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Fall 09012014, Cover Stories, Daily News
 
Ancient 6,500-Year-Old Skeleton from Ur Excavations Gets a Public Audience
 

Tue, Sep 02, 2014

 

Following an early August announcement of a “rediscovered” find in a Physical Anthropology storage room—a rare, fragile, but largely intact 6,500-year-old human skeleton from the famous Ur excavations in what is now Iraq—the Penn Museum has moved the skeleton to a public space beginning Saturday, August 30.
 
Media throughout America, Europe, Asia, and Australia picked up on the story of the rediscovery—made possible via a digital documentation project that led to the positive identification of the ancient skeleton in a Museum storage room.
“Our goal as a museum and research institution is to share what we love with the public—the thrill of discovery, or in this case, the thrill of re-discovery,” said Julian Siggers, the Penn Museum Williams Director.  “Exploring and investigating our shared human past, whether it be in the field, in the lab, in the archives, or in storage, is what makes the field of archaeology and anthropology so exciting for us. We hope our visitors can join us as we make these fascinating connections.”
 
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An Interdisciplinary, International Journal Devoted to the Description, Causes and Implications of Climatic Change

 

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

 

10.1007/s10584-014-1269-y

 

“No harvest was reaped”: demographic and climatic factors in the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

 

Adam W. Schneider1, 2   and Selim F. Adalı2

 

(1)Department of Anthropology, University of California-San Diego, Social Sciences Building Room 210, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0532, USA

(2)Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Koç University, İstanbul, Turkey

 

Adam W. Schneider

 

Received: 20 May 2014

Accepted: 28 September 2014

 

Published online: 4 November 2014

 

Abstract

 

"In the 9th century BC, Assyrians based in northern Iraq started a relentless process of expansion that within two centuries would see them controlling most of the ancient Near East. Traditional explanations for the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 7th century BC have emphasized the role of military conflict, and especially the destruction of the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, by a coalition of Babylonian and Median forces in 612 BC. However, it remains unclear how the Assyrian state, the most powerful military machine of its age and the largest empire the Old World had ever seen up to that time, declined so quickly. In this paper, we highlight two potential factors which may have had some influence upon the Assyrian decline that have not been previously explored. The first is a major increase in the population of the Assyrian heartland area at the dawn of the 7th century BC, which substantially reduced the drought resilience of the region. The second factor is an episode of severe drought affecting large portions of the Near East during the mid-7th century BC. We propose a series of testable hypotheses which detail how the combination of these two factors may have contributed to the development of considerable economic and political instability within the Assyrian Empire, and argue that these demographic and climatic factors played a significant role in its demise."

 

Electronic supplementary material

 

The online version of this article (doi:10.​1007/​s10584-014-1269-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

 


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The Men Who Uncovered Assyria
 
By Daniel Silas Adamson
 
BBC News Magazine
 
22 March 2015
 
Two of the ancient cities now being destroyed by Islamic State lay buried for 2,500 years, it was only 170 years ago that they began to be dug up and stripped of their treasures. The excavations arguably paved the way for IS to smash what remained - but also ensured that some of the riches of a lost civilisation were saved.
 
"In 1872, in a backroom of the British Museum, a man called George Smith spent the darkening days of November bent over a broken clay tablet. It was one of thousands of fragments from recent excavations in northern Iraq, and was covered in the intricate cuneiform script that had been used across ancient Mesopotamia and deciphered in Smith's own lifetime.
 
Some of the tablets set out the day-to-day business of accountants and administrators - a chariot wheel broken, a shipment of wine delayed, the prices of cedar or bitumen. Others recorded the triumphs of the Assyrian king's armies, or the omens that had been divined by his priests in the entrails of sacrificial sheep."

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Wednesday, April 08, 2015

 

Neo-Assyrian Kings and Biblical History

 

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

 

"Yesterday we mentioned the Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period publication project. The Neo-Assyrian kingdom (sometimes empire) began with the reign of Tiglath-pileser II ca. 966 B.C. and continued for 3-1/2 centuries until 609 B.C. when the Assyrians were definitively defeated by the Babylonians."

 


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Destroyed Iraqi Holy Sites Find New Life Online

 

by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   July 16, 2015 07:22am ET

 


TORONTO — "Researchers are embarking on an ambitious project to bring part of Iraq's destroyed heritage back to life.

 

Over the past few years the world has watched as the Islamic State has destroyed historical monuments and committed acts of genocide in Iraq and Syria. While the group labels itself "Islamic," they've been destroying both Islamic and Christian holy sites along with sites that predate the founding of both religions, said archaeologist Clemens Reichel, a curator at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, in a presentation he gave last spring."


 


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Monday, September 07, 2015
 
More on Neo-Assyrian Inscriptions
 
(Post by A.D. Riddle)
 
"About five months ago, we wrote about (1) the series Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) and (2) the importance of the Neo-Assyrian period for biblical history.
 
At that time we mentioned a few advantages to having the physical volumes over the digital versions at ORACC (The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus), namely, the introductions to the texts and bibliography."

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The Newly Discovered Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh
 
by Osama S. M. Amin  
 
September 24, 2015  
 
Education, Exhibitions 
 
"I was taking photos in the main hall of the Sulaymaniyah Museum and came across a display case containing a small clay tablet. The description beside it said the tablet was part of the Epic of Gilgamesh and a fragment of tablet V. Immediately I thought it was a ‘replica’ as the description was superficial. It did not say the tablet was genuine, that it was newly discovered or even told about the many new pieces of information it had revealed."

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Iraq’s Ancient Kish City Lies Buried in Sand
 
Iraq’s Kish City has overcome natural disasters and neglect over the years, but it has now been turned into a desolate site covered in sand.
 
Sept. 24, 2015 | 2:05 p.m. EDT
 
By: Adnan Abu Zeed , Contributor for Al-Monitor 
 
KISH CITY, Iraq — "A British archaeological team from the Field Museum and Oxford University conducted excavations between 1923 and 1929 in Kish City, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad. Since then, no other excavations have been made in the city, which dates back 5,000 years. The visible ruins of the ancient site have been covered by sand dunes and mounds. According to archaeological records, Kish City survived the Great Flood that happened some 7,600 years ago and was mentioned in Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures."

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Math Whizzes of Ancient Babylon Figured Out Forerunner of Calculus
 
By Ron Cowen

Jan. 28, 2016 , 2:00 AM
 
"Tracking and recording the motion of the sun, the moon, and the planets as they paraded across the desert sky, ancient Babylonian astronomers used simple arithmetic to predict the positions of celestial bodies. Now, new evidence reveals that these astronomers, working several centuries B.C.E., also employed sophisticated geometric methods that foreshadow the development of calculus. Historians had thought such techniques did not emerge until more than 1400 years later, in 14th century Europe."

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National Geographic
 
City of Biblical Abraham Brimmed With Trade and Riches
 
Iraqi and American archaeologists are digging at one of the world’s oldest urban centers—and finding evidence of the earliest long-distance commerce.
 
By Andrew Lawler
 
PUBLISHED MARCH 11, 2016
 
UR, IRAQ "The bleak and tawny desert of southern Iraq is a strange place to find dark tropical wood. Even stranger, this sliver of ebony—no longer than a little finger—came from distant India 4,000 years ago."

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A 3,800-Year Journey from Classroom to Classroom
 
By Patrick Lynch
 
April 11, 2016
 
"Thirty-eight hundred years ago, on the hot river plains of what is now southern Iraq, a Babylonian student did a bit of schoolwork that centuries later would change our understanding of ancient mathematics. The student scooped up a palm-sized clump of wet clay, formed a disc about the size and shape of a hamburger, and let it dry down a bit in the sun. On the surface of the moist clay the student drew a diagram that showed the people of the Old Babylonian Period (1,900–1,700 B.C.E.) fully understood the principles of the “Pythagorean Theorem” 1300 years before Greek geometer Pythagoras was born, and were also capable of calculating the square root of two to six decimal places."

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Religion - Archaeology Magazine

 

"In November 1872, a self-taught Assyriologist named George Smith working as an assistant at the British Museum happened upon a fragment of a tablet that would soon become the most famous cuneiform text in the world. One of thousands excavated decades earlier at Nineveh, in present-day Iraq, the tablet told a story eerily similar to that of Noah in the Old Testament. In it, the gods resolve to destroy the world and all life with a great flood, but one of the chief gods warns one man in time to prevent the extinction of all living things: “Demolish the house, build a boat!” the god urges. “Abandon riches and seek survival! Spurn property and save life! Put on board the boat the seed of all living creatures!”

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Iraq's Ancient City of Babylon Eyes World Heritage List

 

BABIL, Iraq — On July 17, "UNESCO added al-Ahwar marshes in southeastern Iraq to the World Heritage list. Now, Iraq is seeking to add the 4,000-year-old city of Babylon to the list, which includes world heritage properties of special cultural and natural significance."

 

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MKs Turn to UNESCO to Save Prophet's Tomb

 

"The Prophet Nahum's tomb is located on the border between Kurdish controlled territory and territory controlled by the central Baghdad government, and is under threat from ISIS; Israeli MKs have turned to UNSCO to try and get help saving this and other Jewish heritage sites in Arab and Muslim countries."

 

Roi Kais|Published:  08.08.16 | 15:30

 


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Bronze Age City Discovered in Northern Iraq
 
Posted on November 4, 2016
 
"Archaeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq.
 
The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years. The archaeologists also discovered settlement layers dating from the Akkadian Empire period (2340-2200 BC), which is regarded as the first world empire in human history."

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The Beginnings of the Iraq Museum

 

Tuesday 15 November 2016 | Dr Juliette Desplat | Records and Research 

 

"Iraq has very much been in the news lately. Overwhelmed with the war stories, you may have missed the very uplifting news of the opening of a museum in Basra, in one of Saddam Hussein’s old palaces. The museum gathers artefacts relating to the history of the city since the Hellenistic period, and is a fantastic place. This took me back to the 1920s and the opening of another museum…"

 


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