Rabat Tape: Ancient Hubushkia

Hubuškia is a royal city and country in Northern Zagros and one of the significant buffer states between Assyrian and Urartian spheres of influence during the 9th to 7th centuries BC. Our information about Hubuškia comes primarily from Neo-Assyrian cuneiform texts. The localization of this place name and the petty state of the first half of first millennium BC has been a subject of debate and dissension among scholars and Assyriologists through the past century. The authors of the present study, based on the Neo-Assyrian inscriptions dealing with the Zagros polities, geographical analysis of the inscriptions and study of the archaeological founds derived from four seasons of excavation in Tape Rabat, suggests that ancient site of Rabat, could be comparable with that of ancient city of Hubuškia. Rabat Tape is located on the western bank of the Lower Zab River in northwestern Iran near the city of Sardasht. The location of the site and its archaeological characteristics, allows us to propose that Rabat Tape could be the same as the ancient city of Hubuškia.