Resource Manager Posted September 7, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2014 More on: 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.” Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted October 8, 2014 Author Report Share Posted October 8, 2014 Digital Reconstruction of the Northwest Palace, Nimrud, Assyria The Metropolitan Museum of Art Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted November 7, 2014 Author Report Share Posted November 7, 2014 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 2014Accepted: 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. Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted April 3, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2015 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted April 14, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2015 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." Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted June 25, 2015 Author Report Share Posted June 25, 2015 Crews Work to Save Babylon Source: CNN Added on 0428 GMT (1128 HKT) June 19, 2015 Video Link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted July 25, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2015 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." Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted August 11, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 11, 2015 From the ASOR Blog:Can you answer these 10 Babylonia true or false questions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted September 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted September 17, 2015 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted October 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2015 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted October 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2015 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted October 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2015 THE NEO-BABYLONIAN CUNEIFORM CORPUS (NABUCCO) "Aims at making available the large corpus of archival documents from first millennium BCE Babylonia to historians of the ancient world in general and Assyriologists in particular."Website Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted April 10, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 10, 2016 Oldest Christian Monastery in Iraq Now a Field of Rubble January 24, 2016 ARBIL, Iraq - The Associated Press "Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery has been destroyed by ISIL extremists after surviving assaults from nature and man for 1,400 years" Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted April 10, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 10, 2016 Math Whizzes of Ancient Babylon Figured Out Forerunner of Calculus By Ron CowenJan. 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted April 10, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 10, 2016 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted April 25, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 25, 2016 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted May 29, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2016 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!”Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted May 29, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2016 The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh Sources of the Standard Babylonian poem "The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh is preserved on three groups of manuscripts (clay tablets), which give an account of the poem at different stages in its evolution, from the eighteenth century BC to the first millennium BC."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted July 3, 2016 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2016 PUBLIC RELEASE: 21-JUN-2016 Iraqi Kurdistan Site Reveals Evolution Towards the First Cities of Mesopotamia "The area had been closed off since the 1990s to archaeological research and the UAB is the only research team from Spain participating in the dig" UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted October 8, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 8, 2016 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." Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted October 8, 2016 Author Report Share Posted October 8, 2016 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 Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted January 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2017 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."Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted January 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2017 At Iraq's Nimrud, Remnants Of Fabled City ISIS Sought To Destroy 11/17/2016 07:00:00 PM "Ali al-Bayati clambered onto the remains of a giant winged bull statue that once stood as a protector of Iraq's fabled ancient Nimrud before the Islamic State group came." Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted January 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2017 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…" Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Resource Manager Posted January 8, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2017 150 New Archaeological Sites Found In Iraqi Kurdistan 11/26/2016 07:00:00 PM 150 new archaeological sites have been found during the 2016 campaign of the Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project (LoNAP) carried out by the Italian Archaeological Mission in Assyria (IAMA) of the University of Udine. Continued Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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