Archaeology Magazine (November/December – 2023):

Assyrian Women of Letters

4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets illuminate the personal lives of Mesopotamian businesswomen

By DURRIE BOUSCAREN

Excavations at the ancient Anatolian city of Kanesh in Turkey have revealed a district where merchants from the distant Mesopotamian city of Assur in Iraq lived and worked. Some 23,000 cuneiform tablets, mostly dating from about 1900 to 1840 B.C., have been found in the merchants’ personal archives in Kanesh.

The parents of an Assyrian woman named Zizizi were furious. Like many of their neighbors’ children, their daughter had dutifully wed an Assyrian merchant. Sometime around the year 1860 B.C., she had traveled with him to the faraway Anatolian city of Kanesh in modern-day Turkey, where he traded textiles. But her husband passed away and, instead of returning to her family, Zizizi chose to marry a local.

Ukraine’s Lost Capital

Ukraine Batyrn Cossack Citadel — Archaeologists have spent decades excavating the remnants of the Cossack capital of Baturyn in north-central Ukraine. Based on the excavation’s findings, the Ukrainian government has reconstructed the town’s citadel—including the wooden Church of the Resurrection, defensive walls, rampart, and moat—which was destroyed by Russian soldiers in 1708.

In 1708, Peter the Great destroyed Baturyn, a bastion of Cossack independence and culture

By DANIEL WEISS

On November 2, 1708, thousands of Russian troops acting on the orders of Czar Peter I, known as Peter the Great, stormed Baturyn, the Cossack capital in north-central Ukraine. The Cossack leader, or hetman, Ivan Mazepa—who had been a loyal vassal of the czar until not long before—had departed with much of his army several days earlier to join forces with the Swedish king Charles XII, Peter’s opponent in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The fortified core of Baturyn consisted of a citadel on a high promontory overlooking the Seim River and a larger adjoining fortress densely packed with buildings, above which soared the brick Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The citadel and fortress were each surrounded by defensive walls, earthen ramparts, and moats whose sides were lined with logs. Although they sustained heavy losses, the Russian forces managed to seize Baturyn, which proved to be a key victory.