Occupation at Ziyaret Tepe is documented from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 BC) to the Medieval period (15th century AD). During most of this time, Ziyaret Tepe was a small village a few hectares in extent. During the Middle and Late Assyrian periods, archaeological and textual references suggest that the settlement expanded into a city of 32 hectares (79 acres). The timeline above covers the basic chronology of the Assyrians and the place of Tushhan (ancient Ziyaret Tepe) within their kingdom.

Click here to see a Region Map of the Late Assyrian Period
This map shows the Upper Tigris and Euphrates River valleys in the Late Assyrian period. Tushan (Ziyaret Tepe) is shown in the eastern half of the map. The red marks denote the Assyrian road systems connecting the various important places of the empire. Amidu is the location of modern-day Diyarbakir. The map is excerpted, with permission of the author, from The Helsinki Atlas of the Near East in the Neo-Assyrian Period (2001), edited by Simo Parpola and Michael Porter. The atlas is published by the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute’s Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.