Nuzi: the archive of a medium-sized town in the Mitanni kingdom

The explanations distinguish finds, interpretations and open questions. Sources appear at the end of the page.

What the source says

The source is a Harvard Art Museums record for a lion of glazed terracotta, whose former title is "One of Two Lions from the Temple of Ishtar, Nuzi". According to the gallery text attached to it, Nuzi, largely inhabited by Hurrians, the Bronze Age people of this region, was violently destroyed about 1350 BCE. Excavations in 1925-31, partly funded by Harvard University, revealed large parts of the settlement and more than 8,000 clay tablets and fragments with cuneiform texts. The documents are kept at Harvard's Semitic Museum and, according to the text, offer rich evidence of life in a medium-sized town in the Mitanni kingdom, an important power of the time whose reach extended over Syria and northern Mesopotamia. Source 1.

An archive known from a label

Here the information on the archive comes from a gallery text that accompanies another object, not from an edition of the tablets. The text does not say what the tablets contain, who wrote them, in which buildings they were found or how many are complete: the figure "more than 8,000" includes fragments. The description "medium-sized town" is also the source's, and it does not explain on what basis it was made. What can be said is that the tablets were uncovered in the excavation of the settlement itself and are kept together, so they speak, in the source's words, of one town, rather than being single documents from different places. Source 1.

One object from the town

The lion itself, object number 1931.162.A, of glazed terracotta, is dated in the record 1500-1350 BCE, to the "Mitannian period" and to Hurrian culture, and was excavated at Yorghan Tepe, Iraq, in January 1930. According to the gallery text it is one of a pair from the main temple of ancient Nuzi, which probably flanked an image of the deity, who has been identified as Ishtar. The "probably" and the "identified" are the source's: the placing of the lions is a reconstruction, not a description of what was found in place. Source 1.

Its place on the timeline

In the Met's timeline for Mesopotamia, 2000-1000 BCE, the Mitanni period in the north is dated about 1600-1350 BCE, and the Late Bronze Age as a whole about 1600-1200 BCE. The destruction of Nuzi about 1350 BCE and the lion's date, 1500-1350 BCE, fall within the Late Bronze Age, so the article is placed in the Late Bronze Age in Mesopotamia. The end of the Mitanni period in the list and the destruction of Nuzi fall on the same round date, but neither source connects them. Sources 2, 1.

Scope of reading: the lion's record on the Harvard Art Museums site and the Met timeline page for Mesopotamia, 2000-1000 BCE, were read on 24 October 2026. The tablets, their editions and the Nuzi excavation reports were not read, so this page gives no document contents, names of inhabitants or town plan.