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118 Hattusha . Asia Minor HATTI (Hiteice) LAND taures mountains LL ASSYRIA Ashur southeast and east; Assyria and Hatti in the north; and as a western anchor in the chain, Mari on the mid-Euphrates. Of them, Mari was the most “Sumerian,” even having served once as Sumer’s capital, the tenth as that function ro- tated among Sumer’s major cities. An ancient port city on the Euphrates River, it was a major crossing point for people, goods, and culture between Mesopotamia in the east, the Mediterranean lands in the west, and Anatolia in the north- west. Its monuments bore the finest examples of Sumerian writing, and its huge central palace was decorated with mu- rals, astounding in their artistry, honoring Ishtar (Fig. 51). (A chapter on Mari and my visit to its ruins can be read in The Earth Chronicles Expeditions.) Its royal archive of thousands of clay tablets revealed how Mari’s wealth and international connections to many other THE END OF DAYS FIGURE 50