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1: G. Buccellati, March 2002

Overview

The Mozan/Urkesh Archaeological Project conducts excavations at Tell Mozan, a locality in northeastern Syria and the site of ancient Urkesh.      Urkesh was a major political and religious center of the Hurrians – an elusive population of the ancient Near East.      Our excavations have shown that they had developed a strong urban civilization, already at the very dawn of history, over 5000 years ago.      urkesh.org is its modern counterpart. Like ancient city-gates, a number of portals give access to our website.

The figure above peers at the written word that stands for our city as if an image of you, the visitor about to browse our site on the web. The music you hear (if your speakers are on) is that of the most ancient musical score ever discovered (at Ugarit) – a tune that accompanied a Hurrian religious hymn. Image and sound give you a glimpse of the Hurrian city and its world that our excavations have brought to light and that this website now brings to you. After a preface with basic information about the content and format of the website, we will show you the horizons that once framed the cultural growth of Urkesh and the archaeological site that we are disentangling from the grip of a soil measured in centuries. A kaleidoscope offers a gallery of images that capture the imagination and elicit our response with the same directness with which they did the ancients'.