Rediscovering: Tell Leilan on the Habur Plains of Syria

Tell Leilan is one of the more imposing sites in northern Mesopotamia. Three seasons of excavation have now been conducted there, and the findings suggest a great deal about this region in the third and early second millennia B.C., including the possibility that Leilan is ancient Shubat Enlil, the capital city of Shamshi-Adad, a fascinating historical figure who in the last years of the nineteenth century B.C. briefly controlled all of northern Mesopotamia from the Zagros Mountains to the Euphrates River.