Heavy rainfall has uncovered 75 ancient artefacts at the Borsippa archaeological site in the Iraqi province of Babylon, the authorities announced on Sunday.

A team searches for ancient artefacts in Iraq [Credit: AFP]

Terracotta pottery, coins and metal objects dating back to the Parthian era were among the items found, said Hussein Fleih of the provincial antiquities authority.

"These pieces will now be examined to determine their exact dating," he told AFP.

The discovery of the items because of rain is not uncommon in Iraq, but there have been several deep archaeological digs at the site next to a Muslim sanctuary dedicated to Abraham.

"Last year, 1,000 pieces were unearthed this way and this proves that antiquities can be on the surface and not deep underground," said Fleih.

Source: AFP [February 25, 2018]

Iraq has foiled an attempt to smuggle antiquities worth millions of dollars to Turkey, its interior ministry said on Saturday.

A destroyed artifact is seen at a museum, where Islamic State militants filmed themselves destroying priceless statues and sculptures in 2015, during a battle against the militants in Mosul, Iraq, March 11, 2017 [Credit: Reuters/Thaier Al-Sudani]

The ministry’s general inspector said in a statement, quoted by Alforatnews, that ministry teams in Kirkuk blocked the transfer of scriptures and antiquities worth USD13 million to Turkey, which were in the possession of two people.

Those, the statement revealed, included scriptures and a bust.

It added that the suspects confessed to agreeing with another party in Turkey on the handover of the pieces. They said they were also expecting to receive more items while waiting at the Turkish borders, including jewelry belonging to the wife of late president Saddam Hussein worth millions of dollars.

Iraq’s archaeological sites sustained severe damage when Islamic State militants occupied a third of the country to proclaim a self-styled Islamic “caliphate”. The militants had filmed themselves axing down priceless statues in Mosul and other areas as they considered statues as pagan representations at odds with their extremist religious codes. However, later reports told that militants turned to selling antiquities to fund the group’s operations.

Author: Mohamed Mostafa | Source: Iraqi News [February 18, 2018]

Before the Greeks excelled in science and philosophy, culture was blooming in Mesopotamia, located between the Euphrates River and the Tigris River in present day Iraq.

Clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia provide an entirely new insight to early medical history [Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum]

This region, known as the cradle of civilisation, was the seat of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which lasted from around 900 to 612 BCE.

Some historians consider the kingdom to be the first true empire in history and many Assyrian kings and cities are described in The Old Testament.

A Danish Ph.D. student has now analysed clay tablets from the Kingdom’s heyday, in which a man called Kisir-Ashur documents his education to become a doctor, and how he combined magical rituals with medical treatments.

Some of the concepts of illness described by Kisir-Ashur and in other, similar texts, were perhaps handed down to the Greeks.

Some of the most detailed sources of ancient medical practices

The clay tablets were largely written by Kisir-Ashur at the end of the seventh century BCE. He is one of the earliest examples of a doctor, or at least something like a doctor, in terms of the level of detail of training and practice.

Researchers have known about the clay tablets for decades, but this is the first time that Kisir-Ashur’s writings have been studied together. And they have turned out to be one of the most detailed accounts of ancient medical education and practice ever recorded.

“The sources give a unique insight into how an Assyrian doctor was trained in the art of diagnosing and treating illnesses, and their causes,” says Dr. Troels Pank Arbøll from the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Arbøll studied the text as part of his Ph.D., which he recently defended.

“It’s an insight into some of the earliest examples of what we can describe as science,” he says.

Illness in Mesopotamia

The residents of Mesopotamia did not distinguish between what we today call magic and medicine. For them, disease was caused by supernatural forces such as gods and demons.

Mesopotamia covered the region between the Euphrates River and the Tigris River in present day Iraq. The region was home to cities listed in The Old Testament, such as Ninive and Babylon [Credit: WikiCommons]

Treatment typically included identifying the illness according to the power that caused it. Then medical agents were applied to heal the disease and its symptoms, alongside rituals to appease the gods.

Some text, which researchers call “medical,” consists of both diagnoses, descriptions of symptoms, prescriptions, incantations, prayers, and rituals.

Disease could be caused by sinful or objectionable behaviour, or it could be the result of witchcraft performed against the patient.

Illnesss was not the only type of divine punishment. Other examples include economic ruin or social exclusion. These problems were treated on the same level as physical illness by healers like Kisir-Ashur.

You might say that Mesopotamian healers focused a great deal on communicating with the patient about the problems.

New insights in the doctor’s training

Kisir-Ashur recorded the treatments that he learned and used during and after his medical training.

He wrote his name, and often the purpose of the text. When you review the material chronologically, it reveals the progression of his training and preactice, says Arbøll.

Kisir-Ashur may have learnt his skills by practising on animals and progressed to treating babies when he was close to finishing his studies.

“It’s likely he did not treat human adults on his own before he was trained. This shows a relatively clear chronology in his training, where he takes on more and more responsibility,” says Arbøll.

Magic and science: hand in hand

The texts reveal that religious or magical rituals were a regular part of treatment.

The text is written in cuneiform script--a system of writing that was in use for many thousands of years. A number of different languages and dialects used the system between the 4th millennium BCE and 100 CE [Credit: ColourB]

The title of the text is often translated as “exorcist,” which is misleading as Kisir-Ashur was not working exclusively with the expulsion of spirits, says Arbøll.

“He does not work simply with religious rituals, but also with plant-based medical treatments. It is possible that he studied the effects of venom from scorpions and snakes on the human body and that he perhaps tried to draw conclusions based on his observations,” says Arbøll.

It was widely assumed that medical treatments for scorpion stings and snakebites had not been recorded before, since they were most often treated by magic.

“Kisir-Ashur observed patients with bites or stings. Perhaps he did this to find out what the toxins had done to the body and from that, try to understand the venom’s function,” says Arbøll.

Mesopotamian scholarship could have spread to Europe

The ancient Mesopotamians may have believed that some diseases and liquids were connected. This was partly based on the idea that human bile was toxic, says Arbøll.

“At this time, bile is considered similar to a venomous substance. It can regulate certain bodily processes and could be the cause or contribution to the cause of an illness. This idea is remeniscent of the important Greek physician, Hypocrites’ theory of humors, where the imbalance of four fluids in the body can be the cause of illness,” he says.

“However, the Mesopotamian conception of bile seems to differ from the Greek. Moreover, Hippocates lived some 200 years after Kisir-Ashur and the fall of the Assyrian Kingdom, so it is far from certain that the idea spread from Mesopotamia to the Greeks. But it would be interesting to investigate,” says Arbøll.

“If there are relationships between ancient Mesopotamian medical knowledge and Hippocratic medicine, which I think there are, we must show these connections in text, which is not easy,” writes Nils Heeßel, professor at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, in an email.

“General assumptions on a single doctor’s academic focus can hardly be seen as a trace of later medical traditions,” he writes.

A snapshot of history

Kisir-Ashur’s clay tablets have been preserved for 2,700 years because the city of Ashur, together with Kisir-Ashur’s family library were burnt down in the year 614 BCE, during the dissolution of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

The library was preserved and first excavated by archaeologists at the beginning of the 20th century.

A large number of clay tablets were preserved well enough to be read, and the family library represents one of the most important collections of written sources from the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

People did not write theoretical works in Mesopotamia and the only way scientists can understand Assyrians’s thoughts and views of the world is by collecting various sources and combining letters and commentaries on medical treatments.

“Great Piece of Work”

The study provides a micro-history of Kisir-Ashur’s experiences in this specific town, at this particular time.

“It’s a snapshot of history that is difficult to generalise and it is possible that Kisir-Ashur worked with the material in a slightly different way than other practising healers. Kisir-Ashur copied and recorded mostly pre-existing treatments and you can see that he catalogues knowledge and collects it with a specific goal,” says Arbøll.

For Heeßel, this is the most exciting part of the thesis.

“It’s a great piece of work and for me this micro-history of the ancient Near East is the most interesting aspect of the thesis. It’s never been done before and I’m glad to see this concept used on our limited material in the region,” he writes.

Professor Fredrik Norland Hagen, who studies medical history at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, is similarly enthusiastic.

“The micro-historical perspective allows for a better understanding of how medicine in ancient Mesopotamia was practised and how medical knowledge was transmitted,” says Hagen, a professor in Egyptology at the Department of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies. He was not involved in the research.

“He has written a new chapter in Mesopotamian medical history. It is solid work,” says Hagen.

Author: Bo Christensen | Source: ScienceNordic [February 12, 2018]

This story is republished courtesy of ScienceNordic, the trusted source for English-language science news from the Nordic countries. Read the original story here. 

When archaeologist Simone Mühl returned to the site of her excavations in last summer, she could hardly believe her eyes. The whole area was under water. When she had last seen it, the low mound at the center of the site was surrounded by fields of grain. Now fishing boats were anchored around it. "It was a fascinating sight, for I had never seen the mound like that before," she says. Gird-i Shamlu lies in the plain of Shahrizor in Iraqi Kurdistan, in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains close to the border with Iran.

Simone Mühl is leading excavations at the settlement mound Gird-i Shamlu, which is located  in the Sharizor Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan [Credit: Simone Mühl]

In the center of the plain is an artificial lake created by the damming of rivers in the valley. By August, when the digging season starts, much of the water that is released from the reservoir beginning in early summer, has usually been absorbed, and the irrigated surface can again be used for agriculture by the local inhabitants.

One of the questions that Simone Mühl hopes to answer is whether or not agriculture was already being practiced in this area 5000 years ago. References to the region in cuneiform texts break off abruptly at around this time. Prior to that, the region formed part of the network of trade routes that connected the Iranian highlands with Mesopotamia to the southwest. The first urban civilizations had emerged in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BCE, and the survival of the cities was dependent on the maintenance of functional trading relationships.

"Mesopotamia itself largely lacked raw materials, especially metals. But via the Shahrizor plain it had access to regions in which metals were available. The plain itself was known for stock-raising, and herds of cattle, sheep and goats were brought by drovers to the temples in the south," Mühl says, adding that these contacts are attested in contemporary cuneiform texts. The region is first mentioned in these texts on clay tablets dating from the 3rd millennium BCE, at a time when the Shahrizor plain was part of the kingdom of Simurrum.

Overall view of the Gird-i Shamlu [Credit: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich]

However, in the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, the area disappears from the historical record, and is first mentioned again only in the 12th century BCE. What can explain this "dark age" which lasted for several centuries? To answer this question, Simone Mühl is utilizing a variety of methods. Archaeological excavations are one tool, and here they were preceded by a program of satellite-based remote sensing to elucidate the history of settlement in the valley.

"We study the landscape with all available tools because it can tell us much about the interactions between human communities and their environment. For instance, agriculture leaves an imprint on the landscape that is quite distinct from that left behind by stock-raising cultures. And this allows us to draw conclusions about the structure of the economy in ancient times," Simone Mühl explains. "I really enjoy working with colleagues in other disciplines and I benefit greatly from such collaborations, because it broadens one's own knowledge so much."

Her readiness to collaborate has also enabled her to acquire a wide range of methodological skills that can be usefully integrated into her work. Her markedly interdisciplinary approach is one of reasons why she has been honored by the Princess Therese of Bavaria Foundation. The Foundation was set up with the aim of promoting the advancement of women in the sciences by drawing attention to their contributions to research, and explicitly recognizing their roles as exemplars for junior female researchers. Mühl is one of seven awardees for the year 2017, who will be formally presented with their prizes on 9 February 2018.

On this site, succeeding generations have built their houses on top of the ruins of their predecessors’ dwellings, so that the  mound covers structures that were erected over a period of thousands of years. The finds from the earliest levels date  from the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE [Credit: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich]

Simone Mühl, who decided she wanted to be an archaeologist when she was still a child, began her studies in the plain of Shahrizor when she was a Master's student. Having obtained her primary degree at Heidelberg University, she conducted research at the University of Chicago, before returning to Heidelberg, where she obtained her doctoral degree in 2011. She moved to the Institute for Near Eastern Archaeology at LMU in 2012, and since then her research has been supported by a number of competitive fellowships and grants. Since 2016, she has headed an independent Junior Research Group – funded by the DFG's Emmy Noether Program for exceptionally qualified early-career researchers.

Simone Mühl hopes that her selection as one of this year's winners of the Therese von Bayern-Preis will show other young female graduates who are thinking of pursuing postgraduate research and wondering about starting a family that it is possible to combine the two. She has a daughter who is now a year old, and accompanies her parents (Mühl's partner is also an archaeologist) on field trips, including their fieldwork in the Shahrizor plain. "I have benefited a great deal from the example of other women in the field. It helps to know that there are also ways of reconciling child-rearing and family life with a successful career in archaeology."

The remote-sensing campaign revealed that the site at Gird-i Shamlu was once densely settled, and detected previously unknown archaeological features. Surface finds of pottery recovered during field surveys have indicated that the oldest material dates from the 3rd millennium BCE. Mühl is now exploring the mound itself. The geomagnetic detection of manmade structures within the mound was a significant find. In the Ancient Near East, villages were constructed of baked clay bricks, and people built their dwellings on top of the ruins left behind by earlier generations. Gird-i Shamlu is 12 m high and occupies an area of several hectares, which indicates that it conceals the remains of structures that were erected over a period of thousands of years. Indeed, the material recovered from the lowest levels date to the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE, while the pottery near the top of the mound originates from the 1st millennium BCE.

The excavations so far show that at least one change in the material culture of the settlement took place, as indicated by  an abrupt switch in the mode of production of pottery. This change probably reflects a social transformation, perhaps  precipitated by the arrival of people from elsewhere. Indeed the aim of Simone Mühl’s project is to shed light  on interactions between migrants and settled pop [Credit: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich]

Typological studies of the pottery excavated at the site also reveal clear evidence for a change in the material culture of the settlement: "At one point in the sequence, there is a distinct change in how the pottery was actually made. The standard technology at the time involved the use of a potter's wheel. But all of a sudden we find ceramic wares that were made by hand and decorated with simple incisions. The patterns look as if they mean something, and are reminiscent of highly stylized representations of mountains and their fauna."

This sudden appearance of a distinctive type of ceramic falls within the period for which no written records are known. Moreover, the handmade pottery does not displace the wheel-thrown type. Both occur in the same stratigraphic levels. Strikingly, most of the handmade vessels take the form of pot-like containers, while the wheel-made ware is much more varied, and includes dishes, jugs and bowls.

"That may mean that there was a change in culinary traditions," Mühl says, while emphasizing that the ceramic evidence alone is insufficient to permit any reliable conclusions on this point. In order to be sure that such changes reflect the presence of a social transformation, diverse types of evidence need to be integrated with one another.

This handmade vessel dates from around 3000 BCE. Vessels of this type are decorated in red, black and white, and the  designs often feature the fauna of the nearby mountains, as well as plant-like motifs and geometrical patterns. It was  found in a recently discovered multi-roomed house. A knife was also recovered, which is among the earliest  metal artefacts so far found in the region [Credit: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich]

"Fitting different pieces of the puzzle together, this change in pottery style may indeed signal a dramatic break in the history of the settlement at Shamlu, perhaps involving the abandonment of the site and the incursion of migrants from elsewhere," says Mühl. Very often it is a combination of factors – political, economic and climatic – that lead to large-scale migrations, she adds. At all events, the original idea that the inhabitants of the Shahrizor plain at that time followed a nomadic lifestyle can now be rejected. They were farmers, who lived in sturdy houses built of mud-bricks and floored with reed mats.

Digging in dangerous terrain

The results of Mühl's extensive surveys of the Shahrizor plain show that it was dotted with a large number of settlements, which could provide points of comparison with the finds made in Shamlu. This is not true of the outlying areas. "My guess is that one would have to explore the mountain valleys across the border in Iran." However, this zone of the Zagros Mountains has long been an archaeological terra incognita, Simone Mühl says. "The political turmoil in the region has made it impossible for archaeologists to work there for many years." And even today, she needs to stay up to date with the latest information on the security situation in Kurdistan before deciding whether field work is possible at all – "also for the sake of my students' safety," she says.


Two years ago, when the militants of Islamic State attacked and took control of the city of Mosul, she had been informed early on of the ensuing destruction of the city's cultural heritage by her personal and professional contacts. This prompted her to set up an association dedicated to the protection of Iraq's cultural legacy.

"I believe I have a personal responsibility to the people who live here, who support my research and who work with me." This feeling of solidarity with her hosts may in part be attributable to the hospitality she has always experienced in the region – "from which Germany could learn a lot," she adds. She knows that this goodwill is a prerequisite for the success of her efforts to collect further evidence that sheds light on the human history of the Shahrizor valley during and prior to its mysterious dark age.

Source: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich [February 09, 2018]