Also tel. [a. Arab. tall a hillock.] The Arab name for an artificial hillock or mound, usually one covering the ruins of an ancient city.
1864. W. F. Ainsworth, Comm. Xenophon’s Anabasis, 285. The hill … appears to have been one of the numerous artificial mounds, topes, or tells, sometimes sepulchral, sometimes heaps of ruin, which abound on the plain of Babylonia.
1878. Conder, Tentwork Pal. (1879), II. 46. We may next notice the most remarkable of its antiquities, namely the Tellûl or Tells there found.
1878. Maclear, Bk. Joshua, xv. (1880), 149. The tell is very strong and it rises about 200 feet high.
1882. F. S. de Hass, Buried Cities, III. v. 380 (Funk). Tells or conical hills…, many of them the craters of extinct volcanoes.
