Tell Nebi Mend – Ancient Qadesh

 

The 10-hectare site of Tell Nebi Mend is in the Upper Beqa’a Valley between the confluence of the Orontes and its major tributary, the Mukadiyah. The site is 30 kilometres south-west of the city of Homs and sits strategically at the heart of the so-called “Homs-Tripoli Gap”, the major east-west route from the Mediterranean to inland Syria.

 

Nebi Mend has a long and rich history of occupation from the 7th millennium BCE to the mid-1st millennium CE and includes Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Hellenistic/Roman deposits, enclosures and defenses.

 

The site is believed to be the ancient Bronze and Iron Age site of Qadesh (or Kadesh), famous as the site of the Battle of Qadesh (c. 1286 BCE), which was fought between the armies of Ramesses II of Egypt and Muwatalli II of the Hittites. In the 3rd century, it was known as Laodicea ad Libanum, and was the capital of a district of the Seleucid empire.

 

Nebi Mend and the Homs region represent a border zone between the southern and coastal Levantine world and ‘inland Syria’. Since 1999, Graham Phillip has conducted the Homs Regional Survey, in collaboration the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museum of Syria. Their goal is to document and examine settlement in the Homs region over a long time-scale while looking at the interaction between the environment and human activity.