Qatna is an ancient city in Syria, present day Tell-el-Mishrife in the Wadi il-Aswad, a tributary of the Orontes, 18 km northeast of Homs. The tell occupies 1 km², which makes it one of the biggest bronze Age towns in western Syria. The tell is located at the edge of the limestone-plateau of the Syrian desert towards the fertile Homs-Bassin.1 Visible remains
The remains of the town-wall are still preserved to a heigt of 20 m in parts. It consists of mudbricks and limestone rubble that probably were originally faced by a mudbrick wall. An artificial ditch ran in front of the wall. The wall encloses a square area, which is rather unusual for a Bronze Age town. There were four gates in the middle of each side. The gates were faced by orthostats of white limestone and black basalt, the foundations were partly cut into the rock. The entrance was about 4m wide and led to a gate-chamber 8 m deep.
The 'colline centrale' near the centre of the town may have been the acropolis. The Royal palace was located on the 'Butte de l'eglise' in the Northwest corner of the upper town. It is one of the biggest buildings of its kind known so far in Bronze Age Syria. Unfortunately, numerous mudbrick-walls were overlooked during the excavations in the 1920s and dug away. Only walls faced with stone slabs or delimited by the hard floor surface remained.
The layout of the palace of Qatna is very similar to that of Mari. Numerous basalt pillar bases have been found. This use of pillars is comparable to the palace of Yarim-Lim in Alalakh VII. The big dimensions of some rooms (the 'cour du throne' measures 20 m across) may indicate that cedar beams were used for the roof. The Palace dates to the Old-Syrian period and was maybe the residence of King Ishi-Addu (see below).
On the "Small Acropolis" in the North of the central mound a second palace has been discovered in 2002 which may be the residence of a member of the Royal family.
The tell housed a small Christian town that was resettled in the 1980s. New Misrife has about 2500 inhabitants today (2000).
2 History of the excavations
Tell-el-Mishrife was excavated between 1924-1927 and 1929 by Robert du Mesnil du Boisson while Syria was a French protectorate. He uncovered parts of the Bronze Age Royal palace, three gates and tombs on the slope between the upper and lower town ('Falaise'). The Syrian Direction Générale des Antiquités excavated on the Colline centrale and the gates. In 1999 excavations have been resumed by the Direction Générale des Antiquités et des Musées in Damascus, the University of Udine and the University of Tübingen.
The discovery of the Royal tombs and cuneiform tablets in 2002 have led to a state of cold war between the German and Italian excavation team.
3 Historical geography and trade
In the 2nd Millennium BC trade routes developed connecting Mesopotamia with Cyprus, Crete and Egypt. Qatna was then situated near the end of the road connecting the middle Euphates valley, for example Mari by way of Tadmor/Palmyra to the Mediterranean.
Another route started from AleppoAleppo is also the name of two townships in the U. state of Pennsylvania. See: Aleppo Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania and Aleppo Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania. Aleppo Arabic alab Tiberian Hebrew l (modern or Ivrit Hebrew Xalav : both mean, left the Euphrates at Emar and led via Halab, Qatna and Hazor to Egypt.
The valley of Homs formed a connection to the Mediterranean near the port of ByblosByblos was a city of Phoenicia, in ancient times. Its inhabitants called their city Gebal and it was known to the ancient Egyptians as Kepen but the Greeks called it Byblos probably because it was through Gebal that byblos (" papyrus" from Egypt) was impo and TripoliTripoli is the second-largest city in Lebanon. In ancient times it was a Phoenician city, and was later controlled successively by the Persians, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Mameluks, and Ottomans. The Crusaders established the County of Tripoli there in the, running between the Lebanon and the Ansari-mountains.
Qatna is mentioned in the tinThe word tin is often used to mean a can, even if it does not contain any tin metal. Tin is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Sn ( L. Stannum and atomic number 50. This silvery, malleable poor metal that is not easily oxidized i trade, which went from Mari via Qatna to the Mediterranean, Cypriote copperCopper is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. Notable characteristics Copper is a reddish-coloured metal, with a high electrical and thermal conductivity (among pure metals at room temperature, only silver was transported in the other direction. The Mari texts mention cloth, clothing, a certain kind of bows, jewellery, woods, wine and two-wheeled chariotFor the torpedo-shaped underwater vehicle ridden by two frogmen sometimes referred to as 'chariot', see Human torpedo''. Hittite chariot (drawing of an egyptian relief) A chariot is a two-wheeled, horse-drawn vehicle. In Latin biga is a two-horse chariot,s as trade goods reaching Mari via Qatna and partly going on to BabylonBabylon was the capital city of Babylonia in Mesopotamia (in contemporary Iraq, about 70 miles south of Baghdad). The name is the Greek form of Babel which is derived in turn from the Semitic form Babilu meaning "The Gate of God". This Semitic word is a t.
