The glazed bricks from Bukan: new insights into Mannaean art

Yousef Hassanzadeh; Antiquity Vol 80 No 307 March 2006

Mannaean studies as an independent field began with the discovery of Ziwiye in 1936 and the initiation of scientific excavations there (Boehmer 1964, 1988; Postgate 1989; Levine 1977). The archaeological site at Ziwiye was at first identified as Izbie, one of the important Mannaean provinces in the Iron Age of Iran. After this, great efforts were made to discover Izirtu, soon identified with Qaplanto near Ziwiye (Godard 1949, 1950: 7). But these identifications have since been discarded. In 1956, R. Dyson from the University of Pennsylvania began his extensive excavations on the Hasanlu mound, proposing Hasanlu IV as a Mannaean settlement. In a short time, the presence of Mannaean at Hasanlu became abundantly apparent (Boehmer 1964; Dyson 1989; Dyson & Muscarella 1989).

Figure 1. Map of north-west Iran, showing the Manneaen sites mentioned in this paper.

Between 1979-1985, illegal excavations were carried out on a massive scale at the site of Qalaichi Tappe, 7km north of Bukan (Figure 1). Some unique glazed bricks were discovered, which soon found their way to antique auction rooms, and were subsequently purchased by private collectors and foreign museums (National Museum of Tokyo, Ancient Orient Museum of Tokyo, and Middle Eastern Cultural Center of Japan).

In 1985, an archaeological team under the direction of E. Yaghmaee was sent to the site. During one season of rescue archaeology the team excavated many glazed bricks and a unique 13-line Aramaic inscription (Yaghmaee 1985). Since the translation in 1988 and subsequent publication of the inscription by Bashash (1996), there has been growing interest and study by linguists, with publication of further interpretive articles (Lemaire 1988, 1998, 1999; Ephcal 1999; Sokoloff 1999; Teixidor 1999; Fales 2003).

Figure 2. Plan of the architectural remains at the site of Qalaichi (Kargar 2004, with some modifications).

The Qalaichi inscription indicates that the place in which the glazed bricks were found was dedicated to Haldi (god of war), and Hadad (god of storm, lightening and thunder). Moreover, the Qalaichi Inscription says that the temple is located in a place called Zatar (Bashash (1996) associates the word Zatar with Izirtu the capital of the Mannaeans). In regard to dating of the inscription, Ephcal places it in the eighth or early seventh century BC (1999: 117).

Excavations at Qalaichi restarted in 1999, under the direction of B. Kargar, and have revealed architectural structural remains covering one hectare. In this complex, a columned hall of 19x35m, and some spaces thought to have religious function have been discovered (Kargar 2004) (figure 2). These buildings were decorated internally with red mud, and for external decoration of the temple, glazed bricks were used.

The archaeological site of Qalaichi and its inscription provide valuable information on the recognition of customs and ideologies of Mannaean society. This paper announces preliminary analysis of the newly accessed glazed bricks from this period.

Figure 3. Façade of dedication platform from Qalachi.

Glazed bricks of Qalaichi

The inscription and glazed bricks from the 1985 excavation, alongside those recovered from looters total 450 pieces, now accessed by the National Museum of Iran. A joint project between the National Museum of Iran and Department of Archaeology at Tehran University started in July 2003, with the aim of studying the glazed bricks. This research programme has ten phases, of which we have completed the following four:

Laboratory study including chemical study by XRD, Pixe and Thermo luminescence.

Raw material sourcing in the Bukan area.

3D architectural reconstruction.

Drawing of all motifs seen on the glazed bricks.

The glazed bricks of Bukan can be divided into two groups from the viewpoint of placement of motifs:

A: Bricks with motifs on the lateral side.

B: Bricks with motifs on the upper face.

Figure 4. Glazed bricks from Qalaichi, showing the body of a lion,

wing of an eagle, and a human face, from Urmia Museum, Iran (Kargar 2004).

In terms of visual coherence, the bricks cover a wide spectrum, from those made unintelligible due to damaged glaze, to intact highly vivid images. In this research, the motifs have been divided into six different groups: A- Botanic, B- Zoomorphic, C- Anthropomorphic, D- Combination (human and animal), E- Geometric, F-Anonymous.

These artistic traits can be attributed to 'Zagross Artistic Style', which covers a vast area from Marlik, west of Alborz mountain ranges, to Luristan in the central Zagross. This style blossomed in late second millennium BC and reached its highpoint during the first millennium BC. It is seen on archaeological sites at Marlik, Ziwiye, and Luristan. Throughout its use this artistic style utilised animal motifs intensively, and arguably influenced the tastes of local governors and their supporters. This natural style with its freedom of action, contrasts noticeably with the formal and more restrictive art of Mesopotamia (Charlesworth 1980: 52). These glazed bricks are being compared with contemporary images in Assyrian and Urartian Art, and also with the newly discovered Mannaean glazed bricks from Tappe Rabat (15km from north-east Sardasht, discovered and damaged by looters in 2004, excavated in 2005 by B. Kargar).

Figure 5. Glazed brick from Bukan depicting a winged goat from

the Ancient Orient Museum Tokyo, Japan (Tanabe 1983).

This ongoing research project is expected to provide new insight into Mannaean art and different influences of other regional artistic styles.

Figure 6. One of the glazed bricks being studied at the National Museum of Iran

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank M. Kargar, director of the National Museum of Iran for his support and help with the project, K. Abdi, H. Molasalehi, and M. Malekzadeh for their comments, F. Biglari for his help, R. Yousefi and A. Vahdati for translation and R. Arab for correcting the translation.

References

BASHASH, R. 1996. Decipherment of Bukan Inscription, in Shiraz (ed.) The proceedings of the first symposium of inscriptions and ancient texts: 25-39. Tehran: Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization Press (in Farsi).
BOEHMER, R.M. 1964. Volkstum und städte der Mannäer. Baghdader Mitteilungen III: 1-24.
- 1988. Ritzverzierte Keramik Aus Dem Mannäischen (?) Bereich. AMI N19: 95-115.
CHARLESWORTH, M.F. 1980. An Ivory Plaque from Ziwiye. Kand-o Kav (journal of Institute and Department of Archaeology of Tehran University) 3: 51-56.
DYSON, R.H. 1989. East of Assyria: The Highlands settlement of Hasanlu. Expedition 30/2-3: 1-127.
DYSON, R.H. & O.W. MUSCARELLA. 1989. Constructing the chronology and Historical Implications of Hasanlu IV. Iran 27: 1-27.
EPHCAL, I. 1999. The Bukan Aramaic Inscription: Historical considerations. Israel Exploration Journal 49: 116-121.
FALES, F.M. 2003. Evidence for West-East Contacts: The Bukan Stela and the Shigaraki Beaker. Paper given at Continuity of Empire: Assyria, Media, Persia, in the Intellectual Heritage of Assyria and Babylonia in east and west, Padova, 26-28 April 2001.
GODARD, A. 1949. Izirtu, La capitale du pays des Manneens, Zibie et Armaid. Comptes de Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: 312-313.
- 1950. Le Trésor de Ziwiyè. publication du service archéologique L'Iran.
KARGAR, B. 2004. Qalaichi: zirtu: Center of Manna, Period Ib, in M. Azarnoush (ed.) Proceedings of the International Symposium on Iranian Archaeology; Northwestern Region: 229-245. Tehran: Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (in Farsi).
LEMAIRE, A. 1988. Une Inscription Araméenne Du VIIIe S. AV. J.-C. Trouvée À Bukân (Azerbaïdjan Iranien). Studia Iranica 27: 15-30.
- 1998. L'inscription araméenne de Bukân et son intérét historique. Comptes rendus L Academie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres: 293-301.
- 1999 La stèle araméenne de Bukân: mise au point épigraphique. Nouvelles Assyriologiues Breves et utilitaires LVII: 57-58.
LEVINE, L.D. 1977. Izirtu. Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Arch&aumlologie. Bd, V, life.3/4: 226.
POSTGATE, J.N. 1989. Mannaer. Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie. Bd.7, life.5/6: 340-342.
SOKOLOFF, M. 1999. The old Aramaic Inscription from Bukan, A revised interpretation. Israel Exploration Journal 49: 105-115.
TANABE, K. 1983. Animals in the arts of ancient orient. Catalogue of the Ancient Orient Museum. Tokyo: Ancient Orient Museum.
TEIXIDOR, J. 1999. L'inscription araméenna de Bukân, relecture. Semitica 49: 117-121.
YAGHMAEE, E. 1985. Discovery of a three thousand year old temple at Bukan. Keyhan newspaper Thursday, 12th March, p.6.

Source: Antiquity Vol 80 No 307 March 2006

Soviet Plans for Baba Gurgur

Henry D. Astarjian

With Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, which marked the inception of the cold war, Soviet propaganda in the world and in the Middle East escalated; they offered Marxism-Leninism as a substitute to corrupt capitalism, a system that exploited the masses for the benefit of a few. They presented themselves as advocates of justice, determined to help the oppressed people bring about radical changes in their lives. This meant overthrowing their regimes, and ridding the region from the colonialist-imperialist domination.

The fact that the Soviets had successfully defended Stalingrad and pushed the German forces all the way to Berlin was a forceful, convincing, propaganda point. So was their entry to Berlin! They stressed this point over and over again, praising the heroism of the Soviet soldier, and the wisdom of their commanders. At the end of the litany, it was all, ultimately, attributed to the superiority of the Communist regime, and the endurance of the Soviet people.

Of all this rhetoric, the one that impressed people most was their capture of Berlin. “If it wasn’t for the Soviet Army, the American forces could not have taken Berlin,” boasted their local propagandists. I argued against this point of view because it gave my interlocuters, the Communist propagandists in my neighborhood, the upper hand. It mattered to me that the West was not the first to enter Berlin. At the time we did not know that Ike had made a decision to let the Soviet soldier, rather than his, die for Berlin.

Kurds, who were Soviet sympathizers, were very happy and proud with this victory, but the Turkomans of Kirkuk felt sorry for the defeat of the Axis, since most of them were pro-Nazis even after Turkey had shifted alliance from Hitler to the allies.

This kind of Soviet propaganda echoed favorably in the Arab world because it articulated the realities of their daily life, albeit somewhat exaggerated, and because it fortified their belief that British policies had undermined their society in order to rob the riches of Baba Gurgur.

While the Soviet propaganda belabored to convey its message to the Iraqi general population, it did not have to struggle too hard to win the hearts and minds of some diasporan Armenians who were familiar with the Russian rather then the Soviet culture. Russo-Armenian “Friendship” is rooted in history. Armenia was one of the Russian Khanats in the Middle Ages. Their Tzars had given Holy Echmiadzin, the Vatican of the Armenian Apostolic faith in Armenia, their constitution, Bolozhenia. They were Armenia’s allies who defended Armenia against the invading Turkish Army in the 1920s.

Armenia was one of the sixteen Soviet Republics, and many an Armenian had served, as top-ranking general or foot soldier, in the Soviet Army and defended the fatherland. Anastas Migoyan, an Armenian, was in the politburo, survived all the politburo purges, later, and became Prime Minister. There was his brother, the creator of the MIG jet. Last, but not least, there was Aram Khachaturian the world famous composer.

The Holy Sea of Echmiadzin was the definition of an individual Armenian’s national identity, therefore Soviet or not, Armenia, and by extension the Soviet Union, was their spiritual home.

The Soviets had exploited this relationship to advance their interests, in not only the Armenian community of Kirkuk, but also that of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, where hundreds of thousands of post-Genocide Armenians had found a safe haven, and thrived.

In fact, this exploitation was not new; a few years after the Bolshevik Revolution the Soviets recruited some Armenian men of cloth, to implement their great designs for the Middle East. For example, the Armenian Archpishops of Iran and Iraq were agents of OGPU, the predecessor of KGB. The former had authority, which extended to India. In fact, the chief of OGPU in the 1920s was an Armenian who was later liquidated in Paris.

Armenian “Patriots,” knowingly or unknowingly, were ready and willing to be a part of this strategy believing that their support would help their motherland to stand in good stead with the Soviets. In fact, in the mid-1940s, a handful of Armenians were in the hierarchy of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), and at least one of them was an original founder of the organization.

It was this Communist Armenian network, which smuggled the defecting Kim Philby, the famed Soviet mole in the British Intelligent Service and one of the original CIA advisers, from Beirut to Cyprus and ultimately to the Soviet Union. This defection shook Whitehall and the Western world, handing the Soviets a major victory. Kim Philby was a collaborator of McLean-Burgess et al., the Soviet moles in the British Intelligence Organization.

The Arab world was oblivious to this defection except for Saudi Arabia, which paid a passing attention to the event only because they knew his father, Kim Philby senior, who had converted to Islam and assumed the name “Abdullah.” He had been a mole and a top adviser to the Saudi Royal Family. He had been an influential strategist in the battle over Saudi “Baba Gurgur.”

In Kirkuk, the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) Club, for instance, was a theater for Soviet propaganda. This most nationalist, noble, benevolent, conservative, and capitalist Armenian Union, which was established by Boghos Nubar Pasha (the onetime Armenian Prime Minister of Egypt), was hijacked by the Armenian Communists, in the name of love for, and loyalty to, the fatherland.

As a teenager I used to go there. They used to sing and teach the youth songs praising the Soviet way of life. Soviet movies shown to us were about the accomplishments of the Soviet regime: the happy life in the kolkhozes, the giant combines, the rich harvests, the contented farmers, the valiant workers of Soviet Armenia, the gymnasts, the healthy vineyards, the famous Armenian cognac factories, and finally, the brave Soviet soldiers standing on guard to protect the beloved fatherland.

AGBU events started by singing Soviet Armenia’s national anthem Sovetagan Azad Ashkhar Hayastan (Free World, Soviet-Armenia). The hammer and sickle studded red flag displayed on stage had substituted the historic red, blue, and peach-colored flag of nationalist Free Armenia.

They told us about how great the Soviet regime has been for Armenia since 1921, when the Bolsheviks toppled the three-year-old free and independent Armenian Republic, and took over the country. They despised the Free Armenian Republic, which in 1918 had risen from the ashes of millennia-old Armenian history and had enjoyed America’s patronage; they spat on its tricolor flag. They were proud of the fact that the Reds of Armenia, in collaboration with Lenin’s forces, had axed to death thousands of incarcerated nationalists who had waged the failed February Uprising against the regime. They were proud of the Sovietization of Armenia! AGBU was so involved in towing the Soviet line, that the opposition labeled them KGBU. Like Philby’s case, Armenian Communists were highly instrumental in the workings of the International Communist movement, and were actively involved in the cold war, which in the Middle East reached its zenith in 1956.

That year, in Beirut, the hub of international espionage and the most important cold war theater, there was a big struggle for control of the Armenian Catholicate, the Great House of Cilicia. They were to elect a new Catholicos. This was of paramount importance to the superpowers because control of the Catholicate meant control of the churches in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Cyprus, the all too strategically important countries for the superpowers. Control of the churches, in turn, meant control of its parishioners and supporters, thus denying the Soviets bridgeheads in these countries.

The Soviet and the United States Embassies in Beirut were intimately involved in this duel. The negotiators on both sides, those who preferred the Soviet candidate and those who opposed it, had open lines to their perspective Embassies, receiving minute-to-minute instructions. Finally, after days of haggling, the Soviets lost. Thus, America won another round in the cold war.

Watery graves

Gaziantep, Turkey, The Economist, April 29th 2009

When Turkey's Birecik dam begins filling up at the end of the month, thousands of archaeological treasures are likely to be lost. Does anyone care?

A CORAL-PINK prawn, a frolicking dolphin. With each gentle prod of the pick, another brilliantly coloured sea creature springs from the earth to reveal an elaborate mosaic floor featuring Oceanus, a mythological god of the seas. The mosaic lies within the atrium of a lavish villa in Zeugma, a strategic port city of the classical period that was built on a terraced hillside overlooking the Euphrates river.

With a bit of luck, and much painstaking work, the small clutch of archaeologists that is working on the site will soon lift the panel and remove it to the museum in the southern city of Gaziantep. But countless other treasures-some recorded, others still awaiting discovery-will be buried under the waters of the Euphrates when the newly completed Birecik dam, just 500 metres downstream, starts filling up on April 29th. At least 82 other sites, some dating as far back as the Palaeolithic period, will also be engulfed. So, too, will nine villages, displacing thousands of local inhabitants.

The Economist:Zeugma, Gaziantep, Turkey

Archaeologists who have studied Zeugma believe that the size and richness of the site make it unique. "We are about to witness a great tragedy," says Catherine Abadie Reynal, a French archaeologist who has been digging there since 1996. "A second Ephesus is about to be lost. And no one seems to have lifted a finger to stop it."

While Mrs Reynal and her fellow archaeologist, Daniel Frascone, are speaking, Hakki Alhan, director of the Gaziantep museum, is furiously working the telephones to secure official permission for the pair to join the Turkish excavation team for a last minute effort at salvaging what they can. "Their papers are in order, the foreign ministry has them our culture] ministry has them, but the Security Directorate in Ankara says they don't," Mr Alhan explains, throwing his hands up in despair. Earlier this month, the French team was given 15 days to work in Zeugma; five have gone already.

The scene is an example of the sort of bureaucratic inertia which has allowed so many of Turkey's historical riches to disappear, including the remains of Samosata, the glorious regional capital of the Roman kings, which was submerged in the early I990S under another Euphrates dam, the Ataturk.

Back in Ankara, Guzen Koksal, a culture ministry official, insists that the "real problem" is not red tape and negligence, but a shortage of funds. "Don't ask me why," she said. "But our budget is shrinking all the time, and nobody ever consults us before they decide to build darns." The ministry's share of the national budget has been reduced this year to an all-time low of 0.02%. "We can barely afford to pay our employees let alone finance excavations," said Mrs Koksal. "We are helpless."

Zeugma has attracted little international attention over the years; few Turks, let alone foreigners, are even aware that it exists. The only recent Turkish reference to its imminent demise appeared last month on the back page of a Little-read Islamic newspaper. Yet western scholars have known for more than two centuries that Zeugma was built by Seleucus I(358~280 BC), one of Alexander the Great's successors, as the site of a crucial bridge linking Anatolia and Mesopotamia on the silk route to China. To secure the bridge, he also founded another city on the river's opposite bank, naming it Apamea after his Persian queen.

Later, Zeugma (a Greek word for "bridge") was taken over by the Romans and turned into an opulent fortress city that housed 5,000 soldiers and stretched across an expanse twice the size of Roman London and three-and-a-half times that of Pompeii. In the 19th century, looters began removing Zeugma's mosaics, some of which are now to be found in museums in Berlin and St Petersburg. Ironically, it was not until 1992, when a local peasant discovered a looter's tunnel leading to the remains of a Roman villa, that the Turkish authorities were alerted to the significance of the site. The splendour of the mosaic floor depicting the "Wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne", which was stolen six years later (see next story), galvanised the Gaziantep museum into action. Three more villas were uncovered when the first official excavations were begun.

"It was around that time that we heard the dam would be built," recalls Rifat Ergec, a former director of the Gaziantep museum and an archaeologist who has worked at Zeugma. "We were horrified." Despite calls for additional funds to speed up and broaden the excavations, it was not until 1996, when the dam began to be built, that the culture ministry launched an international appeal to help save Zeugma's treasures. Dr Reynal was among the first to respond. Over the past four years, more than 15 mosaic panels have been rescued, together with scores of bronze figurines, tens of thousands of clay seals and other artefacts now on display at Gaziantep. Among the new treasures still being uncovered is a voluptuous ivory statuette of Aphrodite.

"The big question now," says Dr Ergec, "is whether the tragedy will be repeated." He is referring to Hasankeyf, a medieval town straddling the Tigris River (see page 51). With the exception of a citadel and some troglodyte dwellings, much of the site, including the remains of a stone bridge that once linked the two parts of the town, is set to vanish once a proposed darn four times the size of Birecik is built there by a British-led consortium.

Unlike Zeugma, Hasankeyf has elicited a flood of international sympathy, in part because it lies within the Kurdish heartlands. A widely publicised campaign mounted by Kurdish activists and British environmentalists and expediently embraced by a group of Conservative MPS, is already causing a stir. The Labour government recently indicated that British export credits for the multibillion pound project would not be released unless the Turkish government first submitted "a detailed plan to preserve as much of the architectural heritage of Hasankeyf as possible". Cansen Akkaya, a senior Turkish official linked to the project, says: "We fully accept that condition. Preserving what we can of Hasankeyf has become a matter of our national pride." sadly, this is not true of Zeugma.

The Tell Nader and Tell Baqrta Project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

In October 2010 the University of Athens obtained permission by the Ministry of Municipalities and Tourism of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (KRG), the General Directorate of Antiquities of Kurdistan and the Directorate of Antiquities of Erbil to conduct excavations in two important archaeological sites: first in Tell Nader, which lies on the outskirts of the city of Erbil and then Tell Baqrta, approximately 28 km to the south of Erbil (Fig. 1). Tell Nader was discovered by Mr. Nader Babakr Muhammad, archaeologist of the General Directorate of Antiquities of Kurdistan and Tell Baqrta was brought to our attention by Dr. Narmen Ali Muhamad Amen, Professor of Archaeology at the Salahaddin University-Hawler. In November 2010 the University of Athens obtained written permission to conduct an excavation in both sites also by the Ministry of Culture of Iraq and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. In addition, Mr. Nawzad Hadi Mawlood, the Governor of the Erbil Province, invited a team of the University of Athens in order to examine older and new theories concerning the location of the Gaugamela battlefield.

In April and early May 2011 a 14-member archaeological and a historical team from the University of Athens, under my direction, traveled to Erbil and started a systematic excavation at Tell Nader, conducted a preparatory survey at Tell Baqrta and a topographical survey in search of the Gaugamela battlefield. This has been the first Greek archaeological excavation in Mesopotamia.

This archaeological and historical expedition was financed by the Greek Ministry of Culture and Tourism, by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the University of Athens. The cost of the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeoloical research was financed by the University of Sheffield, UK. The airline Viking Hellas kindly sponsored a total of 17 airplane tickets. Also the Governorate of Erbil offered us inexpensive accommodation at the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage and the company PLAISIO sponsored two laptop computers for our research.

The work of the Archaeological and Historical Mission of the University of Athens was monitored by the General Directorate of Antiquities of Kurdistan (under the direction of Mr. Malaawat Abubaker Othman Zendin) and the Directorate of Antiquities of Erbil (under the direction of Mr. Haydar Hassan Hussein).

Tell Nader Project

Dr. Konstantinos Kopanias

Please read the full article in attached PDF file

The Tell Nader and Tell Baqrta Project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Preliminary Report of the 2011 Season.

K. Kopanias - C. Beuger - T. Carter - S. Fox - A. Hadjikoumis - G. Kourtessi-Philippakis - A. Livarda - J. MacGinnis,

In SUBARTU (Archaeological Journal of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq)

Attachment	Size
Tell_Nader_&_Tell_Baqrta_2012_2.pdf	1.73 MB

Evidence for the World’s earliest Beer and Wine making in Kurdistan

In a correspondence to the prestigious British scientific journal Nature (vol.360, 5 November, 1992, p. 24) Rudolph Michel of Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology, and Patrick McGovern of University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Virginia Badler, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Toronto, archaeological and laboratory evidence is provided to prove the oldest existing trace of production of barley beer in the world.Their evidence comes from the archaeological site of Godin, 6 miles (10 km) east of Kangawar, in southern Kurdistan, in Iran, where a few years earlier the evidence for world’s earliest grape wine, also dating to 5100 years ago was found by a team from the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada that originally excavated the site. (see also the Postscript at the end)

The disturbing, but not very surprising element in their report was to attribute the development of beer making technology to the far-off Sumerians. Several years earlier, the earliest known evidence for the grape wine making technology found at Godin had also been duly contributed to the Sumerians.

For the past three generations archaeologist have been excavating from Kurdistan the evidence for the invention and development of some of the most crucial technologies that transferred man-the-hunter into man-the-farmer and eventually man-the-civilized. As if the Kurdish mountains and its inhabitants not being suitable place and people to have been the original developers of those technologies despite the clear archaeological evidence, almost instinctively the archaeologists have been uneasy to contribute any thing original found in there to its native people. They have instead looked for an outside source of influence, at times desperately, and when not found, they have tended to list the originating culture as unknown. The same evidence found in any one of the other loci of civilization like Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Greece are automatically attributed to those cultures until proven otherwise.

The treatment of the cultures of the Kurdish mountains has been and remains the reverse. The irony is that as in the case of these most recent discoveries, the argument supporting the Sumerian involvement, is based on evidence that is later in date and indirect in nature (i.e., from the seal impressions) than the Kurdish hard evidence of the actual fermentation vats complete with dried up calcium oxalate sediments (beer residue). In fact Michel et al, indicate that the carbonized remains of the barley used for preparation of the drink was also found first at Godin, just as they admit is the evidence for grapes used for wine making. Let us thus briefly take a closer look at the archaeological evidence as well as the relationship that existed between Zagros mountain societies and the Sumerians to see where the direction of influence must have been, and how.

Godin by no means is an odd incidence of technological sophistication in an otherwise culturally and technologically barren region to lead to require a search for an external civilizing influence. The mound of Godin (or Gawdin) is in fact located in one of the world’s richest archaeological regions, stretching for one hundred miles from Shahabad to Hamadan, where the task for any archaeologist is not where to excavate, but which one of the hundreds of mounds, temples, palace complexes and cave habitats to choose. Here one finds some of the earliest evidence of mankind’s domestication of cereals (e.g., barley and wheat) and live stock (e.g., goats and sheep) and development of some of the other basic technologies dating to 11,000 years ago (Braidwood et al, 1960). Additionally, within this very same region is found the remains of the world oldest glazed pottery at Seh Gabi (Levine, 1974; Vandiver, 1990), earliest experiments with writing and accounting at Godin and Ganj Dara (Schmandt-Besserat, 1986; Nissen, 1986; Green, 1981) and now wine and beer.

Godin itself turns out to have been a major city with well planned and solidly built buildings and a contemporary of the oldest cities of Sumeria and Akkadia, and at a time when most of the rest of the world lived in caves. Godin today can be seen as a great mound on the eastern horizon if one stands on the imposing remains of the 2300 years old grand staircases and the vast colonnaded temple platform of the goddess Anahita at Kangawar.

This entire archaeological region straddles the old Silk Road which was pre-dated for thousands of years by other crucial commercial arteries of the ancient world that connected the East to the West over the Iranian plateau, lowland Mesopotamia, and the Levant. As such, the region boasted a commerce oriented civilization that exported many of its technological developments and discoveries and now contains the remains of many imported artifact and raw material from far away sources and cultures of the time. About 4,500 years ago this region served as the heartland for the native empire of the Qutils (or Gutis) who were among the Hurrian ancestors of the modern Kurds before their Aryanization in the hands of the immigrating Indo-European tribes such as the Medes, Sagarthians, and the Scytho-Alans. The Quti military might soon expanded from the Kurdish mountains and their capital of Aratta to subdue every neighboring regions including Sumeria and Akkadia. In light of the discovery of many well-constructed buildings, wealth of artifacts and new technologies, Godin is the strongest candidate for the site of ancient Aratta.

A Qutil general named Merkar declared his independence from the mountain domains of the Qutil Federation whose king happened to be Merkar’s own brother. Breaking with Aratta, Merkar established circa 2500 BC a separate dynasty to rule independently over all of the Sumerian and Akkadian city-states, taking the famous Uruk (Erech-Kullab) of Gilgamesh for his capital. By 2250 BC the Qutils had totally annexed Sumeria and Akkadia, ruling them until 2120 BC. During that 130 years the Qutils actually settled and flourished in Sumeria in large numbers, populating for example, the twin city of Kesh-Adab (Kramer 1987). Conversely, there has never been any evidence for the Sumerian power to have expanded, let alone engaging in large-scale settlment in any part of the rugged Kurdish highlands.

It is absolutely extraordinary that the tablets recording the correspondence between the Qutil ruler in Aratta and the rebellious Merkar (who was commonly known as Enmerkar, after he took up the Sumerian royal title of En) has survived to this day. These now constitute some of most valuable written records for the history of the Kurdish highlands of circa 4500 years ago. Samuel N. Kramer, arguably the foremost Sumerologist has fortunately translated these correspondence (Kramer, 1987), which established for a good deal of close commercial, artisitic and political contact between Aratta and Uruk, and in none of them is there a hint that the society at Aratta (Godin?) was any less sophisticated or looked down upon by the now all-famous Uruk of Sumeria. In fact, Kramer shows that it was Sumeria which needed the help from the Arattan architects, decorators as well as raw material to build its temple of Innana in 4500 BC!

Whereas Kurdish mountains are the natural habitats of wild barley, wheat and many other cereals, and the evidence points at their earliest domestication there and not to Sumerian marsh lands and deserts where domesticated cereals were introduced much later from the highland, it is only logical to believe that the fermented product of barley, that is beer, to have been also introduced there from the highlands.

This recent archaeological evidence just fortifies the common logic. In fact the beer and wine discovered at Godin date to this exact time period, and could have been introduced by the Qutils into Sumeria where later and indirect evidence (in form of seal markings showing people drinking beer through a straw from a common vat) is found. In fact the Sumerian tablets also record another introduction into Sumeria by Enmerkar the Qutil: worship of the bird-god Anzu, which surprisingly is still worshipped by the Yezidi Kurds as the bird-icon, Anzul (or Anzal).

The strong but totally unjustified hints by the Michel group at Sumerian origin for the Godin beer technology prompted the New York Times to carry an article in the same week, squarely attributing the invention of beer (and grape wine) to the Sumerians, with not a word of the Kurdish mountains in Iran, deep inside which, the actual discovery had taken place. The New York Post carried a cartoon the following day after the New York Times, showing a beer guzzling “Sumerians” in ancient Egyptian costumes (?!), with a banner over their heads declaring “Iraq’s Best Beer”!

Postscript: In 1996, at the 7000-years-old site of Hajji Firuz, between Mahabad and Shnu in eastern Kurdistan, Iran, was found by Patrick E. McGovern and the same team from the University of Pennsylvania Museum, even anolder evidence for wine making in Kurdistan and the world (Archaeology, 10/1996) Six jars, each two-and-a-half gallon in capacity, found in the kitchen areas of a house at Hajji Firuz, contained chemical evidence of a well-developed grape wine making industry.

Using infrared spectrometry, liquid chromatology, and a wet chemical test, was found calcium salt from tartaric acid, which occurs naturally in large amounts only in grapes. Resin from the terebinth tree was also present, presumably used as a preservative, indicating that the wine was deliberately made and did not result from the unintentional fermentation of grape juice. Grapes still grow wild at that and other parts of Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, grape presses made of stone and dated to the late third millennium BC have been recently found at Titris Hoyuk, south of Adyaman in western Kurdistan, Turkey. Wine--that “beverage of the gods,” seem now to have been invented and improved by the ancestors of the Kurds.

Sources: Braidwood, R. et al, “Seeking the World’s First Farmers in Persian Kurdistan: A Full Scale Investigation of Pre-Historic Sites near Kirmanshah,” Ill. Lon. News (October 22, 1960); Levine, L.D., “The Excavations at Seh Gabi,” Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Symposium on Archaeological Research in Iran. (Chicago, 1974); Vandiver, P., “Ancient Glazes,” Scientific American 262:4 (April 1990); Schmandt-Besserat, D., “An Ancient Token System: The Precursor to Numerals and Writing,” Archaeology (November/December 1986); Nissen, H., “The Development of Writing and of Glyptic Art,” in U. Finkbeiner and W. Rölling, eds., Gamdat Nasr: Period or Regional Style? (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1986); Green, M.W., “The Construction and Implementation of the Cuneiform Writing System,” Visible Language, xv.4 (1981); Kramer, N., “Ancient Sumer and Iran: Gleanings from Sumerian Literature,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute, I (1987).

By: Dr M. R. Izady