tell

   An Arabic word denoting a mound or hill made up largely of accumulated layers of ruins and debris from centuries of human habitation. (The Persian word for tell was tepe; the Turkish word is hoytik.) During medieval times, when the Arabs controlled large parts of the Near East, the Mesopo-tamian plains were littered with tells of different ages and in various states of preservation or disintegration. For a long time these sites were known only by their "tell" names, such as Tell Asmar or Tell Halaf. In the modern era, however, with the rise of the science of archaeology, these sites were investigated, and scholars learned that certain tells were the remains of specific and once-important ancient cities. Tell Asmar turned out to be the site of the Sumerian city of Eshnunna; Tell Halaf is the remains of the northern Mesopota-mian city of Guzana; and Tell al-Hibba is the site of the important Sumerian city of Lagash. The ancient names of a few of the ancient Mesopotamian cities unearthed from tells remain unknown. So they are still called by their "tell" names, as in the case of the Sumerian city of Tell al-Ubaid, near Ur.

   See also: Tell al-Ubaid; and the names of individual Mesopotamian cities