I am very much excited to hear that in spite of the war a new archaeological project has been started in the region of Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq in search of ancient cities, roads, walls, etc. In just a few months the Harvard-led project covering some 3,200 square kilometers has revealed about 1,200 potential sites and they are still counting.
There is, however, a downside to the project because the economy of Kurdistan is booming and new developments are exploding all around. One of the main problems is that the archaeologists don’t limit themselves to the individual sites but are also interested in the spaces in between, looking for traces of agriculture and irrigation canals as well as for roads and tracks that connected the settlements. Because of these widespread constructions, these are the areas that are most prone to be destructed before being properly studied and documented.
Evidently, the archaeologists are very keen to work in the area because it has been a zone of conflict for so many years. At last, they are able to take a close look at early civilizations as is mentioned by Phys Org in November 2012.
Yet, in all of this research, I don’t find a single word about Alexander the Great while Irbil is only 100 kilometers away from the very spot where the famous Battle of Gaugamela was fought in 331 BC – the supreme encounter of Alexander and Darius III of Persia. How dare these archaeologists omit Alexander from their reports!
[picture from Oliver Stone's movie Alexander]
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