Category Archives: ASIA

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Ancient Bowl From Tibet Shows Alexander the Great – the Jewish Version

Ancient Bowl From Tibet Shows Alexander the Great – the Jewish Version

An ancient silver bowl with Greek-style reliefs found in Tibet decades ago does not show scenes from Homer’s “Iliad,” as has been postulated. Rather, the bowl shows Alexander the Great and his servants, based on a Jewish version of the “Alexander Romance” dating to the fifth or sixth century C.E. that had been previously unknown, according to a new paper published in the Bulletin of the Asia Institute.

Alexander himself is shown three times on this bowl: once picking fruit from the Tree of Life, and twice drinking from the Fountain of Life, claim authors Anca Dan of CNRS, University Paris Sciences & Letters, and Frantz Grenet of the College de France.

The bowl also has the earliest known depiction in the Far East of the terrestrial Paradise, the two scholars say in their paper. Their innovative view of the bowl’s Jewish origin is based, among other things, on the fact that the nude figure they believe represents Alexander the Great, shown drinking the Water of Life and picking the frankincense from the Tree of Life – is circumcised, which was not a habit known among the Macedonians.

The bowl from Tibet, was probably made or ordered by a Jewish merchant on the Silk Road

If Dan and Grenet are right about their interpretation of the dish’s Jewish origin, then the bowl indicates that Jews involved in long-distance trade along the Silk Road played a role in the evolution of the Alexander legends in the centuries following the king’s death. In short, this one wee bowl indicates Jewish influence in medieval Central Asia (between northern India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan) centuries before the Arabic conquest.

Medieval fanfic

The earliest versions of the Alexander Romance – accounts of real and imagined exploits of the powerful ruler of ancient Macedonia – which were written in Greek, Latin, Armenian and Syriac, date to the third century C.E. and relate to the boy king’s military campaign that began in his homeland and reached as far as India. The main text of the Romance was wrongly ascribed to Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew and Alexander’s official historian. Two extant texts describe the Jewish legend that Alexander the Great arrived at the Garden of Eden. The first is a passage in Aramaic in the Babylonian Talmud, written sometime in the sixth century C.E. It relates that Alexander washed his face in the Water of Life and arrived at the Gate of the Lord, through which only the righteous may enter, based on Psalm 118:20: “He ascended along the length of the entire spring until he reached the entrance of the Garden of Eden. He raised a loud voice, calling out: ‘Open the gate for me!’” (Tamid 32b, Babylonian Talmud).

The second, Sefer Toldot Alexandros ha-Makdoni (the history of Alexander the Macedonian), is part of a collection of Hebrew texts compiled by Eleazar of Worms (now in Germany) in roughly 1325, which is preserved in a manuscript in Oxford. It describes how Alexander was circumcised by his doctors so that he could enter the Garden of Eden as a righteous person. The images on the bowl seem to combine elements from both the Tamid and the Sefer Toldot Alexandros ha-Makdoni. If so, they indicate that the Jews of Central Asia had developed their version of Alexander’s accession to Paradise before the Islamic conquest, Dan and Grenet contend.

Alexander, nude, holding a long-necked flask and drinking bowl

In the Garden of Eden

The interior of the bowl is smooth, as befits practical tableware. The exterior bears a dense riot of imagery done in reliefs that project up to 9 millimetres above the silver surface, the authors explain. It shows six male figures. According to Dan and Grenet, Alexander himself is shown three times, once picking fruit from the Tree of Life, and twice drinking from the Fountain of Life. The researchers recognize two Indian carriers of the Water of Life, and a priest playing on an Indian drum with strings (dhol).

Between each man is a gnarled tree with a snake climbing up toward a nest. In each nest the birds are at a different stage of life: In one there are eggs, in another, a bird is feeding chicks, and finally, one nest shown empty could indicate that the serpent ate them. Between the two figures of Alexander picking fruit from the Tree of Life and drinking from the Fountain of Life, however, the birds are nesting in flourishing trees, as in an eternal spring, the authors explain. As for the Jewish bent of the Alexander depiction, the state of his penis is unmistakable even though the bowl is very small: 6.5 centimetres in height, 21 centimetres in rim diameter and with a capacity of 120 cubic centimetres, which is about half a cup. Its weight corresponds to 250 drachms, in keeping with standard measurements used in ancient Bactria and Sogdiana (4.43 to 4.55 grams).

Tree of Life with snake approaching bird on a nest; images of Alexander are on both sides of the tree
Priest playing the drum

Clearly, the absence of the monarch’s foreskin was of importance, which argues that the artisan or maybe the commissioner of the art was Jewish. The ancient Greeks did depict naked young men, frequently, but did not circumcise. Neither did Macedonians, or the Indians or Iranians conquered by the Macedonians, Dan observes.

Speaking of prohibitions, Jews aren’t supposed to show graven images and nudity isn’t a hallmark of Jewish art. The bowl may have been commissioned by a Hellenized Jew living in central Asia who adored Alexander but did not necessarily shrink at such depictions, the researcher suggests.

There are precedents of nudity in ancient Jewish art: for example, the synagogue of Dura Europos, a city that existed in Syria from 300 B.C.E. to the year 256 C.E., has frescoes showing people dressed to the nines but also a nude woman in the water – a maid or Pharaoh’s daughter herself – rescuing baby Moses.

Moses was found in the river. Fresco from Dura Europos synagogue

Back to the bowl. Even if it was commissioned by a Jew, why would the conqueror have been shown thus trimmed? Because, according to the Jewish version of his “Romance” (from which only medieval versions survive), he had to be in order to visit the Garden of Eden, albeit briefly. The bowl, actually made of a silver alloy with a high concentration of copper, had been obtained in Lhasa half a century ago by Dr David Snellgrove, a professor of Tibetan Buddhist studies at the SOAS University of London, the authors say. The reinterpretation of it by Dan and Grenet was undertaken based on photographs of the bowl, which today belongs to a private owner in Japan who displays it in the Ancient Orient Museum in Tokyo.

Closeup of Alexander the Great’s penis on the Tibetan silver bowl: That is circumcised

Alexander in the altogether

Alexander the Great died young, aged just 32, but left a giant Hellenistic mark on culture wherever he went, which includes Judea. En route to conquering his nemesis Persia, the Macedonian forces he led rolled over Judea and seized control of Jerusalem itself in the year 332 B.C. Centuries later, in the first century C.E., historian Flavius Josephus was aware of (and wrote about) Alexander’s alleged visit to Jerusalem and his meeting with the priests (“Antiquities of the Jews,” 11.317-345). Never mind the veracity of the account; clearly, Alexander was intimately involved with the ancient Jewish world.  He isn’t mentioned by name in the Bible though some choose to believe that the prophet Daniel foresaw him and the fate of his Macedonian empire. But accounts of Alexander’s life, and traditions and legends about the young king, appear time and again in other Hebrew literature. He appears by name in the First Book of the Maccabees – in fact, the first chapters are all about this industrious Macedonian. That first book was apparently written in Hebrew (going by its use of idiom) over 2,100 years ago, after the rise of the Hasmonean kingdom, a century and a half after Alexander’s death. The original version has been lost and all that remains is a Greek translation in the Septuagint that tells how Alexander conquered Judea and later, how his empire was shattered by his death.

Servant bearing a vessel
Alexander holding frankincense

Before addressing his seemingly Jewish trait, why should one think it’s Alexander at all (in three of the six cases)? Because the image on the bowl is of a young man whose hairdo complies with the classical canon, short and abundant, and is done in his specific hairstyle: two curls are flipped upward, away from the forehead, recalling a lion’s mane, Dan explains.

“Alexander was probably born when the Sun was in Leo. The lion was a symbol of kingship and Macedonian kings were showing themselves hunting the lion, as heirs of Heracles, the Greek hero who fought the Nemean lion,” she adds.

His depiction in the nude fits with the Greek version of the Romance, which has the emperor consulting with the Oracle of the Sun and Moon, at the end of the Earth, for which purpose nudity was de rigueur. “The bare Alexander has only a royal mantle or a scarf draped over his shoulder, a symbol of royalty in the Sassanian culture of Iran, which continued to influence Central Asia after the Hunnic invasions, in the 5th century C.E.,” Dan explains. The scarfed Alexander holds a long-necked flask in one hand, of a type known from Syria and Egypt in the 3rd to 4th centuries C.E. (so the silver bowl couldn’t date to before that, Dan argues). Such flasks were used to hold small amounts of precious liquid and here the researchers think the flask is supposed to hold the Water of Life, in keeping with the Jewish version of the Alexander legend – it is only in the Jewish version that the king himself, as opposed to his cook or other servants, attains the Water of Life.

Regarding the trees, Dan and Grenet suspect they’re frankincense-secreting trees of Boswellia serrata that grow in the Indus Valley, which Alexander partly conquered. Possibly the bowl-maker or person who commissioned it was involved in the incense trade. The Greek and Latin versions of the Alexander Romance describe his visit to a sacred Indian wood “full of frankincense and opobalsamum.”

Alexander with a handful of frankincense: The state of his member is very clear

In the trees are birds who sometimes escape the snake and sometimes don’t, images that may depict the fight between good and evil, Dan suggests. She and Grenet reject the explanation published in 1973 by Philip Denwood that the bowl represents an episode of Homer’s life, in which a snake that ascended a plane tree near Artemis’ sanctuary in Aulis ate eight chicks and their mother, and was then turned to stone, presaging the nine years of war between Greeks and Trojans.

The tree isn’t a plane tree, the authors point out, and the bowl doesn’t show eight chicks and a mother bird. None of the characters mentioned in the “Iliad” and nothing from the Greek temple in Aulis is depicted in this bowl.

Pseudo-letters to his mother

The Alexander Romance is comprised of various texts which were rewritten, revised, reinvented, rehashed, changed, and generally evolved throughout antiquity and Middle Ages. The scenes on the bowl could plausibly be based on two apocryphal letters ostensibly written by Alexander the Great that appear in a 5th-century Greek version of the Romance: one where he ostensibly tells his mother Olympias and his teacher Aristotle about his discovery of the Fountain of Life in the Land of Darkness and of the Blessed; and one about gathering aromatic plants (frankincense) around the Oracle of the Sun and the Moon, at the end of his expedition, as related in the pseudo-missive “Letter about the Marvels of India.”

And there you have it. A beautiful young man with classic artistic hallmarks of the young conqueror plus a very clearly circumcised penis, among incense trees, attended by servants. If Dan and Grenet are right about the identification of the iconic man on the bowl and about its origin, then this bowl – a “unique visual representation” of Alexander’s legend in the Jewish context – is also the earliest attestation of the Alexander Romance in the Indo-Iranian world, Grenet says.

The bowl was manufactured at the time of the Sassanian (aka Neo-Persian) Empire, which ruled from the year 224 to 651 C.E, in its eastern regions, which were already dominated by the Huns called “Hephtalites” who occupied Central Asia between 457 and 565 C.E. And if all this is correct then, Dan and Grenet suggest, not only ancient Greek and Roman and Indo-Iranian traditions but Jewish traditions too may have contributed to the awe we feel for Alexander to this very day, as well as to the image of Paradise in various cultures – even among the most eastward Zoroastrians. The base of the bowl is also interesting, in showing six fish in three pairs of two, possibly swimming in the paradisiac Fountain of Life after being resurrected following desiccation for consumption. The frankincense tree recalls the Tree of Life, with its serpent, and the two Alexanders on each side of the tree may correspond to the stereotypical image of Adam and Eve in Eden in Judeo-Christian representations as of the third and fourth century onward; or they may correspond with Zoroastrian representations of a couple in Heaven.

Alexander the Great in the Temple of Jerusalem, Sebastiano Conca (1680–1764)

What about the Jewish prohibition on making graven images? Well, iconoclasm in Late Antiquity may not have been all it’s been thought to be, Grenet and Dan postulate. Depicting the king as a circumcised man allowed to visit the glory of Paradise does not smack of worship per se, but may be indicative of the Jewish appropriation of the figure of Alexander as one of “the righteous”: Jewish tradition goes so far as to suggest that the great conqueror, upon encountering the high priest of the Jews in Jerusalem, bowed before him. It bears adding that to this day some Jews name their children Alexander but nary a one is named, for instance, Ahasuerus.

Possibly, then, living at some point in the 5th century or early 6th, in the Hephthalite Empire that ruled central Asia at the time, was a well-to-do Jew – there were many Jews in that region. This one had become imbued with Hellenic culture, Dan and Grenet sum up; and he wished to salute Alexander, protector of his religion and his people in the form of this beautiful bowl showing stories of the legends of the young king, cut in the only way he could possibly have entered Paradise as the story says.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Judahite Elite in Jerusalem Drank Wine Flavored With Vanilla 2,600 Years Ago

Judahite Elite in Jerusalem Drank Wine Flavored With Vanilla 2,600 Years Ago

Analysis of smashed wine jars in Jerusalem houses destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. finds unexpected flavour in jars that the rich reused

Ancient wine and amphorae.

In the year 586 B.C.E., the Babylonians laid waste to Jerusalem in a fury at the rebellion by King Zedekiah of Judah. Ahead of which, we learn – at least some of the elites in Jerusalem were drinking their wine flavoured with exotic vanilla, archaeologists revealed on Tuesday.

This startling discovery was a result of residue analysis of shattered wine jars from the time of King Zedekiah, found in two destroyed buildings in Iron Age Jerusalem, researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority announced. Signals of vanilla were found in five of eight jars, says Dr. Yiftah Shalev of the IAA.

The reconstructed wine jars from the time of King Zedekiah, which were found to contain traces of vanilla.

Its presence was a surprise, but not a shock in the sense that traces of vanilla had been detected in graves in Megiddo dating to the Bronze Age, around 500 years earlier, Prof. Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University explains.

Discover the secrets of the Middle East

These jars date to the Iron Age. In some cases, their handles are marked with the rosette seal impression of the Kingdom of Judah. That symbol indicates that the clay jar and its content, the wine, were the possession of the royal Judahite administration.

How secure is the identification of the vanilla? One hundred per cent, Gadot answers. But where the flavouring came from is anybody’s guess. Harvested as pods produced by vanilla plants, it isn’t known to have been cultivated back then and had to be harvested from the wild. It could have originated in Madagascar or another part of tropical Africa, or India, and then reached Iron Age Judah by long-distance trading from either source.

The rosette seal impression of the Kingdom of Judah, on a wine jar handle.

Long-distance trading was common then, by sea and by land. From that perspective, finding spices from far, far away is plausible. In this case, the researchers believe the bean was likely imported via Arabia, through the trade route crossing the Negev Desert: possibly under the auspices of Assyrians, or their heirs the Egyptians, or even, possibly, the Babylonians.

Wine-bibbing was common, but vanilla was not: “Its discovery in so many jars in Jerusalem stresses the relative wealth of the residents of Jerusalem at the time,” Shalev says – at least before the irate Babylonians arrived and levelled the city.

Wine evoked mixed feelings in biblical times, as it does today. Psalms 104:15 extols its virtue: “And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, making the face brighter than oil” – a lovely sentiment. The book of Isaiah admonishes: “Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink; that justify the wicked for a reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him” (5:22-23). Hosea is worse: “Harlotry [sensual idolatry], wine, and new wine take away the heart” (4:11). You stand warned.

Cinnamon in Phoenicia

No trace of other spices was detected in these Judahite wine jars, Gadot and Shalev confirm. But it bears noting that the locals of the Levant were augmenting their range of flavours from overseas going back to the Bronze Age, if not before. Cinnamon has been detected in Phoenician flasks found at Tel Dor from 3,000 years ago. The cinnamon residue was in wine jugs, mark you, but in tiny vessels with narrow necks and a capacity of about three tablespoons.

Remnants of the smashed wine jars in Jerusalem.
Restored wine jars.

The wine jars analyzed in the new study have been dated to roughly the time of King Zedekiah, whose rebellion against the Babylonian overlords about 2,600 years ago did not go well. The vessels were found inside two destroyed buildings, in two different digs in the City of David. The Israel Antiquities Authority is excavating “Beit Shalem” on the eastern slopes of the City of David hill. The other, a joint venture by the IAA and TAU, is at the site formerly known as the Givati parking lot, west of the hill.

All the jars contained chemicals typical of wine, and two, as said, had signals of vanilla bean and seem to have been placed in storage rooms in the two buildings. Both of the buildings show the marks of the furious destruction and the jars had, fittingly to the occasion, been smashed. But residue analysis, a technique that has taken off in recent years, could identify molecules adhering to the clay.

The analysis was performed by Ayala Amir, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University, performing the tests in laboratories at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, and Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan. “Vanilla markers are an unusual find, especially in light of the fire that occurred in the buildings where the jars were found. The results of the analysis of the organic residues allow me to say with confidence that the jars contained wine and that it was seasoned with vanilla,” she said.

Ortal Chalaf and Dr. Joe Uziel were the excavation directors on behalf of the IAA who uncovered one group of jars, on the eastern slopes of the City of David hill. “The opportunity to combine innovative scientific studies examining the contents of jars opened a window for us, to find out what they ate – and, in this case, what they drank – in Jerusalem on the eve of the destruction,” they stated.

The second set of jars was found by Gadot and Shalev beneath the Givati parking lot, where a sort of surviving two-story building was unearthed. The researchers suggest it may have been an administrative building, which, unlike today’s equivalents, apparently had a wine cellar. More than 15 jars were found there, as well as other storage vessels.

The analysis also revealed that the ancients sensibly reused their pottery jars – big clay jars are a labour to make and lug about. Some of the jars produced signals of having previously held olive oil (the manufacture of olive oil goes back at least 8,000 years).

In short, finding jars of wine is no surprise; discovering that some of the jars had also been used to store olive oil is horse sense. But, as the archaeologists put it: finding vanilla in the wine is amazing.

ASIA, EUROPE, HUNGARY, MONGOLIA, WORLD

Genetic Study Tracks Warriors from Mongolia to Hungary

Genetic Study Tracks Warriors from Mongolia to Hungary

Less known than Attila’s Huns, the Avars were their more successful successors. They ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe for almost 250 years. We know that they came from Central Asia in the sixth century CE, but ancient authors, as well as modern historians, have long debated their provenance.

Reconstruction of an Avar-period armoured horseman based on Grave 1341/1503 of the Derecske-Bikás-dűlő site (Déri Museum, Debrecen).

Now, a multidisciplinary research team of geneticists, archaeologists and historians, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, obtained and studied the first ancient genomes from the most important Avar elite sites discovered in contemporary Hungary.

This study traces the genetic origin of the Avar elite to a faraway region of East-Central Asia. It provides direct genetic evidence for one of the largest and most rapid long-distance migrations in ancient human history.

In the 560s, the Avars established an empire that lasted more than 200 years, centered in the Carpathian Basin. Despite much scholarly debate their initial homeland and origin have remained unclear.

They are primarily known from historical sources of their enemies, the Byzantines, who wondered about the origin of the fearsome Avar warriors after their sudden appearance in Europe. Had they come from the Rouran empire in the Mongolian steppe (which had just been destroyed by the Turks), or should one believe the Turks who strongly disputed such a legacy?

Historians have wondered whether that was a well-organized migrant group or a mixed band of fugitives. Archaeological research has pointed to many parallels between the Carpathian Basin and Eurasian nomadic artifacts (weapons, vessels, horse harnesses), for instance, a lunula-shaped pectoral of gold used as a symbol of power. We also know that the Avars introduced the stirrup in Europe. Yet we have so far not been able to trace their origin in the wide Eurasian steppes.

In this study, a multidisciplinary team—including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the ELTE University and the Institute of Archaeogenomics of Budapest, Harvard Medical School in Boston, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton—analyzed 66 individuals from the Carpathian Basin.

The study included the eight richest Avar graves ever discovered, overflowing with golden objects, as well as other individuals from the region prior to and during the Avar age.

“We address a question that has been a mystery for more than 1400 years: who were the Avar elites, mysterious founders of an empire that almost crushed Constantinople and for more than 200 years ruled the lands of modern-day Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Austria, Croatia and Serbia?” explains Johannes Krause, senior author of the study.

Genetic Study Tracks Warriors from Mongolia to Hungary
Derecske-Bikás-dűlő, Grave 1341/1503 (Déri Museum, Debrecen).

Fastest long-distance migration in human history

The Avars did not leave written records about their history and these first genome-wide data provide robust clues about their origins.

“The historical contextualization of the archaeogenetic results allowed us to narrow down the timing of the proposed Avar migration.

They covered more than 5000 kilometres in a few years from Mongolia to the Caucasus, and after ten more years settled in what is now Hungary. This is the fastest long-distance migration in human history that we can reconstruct up to this point,” explains Choongwon Jeong, co-senior author of the study.

Guido Gnecchi-Ruscone, the lead author of the study, adds that “besides their clear affinity to Northeast Asia and their likely origin due to the fall of the Rouran Empire, we also see that the 7th-century Avar period elites show 20 to 30 per cent of additional non-local ancestry, likely associated with the North Caucasus and the Western Asian Steppe, which could suggest further migration from the Steppe after their arrival in the 6th century.”

The East Asian ancestry is found in individuals from several sites in the core settlement area between the Danube and Tisza rivers in modern-day central Hungary.

However, outside the primary settlement region, we find high variability in inter-individual levels of admixture, especially in the south-Hungarian site of Kölked. This suggests an immigrant Avars elite ruling a diverse population with the help of a heterogeneous local elite.

These exciting results show how much potential there is in the unprecedented collaboration between geneticists, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists for the research on the “Migration period” in the first millennium CE. The research was published in Cell.

ARMENIA, ASIA, WORLD

Archaeologists discover ancient fortune-telling shrines in Armenia

Archaeologists discover ancient fortune-telling shrines in Armenia

Archaeologists say three 3,300-year-old shrines set up by an unknown culture in Armenia apparently were used for occult divination.

This shrine was excavated at the entrance of a fortress’ west terrace in Gegharot in Armenia. The stone monument was probably the focal point for rituals practised there 3,300 years ago, archaeologists say.

Three shrines, dating back about 3,300 years, have been discovered within a hilltop fortress at Gegharot in Armenia. Local rulers at the time probably used the shrines for divination, a practice aimed at predicting the future, the archaeologists involved in the discovery say.

Each of the three shrines consists of a single room holding a clay basin filled with ash and ceramic vessels. Wide varieties of artefacts were discovered, including clay idols with horns, stamp seals, censers used to burn substances and a vast amount of animal bones with markings on them.

During divination practices, the rulers and diviners may have burnt intoxicating substances and drank wine, allowing them to experience altered states of mind, the archaeologists say.

“The logic of divination presumes that variable pathways articulate the past, present and future, opening the possibility that the link between a current situation and an eventual outcome might be altered,” Adam Smith and Jeffrey Leon write in an article published recently in the American Journal of Archaeology.

Smith is a professor at Cornell University, and Leon is a graduate student there.

Excavations at the shrines are part of the American-Armenian Project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, also known as Project ArAGATS.

The shrines were unearthed over a period stretching from 2003 to 2011.

Archaeologists discover ancient fortune-telling shrines in Armenia

Smith told LiveScience that the region’s rulers probably used Gegharot as an occult centre. At the time, writing had not yet spread to this part of Armenia, so the names of the polity and its rulers are unknown.

Smith and Leon found evidence for three forms of divination at Gegharot. One form was osteomancy, trying to predict the future through rituals that involved rolling the marked-up knucklebones of cows, sheep and goats like dice.

Lithomancy, trying to predict the future through the use of coloured pebbles, also appears to have been practised at Gegharot.

And at one shrine, the archaeologists found an installation used to grind flour. Smith and Leon think that this flour could have been used to predict the future in a practice called aleuromancy. 

The shrines were in use for a century or so until the surrounding fortress, along with all the other fortresses in the area, were destroyed.

The site was largely abandoned after this, Smith said. Although the rulers who controlled Gegharot put great effort into trying to predict and change the future, it was to no avail.

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

The ancient Kingdom Discovered Beneath Mound in Iraq

The ancient Kingdom Discovered Beneath Mound in Iraq

In the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, archaeologists have discovered an ancient city called Idu, hidden beneath a mound. Cuneiform inscriptions and works of art reveal the palaces that flourished in the city throughout its history thousands of years ago. 

The ancient Kingdom Discovered Beneath Mound in Iraq
A domestic structure, with at least two rooms, that may date to relatively late in the life of the newfound ancient city, perhaps around 2,000 years ago when the Parthian Empire controlled the area in Iraq.

Located in a valley on the northern bank of the lower Zab River, the city’s remains are now part of a mound created by human occupation called a tell, which rises about 32 feet (10 meters) above the surrounding plain.

The earliest remains date back to Neolithic times when farming first appeared in the Middle East, and a modern-day village called Satu Qala now lies on top of the tell.

The city thrived between 3,300 and 2,900 years ago, said Cinzia Pappi, an archaeologist at the Universität Leipzig in Germany. At the start of this period, the city was under the control of the Assyrian Empire and was used to administer the surrounding territory. Later on, as the empire declined, the city gained its independence and became the centre of a kingdom that lasted for about 140 years, until the Assyrians reconquered it.

The researchers were able to determine the site’s ancient name when, during a survey of the area in 2008, a villager brought them an inscription with the city’s ancient name engraved on it.

Excavations were conducted in 2010 and 2011, and the team reported its findings in the most recent edition of the journal Anatolica.

“Very few archaeological excavations had been conducted in Iraqi Kurdistan before 2008,” Pappi wrote in an email to LiveScience. Conflicts in Iraq over the past three decades have made it difficult to work there. Additionally, archaeologists before that time tended to favour excavations in the south of Iraq at places like Uruk and Ur.

The effects of recent history are evident on the mound. In 1987, Saddam Hussein’s forces attacked and partly burnt the modern-day village as part of a larger campaign against the Kurds, and “traces of this attack are still visible,” Pappi said.

Ancient palaces

The art and cuneiform inscriptions the team uncovered provide glimpses of the ancient city’s extravagant palaces.

When Idu was an independent city, one of its rulers, Ba’ilanu, went so far as to boast that his palace was better than any of his predecessors’. “The palace which he built he made greater than that of his fathers,” he claimed in the translated inscription. (His father, Abbi-zeri, made no such boast.)

Two works of art hint at the decorations adorning the palaces at the time Idu was independent. One piece of artwork, a bearded sphinx with the head of a human male and the body of a winged lion, was drawn onto a glazed brick that the researchers found in four fragments. Above and below the sphinx, a surviving inscription reads, “Palace of Ba’auri, king of the land of Idu, son of Edima, also king of the land of Idu.”

This work shows a bearded sphinx with a human male head and the body of a winged lion. Found in four fragments it was also created for King Ba’auri and has almost the exact same inscription as the depiction of the horse.

Another work that was created for the same ruler, and bearing the same inscription as that on the sphinx, shows a “striding horse crowned with a semicircular headstall and led by a halter by a bearded man wearing a fringed short robe,” Pappi and colleague Arne Wossink wrote in the journal article.

Even during the Assyrian rule, when Idu was used to administer the surrounding territory, finely decorated palaces were still built. For instance, the team discovered part of a glazed plaque whose coloured decorations include a palmette, pomegranates and zigzag patterns. Only part of the inscription survives, but it reads, “Palace of Assurnasirpal, (king of the land of Assur).” Assurnasirpal refers to Assurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.), the researchers said, adding that he, or one of his governors, must have built or rebuilt a palace at Idu after the Assyrians reconquered the city. 

A hero facing a griffon

Another intriguing artefact, which may be from a palace, is a cylinder seal dating back about 2,600 years. When it was rolled on a piece of clay, it would have revealed a vivid mythical scene.

The scene would have shown a bow-wielding man crouching down before a griffon, as well as a morning star (a symbol of the goddess Ishtar), a lunar crescent (a symbol of the moon god) and a solar disc symbolizing the sun god. A symbol called a rhomb, which represented fertility, was also shown.

“The image of the crouching hero with the bow is typical for warrior gods,” Pappi wrote in the email. “The most common of these was the god Ninurta, who also played an important role in the [Assyrian] state religion, and it is possible that the figure on the seal is meant to represent him.”

Future work

Before conducting more digs, the researchers will need approval from both the local government and the people of the village. “For wide-scale excavations to continue, at least some of these houses will have to be removed,” Pappi said. “Unfortunately, until a settlement is reached between the villagers and the Kurdistan regional government, further work is currently not possible.”

Although digging is not currently possible, the artefacts already excavated were recently analyzed further and more publications of the team’s work will be appearing in the future. The archaeologists also plan to survey the surrounding area to get a sense of the size of the kingdom of Idu.

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

Iraq’s Long-Lost Mythical Temple Has Been Found

Iraq’s Long-Lost Mythical Temple Has Been Found

Life-size human statues and column bases from a long-lost temple dedicated to a supreme god have been discovered in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.

Life-size human statues and the remains of an ancient temple dating back some 2,500 years have been discovered in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The region’s hilly environment is shown here.

The discoveries date back over 2,500 years to the Iron Age, a time period when several groups — such as the Urartians, Assyrians and Scythians — vied for supremacy over what is now northern Iraq.

“I didn’t do excavation, just archaeological soundings —the villagers uncovered these materials accidentally,” said Dlshad Marf Zamua, a doctoral student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who began the fieldwork in 2005.

The column bases were found in a single village while the other finds, including a bronze statuette of a wild goat, were found in a broad area south of where the borders of Iraq, Iran and Turkey intersect. 

For part of the Iron Age, this area was under the control of the city of Musasir, also called Ardini, Marf Zamua said. Ancient inscriptions have referred to Musasir as a “holy city founded in bedrock” and “the city of the raven.”

A lost ancient temple

“One of the best results of my fieldwork is the uncovered column bases of the long-lost temple of the city of Musasir, which was dedicated to the god Haldi,” Marf Zamuatold Live Science in an email.

Haldi was the supreme god of the kingdom of Urartu. His temple was so important that after the Assyrians looted it in 714 B.C., the Urartu king Rusa I was said to have ripped his crown off his head before killing himself.

A 19th-century drawing of an ancient relief that depicts the sacking of the temple of Haldi by the Assyrians.

He “threw himself on the ground, tore his clothes, and his arms hung limp. He ripped off his headband, pulled out his hair, pounded his chest with both hands, and threw himself flat on his face …” reads one ancient account (translation by Marc Van De Mieroop).

The location of the temple has long been a mystery, but with the discovery of the column bases, Marf Zamua thinks it can be narrowed down. 

Additionally, Marf Zamua analyzed an ancient carving of Musasir, discovered in the 19th century at Khorsabad. The carving, he found, shows hillside houses with three windows on the second floor and a doorway on the ground floor. Such a design can still be seen today in some villages, the bottom floor being used as a stable and storage area, he noted.

Life-size statues

This long-lost temple is just the tip of the archaeological iceberg. During his work in Kurdistan, Marf Zamua also found several life-size human statues that are up to 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) tall. Made of limestone, basalt or sandstone, some of these statues are now partly broken.

They all show bearded males, some of whom “are holding a cup in their right hands, and they put their left hands on their bellies,” said Marf Zamua. “One of them holds a hand axe. Another one put on a dagger.”

Originally erected above burials, the statues have a “sad moment” posture, Marf Zamua said. Similar statues can be found from central Asia to eastern Europe. “It is art and ritual of nomads/pastorals, especially when they [buried] their chieftains,” Marf Zamua said.

Mostof the newfound statues date to the seventh or sixth century B.C., after Musasir fell to the Assyrians, and during a time when the Scythians and Cimmerians were advancing through the Middle East.

Modern-day dangers and ancient treasures

Over the past few weeks, conflict in Iraq has been increasing as a group called the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIS) has taken several cities and threatened to march on Baghdad. The Kurdistan area, including this archaeological site, is autonomous, and its militia has been able to prevent ISIS from entering it.

Several life-sized human statues of bearded males, dating back to the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., have also been discovered in Kurdistan.

Marf Zamuasaid there are risks associated with living and working in the border area. Due to the conflicts of the past few decades, there are numerous unexploded land mines, one of which killed a young shepherd a month back, he said. Additionally, the National Iraqi News Agency reports that Iranian artillery recently fired onto the Iraqi side of the border, and there have been past instances where planes from Turkey have launched attacks into Iraqi Kurdistan.

Despite these risks, there are also terrific archaeological finds to be made. In addition to the statues and column bases, Marf Zamuafound is a bronze statuette of a wild goat about 3.3 inches (8.4 centimetres) long and 3.2 inches (8.3 cm) tall. Researchers are now trying to decipher a cuneiform inscription on the statuette.

Marf Zamua presented the discoveries recently in a presentation given at the International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, held at the University of Basel in Switzerland. In addition to his doctoral studies, Marf Zamua teaches at Salahaddin University in Erbil, which is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Valley of the Kings archaeologists unearth treasures in Siberia dating back 2,500 years

Valley of the Kings archaeologists unearth treasures in Siberia dating back 2,500 years

Archaeologists have discovered a large burial mound in the Siberian “Valley of the Kings” dating to more than 2,500 years ago.

The ancient tomb holds the remains of five people, including those of a woman and a toddler who was buried with an array of grave goods, such as a crescent moon-shaped pendant, bronze mirror and gold earrings.

The mounds were made by the Scythians — a term used to describe culturally-related nomadic groups that lived on the steppes between the Black Sea and China from about 800 B.C. to about A.D. 300.

The Scythian woman and the child were buried together in a wooden burial chamber within a burial mound.

The burial mound, known as a kurgan, is located near a previously excavated kurgan belonging to a Scythian chief. Given the proximity of the woman’s burial mound to the chief’s — only 656 feet (200 meters) away — and the valuable artefacts buried with her, “I think that she was a person of great importance in the society of nomads,” said Łukasz Oleszczak, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, who led the Polish team, which worked alongside Russian archaeologists at the site.

The crescent pendant stood out immediately, he added. “She was buried with this artefact that we had believed to be a sign of male burials,” because similarly shaped pendants had previously been found in men’s burials in kurgans in southern Siberia, Oleszczak told Live Science.

The gold grave goods were found near the woman.
The woman had gold earrings and gold ornaments, possibly from a hat, near her head.

Archaeologists have known about the “Valley of the Kings” (a phrase coined by a journalist years ago, harkening to Ancient Egypt’s Valley of the Kings) for more than a century. This vast valley, known as Touran-Uyuk in Tuva, a Russian republic, is replete with numerous Scythian royal burials. 

One of the previously excavated kurgans, dating to the eighth or ninth century B.C., holds the earliest known elite Scythian burial ever found. Most of these kurgans, however, have yet to be formally excavated, Oleszczak said.

At the invitation of Russian archaeologists, Oleszczak and his team conducted excavations in the valley during the 2019 and 2021 field seasons.

The kurgan, detected by aerial laser scanning, is about 82 feet (25 m) in diameter and has a destroyed, flattened centre, according to Science in Poland, a news site coordinated by the Polish government and independent journalists.

The kurgan is relatively short today — just 12 inches (30 centimetres) high, Oleszczak added.

During excavations, the archaeologists found the burials of five people. In one chamber, at the centre of the kurgan, the researchers found a looted burial chamber with weapons, including arrows, suggesting that a warrior had been buried there.

The excavations at the kurgan in Siberia.

The team found the remains of the woman and child in an unlooted wooden burial chamber with three layers of beams.

The sheer amount of wood was likely a symbol of wealth, as “there are not many trees in that area,” Oleszczak said. “Wood is quite valuable.”

According to an anatomical analysis, the woman died at about age 50, and the child was 2 to 3 years old. Along with the crescent pendant, the woman was buried with a number of other grave goods, including gold ornaments near her head that were possibly part of a hat, an iron knife and an engraved wooden comb tied with a leather loop to a bronze mirror.

This comb-mirror duo had been placed in a leather bag. It’s not yet clear how the woman and toddler died, Oleszczak added.

Another burial in the kurgan held the remains of a young male warrior buried with weapons, including a knife, a whetstone and gold ornaments. The fifth burial was found in a pit on the kurgan’s outskirts.

This grave held the remains of a teenager. “Graves of children on the perimeter or just outside the ditch surrounding the barrow are a typical part of the funeral rites of this early Scythian culture,” Oleszczak told Science in Poland.

Using a metal detector, the archaeologists discovered evidence of bronze objects that were left around the kurgan’s perimeter, including dozens of horse-riding equipment pieces, a bronze axe and a goat-shaped ornament. These objects likely became scattered due to deep ploughing from a farm collective that existed in the area in the 20th century.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Christian, Muslim symbols were found in a 7th-century shipwreck in Israel

Christian, Muslim symbols were found in a 7th-century shipwreck in Israel

About 1,300 years ago, a 25-meter-long ship sank just a few dozen meters from the coast of Israel. Most likely, nobody perished in the incident.

But its plentiful cargo included 103 amphorae filled with all forms of agricultural products, numerous daily objects used by the crew and many other unique features, such as several Greek and Arabic inscriptions. They were swallowed by the sea and the sand, which preserved their secrets for centuries.

First spotted by two members of nearby Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, about 35 km. south of Haifa, the site was again covered by sand and rediscovered in 2015.

Students Maayan Cohen and Michelle Creisher examine the pottery near the bulkhead at Ma‘agan Mikhael B shipwreck.

The shipwreck has been excavated by the University of Haifa’s Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies since 2016.

It has offered archaeologists unique insights into the life of the region at the time of the transition between Byzantine and Islamic rule, trade routes and ship construction.

Christian, Muslim symbols were found in a 7th-century shipwreck in Israel

Moreover, the site presents the largest maritime cargo collection of Byzantine and early Islamic pottery discovered in Israel, not devoid of mystery, since two of the six types of amphorae had never before been uncovered.

The first results of the excavations were examined in two academic papers recently published in the journals the Levant and Near Eastern Archaeology.

 “We have not been able to determine with certainty what caused the ship to wreck, but we think it was probably a navigational mistake,” University of Haifa archaeologist Deborah Cvikel, an author of both papers, told The Jerusalem Post. “We are talking about an unusually large vessel, which was carefully built and is beautifully conserved.”

Based on the findings, the researchers believe the ship must have made stops in Cyprus, Egypt and possibly a port along the coast of Israel before sinking, she said, adding: “It was definitely travelling around the Levant.”

The size and richness of the cargo seem to contradict the notion, currently popular among scholars, that during the transition between Byzantine and Islamic rule between the seventh and eighth centuries, commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean was limited.

Inscriptions found by the archaeologists have provided a glimpse of the fascinating complexity of the period, with both Greek and Arabic letters, as well as Christian and Muslim religious symbols, making their way to the ship – whether carved in the wood of the vessel or on the amphorae.

“We do not know whether the crew was Christian or Muslim, but we found traces of both religions,” Cvikel said.

The symbols include the name of Allah written in Arabic, as well as several crosses. Among the products found in the pottery were olives, dates, figs, fish bones, pine nuts, grapes and raisins. Many animal bones were found on the ship, perhaps do to eating practices or because they were kept by the crew as pets.

“We have not found any human bone, but we assume that because the ship sank so close to the coast, nobody died in the wreckage,” Cvikel said.

What also makes the site unique is that among the six types of amphorae identified by the archaeologists, two typologies had never emerged anywhere else. Most of the other vessels appeared to have been made in Egypt.

Moreover, the ship also offers important insights in terms of ship construction techniques.

“Ships were built using a method called ‘shell-first’ construction, which was based on strakes, giving the hull its shape and integrity,” Cvikel told the Post. “The main characteristic of this method is the use of mortise-and-tenon joints to connect hull planks. During the fifth to sixth centuries CE, ‘skeleton-first’ construction, in which strakes were fastened to the preconstructed keel and frames, was used.

“This process of ‘transition in ship construction’ has been one of the main topics in the history of shipbuilding for about 70 years, and some issues have remained unanswered. Therefore, each shipwreck of this period holds a vast amount of information that can shed further light onto the process.”

The excavation of the site, which is carried out with the involvement of several master’s and doctoral students, is ongoing, even though this summer the coronavirus emergency has prevented the archaeologist from going back to it.

“We still need to uncover the rear part of the ship, where presumably the captain lived,” Cvikel said. “We also need to carry out more analysis on many of the findings, including the amphorae, their content, the everyday objects, such as the cookware, and the animal bones.”