Tell Sukas

Tell Sukas
Shuksi, Suksi
Location of Tell Sukas in Syria
35°18′23″N 35°55′20″E / 35.306318°N 35.922203°E / 35.306318; 35.922203
Type	Tell
Periods	Late Bronze Age, Iron Age
Location	near Jableh, Syria
Region	Levant
Part of	Town
History
Abandoned	c. 69 BC
Site notes
Material	Clay, Limestone
Area	1.9 hectares (200,000 ft²)
Excavation dates	1934, 1958–1961, 1963
Archaeologists	Emil Forrer, P.J. Riis
Condition	Ruins
Management	Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums
Public access	Yes

Tell Sukas (also "Teil Sukäs" and "Tell Soukas") (possibly ancient Shuksi or Suksi) is a Late Bronze Age archaeological mound on the Eastern Mediterranean coast about 6 kilometers south of modern Jableh, Syria. It lies about 5 kilometers to the south of Tell Tweini which has been one of the sites proposed as ancient Gibala. The site of Qalat Er-Rouss is a further 9 kilometers to the north. The site of Tell Daruk is not far to the south.^[1]

History

Neolithic Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages

Based on a single deep but narrow sondage the site was occupied in the Neolithic, Chacolithic, and Early Bronze Ages but little can be said of the form of occupation. There was a hiatus of occupation after the Neolithic period with settlement returning in the Late Chalcolithic period. These findings were supported by a number of radiocarbon dates.^[2]

Middle Bronze Age

The most prominnnt feature of the Midde Bronze Age was a large collective tomb (Tomb IV) with three burial layers. It held 41 individuals "dis-articulated skeletal components which had been subject to secondary treatment". Wth the poor state of preservation and damaged from construction in later periods along with the excavator's focus on the Iron Age, little be determined about the buildings associated with the tomb.^[2]

Late Bronze Age

The site is generally identified as ancient Suksi, which was mentioned in the Ugarit tablets.^[3] It was part of Siyannu-Ušhnatu which was the next kingdom to the south below that of Ugarit.^[4] An ash layer was interpreted by the excavators as a destuction by violent conflagration c. 1170 BC like other coastal Mediterranean sites inclding Tell Tweini and Ugarit to the north. Unlike those it does not enter a period of abandonment afterward.^[2]

Iron Age

The site was reused shortly thereafter and commercial activity at the Iron Age settlement can be traced again to at least the tenth century BC,^[5] when it became the port of Luhuti,^[6]

Phoenician and Greek settlement

The Phoenician coastal settlement, divided into two phases (Phoenician II and I). Archaeological evidence points to strong trade connections with Cyprus and the Aegean, as shown by imported Greek and Cypriot pottery.^[7]

Archaeological findings indicate that the Greeks established a settlement at Tell Sukas at approximately the same time they arrived at Al-Mina, the town thrived as a Greek trading outpost until c. 498 BC. Multiple regional conflicts in the 6th century BC and the early 5th century BC contributed to the eventual abandonment of the Greek settlement. Like Al-Mina, Tell Sukas served as a port that likely enabled transplanted Greeks to engage in trade with both fellow Greeks and the local inhabitants. Greek settlers established themselves at Tell Sukas alongside Cypriots.^[8]^[9]

Neo-Phoenician and Hellenistic Periods

The site was largely abandoned after the destruction of the Greek settlement (around 498 BC) and was later reoccupied by Phoenicians between about 380 and 140 BC. Later Hellenistic phases were destroyed by earthquakes.^[7]

Roman, Byzantine and Medieval Periods

The Byzantines transformed the mound into a fortress, which was later expanded by the Crusaders,^[10] occupied by Muslim forces and abandoned in the 14th century.^[11]

Archeology

Tell Sukas consists of a central main mound that overlooks natural harbors to the north and south. On the far shore of the southern harbor there is a outdoor sanctuary, Mīna Sūkās dedicated to a local god, which has been excavated.^[12]

The site of Tell Sukas was first worked by Emil Forrer who conducted two soundings in 1934 as part of the Bryn Mawr College expedition to Cilicia with most of the finds sent to Bryn Mawr.^[13]^[14] One trench which ran 7.35 meters deep found seven occupational layers with layer 5 subdivided into three levels. A two meter square test pit was also dig. The excavator identified Tell Sukas as the site of ancient Gibala (later on others suggested Tell Tweini as Gibala). No formal report of the work was published.^[15]

The site was excavated in 1958–1961 and again in 1963 by the Danish Carlsberg Expedition to Phoenicia under P.J. Riis. Finds included one alphabetic cuneiform tablet (KTU3 4.766, 67 x 89 x 29 mm, now held at the National Museum of Syria in Damascus).^[16] The text was administrative, containing a list of payments to military persons, in the Ugaritic language, and on its edge read "belonged to the House of the King". Evidence of Neolithic, Chacolithic, Early Bronze occupation was only found in a single deep sounding (15 meters deep, 4 meters by 4 meters at the top, 2.5 meters by 2.7 meters at the bottom). The excavations primary focus was on Iron Age and later so the Middle and Late Bronze periods received less attention.^[17]^[18] A steatite cylinder seal depicted an archer mounted on a chariot, drawing his bow. A voluted tree precedes the chariot and a taller man walks behind it. The seal was found out of context.^[19]

Excavations uncovered an early Iron Age cemetery south of the tell which was dated to between the 13th and 10th century BC. Excavations also uncovered a large seventh-century Phoenician temple. The abundance of Greek pottery and the discovery of Greek burial grounds suggest that the city became a permanent Hellenic outpost by 600 BC.^[5] The earliest Greek type tombs discovered date to the late seventh century BC.^[9] Despite interruptions caused by destructive events around 588 and again in 552 BC, the period from approximately 675 to at least 498 BC reveals distinctly Greek elements, such as a sanctuary built in Greek architectural style, which differed from typical Syro-Phoenician religious structures.^[20]

References

Oldenburg, E. and J. Rohweder., 1981, The Excavations at Tall Darūk and Arab al-Mulk", Publications of the Carlsberg Expedition to Phoenicia 8, Copenhagen, 1981
Brown, Michael, "Ancestral veneration and the settlement history of Tell Sūkās", Palestine exploration quarterly 141.2, pp. 138-151, 2009
Nougayrol, Jean, "Soukas= Shuksu", Syria. Archéologie, Art et histoire 38.1, pp. 215-215, 1961
Astour, M.C., "The kingdom of Siyannu-Ushantu" Ugarit Forschungen 11, pp. 11–28, 1979
Aubet, Maria Eugenia, "The Phoenicians and the West: politics, colonies and trade", Cambridge University Press, 2001 ISBN 9780521795432
Suter, Claudia E., "Crafts and images in contact: studies on Eastern Mediterranean art of the first millennium BCE", Vol. 210, Saint-Paul, 2005 ISBN 9783525530047
Moore, A., and A. M. T. Moore, "NEOLITHIC 3", The Neolithic of the Levant, Dissertation, University of Oxford, pp. 294-407, 1978
Riis, Poul Jørgen, "The First Greeks in Phoenicia and their settlement at Sukas", Ugaritica; 6: Publié à l'occasion de la 30. Campagne de Fouilles à Ras Shamra, pp. 435-450, 1969
Dunham, R. A., "The Origins of the Kouros", Thesis, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2005
Fischer-Hansen, Tobias, ed., "Recent Danish research in classical archaeology: tradition and renewal", Vol. 3, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1991 ISBN 9788772891217
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, Tell Sukas
Armstrong, Caroline, "Migration as resilience: multi-scalar GIS investigations of Levantine climate migration from the 13th-10th centuries BCE", Dissertaion, University of British Columbia, 2025
Albright, W. F., "A Summary of Archaeological Research during 1934 in Palestine, Transjordan, and Syria", American Journal of Archaeology 39.1, pp. 137-148, 1935
Forrer, Emil, "Eine unbekannte griechische Kolonie des sechsten Jahr-hunderts v. Chr. in Phönikien", in Bericht über den VI. Inter-nationalen Kongress für Archäologie, Berlin, 21.- 26. August 1939 (Archäologisches Institut des Deutschen Reiches), Berlin, pp.360–365, 1940
AMH Ehrich, "Early Pottery of the Jebeleh Region", Memoirs, vol. XIII, Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, 1939 (available to Borrow at archive dot org)
Töyräänvuori, Joanna, "Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts Outside of Ugarit: Evidence for an Overland Trade Network in the LBA Levant?", Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 30.2, pp. 243-279, 2024
"Archaeological News", Archaeology Magazine, vol. 12, iss. 4, pp. 280-286, Winter 1959
"Archaeological News", Archaeology Magazine, vol. 14, iss, 3, pp. 213-218, Autumn 1961
Feldman, Marian H., and Caroline Sauvage, "Objects of Prestige? Chariots in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean and Near East", Ägypten Und Levante / Egypt and the Levant, vol. 20, pp. 67–181, 2010
Boardman, J., and N. G. L. Hammond, "The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC", The Cambridge Ancient History III. 3.", 1982 ISBN 978-0521234474