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An application has been lodged with the Culture and Tourism Ministry to conduct a surface survey to investigate the ancient city of Satala, which served as a military headquarters in the Roman Empire in the northern Turkish province of Gümüşhane’s Kelkit district.

According to historical records, the city, which is 28 kilometers from the city center, was established by the 15th Apollo Legion, a legion of the Imperial Roman army. It served as a headquarters in the ancient era and also served as an intersection of military roads passing through Anatolia and Cappadocia.

The city was controlled at various times by the Assyrian, Graeco-Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine civilizations.

A 47-arched aqueduct was built to bring water to the ancient city of Satala but only one arch survives today.

The city is believed to cover a very large area. Candles, rings, arms, pots, metal pieces and coins have all been discovered at the site and are now on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, while a bronze bust of Aphrodite is at London’s British Museum.

Kelkit Mayor Ünal Yılmaz said the ancient city of Satala, which is under protection as an archaeological site, had been examined by university academics.

As a result of the examination, a report was prepared by the Gümüşhane Governor’s Office, Kelkit Municipality and academics. In line with the report, an application was made to the Culture and Tourism Ministry to conduct a surface survey.

Yılmaz said no serious work had been carried out in the historical city.

“No work has been implemented here although there were discussions from time to time. Evaluations were also made but nothing was done in practice. Because it is an archaeological site, people were not able to build structures there. I hope the applications will receive a positive response and that works will be initiated,” Yılmaz said.

“Our academics are very hopeful on the issue. We think this area will add a lot to tourism for our province and district after the pre-excavation work is completed,” Yılmaz said.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [March 15, 2016]

Iraq's government is investigating reports that the ancient archaeological site of Khorsabad in northern Iraq is the latest to be attacked by the Islamic State militant group.

Adel Shirshab, the country's tourism and antiquities minister, told The Associated Press there are concerns the militants will remove artifacts and damage the site, located 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of Mosul. Saeed Mamuzini, a Kurdish official from Mosul, told the AP that the militants had already begun demolishing the Khorsabad site on Sunday, citing multiple witnesses.

On Friday, the group razed 3,000-year old Nimrud and on Saturday, they bulldozed 2,000-year old Hatra — both UNESCO world heritage sites. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has called the destruction a "war crime," and a statement by his spokesman on Sunday night said Ban was "outraged by the continuing destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq" by theIslamic State group.

Khorsabad was constructed as a new capital of Assyria by King Sargon II shortly after he came to power in 721 B.C. and abandoned after his death in 705 B.C. It features a 24-meter thick wall with a stone foundation and seven gates.

Since it was a single-era capital, few objects linked to Sargon II himself were found. However, the site is renowned for shedding light on Assyrian art and architecture.

The sculptured stone slabs that once lined the palace walls are now displayed in museums in Baghdad, Paris, London and Chicago.

The Islamic State group currently controls about a third of Iraq and Syria. The Sunni extremist group has been campaigning to purge ancient relics they say promote idolatry that violates their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. A video released last week shows them smashing artifacts in the Mosul museum and in January, the group burned hundreds of books from the Mosul library and Mosul University, including many rare manuscripts.

At a press conference earlier Sunday, Shirshab said they have called for an extraordinary session of the U.N. Security Council to address the crisis in Iraq.

"The world should bear the responsibility and put an end to the atrocities of the militants, otherwise I think the terrorist groups will continue with their violent acts," he said.

Author: Sameer N. Yacoub | Source: Associated Press [March 09, 2015]

French President Francois Hollande and archaeological officials have used an exhibit in Paris of two preserved ancient Egyptian cities as a defiant example that the world will not be cowed by Islamic State militants who recently destroyed ancient Syrian heritage sites in Palmyra and killed a local archaeologist.

The exhibit at Paris' Arab World Institute, Osiris, Egypt's Sunken Mysteries, presents about 250 ancient objects that were recovered after a French archaeologist discovered the legendary cities Thonis/Heracleion and Canopus underwater over a decade ago.

Much like the mystery of ancient Atlantis, the cities had been lost somewhere between myth, history and legend — that is, until French archaeologist Franck Goddio made his landmark discovery in 2000 uncovering the sites in their watery grave near Alexandria. They had miraculously been preserved by sea sediment for nearly 2,000 years.

"This exhibit is an incredible achievement," Goddio told The Associated Press. "For years, these cities seemed lost to the world — submerged because of natural calamities like earthquakes and big tides... And now here they are — being shown to the public for the first time. Some objects only came out of the water last year and others have never left Egypt before."

The underwater excavation is ongoing with a team of 50, and Goddio estimates that only as little as 3 percent of the ancient cities have been uncovered so far.

Hollande, who inaugurated the exhibit this week, alongside the Egyptian minister of antiquities and minister of tourism, said that the message of this exhibit went far beyond Egypt — and said it showed how the will to preserve world heritage is stronger that the wish to annihilate it.

"This exhibit is a message, a fighting message that we have preserved these artifacts, a message of hope at a time when the Middle East is undergoing such drama," he said.

In the last weeks, Islamic State militants destroyed the two-millennia-old temple of Bel, The Temple of Baalshamin, as well as three ancient tower tombs in the central city of Palmyra — what UNESCO has called an "intolerable crime against civilization."

Hollande also paid his respects to the "sacrifice" of Khaled al-Asaad, the former director of the destroyed Palmyra heritage sites and one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the 20th century, who was killed by Islamic State militants.

The exhibit was presented in collaboration with the Egyptian government, with officials keen to use this as a way to show that there's another face to the Arab world as the one being projected by militants.

"What is going on in Syria, like the destruction of Palmyra and in Iraq, this kind of thinking is not the real beliefs of the area. This exhibit shows it. This preservation of culture here in Paris shows that it's just a minority who somehow took the lead that are doing this damage," said Mohamed Abdelmaguid, the general director of the Central Department of Underwater Antiquities in Egypt.

The many thousands expected to visit the Osiris exhibit in the coming months, as it travels to London's British Museum, might not be drawn for their knowledge of current affairs, and be just be attracted by beauty of the artifacts.

The objects — like a beautiful and imposing 5-meter (16-feet) granite statue of the god Osiris, tools, and ritualistic objects — are in often near-perfect condition, and offer a rare public glimpse into the vast achievements of the ancient world.

The exhibit runs until Jan. 31.

Author: Thomas Adamson | Source: Associated Press [September 10, 2015]

Archaeologists from the UK working in the Channel Island of Jersey have found the remains of a 14,000-year-old hunter-gather settlement offering great views over landscapes now drowned by the English Channel.

The site, called Les Varines, is located in the Jersey parish of St Saviour and has produced over 5,000 scattered stone artefacts during the past five years of excavation. But the team has unearthed denser concentrations of tools and burnt bone and, for the first time, fragments of engraved stone. These are currently under study in an attempt to unravel the significance of these unique finds.

Dr Chantal Conneller, a Co-Director of the project from The University of Manchester, said “We knew from the beginning that Les Varines was an important site. There is nothing of its size or scale elsewhere in the British Isles but there are parallels in France and Germany. Previously we had recovered stone artefacts disturbed by later mud flows, but now it seems we have found the well preserved edges of the settlement itself. Incised stones can be common on Magdalenian camps, many are known from sites in the Germany and the south of France, where they are often seen to have a magical or religious use. However they are rare in Northern France and the British Isles, making this a significant find. Although we are not yet sure of the exact age of the campsite, it might well represent some of the first hunter-gather communities to recolonise the north of Europe after coldest period of the last Ice Age”.

The work was carried out by a team from The University of Manchester and University College London.

Dr Ed Blinkhorn, of UCL Institute of Archaeology, who led the excavations, said “This has been the culmination of five years of patient work, tracing thousands of flint tools within slope deposits back to the mother lode. We knew a significant hunter-gatherer camp lay in this field and it seems we’ve finally found it.”

The settlement sits on top of an ancient cliff line and geological investigation has shown that the camp probably sits in a small saddle in the landscape between an old sea stack and rising ground to the north.  This situation would have afforded a degree of protection from the weather during a period when the climate was still relatively cold.  This site dates toward the end of the last ice age and was occupied by modern human hunter-gatherers of the Magdalenian culture, who reoccupied northern and western Europe between 16 and 13,000 years ago.  Hunting animals like reindeer and horse, they left a rich record of sophisticated stone age technology and spectacular works of art including the cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux.

For this reason the team are paying particular attention to three fragments of an exotic stone recovered from the site which show the traces of fine engraved lines across their surface.

Dr Silvia Bello, of the Natural History Museum, who is currently studying the fragments said “We are at an early stage in our investigations, but we can already say the stones are not natural to the site, they show clear incised lines consistent with being made by stone stools, and they do not have any obvious functional role. Engraved works of abstract or figurative art on flat stones are part of the Magdalenian cultural package and one exciting possibility is that this is what we have here.”

The fragments were found within one small corner of the 2015 excavation trenches, alongside stone artefacts and close to a concentration of burnt bone, sealed within an apparent ancient landsurface and associated with possible paving slabs.

The announcement coincides with the opening of Jersey Heritage’s Jersey: Ice Age Island exhibition, displaying the results of the team’s work alongside the wider record of Ice Age archaeology from Jersey, the British Isles and Northern France.

Jon Carter, Director of Jersey Heritage said, “Jersey has an exceptional record of early stone age archaeology for such a small island, and this exhibition show cases these sites and the science behind research currently being undertaken by the Ice Age Island team. This research, supported by the Sates of Jersey Tourism Development Fund and Capco Trust, is bringing to light new stories from Jersey’s deep Ice Age heritage and continuing to show that the Island, with exceptional sites such as Les Varines and La Cotte de St Brelade is a scientific treasure trove”

The finds are the latest results from the Ice Age Island project, a collaboration between Jersey Heritage and a UK archaeological team run, through the British Museum with the UCL Institute of Archaeology, the University of Manchester, University of Wales Trinity St Davids, St Andrews University and the University of Southampton (CAHO).  The project is funded by the Jersey Tourist Development Fund and the Capco Trust, while on-going analysis is supported by the Pathways to Ancient Britain and Human Behaviour in 3D Projects funded by the Calleva Foundation. The Jersey: Ice Age Island Exhibition runs from the 25th October 2015 until 30th December 2016 at Jersey Museum.

Source: University of Manchester [November 02, 2015]

Islamic State fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on some of the world's greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.

A tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul told Reuters the radical Sunni Islamists, who dismiss Iraq's pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris River.

The assault against Nimrud came just a week after the release of a video showing Islamic State forces smashing museum statues and carvings in Mosul, the city they seized along with much of northern Iraq last June.

"Daesh terrorist gangs continue to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity," Iraq's tourism and antiquities ministry said, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.

"In a new crime in their series of reckless offences they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery, appropriating the archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC," it said.

Nimrud, about 20 miles (30 km) south of Mosul, was built around 1250 BC. Four centuries later it became capital of the neo-Assyrian empire - at the time the most powerful state on Earth, extending to modern-day Egypt, Turkey and Iran.

Many of its most famous surviving monuments were removed years ago by archaeologists, including colossal Winged Bulls which are now in London's British Museum and hundreds of precious stones and pieces of gold which were moved to Baghdad.

But ruins of the ancient city remain at the northern Iraqi site, which has been excavated by a series of experts since the 19th century. British archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife, crime writer Agatha Christie, worked at Nimrud in the 1950s.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was deeply disturbed by the destruction at Nimrud.

"This crude attempt to erase the heritage of an ancient civilization will ultimately fail. No terrorist can rewrite history," he said in a statement.

A local tribal source confirmed the attack had taken place.

"Islamic State members came to the Nimrud archaeological city and looted the valuables in it and then they proceeded to level the site to the ground," the source told Reuters.

"There used to be statues and walls as well as a castle that Islamic State has destroyed completely."

Archaeologists have compared the assault on Iraq's cultural history to the Taliban's destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas in 2001. But the damage wreaked by Islamic State, not just on ancient monuments but also on rival Muslim places of worship, has been swift, relentless and more wide-ranging.

Last week's video showed them toppling statues and carvings from plinths in the Mosul museum and smashing them with sledgehammers and drills. It also showed damage to a huge statue of a bull at the Nergal Gate into the city of Nineveh.

Archaeologists said it was hard to quantify the damage, because some items appeared to be replicas, but many priceless articles had been destroyed including artifacts from Hatra, a stunning pillared city in northern Iraq dating back 2,000 years.

Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, promotes a fiercely purist interpretation of Sunni Islam which seeks its inspiration from early Islamic history. It rejects religious shrines of any sort and condemns Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims as heretics.

In July it destroyed the tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul. It has also attacked Shi'ite places of worship and last year gave Mosul's Christians an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. It has also targeted the Yazidi minority in the Sinjar mountains west of Mosul.

Author: Dominic Evans and Saif Hameed | Source: Reuters [March 06, 2015]

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The southern Turkish province of Muğla's Datça Municipality has initiated a project to repatriate the historical artifacts belonging to the ancient Greek city of Knidos back to the district. Artifacts such as the 'Lion of Knidos' and the 'Demeter of Knidos', which are displayed at the British Museum in London as well as the artifacts displayed at the Marmaris and Bodrum museums are planned to be restored to their original site.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Datça Municipality Mayor Gürsel Uçar said they are determined to regain the artifacts and they will apply to the Culture and Tourism Ministry for assistance. He said the artifacts unearthed in Knidos, in present-day Datça, are stored at the Marmaris Museum and Bodrum Museum as well as in storage at Middle East Technical University and Selçuk University. He added that the artifacts should be displayed and stored where they are excavated.

The municipality previously contacted the ministry, and they were assured that the small museums in the region will be closed and a new museum in Datça will be built. However, Uçar stressed that there has been no development since.

"We are determined to display the artifacts unearthed in Datça at their original site," Uçar said. Datça has two protected areas called Reşadiye and the Old Datça Neighborhood.

The latter draws thousands of tours every year thanks to Knidos. However, the municipality also wants to make Reşadiye a tourist attraction with a museum where they can display the artifacts from Knidos.

"We decided on a 20 hectare area in Reşadiye for the museum building. Although Reşadiye was taken under protection, the region does not have the necessary historical atmosphere. We want to develop Reşadiye and build a museum in the region," Uçar said.

Tourist guide and an official of Datça Municipality's Department of Culture, Osman Akın, told AA that thousands of artifacts have been unearthed in Knidos, and a huge part of these artifacts are displayed in museums in the UK. He said the 'Lion of Knidos' and 'Demeter of Knidos' sculptures are still showcased in the British Museum in London.

"The worst thing is that the other artifacts unearthed in the ancient city are not displayed in Datça either," Akın said. He added that the sculptures in the British Museum belong to Datça, and they had to make the replicas of the sculptures in order to remind people that these artifacts were excavated from Knidos.

"The British Museum is considered one of the most important archaeology museums in the world. When you enter the museum from the first entrance, the 'Lion of Knidos' welcomes you to the museum. It is a huge sculpture that weighs 11 tons and is 8 meters tall," he said.

The king of Knidos commissioned the 'Lion of Knidos' sculpture after their naval victory under the command of Admiral Conon. The sculpture was taken out of its original site by British officer and archaeologist Sir Charles Newton in 1855 on a battleship.

Source: Daily Sabah [December 09, 2015]