Rare 2,700-Year-Old Stone Carvings Discovered in Iraq
An Iraqi worker excavates a rock-carving relief recently found at the Mashki Gate, one of the monumental gates to the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, on the outskirts of what is today the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Archaeologists in Iraq have unearthed 2,700-year-old stone carvings that were chiselled into a previously undiscovered section of the Mashki Gate, an iconic structure in what was once the ancient Assyrian capital city of Nineveh.
The eight intricately carved marble bas-reliefs, which depict war scenes, grapevines, palm trees and other motifs, were found in what is now Mosul, during a project to restore the gate after Islamic State group militants destroyed it.
Experts believe that the decorative gate dates back to King Sennacherib, who ruled the Assyrian empire from 705 B.C. to 681 B.C., according to a statement from the Iraqi Council of Antiquities and Heritage.
During his reign, King Sennacherib moved the Assyrian capital to Nineveh where he became well known for his vast military campaigns, according to BBC News.
“We believe that these carvings were moved from the palace of Sennacherib and reused by the grandson of the king to renovate the gate of Mashki and to enlarge the guard room,” Fadel Mohammed Khodr, head of the Iraqi archaeological team, told Al Jazeera.
Because much of the gate was buried underground due to the way it was oriented during its original construction, the only portions that archaeologists could salvage were under the soil.
“Only the part buried underground has retained its carvings,” Khodr said.
In 2016, militants from IS (also called ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) destroyed the iconic gate with a bulldozer.
The Swiss-based International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas is working with Iraqi authorities as well as archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania and Mosul University on the restoration of the gate.
Drone photos reveal an early Mesopotamian city made of marsh islands
New remote-sensing studies at southern Iraq’s massive Tell al-Hiba site, shown here from the air, support an emerging view that an ancient city there largely consisted of four marsh islands.
A ground-penetrating eye in the sky has helped to rehydrate an ancient southern Mesopotamian city, tagging it as what amounted to a Venice of the Fertile Crescent. Identifying the watery nature of this early metropolis has important implications for how urban life flourished nearly 5,000 years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where modern-day Iraq lies.
Remote-sensing data, mostly gathered by a specially equipped drone, indicate that a vast urban settlement called Lagash largely consisted of four marsh islands connected by waterways, says anthropological archaeologist Emily Hammer of the University of Pennsylvania. These findings add crucial details to an emerging view that southern Mesopotamian cities did not, as traditionally thought, expand outward from temple and administrative districts into irrigated farmlands that were encircled by a single city wall, Hammer reports in the December Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
“There could have been multiple evolving ways for Lagash to be a city of marsh islands as human occupation and environmental change reshaped the landscape,” Hammer says.
Because Lagash had no geographical or ritual center, each city sector developed distinctive economic practices on an individual marsh island, much like the later Italian city of Venice, she suspects. For instance, waterways or canals crisscrossed one marsh island, where fishing and collection of reeds for construction may have predominated.
Two other Lagash marsh islands display evidence of having been bordered by gated walls that enclosed carefully laid out city streets and areas with large kilns, suggesting these sectors were built in stages and may have been the first to be settled. Crop growing and activities such as pottery making may have occurred there.
Drone photographs of what were probably harbors on each marsh island suggest that boat travel connected city sectors. Remains of what may have been footbridges appear in and adjacent to waterways between marsh islands, a possibility that further excavations can explore.
Lagash, which formed the core of one of the world’s earliest states, was founded between about 4,900 and 4,600 years ago. Residents abandoned the site, now known as Tell al-Hiba, around 3,600 years ago, past digs show. It was first excavated more than 40 years ago.
Hidden city
Drone photos taken across a massive site in southern Iraq revealed that buried structures, shown in yellow, from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Lagash clustered in four sectors that had probably been marsh islands. Walls, shown in red, surrounded two large sectors. Now-dry waterways, shown in dark blue, connected sectors and crisscrossed one sector, far right.
Composite map of Lagash based on remote-sensing data
E. HAMMER/J. ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 2022
Previous analyses of the timing of ancient wetlands expansions in southern Iraq conducted by anthropological archaeologist Jennifer Pournelle of the University of South Carolina in Columbia indicated that Lagash and other southern Mesopotamian cities were built on raised mounds in marshes. Based on satellite images, archaeologist Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York has proposed that Lagash consisted of around 33 marsh islands, many of them quite small.
Drone photos provided a more detailed look at Lagash’s buried structures than possible with satellite images, Hammer says. Guided by initial remote-sensing data gathered from ground level, a drone spent six weeks in 2019 taking high-resolution photographs of much of the site’s surface. Soil moisture and salt absorption from recent heavy rains helped the drone’s technology detect remnants of buildings, walls, streets, waterways and other city features buried near ground level.
Drone data enabled Hammer to narrow down densely inhabited parts of the ancient city to three islands, she says. A possibility exists that those islands were part of delta channels extending toward the Persian Gulf. A smaller, fourth island was dominated by a large temple.
Hammer’s drone probe of Lagash “confirms the idea of settled islands interconnected by watercourses,” says University of Chicago archaeologist Augusta McMahon, one of three co–field directors of ongoing excavations at the site.
Drone evidence of contrasting neighborhoods on different marsh islands, some looking planned and others more haphazardly arranged, reflect waves of immigration into Lagash between around 4,600 and 4,350 years ago, McMahon suggests. Excavated material indicates that new arrivals included residents of nearby and distant villages, mobile herders looking to settle down and slave laborers captured from neighboring city-states.
Dense clusters of residences and other buildings across much of Lagash suggest that tens of thousands of people lived there during its heyday, Hammer says. At that time, the city covered an estimated 4 to 6 square kilometers, nearly the area of Chicago.
It’s unclear whether northern Mesopotamian cities from around 6,000 years ago, which were not located in marshes, contained separate city sectors (SN: 2/5/08). But Lagash and other southern Mesopotamian cities likely exploited water transport and trade among closely spaced settlements, enabling unprecedented growth, says archaeologist Guillermo Algaze of the University of California, San Diego.
Lagash stands out as an early southern Mesopotamian city frozen in time, Hammer says. Nearby cities continued to be inhabited for a thousand years or more after Lagash’s abandonment, when the region had become less watery and sectors of longer-lasting cities had expanded and merged. At Lagash, “we have a rare opportunity to see what other ancient cities in the region looked like earlier in time,” Hammer says.
Graves of Elite Warrior and Aphrodite Cult Priestess Uncovered in Russia
A silver medallion was discovered in the grave of an Aphrodite priestess, showing the goddess and signs of the zodiac, minus Aquarius and Libra.
About 1,900 years ago, a woman died and was buried in Phanagoria – a city established centuries earlier on the coast of the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia. Her grave was together with others in the ancient city’s necropolis and while there was nothing particularly unusual about it, she was a priestess of the Aphrodite cult, the archaeologists excavating the ancient city concluded.
Another intriguing find at the Black Sea site was a warrior’s tomb featuring a sword that had been made in early medieval Iran. The woman’s grave was found by archaeologists Nikolay Sudarev and Mikhail Treister, during the 2022 summer season of the Phanagoria archaeological expedition, which has been supported since 2004 by the Oleg Deripaska Volnoe Delo Foundation, says its spokesman Ruben Bunyatyan.
Her adornments included a silver medallion showing the goddess and signs of the zodiac, minus Aquarius and Libra. Such medallions were common in the territory of the Bosporan Kingdom as early as 2,300 years ago, says Maria Chashuk, senior research associate of the Phanagoria archaeological expedition. No, the medallion, a big one – about 7 centimetres (2.75 inches) in diameter and 15 millimetres thick – was not broken, so it is puzzling why Aquarius and Libra are missing, she adds.
Rings and belt found by the priestess
Medallions of the sort were used in many ways: as brooches, as headgear accessories and as pendants, Chashuk explains. “It was found on the lower part of the woman’s chest. On the flip side, there is a brace through which one could put a cord and wear the medallion as a pendant. It looks like that was how the medallion was worn by the woman, but that question is still being studied.”
How did the researchers conclude that the ornament shows none other than Aphrodite? Sudarev and Treister based their decision on iconographic features of the image of the goddess, as well as similar images on other analogous findings in the region, Chashuk and Bunyatyan say.
“The images of the zodiac signs around the goddess also point to the fact that this is indeed Aphrodite Urania, as they emphasize her heavenly hypostasis,” Chashuk adds.
“Aphrodite Urania” refers to the divine aspect of the goddess as opposed to her earthly aspect “Aphrodite Pandemos,” not to mention the legend that she was sired by emissions from the genital package of Uranus that had been hacked off by his son Cronos. Moving on.
One of the grave goods was found in the tomb at Phanagoria, southern Russia.
The woman also wore silver earrings with pendants in the form of doves and rings that had images so poorly preserved that they can’t quite be made out: possibly images of cornucopia and Eros with wings, Chashuk suggests.
Other grave goods included a red clay jug with a twisted handle, iron scissors with a bronze handle, a bronze mirror, a string of 157 beads (somebody counted) and three bronze coins. The implication – that members of the ancient Greek pantheon were worshipped in first-century Taman – is not surprising. Christianity would only reach the region in the Middle Ages, around the ninth and 10th century, before which the people followed Slavic pagan religions – and before which some evidently adored the Hellenistic pantheon.
Some of the findings at Phanagoria.
The medallion also suggests belief in astrology, a pseudoscience that posits causative relationships between the positions of celestial bodies and events on Earth. Astrology goes back at least 4,000 years and has been suspected for at least much of that time. Cicero, for instance, wrote roughly 2,050 years ago that divination (by any means) would be awesome if it wasn’t hooey: “A really splendid and helpful thing it is – if only such a faculty exists,” he wrote in “Defense Divinatione.” He added that all men believe “signs are given of future events” – which applies, more or less, to this day.
While Cicero wrote arguments (at remarkable length) for and against astrology’s merits, centuries before him Xenophanes, born in the sixth century B.C.E., reportedly took an actual stand against trying to peer into the future through omens and portents – if only because the gods can’t be bothered to communicate with us, lowly humans.
So, a woman died in first-century Phanagoria and was buried with a medallion showing Aphrodite and 10 signs of the zodiac, and some goods for the afterlife. But maybe she was a groupie of the goddess – why think she was a priestess?
The site is at Phanagoria in southern Russia, by the Black Sea.
Sudarev, an archaeologist with the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that some of the items from the burial have specific semantic meanings, Chashuk says. “For example, silver earrings with pendants in the form of doves could be associated with different deities, but most often doves are mentioned as a symbol of Aphrodite Urania. The mirror and scissors often had a ritual meaning (as a tool for trimming hair) and could also be one of the symbols of the goddess.”
The excavators also found two scarab-type beads made of Egyptian faience, found with other beads on her neck, but they bear highlighting because they bore hieroglyphs at the bottom: one showing a sitting cat-raptor and the other a cobra-Uraeus with a solar disk.
“Mr. Sudarev notes that the symbols on the scarabs relate to the Egyptian analogues of Aphrodite Urania – Wadjet [the cobra goddess] and Hathor,” Chashuk sums up.
At the end of the day, the presence of Aphrodite worship and, possibly, the burial of a priestess to her cult support the belief that Phanagoria was founded as a Greek colony on the Taman Peninsula, the archaeologists say.
Grave with Sassanian sword
Signs of Sassanians
While the existence of deities and their amiable propensity to share information is dubious, and if anybody had consistently gotten their forecasts right, we would probably have heard about it – there is no similar dubiety about the existence of war. The discovery of the Sassanian sword in a burial in Phanagoria, from about 1,500 years ago, is more information about practical matters. “Archaeologists believe that the weapon is part of the Iranian group of swords due to the distinctive golden top of its wooden hilt,” explains Bunyatyan.
Finding a fine sword of Iranian (Sassanian) origin in the territory of the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus supports historic sources describing the Sassanid Empire’s political and military influence in the Caucasus region and along the Taman Peninsula, says Alexey Voroshilov, head of the Phanagorian expedition’s necropolis team. It could have been a diplomatic gift.
Buried with a precious sword
Or, might it reveal the use of mercenaries, foreign soldiers fighting for filthy lucre, which was apparently not unknown in Classic times? It seems that even the “Greek army” that combated the “Carthaginian forces” were stuffed to the gills with hired help.
Not likely, because the sword was just too good, says Voroshilov. “Expensive prestigious weapons were either made to order or came as war trophies. The ceremonial arms and horse harness were part of the diplomatic gifts,” he says. “Hence, it is highly unlikely that the owner of the sword was a mercenary. There is no doubt that this person was a representative of the elite of Phanagoria and was a bearer of the military aristocratic culture of the Bosporan Kingdom in the Migration Period.”
It’s the only sword of its kind to be found in Phanagoria, he says, adding that “this is the first major discovery in Phanagoria testifying to cultural ties between the elites of Phanagoria and the Sassanid Empire.”
The warrior was also buried with other fine stuffs. “In the tomb itself, a lot of rare things were discovered, including imported items: glass jugs, wooden and metal utensils, and wooden boxes with decayed cloths. The tomb is notable for its monumentality and considerable depth (about 7 meters), as well as for its opulent burial rites. There is a lot to suggest that noble and wealthy city dwellers were buried in the crypt along with the warrior,” Voroshilov sums up. The priestess seems to have gotten relatively short shrift a few centuries earlier.
DNA Analysis Identifies Neanderthal Family Members
The first snapshot of a Neanderthal community has been pieced together by scientists who examined ancient DNA from fragments of bone and teeth unearthed in caves in southern Siberia.
The remains were found in caves in southern Siberia.
Researchers analysed DNA from 13 Neanderthal men, women and children and found an interconnecting web of relationships, including a father and his teenage daughter, another man related to the father, and two second-degree relatives, possibly an aunt and her nephew.
All of the Neanderthals were heavily inbred, a consequence, the researchers believe, of the Neanderthals’ small population size, with communities scattered over vast distances and numbering only about 10 to 30 individuals.
Laurits Skov, the first author on the study at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, said the fact that the Neanderthals were alive at the same time was “very exciting” and implied that they belonged to a single social community.
Neanderthal remains have been recovered from numerous caves across western Eurasia – territory the heavy-browed humans occupied from about 430,000 years ago until they became extinct 40,000 years ago. It has previously been impossible to tell whether Neanderthals found at particular sites belonged to communities or not.
“Neanderthal remains in general, and remains with preserved DNA in particular, are extremely rare,” said Benjamin Peter, a senior author on the study in Leipzig. “We tend to get single individuals from sites often thousands of kilometres, and tens of thousands of years apart.”
In the latest work, researchers including Svante Pääbo, who won this year’s Nobel prize in medicine for breakthrough studies on ancient genomes, examined DNA from the remains of Neanderthals found in the Chagyrskaya cave and nearby Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia.
Neanderthals sheltered in the caves about 54,000 years ago, seeking cover to feast on the ibex, horse and bison they hunted as the animals migrated along the river valleys the caves overlook. Beyond Neanderthal and animal bones, tens of thousands of stone tools were also found.
Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists describe how the ancient DNA points to the Neanderthals living at the same time, with some being members of the same family.
Further analysis revealed more genetic diversity in Neanderthal mitochondria – the tiny battery-like structures found inside cells which are only passed down the maternal line – than in their Y chromosomes, which are passed down from father to son.
The most likely explanation, the researchers say, is that female Neanderthals travelled from their home communities to live with male partners. Whether force was involved is not a question DNA can answer, however.
“Personally, I don’t think there is particularly good evidence that Neanderthals were much different from early modern humans that lived at the same time,” said Peter.
“We find that the community we study was likely very small, perhaps 10 to 20 individuals and that the wider Neanderthal populations in the Altai mountains were quite sparse,” Peter said. “Nevertheless, they managed to persevere in a rough environment for hundreds of thousands of years, which I think deserves great respect.”
Dr Lara Cassidy, an assistant professor in genetics at Trinity College Dublin, called the study a “milestone” as “the first genomic snapshot of a Neanderthal community”.
“Understanding how their societies were organised is important for so many reasons,” Cassidy said. “It humanises these people and gives rich context to their lives. But also, down the line if we have more studies like this, it may also reveal unique aspects of the social organisation of our own Homo sapiens ancestors. This is crucial to understanding why we are here today and Neanderthals are not.”
A 6,000-year-old skull found in a cave in Taiwan possibly confirms the legend of an Indigenous tribe
A team of researchers with members from Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam found a 6,000-year-old skull and femur bones in a cave in a mountainous part of Taiwan that might prove the existence of an ancient Indigenous tribe.
The preceramic human remains from No. 5 Cave (1) and representative stone tools from the preceramic layer, including the cobble chopping tools (2), flake tools (3), and fine-material lithic tools made of quartz (4) of Xiaoma (after Huang and Chen 1990).
In their paper published in the journal World Archaeology, the group describes the skull, where it was found and what it might represent.
In Taiwan, there have been stories passed down through the generations about a tribe of short, dark-skinned people that once lived in mountainous parts of the island. But until now, there has been no physical evidence of them.
In this new effort, the researchers found skull and leg bones in a cave that have been dated back to approximately 6,000 years ago—a time before the ancestors of people who are alive on the island arrived.
In studying DNA from the skull, the researchers found it close to African samples from around the same time period. But they also found that its size and shape resemble that of Negritos, who lived in parts of what is now South Africa and in the Philippines.
A study of bones left behind in those areas showed them to be quite short with small body size. Femur bones found near the skull were from the same person as the skull, a young woman.
The researchers estimate she stood approximately 1.3 meters tall.
The researchers suggest their findings confirm the existence of the ancient people in Taiwan but they do not explain what might have happened to them.
They were apparently gone by the time other early Austronesian groups of people began arriving.
The researchers also note that the mention of small, dark-skinned people was made in documents from the Quin Dynasty, and all but one of the 16 Austronesian groups living in Taiwan today have stories that describe small, dark-skinned people who once lived in the mountains.
Such tales differ, however, between groups, the researchers note, with some believing that the earlier people were ancestors of theirs. Others see them as former enemies.
One group claims to have killed off the last of the ancient people 1,000 years ago.
Species found to have existed since the Paleozoic era was found in the depths of the ocean near Japan. It has been understood that life forms that have lived on the ocean floor for millions of years existed much longer than human history, according to the fossil record, and that they managed to survive by living out of sight.
The discovery of 273-million-year-old ‘living fossils’ was made by the discovery of two sea creatures that were found to have symbiotic life between them, 100 meters below the sea surface, near Japan’s Honshu and Shikoku islands.
According to the fossil record, it was determined that the skeletons have not been changed at all.
The researchers completed their non-invasive research using a DNA barcode to identify the species.
The researchers, who discovered that these newly discovered specimens did not change the structure of the shellfish skeletons, said that this provides a possible clue as to why they have disappeared from the fossil record for so long.
They discovered that fossils of soft-structured organisms were so rare that they could be overlooked.
“These specimens represent the first detailed records and examinations of a recent in vivo relationship between a crinoid (host) and an epibiont,” the researchers said.
Crinoids and corals shared a long, symbiotic relationship millions of years ago; Here, corals used crinoids to climb higher than the seafloor, gaining access to more food found in ocean currents.
Byzantine gold coins hidden in a wall in the 7th century were uncovered by Israeli archaeologists
Archaeologists in Israel say 44 pure gold coins dating to the 7th Century have been found hidden in a wall at a nature reserve.
Weighing about 170g, the hoard found at the Hermon Stream (Banias) site was hidden during the Muslim conquest of the area in 635, experts estimated.
They said the coins shed light on the end of the Byzantine rule in the area.
The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived for more than 1,000 years.
“We can imagine the owner concealing his fortune in the threat of war, hoping to return one day to retrieve his property,” said Yoav Lerer, director of the excavation.
“In retrospect, we know that he was less fortunate.”
Dr Gabriela Bijovsky says the coins help document the life of Emperor Heraclius’s family
Apart from the gold coins, the excavation – in a residential quarter of the ancient city – also uncovered the remains of buildings, water channels and pipes, bronze coins and much more, Israeli authorities said.
Dr Gabriela Bijovsky, a numismatic (currency) expert at the Israel Antiquities Authority, said some of the coins were of Emperor Phocas (602-610), but most were of his successor Heraclius.
Banias has a particular place in Christian tradition, being the site where Jesus is said to have told the apostle Peter, “on this rock, I will build my church”.
Medieval subterranean corridors were found by accident in northeast Iran
The workers working on a routine road construction project near Shahr-e Belqeys (City of Belqeys) in northeast Iran made an unexpected discovery.
Shahr-e Belqeys is a castle located in Esfarayen County in North Khorasan Province, Iran. The fortress dates back to the Sasanian Empire. It is the second largest adobe fort in Iran after the UNESCO-registered Bam Fortress. Belqeys archaeological site has an area of over 51,000 square.
“Remains of ancient underground corridors were discovered a few days ago during a road construction project in Bam village of Esfarayen county,” an expert with Belqeys archaeological site said on Monday.
“The total length of those corridors is 18 km, and there is a bathroom and a mill on the way, which has not been opened yet,” the expert said. “Last years, traces of this underground city had been discovered but to protect it, these remains were blocked by the local cultural heritage directorate.
Now we reached these ancient structures from another place, which confirms the statements of the local people,” the expert explained. “The ruins have yielded potteries estimated to belong to the Seljuk period, IlKhanid, and even earlier periods. However, an extensive archaeological excavation is needed to delve into its secrets.”
Belqeys Castle.
Shahr-e Belqeys was prosperous during a period from the late Sassanid era to early Islamic times. Historical evidence, including a book on the history of Nishabur (Middle Persian: Nev-Shapur), suggests that Shahr-e Belqeys won special attention from Sassanid monarchs of the time.
Archaeological excavations at nearby mounts and hilltops put the antiquity of Belqeys in some 6,000 years.
These Medieval subterranean corridors in Iran are not a first. Nooshabad, known as Ouyi to locals, is an underground city with many passages and chambers in Isfahan Province in central Iran.
Nushabad or Nooshabad Underground City.
Nooshabad, which was discovered by chance during a construction project, was initially built to protect city dwellers against invasion and plundering, particularly during the Mongol invasion of Iran.
The construction of this man-made subterranean city, called Ouee (or Ouyi), dates back to the Sasanian (or Neo-Persian) Empire that ruled from 224 to 651. Inhabitants would dig underground chambers as hideout spots for women, children, and the elderly in the event of an attack by foreign invaders.
The fact that these newly found underground tunnels were built in the same way reveals their intended use. In the future, it will be possible to have more information about the tunnels if the Iranian government allows the excavation works.
