FROM KHANA TO LAQE : THE END OF SYRO-MESOPOTAMIA * Giorgio BUCCELLATI (Los Angeles) As a culture-historical construct, the tenn "Mesopotamia" is generally viewed as subsuming the civilizations that made use of Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian as their primary languages. As a geo-historical construct, the same tenn is used to refer to the North-central component of the previous concept, with a meaning similar to that of the modern Arabic tenn "Jezira". Etymology can help us only part way: the suggested notion of "land-between-the-rivers" is skewed in an easterly direction in the culture-historical acceptation (since it stops at Mari on the Euphrates, and it includes to the East the major tributaries of the Tigris), and it is skewed in a Northerly direction in its geo-political acceptation (since it includes only the region between the two Zab's and the Khabur). While terminology is not important in and of itself, it has a significant impact as a short * It is with much admiration that I am offering these reflections to a scholar who came to serve on different occasions as a standard of reference for my own studies, whether it was Kupper 1957; 1961 during my work on the Amorites or, later, KUPPER, 1947; 1950; 1964; 1972, during my work at Terqa. The larger research, of which this article is a part, builds broadly on his own pioneering work. Some of the points raised here were first presented during a paper I read at the University of Arizona in 1986. In its present form, this is the last in a series of six articles currently in press or in preparation which deal with the history and geography of ancient Khana. The sequence of articles is as follows: (1) "Salt at the Dawn of History: The Case of the Bevelled Rim Bowls" (to appear in a volume edited by M. VAN LOON, P. MATTHIAE and H. WEISS); (2) '''River Bank', 'High Country', and 'Pasture Land' : The Growth of Nomadism on the Middle Euphrates and the Khabur" (to appear in a volume edited by M. WAFLER); (3) "The Rural Landscape of the ancient Zor : The Terqa Evidence" (to appear in B. GEYER (ed.), Les techniques et les pratiques hydro-agricoles traditionnelles en domaine irrigue, Bibliotheque Archeologique et Historique, Damascus); (4) "The Kingdom and Period of Khana", BASOR 270 (1988), p. 43-61; (5) "The People of Terqa and Their Names" (in preparation); (6) "From Khana to Laqe : The End of Syro-Mesopotamia" (published here). The current version of this article is rather programmatic in nature. I plan to eventually integrate it, as well as the other articles of the series, into a full-size monograph and at that time I will include a fuller documentation and argumentation than is possible here. I will also include there proper cartographic and photographic illustrations of the geographical phenomena described.