Excavation Continues at Turkey’s Amida Mound

DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY—Hürriyet Daily News reports that excavations at Amida Mound, which is located near the Tigris River in southeastern Anatolia, have shown that the site was occupied as early as 10,000 years ago. Over time, the site has been occupied by numerous groups, including the Assyrians, Urartians, Medes, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Umayyads, Seljuks, and the Ottomans. This year, İrfan Yildiz of Dicle University and his colleagues worked at the site of the Artuqid Palace, which was constructed in the thirteenth century within the walled city of Diyarbakir by Nasir al-Din Mahmud of the Artuqid dynasty. The team members also uncovered about 100 feet of the nearby Royal Road. “We found four coins in total, representing the Ottoman and Ayyubid periods, as well as one from the Republican era,” Yildiz said. The Ottoman coin was one of the first produced after the Republic was founded in 1923, he explained. One side of the coin features an oak leaf, an acorn, and a crescent and star, while the reverse shows a wheat stalk. An inscription, written in the Ottoman script, states that the coin was worth “10 kuruş,” and was minted by the Republic in 1926. To read about a medieval walled city in southwestern Turkey, go to "Off the Grid: Beçin, Turkey."