Nasiriyah: After the war and rebellion made them away from Iraq for decades, European archaeologists made an enthusiastic return in finding milensian-age cultural treasures.
“Come and see!” Shouts a French researcher who was very happy recently in the desert digging in Larsa, South Iraq, where the team had explored a lime inscription that was 4,000 years old.
“When you find such an inscription, in situ, it moves,” said Dominique Charpin, Professor of Mesopotamia civilization at the College de France in Paris.
The inscription in Sumeria was engraved on the brick which was sacked in the 19th century BC.
“To Dewa Shamash, King of Sin-IDdinam, King Larsa, King Sumer and Akkad,” Translated by Charpin easily.
Behind it, a dozen European and Indonesian archaeologists continue to work in the cordoned-off area where they dig.
They brushed aside bricks and released the earth to clean what appeared to be a bridge pier covering the Larsa urban canal, which was the capital of Mesopotamia just before Babylon, at the beginning of the second millennium BC.
“Larsa is one of the largest sites in Iraq, covering more than 200 hectares (500 hectares),” said Regis Vallet, a researcher at the French scientific research center, which headed for the Franco-Iraqi mission.
The 20-person team has made a “big discovery”, he said, including the residence of the ruler identified by around 60 pointed tablets that had been transferred to the National Museum in Baghdad.
– Archaeological Paradise – Vallet said Larsa such as archeological playgrounds and “paradise” to explore the ancient Mesopotamia, which held the age of the Empire Akkad, Babylonia, Alexander Agung, Christians, People, Persians and Islam.
However, modern history Iraq is with conflict succession, especially since the US leadership invasion in 2003 and the result of bloody has maintained foreign researchers.
Just because Baghdad said the victory in the territorial battle on the Islamic State group in 2017 has Iraq “mostly stable and has become possible again” to visit Vallet.
“France returned in 2019 and England a little earlier,” he said.
“Italians returned in early 2011.” At the end of 2021, said Vallet, 10 foreign missions were working in the Qar Dhi Province, where Larsa was located.
The Iraqi antique council and Director of Heritage Laith Majid Hussein said he loved playing host, and was happy that his country returned to the map for a foreign expedition.
“It benefits us scientifically,” he told AFP in Baghdad, added that he welcomed “the opportunity to train our staff after a long disruption”.
– Cradle of Civilizations – Near Najaf in Central Iraq, Ibrahim Salman from the German Archaeological Institute focused on the site of Al-Hira City.
Germany had previously been excavated here which was stopped by the 2003 US leadership invasion which overthrew Saddam Hussein.
Equipped with geomagnetic gauges, the Salman team has worked in a one-time Christian city that has a heyday under the Lakhmid, a 5th and 6th century Pre-Islamic tribal dynasty.
“Some instructions lead us to believe that a church might have been located here,” he explained.
He pointed to the trail on the ground left by the humidity which was maintained by the structure buried and rose to the surface.
“The earth is moistened on a strip of several meters (yards) long guiding us to conclude that under the legs of the archaeologists might be the wall of an ancient church,” he said.
Al-Hira is far more ancient than other sites, but it is part of a variety of state history that serves as a reminder, according to Salman, that “Iraq, or Mesopotamia, is the birth of civilization.
Simple it!”
European archaeologists returned to Iraq after years of war
