Tegarama
Tegarama is an ancient city mentioned in the Bible, located in the region of Asia Minor in modern-day Turkey. Known today as Gürün.
Biblical History
Tegarama, known in ancient Assyrian and Hittite sources as Til-Garimmu or Tegarama, appears in the Old Testament under the name Togarmah, listed as a son of Gomer and grandson of Japheth in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10:3; 1 Chronicles 1:6). Ezekiel references the "house of Togarmah" twice: in Ezekiel 27:14 as a supplier of horses, horsemen, and mules to the great trading city of Tyre, and in Ezekiel 38:6 as one of the nations allied with Gog in the apocalyptic invasion from the north. These passages identify Togarmah/Tegarama as a region in the far north associated with horse breeding and military equipment, consistent with what is known of Anatolian horse culture in the Iron Age. The modern identification with Gürün in central Turkey (ancient Gamir or Gimarrai, in the region of Cappadocia and Pontus) reflects the Assyrian toponym Til-Garimmu, attested in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions describing campaigns against this rebellious highland region. Tegarama thus represents one of the northernmost known peoples in the biblical geographic horizon, associated with the remote and powerful nations beyond Israel's direct experience.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The ancient site of Tegarama is associated with Til-Garimmu, mentioned in Assyrian annals as a fortified city in the Anatolian highlands that resisted Assyrian expansion. The Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II claimed to have campaigned against this region in the late eighth century BC. The modern town of Gürün in Sivas Province, Turkey, preserves a toponym believed to derive from the ancient name. Archaeological investigation of the Gürün region has been limited, though the broader Cappadocian highlands have yielded substantial evidence of Bronze and Iron Age occupation, including Hittite and post-Hittite Luwian settlements. The region was renowned in antiquity for horse breeding, corroborating Ezekiel 27:14's description of Togarmah's trade goods. Systematic excavation of ancient Til-Garimmu itself has not been conducted.
Verse Appearances (0)
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]