doi: 10.2143/AWE.16.0.3214945 AWE 16 (2017) 305-324 THE SITE OF ARZAN: A PRELIMINARY TOPOGRAPHICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECONNAISSANCE IN 2014* MICHAŁ MARCIAK Abstract This paper reports the results of a topographical and archaeological prospection of the site of Arzan and its vicinity, considered by many scholars to be the remains of ancient Tigranocerta, in 2014. The paper provides the first digital documentation of several archaeological objects. The aim of this docu- mentation is twofold. First, it is to document the site, which is subject to rapid degradation. Second, it is hoped that it can also cast additional light on Thomas Sinclair’s identification of Arzan as ancient Tigranocerta. Introduction The city of Tigranocerta was the famous foundation of perhaps the greatest Armenian king ever, Tigranes II (ca. 95–55 BC), also known as Tigranes the Great.1 The city was founded as the new capital of his recently expanded kingdom. The Armenian kingdom had never before and would never again reach such a state of political significance and control (from ca. 87 to 69 BC2) such vast areas of territory, from the Pontic Mountains to Mesopotamia, and from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean (including Cilicia and Syria). The main problem with the identification of Tigranocerta is that the scattered references to its location in ancient sources are not precise, and taken all together, the literary evidence * This paper is part of the author’s research project financed by the National Science Centre in Poland and devoted to three regna minora of Northern Mesopotamia: Sophene, Gordyene and Adia- bene (UMO-2011/03/N/HS3/01159). The project is being conducted at the University of Rzeszów under the supervision of Prof. M.J. Olbrycht. I wish to thank Prof. T. Sinclair (Cyprus University), Prof. E. Kettenhofen (Trier University), Dr A. Comfort (Exeter University), Prof. C. Lippolis (Turin University) and Dr R. Wójcikowski (Rzeszów University) for their feedback. An earlier draft of this paper was delivered at the colloquium ‘Baltica-Iranica’, held in Rzucewo, Poland (arranged by the Department of Mediterranean Archaeology of Gdańsk University) on 15–18 October 2014. I am grateful to Prof. N. Secunda for inviting me, and to Dr V. Sarkhosh Curtis (British Museum) and Dr J. Curtis (Iran Heritage Foundation) for their valuable comments. Finally, I would like to thank the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Of course, the sole responsibility for the content of this paper, and its all possible deficiencies, lies with the author. 1 For the political context of the reign of Tigranes the Great, see Holmes 1923, 176–212; Sherwin- White 1984, 159–206; Sinclair 1994–95, 184–85; Garsoïan 1997; Olbrycht 2009; 2011; Geller and Traina 2013, 450–54. 2 See Sinclair 1994–95, 184–85; Geller and Traina 2013, 451. 306 M. MARCIAK is contradictory. Generally speaking, we can tentatively distinguish three main groups of sources which feature approximately the same location of Tigranocerta.3 The first group includes Strabo (ca. 64 or 63 BC–AD 24) and Tacitus (ca. AD 55–120) in particular, who envisage Tigranocerta as a city located south of the Tigris (Strabo 11. 12. 4, 11. 14. 15, 12. 2. 9, 16. 1. 23; Tacitus Annals 14. 24–25, 15. 4–5). To be more precise, Strabo makes a clear connection between Tigranocerta, Nisibis and Mt. Masion (Strabo 11. 12. 4, 16. 1. 23): Tigranocerta and Nisibis are said to lie at the foot of Mt. Masion, which can definitely be identified as part of the modern belt of limestone hills known as the Mazi and Ṭūr ῾Abdīn Mts.4 In turn, there can be no doubt that ancient Nisibis lay below the modern Turkish settlement, Nusaybin.5 What is more, Tacitus (Annals 15. 5) delivers a very precise detail – the distance between Nisibis and Tigranocerta was 37 Roman miles (approx- imately 55 km).6 Several locations have been proposed to be the site matching the data of Strabo and Tacitus, but by far the most frequently suggested was Tell Ermen (modern Kιzιltepe).7 The second group includes a number of ancient sources which locate Tigranocerta north of the Tigris: Roman itineraries (especially the Peutinger Table), Ptolemy, Eutropius and the Epic Histories. The first two sources do not provide us with precise clues for the location of Tigranocerta, but they leave no doubt that the city was located north of the Tigris. On the Peutinger Table (a medieval map-like representation whose source may go back to first centuries AD), Tigranocerta is visually placed north of the Tigris and at the crossroads of three routes – from ad Tygrem to Tigranocerta, from Tigranocerta to Singara and from Tigranocerta to Artaxata.8 In turn, Ptolemy (AD 90–168) places Tigranocerta in his list of cities located east of the sources of the Tigris and in the territory of Bagrauanende, Gordy- ene, Kotaia and the Mardians (Ptolemy Geography 5. 13. 20).9 By contrast, both Eutropius’ Breviarium 6. 9. 1 (fl. in the second half of the 4th century AD) and the Armenian source known as the Epic Histories 4. 24 (probably the 5th century AD10) are more precise – Tigranocerta was the main city of the land of Arzanene (Ałjnik῾), the borders of which were clearly demarked, at least in the 6th century AD (see Procopius De aedificiis 2. 25. 15), by the Batman and Bohtan rivers, two northern tributaries of the Tigris.11 Several sites have been suggested for this ‘northern’ location of Tigranocerta (especially Siirt, Silvan and 3 For a recent detailed overview of literary references and archaeological identifications, see Marciak forthcoming. Other recent overviews offering a wide range of scholarly opinions include Chaumont 1982 and Plontke-Lüning 2001. See also Avdoyan 2006 and Hakobyan 2010. 4 Dillemann 1962, 39, fig. 3; Sinclair 1994–95, 189. 5 Dillemann 1962, 80–81; Pigulevskaja 1963, 49–59; Comfort 2009, 303–06. 6 Chaumont 1982, 92. 7 Sachau 1880; 1883, 403; Mommsen 1909, 68; Henderson 1901; Dillemann 1962, 247–72; Lasserre 1975, 176–77. 8 See Miller 1916, 745–47; Hewsen 2001, map 58. 9 Stückelberger and Graßhoff 2006, 554–55. 10 See Garsoïan 1989, 1–22; Traina 2010a, 417–19. 11 For Arzanene, see Baumgartner 1896a–b; Hübschmann 1904, 248–51, 305–06, 310–12; Markwart 1930, 82; Honigmann 1935, 5; Dillemann 1962, 48–49, 121–23, 253–54; Whitby 1983; Blockley 1984, 31–32; Wheeler 1991, 506; Syme 1995, 56. THE SITE OF ARZAN 307 Arzan), but in fact, until recently, Silvan (Martyropolis) was the prevailing choice of scholars opting for the ‘northern’ location.12 Furthermore, Armenian sources (except for the Epic Histories) could perhaps be tenta- tively classified as another group of sources, as their references to the city of Tigran (Tigranakert) differ strikingly from the two ‘classic’ positions mentioned above. Namely, Tigranocerta is identified with Roman Amida (modern Diyarbakır) by three Armenian sources: the History of the Armenians (dated variously from the 6th to the 9th century AD13) by Moses of Khoren (only an implicit identification – MX 3. 26–28); the History of Vardan and the Armenian War, attributed to Elisaeus (Ełišē, probably from the 6th century AD); and the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa (12th century AD).14 Furthermore, two other Arme- nian sources, Sebēos (7th century AD) and Stephen of Tarōn (11th century AD), also speak of Tigranocerta in the context of the military campaigns of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius against the Sasanians in AD 622–628 in the Caucasus region.15 Especially intriguing is the phrase ‘the other Tigranocerta’ used by Sebēos (38. 125).16 While the identification of Amida as the site of ancient Tigranocerta has either been widely ignored or seen as the product of late local Armenian tradition,17 it has been a different matter with site(s) in the Caucasian region. In 2005, Armenian archaeologists began excavations near Shahbulagh in the Armenian historical region of Artsakh (currently the Martakert region/Tartar district; the site is located approximately at 40° 03’ 55.0” N, 46° 54’ 21.0” E), which have brought to light a massive Hellenistic foundation occupied from the 1st century BC to the 14th century AD.18 Given the 19th century local tradition, which preserved names such as Tngrnakert, Tarnakert, Taraniurt or Tarnagiurt for this vicinity, Hamlet Petrosyan, the main excavator, suggested that the newly unearthed struc- ture was founded by Tigranes II (Tigranes the Great). This discovery has in turn led Giusto Traina to attempt another historical reinterpretation of all other evidence concern- ing Tigranocerta.19 In short, in Traina’s view, more than one city was called Tigranocerta in ancient Armenia,20 and this fact may also have contributed to the confusion present in 12 von Moltke 1893, 302; Belck 1899, 263–75; Lehmann-Haupt 1908; 1910, 410–19, 498–515; 1936, 1002–05; Christensen 1944, 239; Carcopino 1950, 581, n. 3; Manandyan 1965, 62; Adontz- Garsoïan 1970, 376, nn. 5, 10; Magie 1950, 1214, n. 36; Hewsen 1984, 360; Biffi 2002, 165. 13 See Traina 2010a, 417–19. 14 Chaumont 1988–89, 237. 15 Thomson and Howard-Johnston 1999, xi–xxx; van Esbroech 1987; Chaumont 1982, 108–09; 1988–89, 237–38. 16 Thomson and Howard-Johnston 1999, 82. Sebēos 26 according to the sigla given by Macler 1904, 82. 17 See Chaumont 1982, 100: ‘Cette tradition fallacieuse, dont il est malaisé de déceler l’origine...’ 18 See Petrosyan 2010a; 2010b. 19 Traina 2001 (writing before the excavations in Artsakh); 2007; 2010c in particular. 20 Traina 2010c. However, this idea is not completely new. For instance, see Holmes 1923, 424: ‘May I tentatively suggest that just as one Nicopolis is represented by Niboli and another by Purkh, just as Tash Keupsi arose out of one Pompeiopolis and Mezetli out of another, so the Tigranocerta ...’ 308 M.