Turkish experts find 4 Umayyad epigraphs in the ancient city Knidos
MUĞLA
Four inscriptions made of marble and limestone from the Umayyad period have been unearthed during the archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Knidos in the western province of Muğla’s Datça district.
The excavations have been carried out in the ancient city under the direction of Professor Ertekin Doksanaltı from Selçuk University’s Archaeology Department, with a team of 40 people consisting of geologists, architects, restorers, art historians, biologists, anthropologists, and excavation workers.
Four inscriptions were determined to belong to the Umayyads, who ruled in the city of Knidos between 685 and 711.
One of the epigraphs belonging to the Umayyad period was unearthed during excavations in the ancient city of Knidos, Muğla, Turkey.
It has been determined that the names of tribes that would participate in the Umayyad expedition to Istanbul, as well as commanders and administrators, are written on the four inscriptions found during the excavations.
Doksanaltı said that excavations have been carried out since 2016 in the ancient city of Knidos within the framework of the 12-month excavation project of the Culture and Tourism Ministry.
This collage shows epigraphs belonging to the Umayyad period unearthed during excavations in the ancient city of Knidos, Muğla, Turkey, on April 3, 2022.
Stating that amazing archaeological discoveries were made during the excavations, Doksanaltı said: “On the first day of Ramadan, Knidos presented us with a beautiful gift. Four new Umayyad inscriptions were unearthed during the archaeological excavations.
These inscriptions, which are the largest remains of early Islam in Western Anatolia, contain names of tribes, commanders, and rulers who participated in two of the three expeditions organized by the Umayyads to Istanbul.
Knidos, which offers many new data from the ancient period, showed how important it can be in terms of Islamic historiography with its data that will shed light on the early periods of Islam.”
Stating that the inscriptions vary in length from 15 centimetres to 1 meter, Doksanaltı said that the examinations continue on the artefacts.
Founded by Greek settlers, Knidos became an important cultural and political centre after the fifth century B.C. because of being a busy trading hub in the region.
The city was also famed for its association with Aphrodite and for its famous statue of the goddess, sculpted by Praxiteles of Athens.
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.
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.
Royston-area man turns up the Indigenous artefact in yard
Mark Lake was cleaning up his Royston-area yard last April when he came across an object that looked like it had been around a while. He had been working in a wooded area after an old maple tree had blown over. Over the years, he’d found lots of junk before though never anything of historic value, but what he turned up turned out to be an Indigenous artefact.
“I picked this object up, sticking out from underneath a young maple, and didn’t think anything of it,” he said.
At first, he thought it was a type of industrial waste. Once he got around to cleaning it, he realized it was some kind of carving.
The Indigenous artefact Mark Lake found appears to be a war club.
“I was a geologist in a previous life,” he said. “I recognized it was made out of sandstone.”
He showed it to a sculptor friend who told him from the workmanship it looked like a labour of love.
Lake’s wife Katie has a friend who works with K’ómoks First Nation, so the Lakes got in touch to find out more and sent a picture of the object. The process then started to identify and repatriate it. An archaeologist working with KFN examined it, as did a couple of others.
“The archaeologists have looked at it and certainly think it’s pretty unique,” Lake said.
The couple handed the object over to KFN, and Lake says Chief Nicole Rempel was excited to receive the artefact. It is about 45 cm long, weighs about 1.5 kg and is probably made of medium-grade sandstone.
“It’s fairly hefty and quite smooth in the handle area,” Lake said.
He is not sure of its origin. There is a hole in the handle, perhaps for a rope. Whether it was a functional or strictly ceremonial club remains a bit of a mystery, but it seems to have originated in the Vancouver Island region.
“It might not have moved very far,” he said. “It’s pretty rare to find one that’s that complete.”
After contacting KFN, the Lakes agreed to have their Gartley Point property mapped for archaeological purposes, and it will be added to the provincial registry’s archaeological branch.
For KFN, the Lakes’ willingness to collaborate on this effort is a hopeful sign for broader community relations.
“In a time when Reconciliation is a central focus for our Nation, and more broadly across B.C. and Canada, it’s encouraging to see residents within KFN territory recognize the importance of returning artefacts to the people whose ancestors made them,” Chief Nicole Rempel of KFN said in a news release. “It is my hope that more Vancouver Island residents, and in fact all Canadians, will recognize the importance of these artefacts to local First Nations and reach out when they do come across something. I am grateful to the Lake family for connecting with KFN, so that we can learn more about our history and make it accessible to our members and the broader community.”
KFN asks anyone who has found artefacts in KFN territory to contact Candace Newman (reception@komoks.ca), KFN’s archaeology and referrals co-ordinator, to assess the cultural object.
Remains of Ancient American Dogs Identified at Jamestown
Dogs first came to the Americas about 16,000 years ago, likely on the heels of ice age hunters crossing a bygone land bridge from Siberia. These indigenous canines remained on the continent for thousands of years as furry friends and hunting companions—until, suddenly, they were gone, replaced genetically by European breeds.
A modern reconstruction of the Jamestown colony
Now, a pair of jawbones pried from the earth beneath Virginia’s colonial Jamestown settlement may illuminate when these dogs vanished and the roles they may have played in the lives of both Native Americans and European colonists.
It’s a “pretty cool” study that provides a window into a period of time in which little is known about the continent’s first dogs, says Courtney Hofman, an anthropologist at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, who was not involved with the research. “A lot of work has focused on much older indigenous dogs, but less has been done on them in more recent times.”
When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas in the 15th century, they brought with them large war dogs. Later European colonists brought over working dogs such as bloodhounds and greyhounds, as well as other hunting dogs.
Gradually, these European lineages almost completely replaced the indigenous dogs of the Americas. Today, only a few arctic breeds, such as Siberian huskies and Alaskan malamutes, are thought to retain a genetic connection to their ancient past.
How and when this dramatic genetic turnover happened remains unknown. So Ariane Thomas, a graduate student studying anthropology at the University of Iowa, turned to the remains of dogs uncovered at Jamestown between 2007 and 2010.
Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, founded largely by explorers with little farming experience.
Thomas managed to extract mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), inherited from the maternal line, from two canine jawbones, one found beneath a former bakery and the other inside a well thought to have belonged to Colonial Governor John Smith. Both structures date to the early 1600s.
Thomas compared the dogs’ mtDNA with that of modern and ancient dogs around the world. The Jamestown dogs’ maternal line was totally unrelated to European breeds, her team reported here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists. Instead, the animals were most closely related to other ancient dogs from Illinois and Ohio and were distantly related to several ancient arctic dogs, including the oldest known American dog, found in Alaska and thought to be about 10,000 years old.
Curiously, the dogs aren’t closely related to canines dated to about 1000 to 1400 C.E. found at another early Virginian colonial village known as Weyanoke, just 50 kilometres away.
“There’s a lot more diversity than maybe we initially thought,” Thomas says. That suggests European dogs may have replaced indigenous ones slowly, she says.
All the dog skull fragments recovered from Jamestown feature narrow, shallow cutmarks suggesting they were butchered, she says. The remains were also found amid food waste such as mussel shells and fish bones. The jawbone recovered from Smith’s well dates to a period known as the Starving Time, spanning the winter between 1609 and 1610 during which the Jamestown colonists nearly perished. “They were running low on supplies,” Thomas says, and “resorted to eating whatever was around.”
Some of the other dog bones were found in layers dating to at least 10 years later, suggesting eating dogs wasn’t uncommon when times got tough.
How exactly these indigenous dogs came to Jamestown remains a mystery, she says. Colonists wanted to maintain the prized lineages of European hunting dogs, so it’s unlikely they would have knowingly allowed native dogs to breed with their own, Thomas notes. Later, a law passed in 1629 expressly prohibited trading European dogs to Indigenous people.
The Jamestown dogs may also have had Indigenous owners. Thousands of mussel shell beads in various stages of construction found at the site suggest some Indigenous people—likely the local Powhatan—may have lived and worked at the settlement. If so, they may have brought their canine companions with them.
Next, Thomas hopes to sequence the nuclear DNA of the Jamestown dogs, which will reveal whether they were fully indigenous or hybrids of European-indigenous dogs.
The stories of these dogs highlight the “shared histories” of Indigenous people and colonial Europeans, says Raquel Fleskes, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. “It’s part of the story of Europeans learning from Indigenous societies, and [the dogs’ story] could shed light on their relationships and interactions.”
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.
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.
A 2,300-year-old Iron Age shield has been revealed by archaeologists
The shield is made from green bark that has been stiffened with internal wooden laths.
Found during a dig near Leicester in 2015 and dated to between 395 and 255BC, the shield was made of painted bark, backed by wooden spars. Analysis showed it had been badly damaged, probably by spears and edged weapons, before being left in a pit.
Experts said the shield gave an “unparalleled” insight into prehistoric technology.
A reconstruction showed the shield was light and surprisingly strong
The shield, which measured 670 x 370mm (26ins x 15ins), was found on the Everards Meadows site near the M1 by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) archaeologists.
The bark used was from either alder, willow, poplar, hazel or spindle and the stiffening spars were made of apple, pear, quince or hawthorn.
The shield had a rim of split hazel rod and a boss, to protect the hand, woven from a willow core.
Iron Age
In Britain, dating from 800BC to AD43
Iron tools improved agriculture and industry
There were larger settlements and a more sophisticated society developed
Seen as ending with the Roman conquest of Britain
Mike Bamforth, from the University of York, used CT scanning and 3D printing to help reveal its secrets.
He said: “This truly astonishing and unparalleled artefact has given us an insight into prehistoric technology that we could never have guessed at.
“Being part of the team working to tease apart the complex secrets of the shield’s construction has been incredibly interesting and rewarding.”
Archaeologists said such shields might have been common in the Iron Age but their organic materials meant they rarely survived.
A reconstruction showed that while it was not as strong as solid wooden ones, the shield could stop blows effectively and had the advantage of being extremely light.
The British Museum, which will store the shield, described it as a “absolutely phenomenal object”.
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.
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.
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.
