Both the Tigris and the Euphrates originate in the mountains of Armenia and eastern Anatolia; both end in the Persian Gulf. The Tigris takes a direct route to the Gulf whereas the Euphrates cuts south until it is separated from the Tigris by more than 250 miles of steppe. This broad region, which lies today in eastern Syria and western Iraq, was the Aram Nahraim (“Aram of the Two Rivers”) mentioned in the Bible. The two rivers draw near again until they come within 20 miles of each other, near Baghdad, before diverging a second time. Crucially, the Euphrates is 30 feet higher than the Tigris, facilitating the cutting of channels between the two rivers which could be used for transport and irrigation.¹Lloyd 1984, 16

Thank to the proximity of the Tigris and the Euphrates, this region of Mesopotamia has always enjoyed a strategic advantage. Thus it is not an accident that the capital cities of Mesopotamia in all ages, namely Kish, Babylon, Akkad, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Baghdad, were all located in what William Hallo refers to as the “capital district” of Mesopotamia.²Hallo 2010

Contributing also to the strategic importance of this region is the confluence of the Tigris and Diyala rivers. The trade route which followed the Diyala River penetrated into the eastern Zagros mountains before turning south towards Susa thus connecting Elam with Mesopotamia.

An archaeological team from the Oriental Institute in Chicago excavated several important cities in the Diyala valley during the 1930’s, including Tell Asmar (Eshnunna), Tell Agrab, and Khafajah (Tutul). Attached to these excavations were a number of famous scholars, including Henri Frankfort, Seton Lloyd, Thorkild Jacobson, and Pinhas Delougaz.

The Temple Oval

Of the three major sites excavated by the American expedition in the Diyala Valley, Khafajah was the most important. Excavations at the site were directed by Pinhas Delougaz, who gave priority to the most prominent structure at Khafajah, known as the “Temple Oval.” Delougaz traced the building and rebuilding of the Temple Oval through three major phases, beginning in the first half of the Early Dynastic period and continuing through the Akkadian. Undoubtedly, the most remarkable aspect of the oval was the twenty six feet of pure sand upon which it was constructed.³Sand may seem like a poor choice for the foundations of a building, but it is suitable as long as it is contained by perimeter wall or pit. See Josephson, “The Use of Sand-Box Foundations in Ancient Egypt” Delougaz suggests that approximately two million cubic feet of earth had to be removed and an equal amount of clean, white sand brought in to replace it. The sand must have been transported some distance since there are no known supplies of sand in the area today. The removal of so much earth and the transportation of such a large volume of sand “would be a considerable task even in modern times with all the engineering and transport facilities now available and certainly stands out as gigantic for the period in which it was achieved.”⁴Delougaz 1940, 17 As you may recall, the temple constructed on the mound at Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt was likewise constructed on pure white sand that had to transported there for that purpose.

The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze villages situated in the Diyala Plain are buried under approximately thirty feet of sediment. The broad distribution of this sediment across the plain suggests that the river once fanned out across the plain rather than flowing through a single deep channel, as it does today.⁵Adams 1965, 6-11