The round hole made by an artillery shell was visible long before we pulled up next to the National Museum in Baghdad in early May of 2003. The puncture, just below a frieze of a king in a chariot, was in the replica of a Babylon gate next to the exhibit halls. An American tank sat in the archway. Though I had seen images of the destruction that took place a month before, the sight was startling.

Inside it was worse. The administrative area was in shambles. Filing cabinets were turned over, and papers dating back to the museum’s founding by British archaeologist Gertrude Bell in the 1920s, were strewn about. Small fires had destroyed some offices. In the display area, angry mobs had shattered the cases and smashed 2,000-year-old statues. The primary storage facility had been breached, and some 15,000 objects—no one knows exactly how many—were gone. Among the missing pieces were thousands of tiny cylinder seals, as well as several iconic artifacts such as the Lady of Warka, a stone head of a woman found at Uruk, which is considered the world’s oldest city.

Had museum officials not hidden 8,366 of the most valuable artifacts in a safe place known only to them, this event might have been a catastrophe for cultural heritage in Iraq. For a while, no one knew for certain how much damage had been done; I was with a team of U.S. archaeologists who arrived to assess the situation. Most of the museum’s estimated 170,000 artifacts were eventually found to be safe. The rampage had earned front-page headlines across the world. It was entirely preventable.

Some 2,500 years earlier, the Persian king Cyrus the Great was able to storm nearby Babylon, then the world’s largest city, but texts from the time relate that there was no chaos or looting. However, in 2003, American troops failed to secure what was second on their own list, after the Central Bank, of important places to protect in the modern Iraqi capital. Archaeologists had visited the Pentagon prior to the invasion to provide military officials with detailed coordinates of all major Iraqi cultural heritage sites.

The looting of the museum was over less than 48 hours after it began on April 10, 2003. But it was only the start of a decade of disaster for Iraq’s cultural heritage, a heritage that includes the world’s first cities, empires, and writing system. More than ancient vases and display cases were affected. The invasion began a grim era of sectarian violence and lawlessness in the very land that developed the state, legal codes, and recorded history itself. That era continues. “These are still very tough days,” says Abdul-Amir Hamdani, an Iraqi archaeologist who today is working on a doctorate at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. I first met Hamdani in May 2003 on the sidewalk outside U.S. military headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriya, where he was desperately attempting to get help to stop the vandals poaching ancient sites. “There is still nothing protecting many sites from looting and destruction.”

Looting, particularly in southern Iraq, which was the center of ancient Mesopotamia, had already begun in earnest in the late 1990s and grew to alarming proportions by 2004 and 2005, long after the National Museum was secured. The United States, its allies, and the fledgling government of post-Saddam Iraq did little to address the sources of the problem. Looting notwithstanding, Hamdani says that today’s principal threat is unbridled development; he served time in jail a few years ago for protesting construction on ancient sites. It is true that, now, foreign archaeologists are working in the northern part of Iraq called Kurdistan. A few western excavators are even digging in the southern regions that have long been off-limits. Looting at archaeological sites has decreased. But young archaeologists in the country long ago drifted to other less controversial and more remunerative work as the older generation retired, emigrated, or died.

More ominously, a new generation of Iraqis has grown up without any access to the impressive network of museums across the country that were once crowded with schoolchildren. They know little of their ancient past. Many Iraqi politicians today have a bent toward Islamic fundamentalism that is no friend to secular archaeology. Liwaa Semeism, the tourism minister overseeing the State Board of Antiquities, is a member of a splinter Shiite party. He has reduced the board’s authority and is openly hostile to foreigners. American archaeologists are now forbidden to excavate in Iraq until a trove of Jewish artifacts removed by the U.S. government is returned. And Semeism recently suggested that Germans might not be welcome either until the famous Babylonian Ishtar Gate—the model for the National Museum gateway—is returned.

The National Museum of Iraq today has beautifully renovated galleries and state-of-the-art climate control and security systems run by a staff that still consists of a core of underfunded but dedicated curators. But despite all the effort and money lavished on it by foreign governments, the museum remains closed to all but the most senior VIPs in an attempt to protect it. The fear is that throwing the museum’s doors open to the public exposes the collection and the newly-restored building to risk from another attack.

New elections later this month could bring greater political stability to the country. Eventually, as they have done from Nebuchadnezzar to Saddam, Iraqi leaders may again see their heritage as a major asset. “If you want to think about unity, then the ancient past is a broadly shared culture,” says Elizabeth Stone, a SUNY Stony Brook archaeologist who spent years excavating in Iraq. “Ancient Mesopotamia was real, and that could be used as a basis for natural unity.”

Hamdani will be returning to his home country this summer to continue his research. More than half of the stolen objects from the National Museum have been recovered, the gaping hole in the gate has since been carefully patched, and the tanks are gone. It is worth noting that there were no follow-up congressional hearings or independent investigations to pinpoint the parties responsible for the negligence connected to the museum debacle. No one in the U.S. military was criticized, demoted, or court-martialed. A Marine, who blamed Iraqis for using the site as a base to fight the Americans, wrote the only formal report on the matter.

The chaos that engulfed this land may finally be receding. A decade later, however, the true cost to our understanding of such a rich share of humanity’s heritage has yet to be tallied.

SEE: http://www.archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/779-national-museum-baghdad-looting-iraq

 

January/February 2013

When the Indus River swelled two years ago in central Pakistan, the floodwaters came within just three feet of overtopping an earthen embankment protecting the ancient city known as Mohenjo-Daro. At the time, archaeologists breathed a sigh of relief. But in September 2012 monsoon rains again threatened the site, lashing at the exposed walls and sparking new fears that this 4,000-year-old metropolis may be destroyed before it yields its secrets. Those secrets remain legion. Archaeologists still don’t know the city’s true size, who ruled there, or even its ancient name—Mohenjo-Daro (“Mound of the Dead”) is the site’s name in modern Sindhi. To read more..  Dowload .pdf below.

 

Mohenjo-Daro.pdf

This story was recently cited in the New York Times article “Syrian Conflict Imperils Historical Treasures” By PATRICIA COHEN http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/arts/design/syrian-conflict-imperils-historical-treasures.html?hpw

A massive citadel built atop a 150-foot-tall hill of solid rock looms over Aleppo’s old quarter. Fortresses have risen above this northern Syrian city since Roman times. But at the heart of the citadel, amid ruins of Ottoman palaces and hidden behind high walls that date to the Crusader era, a team of German and Syrian archaeologists is clearing debris from a large pit that shows this hilltop was significant long before the Romans arrived. Here, amid clouds of dust, a battered basalt sphinx and a lion—both standing seven feet tall—guard the entrance to one of the great religious centers of ancient times, the sanctuary of the storm god Adda. Kay Kohlmeyer, an archaeologist at Berlin’s University of Applied Sciences and the excavation codirector, has spent more than 10 years peeling away the layers of rubble that conceal the rich history of this temple. He’s found that it was first constructed by Early Bronze Age peoples, then rebuilt by a succession of cultures, including the Hittites, the Indo-European empire-builders whose domain spread from Anatolia to northern Syria in the 14th century b.c. Through the millennia, as Syrian, Anatolian, and Mesopotamian cultures mixed and blurred at this ancient crossroads, Adda was known variously as Addu, Teshup, Tarhunta, and Hadad. But as artistic styles and languages came and went, the storm god’s temple endured.

On a hot April morning, Kohlmeyer welcomes me into the shade of the corrugated roof that now covers Adda’s sanctuary. As my eyes adjust to the sudden gloom, I spy a row of stone friezes of gods and mythical creatures still standing in a neat row at the far end of the temple. Their modest size (most are no taller than three feet), clear lines, and almost whimsical subjects—human figures in pointy shoes and hats, a bull pulling a chariot—seem more like a series of three-dimensional cartoon panels than a powerful and magical tableau. Yet even in the shadows, the sharply chiseled surfaces are so fresh they look as if the sculptors just laid down their tools for a lunch break.

Kohlmeyer and his team were not the first to uncover the mesmerizing friezes, which were buried when the temple was abandoned in the ninth century b.c. Trenches that date to six centuries later show that Hellenistic people, perhaps digging for valuables, exposed some of the reliefs. Awed by what they found, and possibly fearful of desecrating an ancient holy site, they left the stones intact. Exposed for a century or so until it was swallowed again by debris, the temple may have been an early Near Eastern tourist attraction. And if archaeologists, preservationists, and Syrian government officials have their way, the site will soon offer visitors the rare opportunity to tread the floor of a 5,000-year-old place of worship.

At work since 1996, the team is just now wrapping up excavations and preparing the site for the construction of a museum supported by the World Monuments Fund and the Agha Khan Trust. But the ambitious project actually originated as an offhand joke. While Kohlmeyer was laboring on a gritty salvage dig at a remote Bronze Age site along the Euphrates River, a Syrian official suggested that he find a more civilized spot to excavate—like the Aleppo citadel. Securing permission from Syria’s bureaucracy to dig in the middle of one of the country’s most important national monuments—in what many believe is the world’s oldest continually inhabited city—was so improbable as to be funny. “It is as if the Chinese wanted to excavate the Tower of London,” says Kohlmeyer, who sports a trim mustache and brown hair down to his shoulders. But he took the suggestion seriously and, miraculously, got the permit. Kohlmeyer’s sensitivity to later Muslim-era sites may have helped. (His wife Julia Gonnella is an archaeologist who specializes in the Islamic period, and is now responsible for analyzing artifacts from the upper levels of the citadel.) “My friend was astonished to learn that his joke became a reality,” says Kohlmeyer.

He already had reason to believe that the temple of the storm god lay under the later Byzantine and Islamic layers. After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which had long controlled the region, the French occupied Syria under a secret agreement with the British. They made the citadel their key base in Aleppo, and in the 1920s a French scholar noticed a slab with a Hittitestyle relief that had been reused in a medieval structure. French archaeologists dug into a nearby storage building, which had filled with trash and rubble over many centuries. Ducking through a narrow passage in a wall on the left side of the temple, just where the line of friezes at the rear of the temple begins, Kohlmeyer takes me into the cellar of the storage building. The French had cleared this space, reaching the temple pavement. But they abandoned their work just shy of the first carved slab, leaving behind a trowel and an empty bottle of champagne gleefully excavated by Kohlmeyer’s team. “A half-meter more, and all of these would have been in the Louvre,” he says, gesturing at the row of jaunty figures. By the second season, in 1997, Kohlmeyer had found the first relief, and to his delight was sure he had located a remarkably intact temple that would give him a unique glimpse into the religious architecture, beliefs, and practices of the ancient Near East over a vast span of time. Since then, he and his team have expanded the dig. Most of what is visible today dates to the period around 900 b.c., when small neo-Hittite kingdoms that arose after the collapse of the Hittite empire dotted the region. But the temple has more ancient antecedents as well as astonishing continuity. Kohlmeyer has been able to trace the complicated story of building, destruction, and renovations at the site over two millennia, offering an intimate picture of the great and sometimes subtle changes wrought over time by the storm god’s devotees.

Aleppo’s ancient origins still lie hidden under the citadel and surrounding city. But as early as 2400 b.c., the rulers of the prosperous city of Ebla made a 35-mile pilgrimage here to what likely was a modest place of worship where sacrifices were offered to Adda. “The storm god was the archetypal deity in Syria and Anatolia,” says Billie Jean Collins, an expert in the ancient Near East at Atlanta’s Emory University. Mesopotamians and Egyptians depended primarily on irrigated fields, but those living to the north and west counted on rainfall to sustain their crops. That made the storm god the preeminent deity. The Hebrew god Yawheh was originally considered a storm god, she adds. Whatever his name, this masculine deity was typically depicted carrying a weapon, or a thunderbolt, as a symbol of his power.

Tablets from Ebla describe the rulers’ contributions to renovating Adda’s temple, which was built on the bedrock of the natural hill. In one corner of the covered area, Kohlmeyer points to rough stones covered with plaster—today all that can be seen of the structure patronized by Ebla’s royal family. A curious deposit of small and finely worked bronze ceremonial spearheads—similar to those found by the late-19th-century German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann at Troy—were the only artifacts Kohlmeyer recovered from the early temple. By 1800 b.c., Aleppo had become the center of the short-lived Yamhad Empire, which was populated largely by Amorites, a Semitic people first mentioned by Mesopotamian scribes in the mid-third millennium b.c. as nomads from the west. Cuneiform texts from Mari, a city far to the southeast on the Euphrates, describe the giant seated figure of the storm god—by then known as Addu—in the place of honor within the sanctuary, with a smaller sun god on his knee. The layout of this renovated temple was the same as the original, offering a suitably impressive home to the esteemed god.

Lebanese cedar spanned the roof of the central hall, which measured about 90 feet by 55 feet. The temple was at least 15 feet high, and the northern wall was 33 feet thick. That thickness, combined with evidence of a wooden staircase, hint at a multi-floored building that may have risen to an even more significant height, says Kohlmeyer. This structure, he adds, may have been similar to a small number of tower temples built in the region during the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1570 b.c.). Fire eventually destroyed the building, but patrons again came to its rescue and at least partially restored the temple. The basic shape—nearly square with a northern altar opposite the main entrance to the south— remained unchanged. It, too, may have looked like a tower from a distance.

By the 14th century b.c., the Hittites were expanding from Anatolia into what is now northern Syria and exerting a strong influence over the region. Reconstructing the temple yet again, the new architects seem to have reoriented the building along Hittite lines. That meant shifting the central altar to the eastern wall so that it was not visible from the main entrance. In the new design, worshipers entered the temple and then turned right to see the storm god, now called Teshup. The central hall also was narrowed—either to accommodate that change or because Lebanese cedar was too expensive or not available. The old central altar was covered, and some of the plain stone slabs lining the walls were replaced with figures carved in a vibrant Hittite style.

An array of fantastical gods—and even carvings that imitate windows and shutters typical of a Hittite place of worship—decorated the temple in this era. Some of the new panels show bull-men with tails, similar to depictions found near the Hittite capital of Hattusa in north-central Turkey. But, with their curly hair, they bear a striking resemblance to an ivory plaque found in Megiddo far to the south in modern-day Israel—a hint of the extent of the cultural and political connections during this period. And the new masters of Aleppo added the magnificent basalt lion and sphinx in front of the temple doors. Similar statues guard the entrances to Hittite temples and city gates far to the north. Those two figures are imposing, but the strange and delightful carving of a fish-man that sits nearby steals the show. Just over six feet tall, he holds a pinecone and bucket—symbols of purification that are found in reliefs that decorate later Assyrian palaces. His feet poke out from his scaled tail. The subject and quality of this frieze hints at an artist familiar with the latest Mesopotamian styles, so different from the smaller and more cartoonish Hittite approach to wall decoration.

With its revamped floor plan, substantial statues, and array of styles, the new structure was the product of a cosmopolitan period, when the old northern Syrian traditions absorbed Anatolian and Mesopotamian influences. But by the 11th century b.c., the Hittites were history. And, yet again, the temple at Aleppo reflects the ever-changing Middle East. The Hittite temple was destroyed and a new sanctuary arose in its place. The central altar was restored to the position it had in the original plan and a king’s image placed next to that of the storm god. Adjacent to the ruler’s image is an inscription that gives important insight into an era largely shrouded in mystery.

When the long-powerful Hittite Empire crumbled around 1190 b.c., after a series of civil wars, a complicated tapestry of peoples and languages emerged in the region. But it is hard to discern what took place in this transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Trade collapsed, major cities were abandoned, and small villages predominated. The Near East appears to have suffered through a dark age from the collapse of the Hittite Empire until 1000 b.c. “It is dark because we have so few inscriptions,” says London University’s David Hawkins, one of the few specialists fluent in Luwian, a language related to Hittite and used in southern Anatolia and northern Syria during this period.

Scholars long blamed invasions by the so-called “Sea Peoples” mentioned in Egyptian chronicles for the disruption and chaos across the Near East. But archaeological evidence for such an invasion is scanty. Hawkins suspected that a contraction of trade set off migrations of peoples in the Mediterranean basin that didn’t necessarily devastate the region or its ancient traditions. He has already traced a link between the names of old Hittite kings and those of the lords of Iron Age towns in the area, including the ruler of Carchemish, an important site that straddles the border between Turkey and Syria. The so-called dark age, it appears, may not have been so dark after all, and could have been a time of continuity rather than widespread disruption.

Eager to find inscriptions, Hawkins visited Aleppo in 2003, but returned to Britain disappointed. Ten days later, Kohlmeyer uncovered the king’s inscription. “I called Hawkins, and he arrived the day after,” Kohlmeyer recalls. Incised in Luwian hieroglyphics, the text is a set of cult instructions focused on the storm god and mentioning the king’s name. The discovery confirmed that this was indeed the storm god’s sanctuary. But what caught Hawkins’s eye was the mention of Taita, ruler of a people called the Patasatini. He contends that the proper translation is Palestin. That would make the king of the Philistines responsible for restoring the storm god’s temple to its former glory.

The Philistines (whose name survived as a geographical term describing “Palestine”) are probably the Peleset, one of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in 1180 b.c. They made pottery similar to that produced by Mycenaeans and other peoples in the Aegean Sea, and settled the eastern Mediterranean coast from Gaza to Turkey. The new inscription complements two found decades ago near the major Syrian city of Hama, south of Aleppo, which reference both Taita and his queen. The king, Hawkins says, likely ruled over a substantial part of Syria.

Kohlmeyer also found a fragment of an inscription on a lion statue that mentions Carchemish and Egyptian horses, hinting that this ruler was more than simply a local leader. “This brings Aleppo into the international sphere,” says Hawkins. “And there seems to be continuity after the fall of the Hittites.” Archaeologists have found ceramics in northern Syria that appear to have been influenced by styles popular along the Mediterranean coast in this period. But Kohlmeyer, aware of the find’s political implications in a country with 400,000 Palestinian refugees, downplays the inscription’s significance. “I worry that this could become a pilgrimage site for Palestinians,” he says.

There was one last temple restoration around 900 b.c. by an unknown patron. This time, slabs portraying demons, monsters, and gods were added. A warrior-goddess, perhaps Ishtar, is dressed like a man. Eerie half-scorpion, half-human creatures stride by. And, in a long relief, the storm god himself, clean shaven, wearing a conical cap with horns, and clad in a kilt with a dagger, carries a pointed club as he mounts an old-fashioned Hittite chariot drawn by a bull. Protective winged figures—perhaps resembling the cherubim that decorated Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, which was built at this time—flank the altar. Depictions of winged creatures at Solomon’s temple may have been decorated in gold, and though no gold has been found at Aleppo, these reliefs could have once been sheathed in it.

An international array of styles is apparent on the final reliefs, and the artists may have spoken a polyglot of Luwian, Phoenician, and Aramaic as they chiseled away. Some of their innovations turn up later in the palaces of the great Assyrian rulers. “We still think of Mesopotamia as the center of civilization,” says Kohlmeyer. “That is wrong—influence went in both directions. These sculptures show that what originated in northern Syria eventually appears in Assyria.”

But before a new temple floor could be laid, a disastrous fire struck. Some of the reliefs were still unfinished, and remains of posts hint at scaffolding that was in place in the final days. There would be no reconstruction. In Hellenistic times, probably around 300 b.c., the Hittite altar was uncovered but not touched. Standing by the east wall, Kohlmeyer points out the ancient trench dug by the Greeks, which the modern team re-excavated. A people who believed in the storm god named Zeus—who like his Eastern cousin was chief of the pantheon and often depicted wielding a weapon— may have respected the site as sacred. There was a political angle to that consideration as well, says Collins, since showing respect for local gods was a smart way for newcomers to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with the locals. Over time, however, the trench was filled in and the friezes were forgotten. “This is one of the few places in Syria you can see such clear stratigraphy,” says Kohlmeyer, pointing up at the innumerable layers that begin with the time of Alexander the Great and stack up until the final days of the Ottoman Empire.

There is still more to discover. Kohlmeyer guides me to a deep trench behind the old central altar. A couple of local workers remove the plywood and sandbags that cover the 16-foot-deep excavations. Below are blank stone slabs— perhaps part of a corridor running around the temple. “This may have been part of the outer facade in the early second millennium b.c.,” he says, as I back away from the crumbling edge of the hole. The trench offers tantalizing hints at what remains to be found. Kohlmeyer is hopeful that once he clears the edges of the site, further clues to the temple’s outer precincts will emerge. Officials in Damascus, however, want work completed so that a museum can be built. Construction is slated to begin next year. A steel roof will protect the fragile temple remains, and the number of visitors will be strictly controlled.

As we climb out of the temple area and make our way through the gate to a stone-paved lane, we’re immersed in a sea of Syrian children in blue-andwhite uniforms. “I like working out in the open air in the countryside,” he says wistfully. An archaeologist digging in the center of a city whose citizens firmly believe is the oldest continuously inhabited one, he’s a prize guest at dinner parties, and the necessary socializing distracts him from his work. But there are advantages. He and his wife and daughter live in small century-old house on the citadel, far above the noise and dust of town. And late at night, when the tourists are gone and the citadel’s gates are locked up, silence descends. Then it is just Kohlmeyer, his family, and the storm god.

 

 

SidonArchaeology.pdf

The rush to document thousands of ancient texts before they are sent back to Iran, or sold, reveals the daily workings of the Persian empire

The palace of Darius and the large audience hall in the royal city of Persepolis (above). Tens of thousands of clay tablets and fragments (right) from Persepolis are written in cuneiform to express Elamite, an ancient language of western Iran.

Tensions between iran and the United States have rarely run higher, with both governments sparring over alleged terror plots, disputing the nature of Iran’s nuclear program, and vying to influence the uprisings across the Arab world. But in Chicago and Boston courtrooms, the two countries have found rare common ground—neither wants ancient tablets from the royal palace of Persepolis in Iran to end up on the auction block. To the relief of scholars, two recent court rulings may give them their joint wish, preserving open access to what is the most significant source of information on the ancient Persian Empire uncovered to date.

In the early 1930s, during excavations of Persepolis, University of Chicago archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld unearthed tens of thousands of fragments of fragile clay tablets dating from about 500 b.c. The fragments were packed into 2,353 cardboard boxes and shipped to the university’s Oriental Institute. The Iranian government of the day allowed the export, with the understanding that the tablets would be translated and then returned. But the task of piecing together and understanding the vast number of fragments has been under way for more than seven decades and the majority of the collection remains in Chicago. Now, fearing loss of the archive, the university has moved into high gear to create thousands of digital images of the tablets, which record the day-to-day accounts of the empire during the reign of Darius the Great (521–486 b.c.) and include records of those traveling on behalf of the king, lists of workers’ rations, and careful notation of offerings made to deities.

Researchers hope to have most of this intensive effort completed within the next two years. To get the job done, the institute has assembled what Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute, calls a “dream team” of textual scholars, archaeologists, and technical experts in digital cataloguing to take images of the tablets and make them available for public use. Translations are also being done, though it will take much longer to complete that daunting task. “Whether they are seized for sale or the government of Iran demands them back, the tablets will be out of the building soon. We all understand how important and urgent this is,” says Stein.

The front of this tablet (top) is inscribed in Elamite, while the back (left) has an impression that identifies the seal’s original owner as “Cyrus, son of Teipses, an Azanite.” Some scholars believe he was the grandfather of Cyrus the Great, who ruled the Persian Empire before Darius.

The sudden rush stems from a long-running legal battle involving not just the University of Chicago, but also Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston. The trouble began in2004, when Stein returned 300 translated tablets to Tehran in an effort to build trust with Iranian museum officials and scholars. Media reports of that visit caught the atten-tion of David Strachman, a lawyer for a group of Americans suing the Iranian government. They sought damages from a 1997 bombing in Jerusalem that killed five U.S. tourists and wounded dozens more. The Palestinian orga-nization Hamas, which has ties to Iran, had claimed responsibility, so the plaintiffs filed suit against Iran. In 2003, a U.S. federal court awarded them $423.5 million in damages, including $300 million in punitive damages. When the defendant, the Islamic Republic of Iran, ignored the ruling, the lawyers sought out Iranian assets on U.S. soil. Strachman set his sights on other tablets from Persepolis and on Iranian artifacts at Harvard and the MFA that could be worth millions of dollars if sold on the antiquities market.

Two bitter, expensive, and complicated legal battles ensued, pitting the plaintiffs against Chicago, and against Harvard and the MFA, and forcing the reluctant Iranian and U.S. governments to become involved. In March 2011, a U.S. court of appeals in Chicago rejected the plaintiffs’ request to seize and sell the Chicago tablets, noting that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 protects foreign assets, except those used for commercial purposes. Strachman argued that the tablets were commercial property, but the court disagreed. It also said that the university could ask for immunity on Iran’s behalf. A lower court had sided with the plaintiffs, and Iran had hired a lawyer to argue for protection. When former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami met with the Oriental Institute’s Stein in 2006 to discuss the situation, Khatami argued that the tablets “do not belong to governments but to the Iranian nation and the world.” The U.S. Department of Justice sided with the Iranians, and the Department of State twice filed briefs backing the position of Chicago and the Iranian government.

Patty Gerstenblith, a legal expert at DePaul University, predicts that Strachman’s clients may ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. In an email, Strachman said that he preferred to decline comment on the litigation. A 2002 U.S. law that punishes terrorists might yet give the suit new life, adds Gerstenblith. For now, Stein says he’s relieved that the long and arduous discovery phase, when the plaintiffs requested reams of documents from Chicago, is over. “We went to hell and back trying to find all the stuff,” he recalls.

Some tablets were written in different scripts to express languages other than Elamite, including the Semitic language Aramaic (right) and Greek (below).

Meanwhile, in September 2011, in a separate case in Boston, a federal judge blocked the same plaintiffs from claiming the two other collections of tablets and artifacts. Harvard and the MFA had argued that they own the objects, not Iran, while the plaintiffs had argued they were taken illegally out of the country and therefore are still the property of the Iranian government. The court ruled that the collections belong to the institutions, not to Iran.

Though the immediate threat of seizure has passed, Stein worries that the conclusion of the suit in favor of the Oriental Institute could prompt Iran to demand the tablets be returned before another legal challenge surfaces. The threat of losing them, either through sale or return to Iran, has galvanized outside groups—among them, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Parsa Foundation—to contribute $3 million to the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project (PFAP), named for the rooms of the city’s fortification wall where the tablets were found. Although broken into thousands of fragments, the tablets may have survived thanks to the collapse of the building that housed them, likely whenAlexander the Great burned the royal compound in 330 b.c.

The Elamite text of this tablet (above) records an order from a high-level official named Farnaka, who was in charge of the central administration.

For scholars of the ancient Near East, Chicago’s PFAP is providing new insights into the vast empire that ruled the area from Egypt to India in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c., but that has mainly been known through ancient Greek sources and a few more recent archaeological digs. The archive contains an impressive record of the Persian Empire’s daily dealings with its subjects during a period of about 15 years beginning in the late sixth century b.c. The texts pose a challenge to the handful of scholars capable of making sense of the records contained in the tablets. In this period, the Semitic tongue Aramaic was the lingua franca across the Middle East, but a host of other tongues and scripts were also used. Most of the tablets use a dialect of Elamite, the ancient language of western Iran, which was inscribed in the Mesopotamian cuneiform script. Others are written in Aramaic, and a small number are in Greek, Phrygian, and Old Persian. The latter find has been particularly surprising. Scholars long believed that Old Persian was only used for monumental purposes, not for practical accounting. This find may indicate that this script was more versatile than once believed. But Matthew Stolper, an Oriental Institute scholar who has led the Chicago “dream team” since they began work in 2002, cautions that other examples are required to make a case for Old Persian as a widespread writing system.

 

Many of the tablets were shipped to Persepolis from regional centers where they were carefully transcribed, sorted, and stored. This is exploding an old myth—held by both ancient Babylonians and modern scholars—that the Persian rulers were barbarians civilized by their subjects. Instead, there was a homegrown and capable bureaucracy. Another mistaken belief the tablets expose is that, following a decree of Cyrus the Great, slavery was not permitted in the empire. A text written in Persepolis mentions a slave sale.

A relief from the main stairway of the Council Hall depicts armed Persian guards (right). Between 5,000 and 6,000 of the tablets lack text, but include seal impressions on the clay (above).

Because most of the accounts record the distribution of grain, flour, sheep, goats, wine, and beer, the kind of day-to-day accounting that reveals the empire’s internal workings, the tablets provide a look at a cross section of ancient Persian society, from the royal family to workers. are no big narratives here. This is the view from the lunchbox,” says Stolper. The tablets also give insights into religious practices of the day. Scholars still are unclear what role religion played in the early empire of the sixth century b.c.  The Persepolis tablets indicate that the court distributed food and wine to priests of the ancient Iranian deity Ahura Mazda, a god who later became the focus of a Persian state religion. But they surprised researchers by showing that offerings were issued to Elamite and Babylonian gods as well. With respect to food distribution, the tablets say that some female workers received larger rations than men of comparable status, although it is not clear why. On the other hand, women with male children received more food than those with girls. There are also innumerable notations of travelers’ expenses paid for by the royal court. “People were moving from Bactria [in today’s Afghanistan] to Sardis [in today’s Turkey],” says Stolper. “This was a polyglot and multiethnic society.”

In their seemingly humdrum details, the Persepolis tablets are both adding new information to our understanding of the Persian Empire and revising long-held notions about the kind of society in which the Persians lived. According to Stolper, “The Persepolis archive has fundamentally changed every aspect of the study of Achaemenid Iranian languages, art, institutions, and history.” Even if the tablets go to auction, he hopes to convince any future owners—or Iranian officials—to wait until the information from each fragment is completely digitized before claiming the artifacts. This will ensure that the archive is available for the future, no matter what course the legal case takes.

5,000 years ago, a long-buried society in the Iranian desert helped shape the first urban age

Even local archaeologists with the benefit of air conditioned cars and paved roads think twice about crossing eastern Iran’s rugged terrain. “It’s a tough place,” says Mehdi Mortazavi from the University of Sistan Baluchistan in the far eastern end of Iran, near the Afghan border. At the center of this region is the Dasht e Lut, Persian for the “Empty Desert.” This treacher ous landscape, 300 miles long and 200 miles wide, is covered with sinkholes, steep ravines, and sand dunes, some topping 1,000 feet. It also has the hottest average surface temperature of any place on Earth. The forbidding territory in and around this desert seems like the last place to seek clues to the emergence of the first cities and states 5,000 years ago.

Yet archaeologists are finding an impressive array of ancient settle ments on the edges of the Dasht e Lut dating back to the period when urban civilization was emerging in Egypt, Iraq, and the Indus River Valley in Pakistan and India. In the 1960s and 1970s, they found the great centers of Shahr i Sokhta and Shahdad on the desert’s fringes and another,Tepe Yahya, far to the south. More recent surveys, excavations, and remote sensing work reveal that all of eastern Iran, from near the Persian Gulf in the south to the northern edge of the Iranian plateau, was peppered with hundreds and possibly thousands of small to large settlements. Detailed laboratory analyses of artifacts and human remains from these sites are providing an intimate look at the lives of an enterprising people who helped create the world’s first global trade network.

Far from living in a cultural backwater, eastern Iranians from this period built large cities with palaces, used one of the first writing sys tems, and created sophisticated metal, pottery, and textile industries. They also appear to have shared both administrative and religious ideas as they did business with distant lands. “They connected the great corridors between Mesopotamia and the east,” says Maurizio Tosi, a University of Bologna archaeologist who did pioneering work at Shahr i Sokhta.“They were the world in between.”

Work continues at Shahr-i-Sokhta, while the standing walls uncovered during earlier campaigns have been preserved. The site was composed of many large structures, including palaces, several large villas, and more modest homes.

By 2000 b.c. these settlements were abandoned. The reasons for this remain unclear and are the source of much scholarly controversy, but urban life didn’t return to eastern Iran for more than 1,500 years. The very existence of this civilization was long forgotten. Recovering its past has not been easy. Parts of the area are close to the Afghan border, long rife with armed smugglers. Revolution and politics have frequently interrupted excavations. And the immensity of the region and its harsh climate make it one of the most challenging places in the world to conduct archaeology.

The peripatetic English explorer Sir Aurel Stein, famous for his archaeological work surveying large swaths of Central Asia and the Middle East, slipped into Persia at the end of 1915 and found the first hints of eastern Iran’s lost cities. Stein traversed what he described as “a big stretch of gravel and sandy desert” and encountered “the usual…robber bands from across the Afghan border, without any excit•ing incident.” What did excite Stein was the discovery of what he called “the most surprising prehistoric site” on the eastern edge of the Dasht-e Lut. Locals called it Shahr-i-Sokhta (“Burnt City”) because of signs of ancient destruction.

It wasn’t until a half-century later that Tosi and his team hacked their way through the thick salt crust and discovered a metropolis rivaling those of the first great urban centers in Mesopotamia and the Indus. Radiocarbon data showed that the site was founded around 3200 b.c., just as the first substantial cities in Mesopotamia were being built, and flourished for more than a thousand years. During its heyday in the middle of the third millennium b.c., the city covered more than 150 hectares and may have been home to more than 20,000 people, perhaps as populous as the large cities of Umma in Mesopotamia and Mohenjo-Daro on the Indus River. A vast shallow lake and wells likely provided the nec•essary water, allowing for cultivated fields and grazing for animals.

Built of mudbrick, the city boasted a large palace, separate neighborhoods for pottery-making, metalworking, and other industrial activities, and distinct areas for the production of local goods. Most residents lived in modest one-room houses, though some were larger compounds with six to eight rooms. Bags of goods and storerooms were often “locked” with stamp seals, a procedure common in Mesopotamia in the era.

Shahr-i-Sokhta boomed as the demand for precious goods among elites in the region and elsewhere grew. Though situated in inhospitable terrain, the city was close to tin, copper, and turquoise mines, and lay on the route bringing lapis lazuli from Afghanistan to the west. Craftsmen worked shells from the Persian Gulf, carnelian from India, and local metals such as tin and copper. Some they made into finished products, and others were exported in unfinished form. Lapis blocks brought from the Hindu Kush mountains, for example, were cut into smaller chunks and sent on to Mesopotamia and as far west as Syria. Unworked blocks of lapis weighing more than 100 pounds in total were unearthed in the ruined palace of Ebla, close to the Mediterranean Sea. Archaeologist Massimo Vidale of the University of Padua says that the elites in eastern Iranian cities like Shahr-i-Sokhta were not simply slaves to Mesopotamian markets. They apparently kept the best-quality lapis for themselves, and sent west what they did not want. Lapis beads found in the royal tombs of Ur, for example, are intricately carved, but of generally low-quality stone compared to those of Shahr-i-Sokhta.

Pottery was produced on a massive scale. Nearly 100 kilns were clustered in one part of town and the craftspeople also had a thriving textile industry. Hundreds of wooden spindle whorls and combs were uncovered, as were well-preserved textile fragments made of goat hair and wool that show a wide variation in their weave. According to Irene Good, a specialist in ancient textiles at Oxford University, this group of textile fragments constitutes one of the most important in the world, given their great antiquity and the insight they provide into an early stage of the evolution of wool production. Textiles were big business in the third millennium b.c., according to Mesopotamian texts, but actual textiles from this era had never before been found.

Situated at the end of a small delta on a dry plain, Shahdad was excavated by an Iranian team in the 1970s (below). An Iranian-Italian team (bottom), including archaeologist Massimo Vidale (right), surveyed the site in 2009.

The artifacts also show the breadth of Shahr-i-Sokhta’s connections. Some excavated red-and-black ceramics share traits with those found in the hills and steppes of distant Turkmenistan to the north, while others are similar to pots made in Pakistan to the east, then home to the Indus civilization. Tosi’s team found a clay tablet written in a script called Proto-Elamite, which emerged at the end of the fourth millennium b.c., just after the advent of the first known writing system, cuneiform, which evolved in Mesopotamia. Other such tablets and sealings with Proto-Elamite signs have also been found in eastern Iran, such as at Tepe Yahya. This script was used for only a few centuries starting around 3200 b.c. and may have emerged in Susa, just east of Mesopotamia. By the middle of the third millennium b.c., however, it was no longer in use. Most of the eastern Iranian tablets record simple transactions involving sheep, goats, and grain and could have been used to keep track of goods in large households.

Burial Goods If there were any doubts that eastern Iran was a sophisticated and populous region in the third millennium b.c., the vast cemetery at Shahr-i-Sokhta has put them to rest. Over the past two decades, a team led by Iranian archaeologist Mansour Sajjadi has been working in a 100-acre area that includes an estimated 40,000 graves—and possibly as many as 200,000—dug over a period of many centuries, only 100 of which have thus far been exca-vated.According to archaeologist Kirsi Lorentz at the University of Newcastle, who is working on the finds from the site, the cemetery offers “a unique record with which to study the development of urban civilization in the third millennium b.c.” One of the most intriguing finds is the well-preserved remains of a woman in her late 20s who died between 2900 and 2800 b.c. She was buried with an ornate bronze mirror and what Sajjadi and Ital-ian excavators believe is an artificial eyeball made of bitumen paste and gold that was once held in place with fine thread. Microscopic examination showed that the artificial eyeball left an imprint in her eye socket, a sign that it was there for a long period of time before her death. Other archaeologists insist that the object is more likely an eyepatch held in place by string threaded through holes on each side. Another important find was an intricate rectangular wooden board with 60 small, round pieces made from wood inlaid with bone and limestone, likely an early form of backgammon. Similar sets have been found in the Indus far to the east, as well as in the tomb of Queen Puabi in the Royal Graves of Ur. The board in Shahr-i-Sokhta is approximately the same date as the Indus and Mesopotamian artifacts, and suggests that the people of eastern Iran traded not only goods, but ideas for entertainment as well. Lorentz says that the cemetery’s large numbers will allow for statistical analysis of health, diet, and mobility among the ancient residents. And though the bones are often in poor condition, she adds that there is “exceptional preservation” of human hair, nails, and skin. Grooves found in the teeth of many individuals may be a sign that weavers used their teeth as third hands. Short hair found on the skulls may show that crew cuts were the fashion—at least in death if not in life. —A.L.

While Tosi’s team was digging at Shahr-i-Sokhta, Iranian archaeologist Ali Hakemi was working at another site, Shahdad, on the western side of the Dasht-e Lut. This settlement emerged as early as the fifth millennium b.c. on a delta at the edge of the desert. By the early third millennium b.c., Shahdad began to grow quickly as international trade with Meso•potamia expanded. Tomb excavations revealed spectacular artifacts amid stone blocks once painted in vibrant colors. These include several extraordinary, nearly life-size clay statues placed with the dead. The city’s artisans worked lapis lazuli, silver, lead, turquoise, and other materials imported from as far away as eastern Afghanistan, as well as shells from the distant Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

Evidence shows that ancient Shahdad had a large metalworking industry by this time. During a recent survey, a new generation of archaeologists found a vast hill—nearly 300 feet by 300 feet— covered with slag from smelting copper. Vidale says that analysis of the copper ore suggests that the smiths were savvy enough to add a small amount of arsenic in the later stages of the process to strengthen the final product. Shahdad’s metalworkers also created such remarkable artifacts as a metal flag dating to about 2400 b.c. Mounted on a copper pole topped with a bird, perhaps an eagle, the squared flag depicts two figures facing one another on a rich background of animals, plants, and goddesses. The flag has no parallels and its use is unknown.

Vidale has also found evidence of a sweet-smelling nature. During a spring 2009 visit to Shahdad, he discovered a small stone container lying on the ground. The vessel, which appears to date to the late fourth millennium b.c., was made of chlorite, a dark soft stone favored by ancient artisans in southeast Iran. Using X-ray diffraction at an Iranian lab, he discovered lead carbonate—used as a white cosmetic—sealed in the bottom of the jar. He identified fatty material that likely was added as a binder, as well as traces of coumarin, a fragrant chemical compound found in plants and used in some perfumes. Further analysis showed small traces of copper, possibly the result of a user dipping a small metal applicator into the container.

A metal flag found at Shahdad, one of eastern Iran’s early urban sites, dates to around 2400 b.c. The flag depicts a man and woman facing each other, one of the recurrent themes in the region’s art at this time.

Other sites in eastern Iran are only now being investigated. For the past two years, Iranian archae•ologists Hassan Fazeli Nashli and Hassain Ali Kavosh from the University of Tehran have been digging in a small settlement a few miles east of Shahdad called Tepe Graziani, named for the Italian archaeologist who first surveyed the site. They are trying to understand the role of the city’s outer settlements by examining this ancient mound, which is 30 feet high, 525 feet wide, and 720 feet long. Excavators have uncovered a wealth of artifacts including a variety of small sculptures depicting crude human figures, humped bulls, and a Bactrian camel dating to approximately 2900 b.c. A bronze mirror, fishhooks, daggers, and pins are among the metal finds. There are also wooden combs that survived in the arid climate. “The site is small but very rich,” says Fazeli, adding that it may have been a prosperous suburban production center for Shahdad.

Sites such as Shahdad and Shahr-i-Sokhta and their suburbs were not simply islands of settlements in what otherwise was empty desert. Fazeli adds that some 900 Bronze Age sites have been found on the Sistan plain, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mortazavi, meanwhile, has been examining the area around the Bampur Valley, in Iran’s extreme southeast. This area was a corridor between the Iranian plateau and the Indus Valley, as well as between Shahr-i-Sokhta to the north and the Persian Gulf to the south. A 2006 survey along the Damin River identified 19 Bronze Age sites in an area of less than 20 square miles. That river periodically vanishes, and farmers depend on underground
channels called qanats to transport water.

Despite the lack of large rivers, ancient eastern Iranians were very savvy in marshaling their few water resources. Using satellite remote sensing data, Vidale has found remains of what might be ancient canals or qanats around Shahdad, but more work is necessary to understand how inhabitants supported themselves in this harsh climate 5,000 years ago, as they still do today.

This plain ceramic jar, found recently at Shahdad, contains residue of a white cosmetic whose complex formula is evidence for an extensive knowledge of chemistry among the city’s ancient inhabitant

Meanwhile, archaeologists also hope to soon continue work that began a decade ago at Konar Sandal, 55 miles north of Yahya near the modern city of Jiroft in southeastern Iran. France-based archaeologist Yusef Madjizadeh has spent six seasons working at the site, which revealed a large city centered on a high citadel with massive walls beside the Halil River. That city and neighboring settlements like Yahya produced artfully carved dark stone vessels that have been found in Mesopotamian temples. Vidale notes that Indus weights, seals, and etched carnelian beads found at Konar Sandal demonstrate connections with that civilization as well.

Many of these settlements were abandoned in the latter half of the third millennium b.c., and, by 2000 b.c., the vibrant urban life of eastern Iran was history. Barbara Helwig of Berlin’s German Archaeological Institute suspects a radical shift in trade patterns precipitated the decline. Instead of moving in caravans across the deserts and plateau of Iran, Indus traders began sailing directly to Arabia and then on to Mesopotamia, while to the north, the growing power of the Oxus civilization in today’s

The large eastern Iranian settlement of Tepe Yahya produced clear evidence for the manufacture of a type of black stone jar for export that has been found as far away as Mesopotamia

Turkmenistan may have further weakened the role of cities such as Shahdad. Others blame climate change. The lagoons, marshes, and streams may have dried up, since even small shifts in rainfall can have a dramatic effect on water sources in the area. Here, there is no Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, or Indus to provide agricultural bounty through a drought, and even the most sophisticated water systems may have failed during a prolonged dry spell.

Unbaked clay figurines like this one, dated to 2400–2000 b.c., were found in several graves at Shahdad.

It is also possible that an international economic downturn played a role. The destruction of the Mesopotamian city of Ur around 2000 b.c. and the later decline of Indus metropolises such as Mohenjo-Daro might have spelled doom for a trading people. The market for precious goods such as lapis collapsed. There is no clear evidence of widespread warfare, though Shahr-i-Sokhta appears to have been destroyed by fire several times. But a combination of drought, changes in trade routes, and economic trouble might have led people to abandon their cities to return to a simpler existence of herding and small-scale farming. Not until the Persian Empire rose 1,500 years later did people again live in any large numbers in eastern Iran, and not until modern times did cities again emerge. This also means that countless ancient sites are still awaiting exploration on the plains, in the deserts, and among the rocky valleys of the region.

Andrew Lawler is a contributing editor at Archaeology. For our 1975 coverage of the excavations at Shahr-i-Sokhta, see www.archaeology.org/iran

Lasting Impression The impression of a cylinder seal on an unbaked clay jar sealing from Konar Sandal They are tiny and often faded and fragmented. But one abundant source of evidence for both international trade and the role of women in eastern Iran during the third millennium b.c. are the tiny images found on seals and seal-ings throughout this area. The small impressions were designed to mark ownership and control of goods, from bags of barley to a storeroom filled with oil jugs. Holly Pittman, an art historian at the University of Pennsylva-nia who has worked throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, is examining the fragile impressions. She is attempting to build a clearer picture of the lives of ancient inhabitants in large centers such as Shahr-i-Sokhta, Shahdad, and Konar Sandal, near today’s modern city of Jiroft. Pittman now believes these people of eastern Iran shared common ideas and beliefs while also participating in the first age of long-distance exchange. Female deities with vegetation growing out of their bodies are one common element on the seals found in eastern Iran and, as on the Shahdad flag, figures confronting one another also appear frequently. A distinctive type of white stone seals that have been found in Central Asia and the Indus appear to have been made in a similar style by eastern Iranians. “There are relationships between sites, and certainly this part of eastern Iran is participat-ing in a global network,” she says. “This is a world of merchants and traders.” Pittman believes that by early in the third millennium b.c., the network linking Mesopotamia and southeastern Iran resulted in a mixing of cultures across this enormous area. Seals that were used to close storage rooms in Konar Sandal, for example, are of a specific Mesopotamian type common in the major Iraqi port of Ur. That hints strongly at the presence of Mesopotamian inhabit-ants in Konar Sandal who had almost certainly come from Ur. She also suggests that Mesopotamian artifacts absorbed style elements from southeastern Iran. Another example is the famous inlaid lyre found at Ur, which has the face of a bearded bull typical of eastern Iran. Other seals found in ruins such as Konar Sandal are Proto- Elamite in style, showing strong connections with western and central Iran, where the Proto-Elamite writing system is believed to have originated at the same time that Mesopotamian urban life began to flourish in the late fourth millennium b.c. Seals were powerful markers of economic, political, and social clout. At some eastern Iranian sites such as Shahr-i-Sokhta, they appear to have been largely in the hands of women. Marta Ameri, an archaeologist at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, notes that two-thirds of the seals found in Shahr-i-Sokhta’s graves are found in female burials. While the grander bronze seals are uncovered mostly in male tombs, the more common bone seals are more often associated with women. Based on remains of seal-ings made to doors, vases, bags, and other objects, the bone seals were in more frequent use than the bronze. This suggests, Ameri says, that women were in control of food storage and possibly trade goods as well. Until more intact graves are found at other sites such as Shahdad,“we at least have a tantalizing look at the roles women may have played,” says Ameri. —A.L.

This remote valley may have been the home of a civilization at the heart of the ancient world’s first globalized economy

Youssef Madjidzadeh is insistent. “There is no difference between Jiroft and Sumer,” says the white-bearded 72-year-old archaeologist, leaning forward on the sofa. We’re in the lobby of a hotel on the grounds of the shah’s former summer place near the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. The bold claim is an exaggeration at best, and a view shared by few of his colleagues. But there is no doubt that the dig he directs near the modern city of Jiroft in southeastern Iran is reshaping the way we understand the first emergence of civilization.

In Tehran, thousands of people are in the streets protesting the results of the recent election that gave Mahmoud Ahmedinejad another term. But here, a six-hour drive over the craggy Elburz Mountains from the capital, foreign and Iranian archaeologists have gathered amicably at this resort to discuss ancient Iran’s relations with the larger Bronze Age world. Much of the discussion revolves around the role of Jiroft as a wealthy and powerful center during the first flowering of urban culture nearly 5,000 years ago.

For a century, the story of civilization is thought to have begun around 3000 b.c. in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. There the first cities, monumental palaces, and temples were built, and one of the first writing systems developed. Several years ago. Madjizadeh upset that archaeological gospel by contending that Jiroft is every bit as large and important as Sumer. And maybe even older. His first published volume on the site is titled The Earliest Oriental Civilization. These dramatic assertions made headlines in Iran and around the world.

No one at the meeting contradicts him. The foreigners are too polite and the Iranians seem intimidated. Madjizadeh remains defiant, even as the data his team has gathered demonstrates that Jiroft’s heyday was from 2500 b.c. to 2200 b.c., a millennium or more later than the earliest remains of cities in Mesopotamia. “It was necessary to say that at the time, in order to have the attention of the world,” he says, leaning back on the sofa. “I think I did the right thing.”

Madjizadeh’s excavations have been dogged by controversy since they began in 2002 in the wake of the terrible looting that first brought the site to international attention. Some archaeologists complain privately that his methods are not sufficiently up to date, and others bemoan his failure to pull together a strong team of specialists to sort through complicated, challenging finds. Yet despite attempts by Tehran to allow other archaeologists to conduct independent excavations, Madjizadeh continues his work and rejects critical comments as thinly masked jealousy. “Some people hate you because you wear your glasses a certain way,” he says dismissively. “I don’t care what they think.”

No one doubts that Jiroft is challenging our understanding of how civilization first thrived in the third millennium b.c. Long considered a cultural backwater hidden among high mountains and harsh deserts, this valley is emerging as an important crossroads in humanity’s first attempt at globalization more than 4,000 years ago. According to Holly Pittman, a University of Pennsylvania art historian who has collaborated with Madjizadeh, “This is a whole new Bronze Age civilization.”

 

The discovery is part of a larger tapestry of finds in Iran, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf region that give are creating a new understanding of civilization’s emergence. Instead of three largely isolated societies hugging the banks of the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, and Indus rivers, early civilization is turning out to be much more complicated. Myriad kingdoms scattered over thousands of miles traded goods, fashions, and ideas with one another while creating their own unique and independent ways of life. And Madjidzadeh’s excavation is a key part of that evidence. “Jiroft doesn’t displace Mesopotamia,” says Phil Kohl, an archaeologist at Wellesley College who attended the Caspian Sea meeting. “But it does show there are more players in the region than we had previously conceived.”

Until recently, those players were merely hinted at in cuneiform tablets inscribed by Mesopotamian scribes and excavated in the past century at sites such as Ebla and Ur. The texts mention exotic cities and lands such as Aratta, Meluhha, and Marhashi, which scholars long assumed were mythical. But given discoveries east of Mesopotamia in recent decades, historians now believe they can pinpoint actual geographical locations. Harvard University’s Piotr Steinkeller, for example, argues that Jiroft is the city of Marhashi mentioned in tablets from sites in Mesopotamia such as Adab. Steinkeller notes that the texts show that Marhashi lies between Anshan—near today’s southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz—and Meluhha, the probable name of what we call the Indus civilization far to the east in Pakistan and India. But others dispute these identifications. Madjizadeh thinks Jiroft is the ancient city of Aratta, which appears in Mesopotamian texts as a powerful city to the east.

It’s not difficult to grasp why archaeologists—and most of the outside world—would overlook Jiroft. British scholar Sir Aurel Stein passed through this area in the 1930s, noting many ancient mounds. But like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan before him, he didn’t linger. Entering Jiroft is a little like finding the legendary kingdom of Shangri La—if you like your paradise very, very warm. Dropping down from high peaks above barren hillsides, the road from the provincial capital of Kerman snakes into a lush green world of date palms and fruit plantations. The Halil River meanders through what feels like a miniature version of Mesopotamia and the area is as fertile as any stretch of Nile. But this river never reaches the sea and the valley is one of earth’s hottest places. Summer temperatures top more than 120 degrees and it’s often too blistering for flies to swarm. It is little wonder that outsiders rarely tarried.

 

How Jiroft emerged as a cosmopolitan center some 4,500 years ago, complete with massive acropolis, a life-size statue of a powerfully built man, and—perhaps—its own unique writing system, is difficult to fathom. To get to Mesopotamia, it is a hard 600-mile trek over high ranges, deserts, and a vast plateau. Reaching the Indus River to the east is no easier. Yet there has been some evidence of Jiroft’s role in long distance trade in the third millennium b.c. Distinctive chlorite (a dark stone) vessels pop up in excavated sites across the ancient world in this period, from the Royal Graves of Ur, to the Arabian Peninsula along the Persian Gulf, to the sites along the Indus River in today’s Pakistan. Some are as tall as flower vases—about 10 inches high—with flared rims, while others are round and low. A few are intricately carved and studded with semiprecious stones, and those decorated with images of snakes or scorpions reveal a mythology far different from that of any known culture. For decades, the origin of these odd artifacts was unknown.

Scholars classified them as “Intercultural Style,” an academic way of saying their origin was unclear. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Harvard University archaeologist C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky dug 55 miles west of Jiroft at a site called Tepe Yahya, and discovered workshops that produced similar chlorite vessels. Kohl suggested then that these objects were made to export to Mesopotamian markets.

But Yahya was small, more village than city, and some archaeologists suspected there were major centers in the area waiting to be found. Then the 1979 revolution closed Iran off from the outside world, shutting the door to further research.

The mystery remained unsolved until 2001, when an illegal dig in an ancient cemetery 15 miles south of the modern city of Jiroft attracted the attention of police. They confiscated hundreds of vessels similar to those found at Yahya and Ur, many of which included fine carvings of animals and plants. Some were embedded with colorful stones. At the same time there was a political thaw in Tehran under President Mohammad Khatami. That led authorities, who had only allowed limited excavation by foreigners since 1979, to call in Madjidzadeh, a respected excavator who was fired from his job as archaeology department chair at Tehran University in the aftermath of the revolution. In the interim, he had left the country with his French wife and taken French citizenship.

In 2003, Madjidzadeh began work in the winter season, the only time when excavation is practical given the heat. He didn’t focus on the denuded cemetery, now a sad landscape of round looters’ holes, but instead began work on two massive, largely untouched mounds located a few hundred yards away called Konar Sandal South and Konar Sandal North. After six years of excavation, the southern mound, which rises 80 feet above the plain, has proven to be the remains of an impressive citadel surrounded by a wall of carefully laid brick, with buttresses and niches. Almost 200 feet of this wall—which is still six feet high in places—has been exposed on the western side. The sophisticated layout reminded Madjidzadeh of the complex decorative patterns found on chlorite vessels looted from the cemetery, which he believes may record the architectural decoration of the citadel itself. The vessels show elaborate swags that also appear on the walls of the citadel. The style is radically different from what archaeologists have found in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or the Indus. “This is really unique architecture,” says Madjidzadeh.

Madjidzadeh was puzzled when he found an entrance gate on the western side of the mound. He had assumed the main gate would face east, toward the river. But geomorphologist Eric Fouache from the University of Paris, who was part of Madjidzadeh’s team, determined that four millennia ago the river flowed on the west side of the mounds. Visiting diplomats from Mesopotamia’s Uruk, as well as merchants from Mohenjo Daro on the Indus and the Persian Gulf, disembarking at the river’s edge, would have been awed by this monumental entrance. The gate was flanked by semi-circular towers nearly 16 feet in diameter and a formidable wall coated in gleaming white plaster, traces of which still remain.

 

Next, the visitors might have been escorted into a large rectangular room. Here, set in a niche, the team found a muscular male figure sculpted out of mudbrick. His fists rested on top of his belt, which once was painted a brilliant ochre but now retains only a few flakes, and his long skirt was covered with rows of red and black triangles. The upper torso and head are gone, but the full figure may have been over six feet tall. No potsherds or any other material were found in the room to show that it was used as a residence or business. Though lacking evidence, Madjizadeh makes a leap of faith in declaring that this room was a place of worship. “This is the holiest part of the citadel, and certainly a temple,” he says. If true, it would be a momentous find. Though temples are common in this period in Mesopotamia, none have been found east of Susa, the great city on the edge of the Mesopotamian plain that was strongly influenced by its neighbors to the west, such as the cities of Ur and Uruk. Even the Indus River civilization shows no obvious signs of temples, despite its large population and sophisticated city planning.

Based on surveys made by Madjizadeh’s team in the past few years, Jiroft’s ancient settlement sprawled below the citadel’s high walls, at least half a mile to the east and west. Today this area is covered by the thick groves of date palm plantations created in recent years using heavy machinery that flattened a host of smaller mounds once encircling Konar Sandal South. But the team has been able to excavate several small mudbrick homes, which show that most of Jiroft’s inhabitants lived simply, in houses with earthen floors and no foundations, which appear similar to modern ones in the area. Rooms are tiny, there are no central courtyards, and activities such as cooking take place in the open air. The menu in antiquity, like that of today, included domesticated animals such as cows, sheep, and goats. But the ancient population also hunted a variety of wild animals, including gazelles, boars, and rabbits, according to Marjan Mashkor of the Sorbonne, who examined faunal remains found in and among the houses.

 

 

 

 

In one house, the team also uncovered bits of agate, mother of pearl, turquoise, and other materials likely used for adornment, some of which came from far outside the valley. And excavators working on the eastern side of the ancient town found a brick platform that Madjidzadeh believes was either a center for producing crafts or a massive city wall, though he lacks clear evidence to prove his assertions. There the team has found more than 50 pieces of carved chlorite vessels. These are arguably the most important finds to date. Many foreign archaeologists, including Oscar Muscarella, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the looted vessels, although he says that Madjizadeh’s finds demonstrate that while some of the looted artifacts may be fakes, others may come from the time of Jiroft’s heyday.

Those vessels are not the only sign of Jiroft’s connection to the outide world. Tiny, fragile, and worn seal impressions left on clay more than four millennia ago and found at the site provide the most vivid picture of Jiroft’s society. Merchants and priests across southwest Asia used such seals to mark goods, protect stores, and confirm an agreement—a notary’s seal is the modern remnant of that ancient tradition. For Pittman, Madjidzadeh’s discovery of a handful of seals andsome 500 seal impressions has proved an unexpected bonanza and helped reveal the close relations between the far flung peoples of East Asia’s early Bronze Age.

One square seal made of bronze discovered at Jiroft closely resembles those found at Lothal, an important Indus port along the coast of what is now India. Fragments of other seals show signs of contact with neighboring settlements such as Bampur, Shahdad, and Shahr-i-Sokhta—all important centers in third millennium B.C. Iran—as well as sites far to the north in today’s Turkmenistan in what is called the Bactrian Margiana Archaeological Complex (the Oxus civilization.) Still others have iconography similar to those found at Ur. One seal impression has thefaint signs of cuneiform, with two facing figures typical of the Akkadian Empire, which ruled much of Mesopotamia around 2200 b.c. “There is quite a bit of robust evidence for long distance relations,” says Pittman.

The seals are the only remains of what were bags of goods, ranging from wool to beads to the fine chlorite vessels, which traveled on donkey caravans across the Iranian plateau, or south to the Persian Gulf. From there, ships could transport them to Arabia or the Indus. By 2500 b.c., ships were passing from ports in Oman to the Indus, according to excavations on the coast of Oman by Maurizio Tosi from the University of Bologna. The majority of seals and impressions at Jiroft show that ordinary goods—likely textiles, grain, oil, as well as prized objects like the chlorite vessels—passed among the early civilizations.

Along with luxury goods and ordinary wares, the people of Jiroft also exported their exotic imagery—deities that are half-animal and half-human, or even halfvegetation. Scorpion men, strange half-bird creatures, vegetable gods, and snakes dazzle art historians. These figures, which appear on seals, impressions, and vessels, demonstrate that Jiroft had a homegrown religion and mythology, says Pittman. “This is a new set of imagery and iconography.” She hails the finds as opening a window on the early Bronze Age, the critical period when civilizations first began to interact on a regional level. The imagery appears on seals, sealings, as well on the chlorite vessels. There is evidence of an earlier, pre-citadel settlement at Jiroft dating a thousand years earlier. Digging in the largely destroyed cemetery area near the river, Massimo Vidale of Rome’s Institute of Conservation and Preservation recently found continuity of the culture. In and around the remains of a small oval hut, the team uncovered elaborately painted storage vessels, fine alabaster bowls, stone sickle blades, and a small terracotta bull, as well as evidence of metallurgy. Hundreds of lapis lazuli beads show contact with regions such as Afghanistan, the source of the semiprecious stone. Though radiocarbon dates OF WHAT? are not yet available, Vidale estimates that the site dates to the mid-fourth millennium b.c. based on radiocarbon dating of charcoal beside the pottery remains. That is compelling evidence that Jiroft evolved independently of other regions, rather than simply taking on the trappings of civilization passed on by Mesopotamia. How that evolution took place remains to be explored. But a millennium later, as other civilizations began to flex their trade muscles, Jiroft also spread itself over a vast area.

 

A short walk north of the citadel is another large mound made up of two platforms that are nothing short of monumental. Originally, the bottom one was more than 30 feet high and 900 feet on each side, punctuated with semi-circular bastions. The upper platform was exactly half that size and decorated with niches and buttresses. Madjidzadeh says it is “obvious” that this is a stepped platform of the sort found in Mesopotamia called ziggurats, which were the center of religious rituals. Others are not so sure.

Platforms dating to the early fourth millennium B.C. are found at the western Iranian site of Susa and visible at Iraqi cities, such as Uruk, from the early third millennium B.C. Mesopotamians eventually added ever smaller platforms on top of the base. Determining when Konar Sandal North was built is proving challenging. Despite collecting 17,000 pottery sherds, Madjidzadeh admits that dating remains uncertain.

However, a foreign archaeologist who has examined the materials thinks it is possible the platform was built as much as a thousand years later than the heyday of Konar Sandal South.

 

 

It is clear that Jiroft began to decline in the late third millennium b.c. Madjidzadeh attributes Jiroft’s collapse to a prolonged drought that dried up not only the river, but also the underground water sources that even today are critical for the valley’s fertility. A regional drought afflicting the Near East is also considered a culprit in the fall of Egypt’s Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, which had taken place a century or two earlier. Fouache, who conducted extensive studies in the Jiroft valley in 2004, is not as convinced. He believes that there was a drier period, but that it was not a severe event. A combination of drought and an international economic collapse, which may have followed the upheavals in Mesopotamia and Egypt, dealt a fatal blow, but the data remain sparse.

A written record would help scholars unravel some of the perplexing questions about the forms of government, religion, and economy developed at Jiroft. And Madjidzadeh is betting that an entire library of an unknown script may lie just south of the southern mound. That audacious claim is based on just three tablets—one found by a local villager and two found by members of the excavation team under a barn in a nearby village. The first tablet has eight simple geometric signs; the second has nearly twice as many in a slightly more complex form, while the third has 59 that appear The symbols do not appear to relate to any known system, although each tablet has additional symbols scratched on the back that resemble Linear Elamite, a script used across the Iranian plateau in the third millennium b.c.

Madjidzadeh believes the tablets may be part of a larger archive of this mysterious writing system. When he presented his finds at a professional meeting in Italy two years ago, several specialists dismissed the tablets as planted fakes—a charge that infuriates the dig director. Vidale backs up Madjidzadeh, saying that two of the three were excavated in situ. Resolving the dispute requires more digging, but the owners of the land where he thinks the archive is located are reluctant to sell and he has been unable to conduct further excavations there. He hopes to reach a deal in 2010 if there is enough money to settle the matter.

In the meantime, Madjidzadeh has been battling critics who say that his methods are old-fashioned and lacking detailed stratigraphic data, and that he has not published enough of his findings. He wrote a report on Jiroft that appeared in the January 2009 issue of the professional journal Iran, published in Tehran. “It was his first article in five years,” fumes Muscarella. It lacked clear inventories and other basic data sought by interested foreign colleagues. Iranian archaeologists also are concerned. “There are not enough data coming out—for such a big site you should have more dig reports by now,” says one Iranian archaeologist who requested anonymity because of concerns about retribution. “The problem with Jiroft is a lack of archaeological proficiency,” he adds.

Efforts to keep a team of foreign specialists involved have failed. The French government refused to fund further efforts by Fouache and others because of worries that Madjidzadeh’s team was not abiding by modern research standards. For example, he kept valuable artifacts that had not been adequately catalogued or conserved in a trunk under his bed. But Madjizadeh also has cultivated powerful allies, some of whom were his students at Tehran University. And he is popular in Jiroft, which named a square after him [when?]. So when the Tehran office in charge of archaeological excavations tried to remove Madjidzadeh early in 2009, it was forced to back down by his allies even more complicated. in the provincial government in Kerman Province, where Jiroft is located. He also has influential backers in Tehran.

Madjidzadeh— who one colleague calls “a strange, sensitive, and complex character”—bridles at the attacks on his methodology. He adds that he works 18 hours a day on his computer. “My wife says I am statue. I am working alone,” he says over tea at the Caspian resort. No one disputes how hard Madjidzadeh works, but archaeologists are still appalled at the comments he made to the Iranian press in the early excavation seasons, when he insisted that is Jiroft the first and oldest civilization. “This is an outrageous claim which is manifestly nationalistic and embarrassing,” says Muscarella. Recently Madjizadeh has backed off his assertion that Jiroft predates Sumer, which is located within Iraq, is promoting tourism Jiroft, building a dozen tourist huts at the foot of Konar Sandal South, to the irritation of some archaeologists who fear the site could be damaged. He waves off such worries. “We had thousands visit for the Iranian New Year!” he says enthusiastically before grabbing his bag and coat and heading back to France and his computer.

As he rushes off, Madjizadeh can’t leave behind the controversy stirred up by his sensational claims, or the critics who maintain his methods are questionable. But he does leave little doubt that archaeologists must rethink the story of civilization’s first growth spurt, and find a place for sites such as Jiroft which provide a new take on how humans first began to connect with distant societies, laying the foundation for today’s globalized world.

 

As dusk approaches, Korean pilgrims in white baseball caps blow horns and sing hymns atop Tel Megiddo. This crossroads in northern Israel–also known as Armageddon–is where the New Testament says the final battle pitting good against evil will begin. Below the huge mound, tour buses idle, throngs of visitors buy postcards, and a nearby McDonald’s does a thriving business at its drive-through window.

On the opposite side of the busy highway are the grim brick walls and coiled barbed wire of a high-security prison. It is an awkward place for an important archaeological site. Unlike at the mound, visitors are not welcome here. Even archaeologists must apply well in advance for access–something I wasn’t granted–so I am left standing outside the gates with Yotam Tepper of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The mosaic floor that he and a team of inmates discovered under the prison yard may mark one of the earliest known places of Christian worship.

Franciscan archaeologists contend that the disciple Peter’s home lies beneath this octagonal shrine built after Constantine’s reign. Today, a modern church with a glass floor shelters the ancient buildings. (BauBau PhotoWire)

This site in the city of Aqaba on the Red Sea may contain the ruins of a pre-Constantinian church. (Courtesy Thomas Parker)

Although the site may date to a full century before the Roman emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan transforming Christianity from a disparate group of Jesus-worshipping cults to a powerful state religion in A.D. 313, these early followers of the controversial faith weren’t hiding their beliefs. “There were Samaritans and Jews and Romans and Christians all living together in just this small place,” says Tepper. A Roman soldier paid for the mosaics, and members of the congregation may even have baked bread for Rome’s sixth legion, stationed nearby.

The find at Megiddo is a key piece of evidence in a radical rethinking of how Christianity evolved during its first three centuries, before it was backed by the might of empire. Until recently, scholars had to rely on ancient texts that emphasize the vicious persecution of the church–think lions dining on martyrs in Rome’s Colosseum. A growing body of archaeological data, however, paints a more diverse and surprising picture in which Christians thrived alongside Jews and the Roman military. These finds make this “a definitive time in our field” since they appear to contradict the literary sources on which historians have long depended, says Eric Meyers, a biblical archaeologist at Duke University.

Megiddo is only the latest in a series of recent digs in the Near East revealing a more complex history of the early Christian era. Near the Red Sea in the Jordanian city of Aqaba, archaeologists have uncovered what the dig director, Thomas Parker of North Carolina State University, argues is a pre-Constantinian prayer hall. At Capernaum, just an hour’s drive from Megiddo, Franciscan monks believe they have excavated a pilgrimage site dating to as early as the first century A.D. on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Such discoveries are unusual; the only undisputed early Christian worship site is at Dura Europas, on the Euphrates River in modern Syria, which was excavated in the 1920s and ’30s by French and American teams. How the most recently discovered sites were used and dated, however, is hotly contested.

 

Andrew Lawler is a staff writer for Science magazine.

 

It’s a drizzly autumn morning in the eastern Mexican city of Xalapa, near the heartland of what many scholars say was Mesoamerica’s first civilization. At the city’s elegant anthropology museum, amid one of the finest Olmec collections in the world, Yale archaeologist Michael Coe points at the giant squat stone head staring sullenly at us. “Look at this,” he says enthusiastically. “When it was made, the Maya area didn’t even have pottery, and the biggest sculpture from this time in Oaxaca”–an important valley to the west–”could fit in this guy’s eye.” The Olmec, Coe insists, “were the Sumerians of the New World.”

An energetic man even at 77, he is part of an older generation of scholars who have spent a good part of their professional lives arguing among themselves over whether the Olmec birthed the rudiments of Mesoamerican civilization, or whether they were one among many contemporary peoples who contributed art, technology, and religious beliefs to the Aztec, Maya, and other cultures that Cortes and the Spanish encountered 2,500 years later. But that lingering “mother-sister” debate–often vociferous, occasionally unseemly, and sometimes downright nasty–obscures a quiet revolution in research on early Mesoamerica. While the elders bicker, a younger batch of archaeologists is pursuing other questions, asking, for example, how the ordinary Olmec lived and worked, and what they ate.

The lush, wet environment of the Laguna de los Cerros site, aerial view above left, typifies the Olmec heartland between the later Aztec (Tenochtitlán) and Maya (Palenque) regions. (Ken Garrett)

Such fundamental matters until now were largely neglected amid the academic fracas, which has focused on monumental structures, evidence of kings, and the iconography of the elite. “Everyone is flying a flag from their own valley,” sighs Mary Pye, a 40-something archaeologist in Mexico City who is also in Xalapa for a conference on the Olmec. “Forget mother-sister,” she says. “It’s more complicated.” The more nuanced picture emerging of early Mesoamerica does not fit that of either warring camp. Those who back the Olmec as the first civilization traditionally point to the early adoption of maize, the growth of urban centers, and the export of finished goods such as pottery throughout Mesoamerica to clinch their argument. Opponents emphasize the complexity of other cultures in different areas, such as Oaxaca. But the new research shows that during the early critical phase of urbanization the Olmec may have shunned maize, lived mostly as fishermen, and sought luxury items from distant places, while simultaneously expanding their cultural influence throughout the region.

 

Andrew Lawler is a staff writer for Science and lives in rural Maine.