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Forum: Stones Forum
Moderated by : Andy B , TimPrevett , coldrum , Klingon , MickM , TheCaptain , bat400 , davidmorgan , Runemage , SolarMegalith , sem
Respond to: Syrian sites
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bat400
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Messages: 1332
from South Central Indiana, US
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|  New Message Posted!2012-10-11 16:09
Aleppo's ancient city a victim of Syrian war
Ruled successively by Hittites, Greeks, Romans and Ottomans, Aleppo's ancient city has survived violent change over thousands of years. But the modern weaponry of Syria's escalating civil war is proving too much.
For a month, rebels armed with assault rifles and grenades have battled President Bashar al-Assad's army along Aleppo's cobbled streets. Troops have used tanks, helicopters and jets to shoot, blast and bomb their positions.
Even before the fighting, time had forced houses made of stone and wooden beams to lean under their own weight and Aleppo's ancient mosques are crumbling. But the new scars are prominent. "How can we protect the old houses? We have to protect ourselves first," said rebel fighter Ahmed Hanesh, a 19-year-old student, standing guard at the edge of the Old City.
Further into the Old City, the streets taper. Families with young children walk in the opposition direction with their possessions - refugees fleeing pitched battles.
Aleppo's Old City is one of several locations in Syria declared world heritage sites by UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, which are now at risk from the fighting.
"It's a catastrophe. Aleppo is thought to be one of the oldest towns in the world and a crossroads for some of the region's most important historical developments," a UNESCO representative told Reuters in Paris.
UNESCO believes five of Syria's six heritage sites - which also include the ancient desert city of Palmyra, the Crac des Chevaliers fortress, and parts of old Damascus - have been affected.
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see : http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/08/28/us-syria-crisis-aleppo-idUKBRE87R0US20120828?envprodukx=0. Aleppo's ancient city a victim of Syrian war
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davidmorgan
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| New Message Posted!2012-09-23 05:15
Robert Fisk: Syria's ancient treasures pulverised
The priceless treasures of Syria's history of Crusader castles, ancient mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, the renowned "Dead Cities" of the north and museums stuffed with antiquities have fallen prey to looters and destruction by armed rebels and government militias as fighting envelops the country. While the monuments and museums of the two great cities of Damascus and Aleppo have so far largely been spared, reports from across Syria tell of irreparable damage to heritage sites that have no equal in the Middle East. Even the magnificent castle of Krak des Chevaliers described by Lawrence of Arabia as "perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world" and which Saladin could not capture has been shelled by the Syrian army, damaging the Crusader chapel inside.
The destruction of Iraq's heritage in the anarchic aftermath of the Anglo-American invasion of 2003 the looting of the national museum, the burning of the Koranic library and the wiping out of ancient Sumerian cities may now be repeated in Syria. Reports from Syrian archeologists and from Western specialists in bronze age and Roman cities tell of an Assyrian temple destroyed at Tell Sheikh Hamad, massive destruction to the wall and towers of the citadel of al-Madiq castle one of the most forward Crusader fortresses in the Levant which originally fell to Bohemond of Antioch in 1106 and looting of the magnificent Roman mosaics of Apamea, where thieves have used bulldozers to rip up Roman floors and transport them from the site. Incredibly, they have managed to take two giant capitols from atop the colonnade of the "decumanus", the main east-west Roman road in the city.
In many cases, armed rebels have sought sanctuary behind the thick walls of ancient castles only to find that the Syrian military have not hesitated to blast away at these historical buildings to destroy their enemies. Pitched battles have been fought between rebels and Syrian troops amid the "Dead Cities", the hundreds of long-abandoned Graeco-Roman towns that litter the countryside outside Aleppo, which once formed the heart of ancient Syria. Syrian troops have occupied the Castle of Ibn Maan above the Roman city of Palmyra and parked tanks and armoured vehicles in the Valley of the Tombs to the west of the old city. The government army are reported to have dug a deep defensive trench within the Roman ruins.
"The situation of Syria's heritage today is catastrophic," according to Joanne Farchakh, a Lebanese archaeologist who also investigated the destruction and plundering of Iraq's historical treasures after 2003, and helped the Baghdad museum to reclaim some of its stolen artifacts. "One of the problems is that for 10 years before the war, the Syrian regime established 25 cultural museums all over the country to encourage tourism and to keep valuable objects on these sites many placed stone monuments in outside gardens, partly to prove that the regime was strong enough to protect them. Now the Homs museum has been looted by rebels and by government militias, who knows? and antique dealers are telling me that the markets of Jordan and Turkey are flooded with artifacts from Syria."
There is, of course, a moral question about our concern for the destruction of the treasures of history. Common humanity suggests that the death of a single Syrian child amid the 19,000 fatalities of Syria's tragedy must surely carry more weight than the plundering and erasure of three thousand years of civilisation. True. But the pulverisation and theft of whole cities of history deprives future generations in their millions of their birthright and of the seeds of their own lives. Syria has always been known as "the Land of Civilisations" Damascus and Aleppo are among the world's oldest inhabited cities and Syria is the birthplace of agrarian society and the terrible conflict now overwhelming the country will deprive us and our descendants of this narrative for ever.
To their enormous credit, Syrian archaeologists have themselves anonymously catalogued the destruction of their native country's historical sites. They include government shelling of villages that exist within ancient cities; rebels have apparently been sheltered, for example, in the small civilian township built inside the wonderful ruins of Bosra which contains one of the best-preserved Roman theatres in the world which did not prevent several buildings from being destroyed. Similar bombardments have smashed the fabric of Byzantine-era buildings in al-Bara, Deir Sunbel and Ain Larose in northern Syria.
In the monastery of Sednaya, apparently founded by the Emperor Justinian the people of the village still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus shellfire has damaged the oldest section of the building, which dates back to 574. The Umayyad Mosque in Deraa, one of the oldest Islamic-era structures in Syria, built at the request of the Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab, has also been damaged. Dr Bassam Jamous, the government-appointed director general of antiquities in Syria, says that "terrorists" ironically, the Western world's own nomenclature for state enemies have targeted historic buildings in Damascus, Aleppo, Bosra, Palmyra and the Citadel of Salah al-Din (Saladin), a crusader fortress seized by the Kurdish warrior hero in 1188, the year after he recaptured Jerusalem for the Muslims from Balian of Ibelin.
Several months ago the Syrian authorities reported the theft of the golden statue of an 8th century BC Aramaic god still unfound, although it was reported to Interpol and admitted thefts at government museums at Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, Maarat al-Numan and Qalaat Jaabar. Hiba Sakhel, the Syrian director of museums, has confirmed that items from the Aleppo museum have been transferred to the vaults of the central bank in Damascus for safekeeping.
"Syrian Archeological Heritage in Danger", a group of Syrian specialists who list the destruction and looting of the country's treasures on their own website, has revealed that Syria's Prime Minister, Adel Safar, wrote to fellow ministers on 11 July last year warning that "the country is threatened by armed criminal groups with hi-tech tools and specialised in the theft of manuscripts and antiquities, as well as the pillaging of museums". The archaeologists find this note "very odd" because it appears to warn of looting which had not yet occurred and thus suggests that officials in the regime might be preparing the way for their own private theft and re-sale of the country's heritage, something which did indeed occur under President Assad's father Hafez al-Assad.
So the looting and destruction lies at the door of all sides in the Syrian conflict, along with the thieves who move in on all historic sites when the security of the state evaporates. In truth, Syria has always suffered and the regime always tolerated a limited amount of theft from historical sites, to boost the economy in the poor areas in the north of the country and to enrich the regime's own mafiosi. But what is happening now is on an epic and terrifying scale. "As for the old churches, old houses, old streets of Homs, you can forget it they don't exist any more," archaeologist Joanne Farchakh says. A specialist in heritage in times of war in Lebanon, Iraq and northern Cyprus as well as Syria, she gloomily reports new information from the second millennium BC sites in which looters have dug huge holes, metres wide, to unearth the treasures of pre-history.
Much of this destruction is taking place not only in the world of ancient Rome, the Crusaders and the Muslim conquest and revival, but in the land of the original "terrorists", the Assassins whose murderous attacks on all authority a thousand years ago were led by "the Old Man of the Mountains". He once besieged Al-Madiq castle whose bombardment by the Syrian army is now available on videotape.
As old as war itself
Maybe we "Westerners" have a bit of a nerve to denounce the destruction of Syria's antiquity. From the Roman destruction of Carthage to RAF Bomber Command's pounding of Hamburg, Dresden and a hundred medieval German cities to rubble, we have been smashing our history to bits for centuries. The pillaging of Europe's great cities was a practice of war as common as the rape of an enemy's womenfolk for hundreds of years, and the last century has witnessed such savagery on an unprecedented scale. The German destruction of the Louvain library and the Cloth Hall of Ypres and countless French Gothic cathedrals and churches in the First World War, to the bombing of Rotterdam, the City of London, Coventry and Canterbury and the great cities of Germany not to mention the priceless monastery of Monte Cassino we are in no position to point the finger at the Arab world for its historical self-immolation.
In Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s, I saw the same thing. The pulverisation of mosques and Catholic and Orthodox churches, the smashing of gravestones even the bulldozing of graveyards were a form of cultural cleansing that reached its apogee in the burning of the old Sarajevo library. In Baghdad in 2003, hired mobs smashed into the National Museum and took the treasures of Mesopotamia. I crunched my way across the floor on fragments of Greek statues which were of no interest to the looters, and then watched the burning of the Koranic library, the flames of 15th-century Korans too bright for the naked eye. I rescued just a few 18th-century Ottoman documents flapping in the breeze down outside.
Some of these destroyers were brought into the city by bus I saw them climb back aboard outside the library and identified one of them at another burning and it is true that most cultural destruction is organised. Looters come in armies. Joanne Farchakh and I visited the legions of thieves working in the Sumerian sites of southern Iraq as they hurled priceless second millennium BC clay jugs out of their troglodyte holes in order to reach older, fourth millennium treasures at a greater depth. During the Lebanese civil war, looters in southern Lebanon would offer me Phoenician gold bracelets from the ancient cemeteries around Tyre. No one knows how many treasures Lebanon lost between 1975 and 1990. In 1975, the Syrian army just as they have done today based soldiers in Lebanon's historical sites, including the temples of Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley. The Temple of Jupiter still bears the scar of a Palestinian RPG in its south-west corner.
This is why it is so important to have an inventory of the treasures of national museums and ancient cities. Emma Cunliffe, a PhD researcher at Durham University, published the first detailed account of the state of Syrian archeological sites in her Damage to the Soul of Syria: Syria's Cultural Heritage in Conflict, listing the causes of destruction, the use of sites as military positions and what can only be called merciless looting. Much of her work has informed the studies of archaeologists like Farchakh.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-syrias-ancient-treasures-pulverised-8007768.html
Submitted by coldrum.
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davidmorgan
Joined:
23-11-2006
Messages: 1603
from The New Forest
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| New Message Posted!2011-02-13 10:58
Tel Ghweran - Archaeological findings dating back to Ayyubid period in north-eastern Syria
The archaeological site of Tel Ghweran is located on the road from Deir Ezzor to the center of Hasaka city, nestled on the bank of Khabur River south of the city.
Excavations indicate that the site was settled during the late Uruk period, prospering during the second half of third millennium BC and reaching the peak of its splendor during the Ayyubid period in the 12th and 13th centuries AD.
The site, which is 80 meters long, 60 meters wide and 11 meters high, was studied for the first time by a German expedition which was surveying the hills on the banks of Khabur River. The expedition found pottery fragments that indicated that the site dates back to the late Stone Age and the Bronze Age.
In 2003, the Syrian expedition began work in the site, undertaking expeditions for four seasons.
In the level dating back to the late Uruk period, the expedition uncovered remains of rooms containing pottery and bronze artefacts and animal bones. Directly above this level was a level dating back to the "third dawn of the dynasties" period containing parts of brick structures including a basin, plaster-covered walls, and parts of two tower-shaped structures.
In the level dating back to the Acadian period, excavations uncovered walls and parts of rooms built with plaster-covered bricks, in addition to clay bases, jars, cups and bowls.
The level dating back to the Islamic era contains white limestone buildings that contained basins, stables and houses. Finds in this level include silver coins, bronze artefacts such as bracelets and spoons, clay lanterns, animal-shaped figurines, glass bottles, and stamps made of basalt and baked clay bearing geometric shapes.
(SANA)
http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/201101318825/Related-news-from-Syria/tel-ghweran-archaeological-findings-dating-back-to-ayyubid-period-in-north-eastern-syria.html
Submitted by coldrum.
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davidmorgan
Joined:
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Messages: 1603
from The New Forest
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| New Message Posted!2011-01-25 19:29
Human Settlement in Syria Dates Back to One Million Years
Director General of the Department of Archaeology and Museums Bassam Jamous affirmed that humans inhabited Syria one million years ago on the banks of Orontes, Euphrates and the Great Northern River and later the Syrian Desert.
In a lecture on new archeological finds in Syria during the past ten years, Jamous pointed out that recent studies revealed that humans settled in al-Dedariya Cave north of Aleppo, central Syria, where human skeletons dating back to 100,000 years ago.
Over the past ten years, the Department of Archaeology and Museums documented over 10,000 archaeological sites across Syria, 600 of which date back to prehistory.
Jamous noted that recent discoveries prove that the first villages with circular houses were established during the 10th millennium BC in the middle Euphrates area and Jadet al-Magharra site in Aleppo countryside.
In Damascus Countryside, three sites were discovered: Tal Aswad, a-Ramad and Ghrefi. They contain several buildings indicating urban development dating back to the 7th millennium BC.
In 2010, the Department announced the discovery of a village called "al-Jerf al-Ahmar" on the banks of the Euphrates, which showed an example of a pictography predating hieroglyphs. The village contained circular houses without pillars that are still standing after 11,000 years.
In al-Balaas site in the desert of Hama, excavations uncovered the symbols of an eagle and an inverted pyramid, indicating the beginning of the use of abstract symbolism during the 10th millennium BC.
Jamous pointed out to the diverse artistic aesthetics found in ancient Syrian cultures as shown by a floor mosaic and basalt tablets bearing various carved symbols found in al-Abar site in the Euphrates basin.
In the Haloula area, a red painting depicting dancing women dating back to the 7th millennium BC was uncovered. Recently discovered burial chambers in Palmyra contain 2000 year-old murals depicting women in ritualistic scenes.
Other excavations uncovered statues bearing the names of their owners on their shoulders.
Jamous said that there are more than 60 archaeological excavations working in various sites to uncover the history of Homo erectus (an extinct prehistoric hominid).
He went on to note that the Department will establish several new museums, including a mosaic museum on the highway between Hama and Aleppo, adding that Syria won the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for archaeological parks for the Dora site in Deir Ezzor.
Jamous concluded by saying that the Department is working on including several of Syria's archaeological sites on the World Heritage List such as Amrit city, Simeon Stylites Monastery and Suleiman Keep, in addition to eight archaeological villages in Aleppo and Idleb.
http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/201101178685/Travel/archaeologists-human-settlement-in-syria-dates-back-to-one-million-years.html
(SANA)
Submitted by coldrum.
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davidmorgan
Joined:
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Messages: 1603
from The New Forest
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| New Message Posted!2010-12-17 13:32
The excavations of the Syrian-French archaeological missions which ended their works in different sites in Hasaka province (North-eastern Syria) for the current season resulted in a number of findings dating back to different periods of time, said Director of Hasaka Antiquities Department Abdul-Masieh Baghdo.
The archaeological mission working at the site of Tal Faras unearthed a number of buildings dating back to the 4th millennium BC, under which laid another building from the 5th millennium BC. The findings also included ovens to make pottery.
In Tal Mohammad Diab, the French archaeological mission found an arched stone cemetery, graves, pottery jars and dishes, a bronze spearhead and an ax dating back to the Middle Bronze Age.
The Syrian-European archeological mission working at Tal Baidar discovered the southern courtyard of a temple and houses dating back to 2500 BC.
A palace with tow courtyards from the Acadian age and some buildings dating back to the Hellenistic period were also discovered.
In Tal Taban, the Japanese archaeological mission found walls, buildings and archaeological remnants from the Middle Assyrian and the Babylonian periods.
The findings also included a seal and a clay tablet with cuneiform inscriptions.
(SANA)
http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/201012038268/Related-news-from-Syria/french-archaeologists-buildings-dating-back-to-4th-millennium-bc-unearthed-in-syria.html
Submitted by coldrum.
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davidmorgan
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from The New Forest
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| New Message Posted!2010-12-17 13:30
Several dolmen tombs dating back to the 5th Millennium BC or the StoneCopper Age (the Eneolithic Age) have been unearthed in several sites in southern Syria such as Ein Zakkar, Tsil, al-Bakkar and Jibilieh to the west of Daraa, in addition to al-Maysara, southeast Daraa, Syrian Archaeologists said.
The dolmen means "stone table" or the "holy cemeteries". It represents the beginning of human architectural art as the findings indicate that man used this kind of tombs for burial 5,000 years ago.
Archaeologist Yasser Abu Noktah said that the discovered dolmens at al-Maysara Spring consist of roofs with huge flagstones, on which animals' drawings are carved, adding that a number of stone and flint tools were also unearthed at the site.
Al-Maysara site is one of the most important Syrian sites which date back to the Neolithic Age between 7,000 to 4,500 BC.
Abu Noktah added the archaeological expeditions have also unearthed several dolmen tombs to the northwest of Enkhil city.
"Other dolmen tombs were unearthed to the northwest of Nawa city where a large number of the Neolithic cemeteries were built," Abu Noktah said.
The tombs were built of rock on double bench with a circular 3- foot height basaltic projection. On the bench a row of upper slabs were built with a height of 10 to 17 cms surrounding a covered chamber with unsymmetrical sides.
Abu Noktah said the tombs which were discovered to the west of Tsil Village consist of two rows of straight irregular polished stones.
Chairman of Daraa Antiquities Department Mohammed Nasrallah said that the dolmen represents the prevailing lifestyle thousands of years ago, adding that his department set up a plan to study these tombs for identifying the food, burial rites and the tools used by man during these ages.
The dolmen is a stone-made burial chamber. Originally, it would have had soil over it in a mound but this has eroded away. It measures about 8-10ft across by 6ft high (2.4-3m by 2m).
http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/201011258161/Travel/archaeologists-tombs-dating-back-to-5th-millennium-bc-stonecopper-age-unearthed-in-syria.html
Submitted by coldrum.
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davidmorgan
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from The New Forest
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| New Message Posted!2010-12-17 13:27
A number of Archaeological cemeteries with skeletons dating back to the Stone Age were duged up at Tal El-Karkh site in Idelb , northwest of Syria, according to Syrian archaeologists.
A necklace of beads made of miscellaneous jewels, awls made of bones and multi-usage stone tools dating back to the late Stone Age were also discovered, said a press release from the Syrian State-run news agency.
''The finds reflect the lifestyle prevalent at that period, the existence of pre-earthenware societies and the site's richness in cultural factors,'' Anas Haj Zeidan, Director of Excavation and Archaeological Studies at Idleb Archaeology Department told SANA.
He added that the finds are indicators of the consecutive civilizations spanning long periods until the Byzantine era, which witnessed remarkable boom given that al-Rouj basin at which the site is located comes in the middle of trade routes.
http://www.archnews.co.uk/world-archaeology/middle-eastern-archaeology/3861-new-discoveries-from-syria.html
Submitted by coldrum.
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davidmorgan
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from The New Forest
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| New Message Posted!2010-12-17 13:26
More than 1000 archaeological sites dating back to the Stone Age, Acadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Byzantine and Islamic periods have been excavated in Hasaka Province that shed light on the great history of the eastern region of Syria as a treasure house of ancient civilizations lived there.
In a statement to SANA, Director of Hasska Antiquities Department Abdul-Masih Baghdo said the national mission working at Tel al-Hasaka site unearthed a cathedral dating back to the 4th century AD, grape press and an ancient oven as well as some rings and bronze lanterns.
The archaeologist Khaled Hammo said "the discovered city in Tel al-Mabtoh had an engineering design for streets and drainages. It dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. Other important findings include alabaster pot with bull and lion heads and a Bronze scythe."
The report of the Syrian-Belgium archaeological mission working at Tall Shagher Bazar (Huteen) indicated the discovery of ancient round shaped buildings and cuneiform writings dating back to Old Babylonian period.
Excavations at Tall Bedr revealed some parts of a temple and a palace with two tumbled brick courtyards dating back to the Acadian period. Several Hellenistic pottery and jars were also uncovered.
At Tall Hamokar archaeological site, the Syrian-American archaeological mission discovered two buildings date to Nineveh and Acadian periods.
Excavation works at Tall al-Hamdi unveiled different archaeological layers dating back to the Mitanni period, some graves from the Sasani period and two archaeological houses from the Hellenistic period.
Regarding the Palace region, a 9 m wide wall from the Hellenistic period was discovered. Other findings include a brick with the name of the Assyrian king shalmaneser III on it.
In Tall Berri, the Italian archaeological mission found pottery fragments under brick buildings dating back to the 3rd millennium BC, a Babylonian floor, some walls from the Parthian period and ovens from the Islamic era.
(SANA)http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/201010267819/Culture/syria-hasaka-archaeological-treasures-of-the-old-levant.html
Submitted by coldrum.
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davidmorgan
Joined:
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from The New Forest
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| New Message Posted!2010-12-17 13:23
We have quite a few reports of Syrian sites that are very tricky to locate. I thought I'd put them here for the time being.
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