Near East Kingdoms

Kani Shaie (City) (Sumer)

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The city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture.

It developed out of the end of the Pottery Neolithic across the Fertile Crescent, a period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond. Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement, initially in the form of pastoralists but soon as farmers too.

By the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer was divided into approximately a dozen independent city states which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders. Many of the smaller cities emerged in two broad waves, in the mid-third millennium BC and at the start of the second millennium BC. One of these was the modern archaeological site of Kani Shaie (its ancient name is unknown).

That archaeological site is located in the province of Sulaimaniyah, at the foothills of the Zagros mountains in northern Iraqi Kurdistan. The occupation mound is about fifteen metres in height and covers about two hectares of ground. Excavations at Kani Shaie began in September 2013.

The 'Kani Shaie Archaeological Project' (abbreviated as KSAP) has been led by the University of Coimbra's Centre for Studies in Archaeology, Arts, and Heritage Sciences (abbreviated as CEAACP), in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and the Kurdistan region's heritage authorities.

The project completed another successful excavation campaign in 2025, with its members describing the site as the most important of its kind to the east of the Tigris when it comes to understanding human occupation between the fourth and third millennia BC.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and Evolution of Sumerian kingship (Ancient World Magazine), and Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (Published between 2003-2021, part of the Babylonian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology), and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, and Monumental Uruk-Period Building in Kani Shaie (Arkeonews), and Kani Shaie Archaeological Project.)

c.4900 BC

At about the same time as the small city of Kani Shaie is being founded in the north, the 'Early Ubaid Level XV' archaeology at Eridu displays one of the earliest temples there. It is located in a swampy semi-lake area, the Sumerian abzu, the waters of the world from which the first land is created by the god Marduk.

The Sumerian flood story includes a depiction of a large vessel which is packed with various objects and, presumably, animals, clearly showing a basis for the later Old Testament flood story of Noah and the ark

c.3900 BC

As early as 8000 BC, during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, small clay tokens of various distinctive shapes are evidently being used by Near Eastern farmers to keep an inventory of their commodities. A cone-shaped token, for instance, may indicate that a farmer has a certain amount of barley in his granary.

This already-ancient system is greatly expanded during the Uruk IV period which begins around 3900 BC to succeed the Ubaid culture. The ancient Sumerian religious centre of Eridu - already a millennium old - is gradually surpassed in size by the nearby city of Uruk.

Metalwork appears at this time too, marking the beginning of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) and the fading of the stone age period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices transform human lives between about 10,000-4000 BC.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) lasted in the Levant until the middle of the sixth millennium BC, but the lack of pottery certainly did not prevent rapid advances in early farming techniques and the creation of settled town life, as shown by this sample PPN house at Beidha

c.2500 BC

The abandoned site of Eridu only becomes important once again at the start of 'Early Dynastic II', around 2500 BC, but Kani Shaie decreases in importance. The lower town remains inhabited but the main monumental building of the upper town area may be abandoned.

884 - 870 BC

The Neo-Assyrian kingdom completes its conquest of much of Syria during this period. The empire also takes areas of Philistia and Urartu, and conquers Bit Zamani, while Carchemish pays tribute in 882 BC, apparently becoming a vassal in 870 BC. During this period Kani Shaie remains occupied and soon becomes part of the Assyrian state.

c.305 BC

Having created his Seleucid empire in the Near East, Seleucus founds the city of Seleucia in Mesopotamia by massively rebuilding and expanding an existing settlement. In this period Kani Shaie survives, but seemingly only as a town (the lower town area of the site) although it does endure for the next five centuries or more.

Excavations at the top of Kani Shaie's artificial mound (tell) have revealed a monumental building of official or religious character, one which likely dates to the Uruk IV period