QaNaTES Project

The survey carried out on the archaeological site and soundings allowed the identification of materials dated to the Iron age, although they are not associated to sure contexts. All the region of Qaleh Naneh is porbably cited in the cuneiform texts starting from the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. An inscription of Amar-Suena (Ur III period = end of the 3rd millennium BC) dated to his eighth year of reign deals with a series of place-names located on the foothills road that led through the region east of the Tanjero valley (forming the Diyala valley after the confluence with the Sirwan river), probably near the modern city Halabja (Iraq) up to the Lake Zarībār. This ‘road’ was probably used by the Ur III kings to penetrate Western Iran at a very small distance east of the Diyala river. At the time of Ashurnasirpal II the plain of Marivan and the Zarībār Lake are integral part of the innermost region ('ša bitani') of Zamua which remains essentially autonomous from a political point of view. Later texts also refer to 'a sea of ​​Zamua' identified by A. Billerbeck with Lake Zarībār as early as 1898, although authoritative alternative hypotheses have made it coincide with the Urmia Lake for a long time. The itineraries followed during the Sargon II military campaigns aimed at the procurement of goods, the control of the communication routes and the territory in an anti-Urartian function place the Zarībār Lake and the Marivan plain or in the district of Surikaš or in the territory of Karalla, two place-names mentioned in the 5th , 7th , 8th  and 14th campaign (third quarter of the VIII century BCE).