond the Baliḫ, additional near contemporary information arrives from the hundreths of tablets found at ancient Ṭābatum (Tell Taban), by the river Habur.