Archaeologists uncover palace of the Mittani Empire in Iraq's Kurdistan Region

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 28, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iraq, Kurdistan, Middle East

German and Kurdish archaeologists have uncovered a Bronze Age palace on the eastern bank of the Tigris River in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. As the international research team reports, the site of Kemune can be dated to the time of the Mittani Empire, which dominated large parts of northern Mesopotamia and Syria from the 15th to the 14th century BCE. The Mittani Empire is one of the least researched kingdoms of the Ancient Near East. The archaeologists now hope to obtain new information about the politics, economy, and history of the empire by studying cuneiform tablets discovered in the palace.

Aerial view of Kemune Palace from the west [Credit: University of Tübingen, eScience Center, & Kurdistan Archaeology Organization]

Last autumn, receding waters in the Mosul Dam reservoir unexpectedly brought to light remains of an ancient city. Archaeologists launched a spontaneous rescue excavation of the ruins exposed by the ebbing waters. It was headed by Dr. Hasan Ahmed Qasim (Duhok) and Dr. Ivana Puljiz (Tübingen), as a joint project between the University of Tübingen and the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization (KAO) in cooperation with the Duhok Directorate of Antiquities. Kurdish archaeologist Hasan Ahmed Qasim explains its significance: "The find is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the region in recent decades and illustrates the success of the Kurdish-German cooperation." The project was largely financed by the KAO and its sponsor, Kurdisch businessman Hersh Isa Swar.

Terrace wall on the western side of Kemune Palace [Credit: University of Tübingen, eScience Center, & Kurdistan Archaeology Organization]

As Ivana Puljiz of the Tübingen Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) reports, the site shows a carefully designed building with massive interior mud-brick walls up to two meters thick. She says some walls are more than two meters high and some of the rooms have plastered walls. "We have also found remains of wall paintings in bright shades of red and blue," Puljiz says. "In the second millennium BCE, murals were probably a typical feature of palaces in the Ancient Near East, but we rarely find them preserved. So discovering wall paintings in Kemune is an archaeological sensation.”

A room in the palace during excavations [Credit: University of Tübingen, eScience Center, & Kurdistan Archaeology Organization]

The palace ruins are preserved to a height of some seven meters. Two phases of usage are clearly visible, Puljiz says, indicating that the building was in use for a very long time. Inside the palace, the team identified several rooms and partially excavated eight of them. In some areas, they found large fired bricks which were used as floor slabs. Ten Mittani cuneiform clay tablets were discovered and are currently being translated and studied by the philologist Dr. Betina Faist (University of Heidelberg). One of the tablets indicates that Kemune was most probably the ancient city of Zakhiku, which is mentioned in one Ancient Near Eastern source as early as the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BC). This indicates the city must have existed for at least 400 years. Future text finds will hopefully show whether this identification is correct.

German and Kurdish archaeologists excavate the palace site of Kemune on the eastern Tigris [Credit: University of Tübingen, eScience Center, & Kurdistan Archaeology Organization]

In ancient times, the palace stood on an elevated terrace above the valley, only 20 meters from what was then the eastern bank of the Tigris River. In the Mittani period, a monumental terrace wall of mud-bricks was built against the palace’s western front to stabilize the sloping terrain. Overlooking the Tigris Valley, the palace must have been an impressive sight.

Fragment of mural painting [Credit: University of Tübingen, eScience Center, & Kurdistan Archaeology Organization]

Archaeological surveys carried out by the Collaborative Research Center “ResourceCultures” (SFB 1070) under the direction of Dr. Paola Sconzo (University of Tübingen) in the vicinity of the palace indicate that a larger city adjoined it to the north. "We discovered the site of Kemune already in 2010 when the dam had low water levels; even at that time we found a Mittani cuneiform tablet and saw remains of wall paintings in red and blue,” says Hasan Ahmed Qasim, “But we couldn’t excavate here until now.” The area was flooded following the construction of the Mosul Dam in the mid-1980s. But a lack of rain and water released to ease dry conditions in southern Iraq meant that the water level dropped so far in the summer and autumn of last year that archaeologists could excavate the site for the first time.

One of the palace rooms during the excavation [Credit: University of Tübingen, eScience Center, & Kurdistan Archaeology Organization]

"The Mittani Empire is one of the least researched empires of the Ancient Near East," explains Puljiz. “Information on palaces of the Mittani Period is so far only available from Tell Brak in Syria and from the cities of Nuzi and Alalakh, both located on the periphery of the empire. Even the capital of the Mittani Empire has not been identified beyond doubt.” The discovery of a Mittani palace in Kemune is therefore of great importance for archaeology.

Terracing wall of the palace of Kemune [Credit: University of Tübingen, eScience Center, & Kurdistan Archaeology Organization]

The Mittani Empire covered an area reaching from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the east of present-day northern Iraq from the 15th century to the middle of the 14th century BCE. Its heart was in what is now northeastern Syria, where its capital Washukanni was probably located. Akkadian cuneiform texts from the site of Tell el-Amarna in present-day Egypt show that the Mittani kings interacted as equals with the Egyptian pharaohs and the kings of Hatti and Babylonia.

For example, it is known that the Mittani king Tushratta gave his daughter’s hand in marriage to Pharaoh Amenophis III. Mittani lost its political significance around 1350 BCE. Its territories came under the control of the neighboring empires of the Hittites and Assyrians. The Mittani culture is known for its typical painted ceramics. The vessels are characterized by carefully-executed light painting on a dark background. Their conspicuous appearance enables archaeologists to date the sites where fragments of such vessels are found to the time of the Mittani Empire.

Source: University of Tübingen [June 28, 2019]

A historical treasure bordering ancient Mesopotamia

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on March 30, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iraq, Kurdistan, Middle East

In Iraqi Kurdistan, excavations carried out by a French archaeological mission have revealed an ancient city on the site of Kunara. Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, this city stood in the heart of an unknown kingdom: that of the mountain people, who had until then remained in the shadow of their powerful Mesopotamian neighbours.

The first cuneiform tablet discovered in Kunara. It is an administrative text recording deliveries of different types of flour [Credit: (c) A. Tenu/Mission archéologique française du Peramagron]

“The first excavations were perplexing!” This was not ArScAn researcher Aline Tenu's first archaeological mission in the Middle East, yet the discovery that she made with her colleague in Iraqi Kurdistan continue to yield many surprises. “You could call it a small revolution,” confirms their colleague Philippe Clancier, an epigraphist at ArScan.

What exactly did they find? Over the course of six excavation campaigns, conducted between 2012 and 2018,  the archaeologists unearthed the traces of an unexpected ancient city at the site of Kunara. It is located on the outskirts of the Zagros Mountains, on two small hills overlooking the right bank of a branch of the Tanjaro River, approximately 5 km southwest of the city of Soulaymaniyah (modern-day cultural capital of Iraqi Kurdistan).

“This area near the Iran-Iraq border was not very well explored until now,” Tenu points out. The ban on venturing into Kurdistan under Saddam Hussein’s regime as well as successive wars—the most recent against ISIS—did not make things any easier. “The situation is much more favourable now,” enthuses the archaeologist, emphasizing the warm support offered by local authorities.

An unexpected discovery

This discovery is all the more unexpected as Kunara is a rare find. Five excavation sites have unveiled large stone foundations stretching dozens of metres, in both the upper and lower parts of the site. They apparently date from the late 3rd millennium, circa 2200 BC. In other words, monumental structures were erected over 4000 years ago. “We weren’t expecting to discover a city here at all,” admits Kepinski, who initiated the mission before handing it over to Tenu.

One of Kunara's public buildings during the excavations. Only a small part is known of this 25 x 40m building, which is believed to date from the end of the 3rd millennium (around 2200 BC)  [Credit: (c) A. Tenu/Mission archéologique française du Peramagron]

One morning in 2015, the ground beneath these structures that date back multiple millennia offered new surprises. “One of our partners said breathlessly ‘We found a tablet!’” Tenu recalls, filled with emotion. It was followed by dozens and dozens of others, in the shape of small clay rectangles approximately 10 centimetres on each side. They were all inscribed with closely-spaced cuneiform signs, which is to say in the shape of nails and wedges. There was no doubt, these were the same traces of writing that appeared in the Middle East in the middle of the 4th millennium BC, and that make this region the universal cradle of writing and history. Over 4000 years ago, the inhabitants of Kunara were part of this very small group of peoples who had already become a part of history!

This was nevertheless not the stuff to shake the foundations of the hushed and richly-endowed world of Assyriology. Born in the mid-19th century oriental archaeology has more than one legendary discovery among its excavations, including Babylon, Nineveh, Nimrud, and Ur, to cite just a few. All of these legendary cities continue to impress through their excessiveness and architectural audacity, in addition to their teeming sculpted bestiary full of chimeras—part human, part bull—standing watching over imposing palaces surrounded by labyrinths of small streets. All of these ancient cities spread between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the “land between the rivers” known as Mesopotamia.

Aside from their evident wealth, these archaeological sites have two exceptional distinguishing features: they are the oldest known cities, and as far as we know, humanity’s first city-states. Most importantly, it was within their walls that writing and the first literary forms were perfected, such as the legendary adventures of
Gilgamesh. In comparison, during the same period the peoples of Western Europe were at best erecting dolmens or a few monoliths, without leaving the least written trace.

At the gates of Mesopotamia

What can the few hundred metres of Kunara’s stone foundations and its modest written traces add to this prestigious list of archaeological and literary treasures? “The city of Kunara provides new elements regarding a hitherto unknown people that has remained at the periphery of Mesopotamian studies,” enthuses Tenu. The city of Kunara could prompt Assyriologists to reconsider this mountainous region, whose history has until now been written by a single hand, that of the Mesopotamian conquerors.

This structure with small cup-shaped indents could have been used for ceremonies [Credit: (c) D. Sarmiento Castillo/Mission archéologique française du Peramagron]

This city was located on the western border of Mesopotamia, at the gates of Mesopotamia’s first empire, known as the Akkadian Empire, which united all of the city-states in the region. It was ruled by some of Mesopotamia’s greatest kings, who bore the laudatory title of “King of the Four Regions of the World.” A military victory won by one of these kings—Naram-Sin, grandson of the founder of the Empire—was immortalized on a stele of pink limestone that is exhibited at the Louvre Museum. “Naram-Sin is depicted triumphing over this people of the mountains, the Lullubi,” Tenu explains. In the exclusively Mesopotamian sources available today, the Lullubi are depicted as “barbarians” living secluded in the mountains. Nothing more than that was known.

The discovery at Kunara shines a new light on this people. “It is possible that this city was one of the capitals of the Lullubi,” suggests the archaeologist. If this theory is confirmed, the history of the Lullubi would take on an entirely new scope, for far from living isolated from the world, the inhabitants of Kunara maintained commercial relations with very distant regions in both the east (toward Iran) and the north (toward Anatolia and the Caucasus).

These links are attested to by the presence of various types of lithic tools (obsidian, basalt, carnelian) for which there are no nearby deposits. “The city must have even been fairly prosperous,” Tenu suggests, “as rare stones such as obsidian were used to produce entirely commonplace tools.” This openness toward the world and affluence is also illustrated by the presence of a number of moulds for metal blades. Kunara and its inhabitants were therefore full participants in the Bronze Age, which had begun a few centuries earlier in Mesopotamia.

Power based on commerce and agriculture

Connected to these tools and a profusion of ceramics—with some fragments handsomely adorned with zoomorphic patterns—is an entire series of unexpected fauna that once walked the earth in Kunara. The bones of bears and lions, which were prestigious wild animals at the time, attest to royal hunts or reverent gifts. The remains of two horses, an exceptional mount for the 3rd millennium, also confirm that Kunara was far from a peripheral area. “The city most likely took advantage of its strategic location on the border between the Iranian kingdom in the east and the Mesopotamian kingdom in the west and south,” suggests Kepinski.

Fragment of an arrowhead made of obsidian. The obsidian comes from Anatolia several hundred kilometers  from Kunara [Credit: (c) F. Marchand / Mission archéologique française du Peramagron]

However, it was surely the area’s agricultural wealth that promoted its rise. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of goats, sheep, cows, and pigs, suggesting the existence of a major livestock farming system. The presence of an irrigation network in the city’s south is also a reminder of the mastery the region’s inhabitants achieved in grain farming, especially barley and malt.

For that matter, it is the inner workings of this agricultural economy that the scribes of Kunara engraved on the dozens of tablets found at the site.

“They had a firm grasp of Akkadian and Sumerian writing, as well as that of their Mesopotamian neighbours,” emphasizes Clancier, a specialist on cuneiform writing. “The first tablets found in a building of the lower city, register a large number of entries and departures of flour,” he continues. “It was actually a kind of flour office,” Tenu adds, “in all likelihood for the benefit of the ‘Ensi’ of Kunara.”

The title of Ensi signifies both “king” and “governor.” Its mention in tablets, in addition to the title of Sukkal—a senior state dignitary—evoke a political administration based on the Mesopotamian model. A simple borrowing from its powerful neighbour, or a mark of submission to the Akkadian Empire? “It’s still too soon to know,” Tenu prudently says. “It could also be a hybrid organisation that was built over the course of successive annexations and independences.”

A language and writing of its own

This is incidentally what is suggested by the second group of tablets discovered in 2018, once again in the lower city, but in a different area. It is no longer a question of flour, but most certainly of grain, a much more valuable crop: “The tablets provide information about considerable warehouses, some reaching over 2000 litres,” Clancier ventures.

Vase decorated with snakes and scorpions [Credit: (c) C. Verdellet/ Mission archéologique française du Peramagron]

These important volumes confirm sustained agricultural activity and large-scale gathering conducted by a major city. Yet it is the unit in which they are referred to that is surprising. “It is not the Akkadian imperial Gur (= 300 litres), but rather the Gur of Subartu, or literally the Gur of the North,” the epigraphist points out. This is a new and unique unit, attested only at Kunara: “The use of an original unit could resonate like an act of independence,” Tenu suggests.

Another interesting element is that the tablets are brimming with points of origin, such as “Khabaya” or “Ninarshuna,” providing a list of names that is entirely new for Assyriologists. “While they are written in cuneiform, these names do not sound Mesopotamian,” Clancier confirms. Kunara and its surrounding region had its own appellations and language. The only regret is that to date, no tablet or inscribed brick has revealed the city’s original name.

“But we will continue to look,” Tenu says with delight, her eyes already on the next excavation campaign scheduled for the autumn of 2019. New discoveries could help resolve unanswered questions. Who exactly were the inhabitants of Kunara? Were they even Lullubi? If not, who were they? And most especially, why did this city not spring back to life after the violent fire that apparently ravaged it over 4000 years ago? Let us hope that it will ultimately reveal the name it was given by this ever-mysterious mountain people.

Author: Jean-Baptiste Veyrieras | Source: CNRS News [March 30, 2019]

2018 excavations at Tel Gomel, Kurdistan completed

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 18, 2018 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iraq, Kurdistan, Middle East

A team of Kurdish and Italian archaeologists believe they are on track to proving the site of Nurrugum in southeastern Duhok province is what scholars already recognize as Gomel that has been settled for at least nine millennia.

View of Tel Gomel, perhaps the site of the battle of Gaugamela [Credit: Terra di Ninive]

“Since it was settled especially during the first half of the second millennium BC, I suspect that Nurruguma could be identified with Guagamela. But we cannot prove it yet,” said Professor Daniele Morandi Bonacossi at a press conference on October 9 to report the team’s 2018 excavation findings from the plain of Navkur.

Guagamela (or Tel Gomel/Gammagara/Gir-e Gomel) is located 52 kilometers northwest of the Kurdistan Region’s capital city of Erbil near Bardarash. Inhabitation can be proven in the Neolithic Period and continues up to the Ottoman Period and present day, making it one of the oldest continuously-inhabited sites in the region — dating at least 9,000 years.

The team hopes in the future to prove the link with a discovery of cuneiform tablets like their German colleagues did in Mardaman, said Morandi Bonacossi, a professor in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage at the University of Udine.

During the dry late summer season, teams of archaeologists from around the world have flocked to Iraq and the Kurdistan Region following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.

“We know from the Syriac manuscripts of the 12th century AD that the name of Guagamela at those times 800 years ago was Gogomel. The modern name of the site is Gomel,” said Morandi Bonacossi.

“There is a direct link from the linguistic point-of-view between the modern name of the site and the Syriac, the Greek, and the Assyrian name," he added.

They believe Guagamela was probably called Gammagara in the Neo-Assyrian (about 1000-612 BC) and later periods. The latter name has been found on inscriptions on the Jerwan Aqueduct in present-day northern Nineveh province, where Assyrian King Sennacherib built the Atrush Canal to bring water to his empire.

"(I am) Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria. For a long distance, adding to it the water of the two Ḫazur Rivers, the water of the river Pulpullia, the water of the town Ḫanusa, the water of the town Gammagara, (and) the water of the mountain springs to the right and left at its sides, I had a canal dug to the meadows of Nineveh. Over deep-cut wadis, I had a bridge of white stone blocks made, (and) those waters I caused to pass over it,” reads the inscription.

Bones dating from an Early Bronze Age (2600-2350 BC) cemetery at the Operation 1 site [Credit: LoNAP]

Guagamela is known to be a battlefield where Alexander the Great decisively defeated King Darius III who was leading the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 331 BC. The battle is also called the Battle of Arbela. It has been speculated that Alexander chose the area because it was flat and allowed his outnumbered soldiers to decisively defeat Darrius’ massive army.

“This was one of the most important battles of ancient times because it marks the beginning of the Hellenistic period and then the collapse of the Persian Empire and the rise of the large empire of Alexander the Great,” said Morandi Bonacossi. “The largest empire in the world at those times.”

They had three operations in 2018. One covered the Early Bronze Age (2600 BC) that spanned into the late 20th century AD.

“What is very interesting is that this area used to be cemetery, the necropolis, the burial place of the dead people from the city of Guagamela,” said Morandi Bonacossi.

All of the bodies discovered were accompanied by vessels containing offerings for the dead including the cooked bones of sheep and birds.

“These are the graves that we have found and they are very interesting graves because they are cremation burials, which are not very typical for the Assyrian period because typical Assyrian were inhumations (grave burials) — simple pits in the soil in which the body was placed," explained Morandi Bonacossi.

As they dug, Morandi Bonacossi's team discovered more burial sites: “And underneath the cemetery of the Assyrian period we have found another  more monumental cemetery made with graves made of bricks, which dates between 1700-1550 BC."

It contains a vaulted burial chamber “particularly rich and particularly large.”

A vaulted and at the time costly burial chamber discovered during the dig [Credit: LoNAP]

Under that grave, they discovered another cemetery dating to the Early Bronze Age (2600-2300 BC).

“This is a very important period for us archaeologists because it is the period in which all this region of northern Iraq, large urban centers, very big cities emerged," said Morandi Bonacossi.

"In these cities there were local urban elite who controlled the government of these large towns. These people were buried in the cemetery that we are excavating now. This is the most important grave that we have found this year."

They took soil samples back to Italy to carry out chemical analysis in hopes of understanding what type of food the vessels contained. When archaeologists understand the diet of peoples, they can hypothesize and prove how they lived, whether they were nomadic or agrarian, etc.

“It must have been for an important person in the city,” he said. “Baked bricks at that time were a very expensive building material because normally buildings were built using sun-dried bricks.”

The archaeologists have worked more closely with officials in Kurdistan after the events of October 16, 2017, as security remains a concern in disputed areas of Nineveh.

“We have started this joint Italian-Kurdish expedition with our friends,” emphasized Morandi Bonacossi, naming tens of individuals from the Kurdistan Region who have worked on the project.

Bonacossi Morandi directs the Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project (LoNAP) that involves the Kurdistan Regional Government, including Duhok Province's Directorate of Antiquities. His university and the Italian Embassy in Baghdad and Consulate in Erbil also support the initiative.

Vessels were found around the bodies in the burial sites. They contained cooked animal bones, believed to be an offering for the dead [Credit: LoNAP]

"Fortunately, the excavations this year produced good results," summarized Hassan Qassim, the director general of Duhok's antiquities directorate.

The second operation spanned the Middle Bronze Age (2000 BC) to the Parthian period (300 AD). The third covered the Late Chalcolithic 1-2 period (4500 BC) to the Middle Assyrian period (1000 BC).

They will return in 2019 and conduct a deeper dig at Gir-e Gomel.

"We all know that Kurdistan's history has been distorted by the occupiers of Kurdistan. It has been rewritten. Our excavations with foreign teams are to reveal the truth of the history and civilization of Kurdistan for all the people of Kurdistan," said Qassim.

Guagamela "was particularly important in the period between 2,500-2,000 BC and between 2,000-1,600 BC," according to Morandi Bonacossi.

“We don’t have very much information, but some beautiful texts which were found in the city of Mari [present day Syria] here and in the city of Shemshara [or Shusharra] here. They give us some information on the history of the region where we are during the first half of the second millennium," said Morandi Bonacossi.

“We know that the region of Duhok during this period was occupied by great kingdoms, the Kingdom of Nurrugum and to the south in the region of Erbil, the Kingdom of Qabra," he added.

Qabra, close to Erbil, is being excavated by a US expedition.

Author: Chris Johannes | Source: Rudaw [October 18, 2018]

Remains of two more Neanderthals found in Kurdistan's Shanidar Cave

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 15, 2018 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Early Humans, Iran, Kurdistan, Middle East

Archaeologists said on Friday that they have found the fossilized remains of two more Neanderthal adults in the Kurdistan Region's famed Shanidar Cave, adding to several others unearthed since the 1950s.

British paleoanthropologist Dr. Emma Pomeroy points out the parts of a Neanderthal skull  in the Kurdistan Region's Shanidar Cave [Credit: Kurdistan 24]

Five years ago, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed an agreement with Cambridge University to bring a group of archaeologists to search for and excavate bones of Neanderthals found on site, located on Bradost Mountain in Erbil’s Barzan area. In the past, archaeologists have found parts of 10 Neanderthal skeletons at Shanidar, bringing the new total to 12.

Neanderthals are an extinct species of hominids, the family of great apes that includes modern humans.

“What we have here is the skull of a Neanderthal adult,” Dr. Emma Pomeroy, a British paleoanthropologist who works on field excavations in the cave, told Kurdistan 24.

“It's been quite badly squashed by the stones and all the soil on top of it, but it's actually fairly complete. We can see the lower jaw, the upper jaw, we can see with the teeth, and we can see the eye sockets. So, hopefully, when we've finished excavating - removing all the bones, we may be able to reconstruct it.”

View of the excavations in Shanidar Cave [Credit: Basnews]

“It seems to be the first of two individuals that we have in this area," she continued. "So we've got one individual higher up and another one underneath, and it looks like a rock has been intentionally put on top of the burials as well."

Pomeroy mentioned that one of the questions that they have is whether the Neanderthals were buried at the same time or whether they returned to the site to bury their dead.

She noted that this is something the team is approaching from multiple angles, using a full range of techniques and specialists from several institutions in the UK and further afield.

“All in all, we're about 12 individuals and all with different specialties. Some specialize in soil ... me, I specialize in the Neanderthal bones. Others specialize in studying the environment or the tools that they used, the kind of animals that we find here that they might have eaten,” she continued.

Shanidar Cave entrance [Credit: Basnews]

“So we hope to build a strong picture of how they lived here, what their life was like, and what they did when members of their group died.

Previously, archaeologists found the remains of ten Neanderthals inside the cave, dating from 35,000 to 65,000 years ago.

Some sixty years ago, American archaeologist Ralph Solecki first discovered the remains of nine Neanderthals in Shanidar Cave, where he, along with his team, conducted excavations between 1951 and 1960.

“Shanidar Cave is one of the most important places for archaeology on the planet,” said Chris Hunt, another archaeologist currently working on the excavation.


“Many of the bones [of the previous Neanderthals found] are very broken, but when he [Solecki] did his work, there was very little archaeological science,” he stated.

"We are delighted because we have some new skeletal evidence, and particularly, a new skull.”

“So it’s very very exciting," he continued. "There are many kinds of scientific analysis that will need to be done on this. But before we can do that, we have to, very carefully, lift it out the cave.”

Hunt believes this is an enormous treasure for Kurdistan and for archaeology.

“It is a treasure of knowledge. There is no gold, there are no rubies, but there is knowledge... and it is priceless."

Author: Sangar Ali | Source: Kurdistan 24 [September 15, 2018]