SINJIRLI, sin'jir-le'. The name of a Kurdish village in North Syria under Mount Amanus, 40 miles northeast of Alexandretta. The hill or tell on which the village lies is one of several hundreds in that region which scholars have recognized as marking the sites of ancient cities. In 1883 Dr. von Luschan pointed out the eligi bility of this site for excavation. and when in 1888 the Germans formed their Orient-Gesell schaft, Sinjirli was selected for the first opera tions. In the same summer an expedition was sent out, followed by a second in 1890 and by a third in 189091. all of which were under the direction of Von Luschan except that Dr. Hu mann acted as director in the beginning of the first campaign. Among other scholars participat ing were Entino. Koldewey. The excava tions uncovered the remains of an ancient city, which was surrounded by two walls. while the inner acropolis was defended by two or three lines of fortification. The massive character of these structures, especially of the gates and of the sculptures, showed that the expedition was making the first excavation of a city originally Hittite, although almost nothing in the way of inscriptions was found here. (See HITTITES.) A more recent. part of the city was also discovered which is evidently Aramaic in character. The first important find in the way of inscriptions was a monolith of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, one of the largest known, remarkable for its rich sculpture and for details of religions value, con taining an inscription'of fifty-nine lines in which the monarch celebrates the triumph of his second campaign against Egypt about um. 670. Ara maic inscriptions were found which are of great value for the additions they make to our knowl edge of Syrian politics and civilization. The
earliest• of these is the Hadad inscription found in a neighboring village. This is written on a cylinder of dolerite of original height of 4 meters and of 2.5 meters circumference, sur mounted by the bust of the Syrian god Hadad. On the lower part is an inscription of thirty-four lines, the characters of which are almost identi cal with those of the Moabite Stone; in it a certain Panammu, King of Ja'di, celebrates his god. It is the oldest Aramaic inscription we possess, being in a dialect approaching the Canaanitish languages, and may be dated about 'Lc. 800. Another similar monument, now torso, contains in a field of I X I.5 meters an Aramaic inscription of twenty-three lines, in which a king of Sham'al records the history of his father, Panamint' (different from the one above mentioned. but probably of the same dy nasty). This and some smaller inscriptions refer to the suzerainty of Tiglathpileser Ill. (a.e. 745 727), whose own monuments also speak of kham'al, so that we are able to date the monu ment—a connection of immense value to epig raphy and philology—and also to locate the an cient State of $lonn'al, whose political and social conditions are interestingly described on this stone. Consult: Ansyrabun!wn in. kendschirli, in the Mittheilungen of the Berlin Museum; Craig. in the Academy, 1893, p. 441; D. H. Mul ler. in the Contemporary Review, April. 1894; Lidzbarski. Nordsernitisclre Epigraphik ( Weimar, 1898).