An Alexandria in Kurdistan - Iraq?

Two and a half thousand years after his death, the name of Alexander is still making good PR. As soon as some ruins or artifacts are being found somewhere near the presumed route the conqueror took during his campaign through Asia, there is a rush to connect them to Alexander. Maybe wrongly, maybe rightfully so – time will tell.

The lakeside site was discovered by a team of Iraqi and 

British archaeologists led by experts from the British Museum - From Phys.org.

The spot this time is situated in northern Iraq, actually in the Kurdish region near the city of Qalatga Darband which according to some daring researchers could be a city founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. Qalatga Darband is located a good one hundred kilometers east of the battlefield of Gaugamela, meaning that the assumption is not entirely improbable. Other theories link the site to the late Hellenistic era or even to the transition period from Hellenism to Parthian rule. The very name translates into Kurdish as “Castle of the Mountain Pass”, a strategic location where the Little  Zab River cuts through the mountain range to empty eventually into the Tigris River.

Qalatga Darband was discovered in 1973, but excavations in this troubled region started  first by the French in 2013 followed by the British in 2016 who used the terrain to train Iraqi archaeologists. Unfortunately the latest unrest after the Kurdish referendum for independence has forced the last foreign experts to leave.

The once so proud archaeological tradition in Iraq is in a very poor state after the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War and more recently the invasion of IS. Many sites have been looted or simply bulldozed, meaning that history has been obliterated altogether. Others remain inaccessible and based on aerial and satellite surveys there are still many more to be explored. But the days of excavations by foreign nations are no longer acceptable and the Iraqis will have to do it themselves – hence the training mission of the British Museum that is set to run until 2020.

In the meantime, the discovery of two statues at Qalatga Darband seem to indicate that the site was once a thriving hub on the route from Greece to Mesopotamia and Persia – possibly linking it to Alexander because one of the unearthed statues could be his portrait (a second statue looks like Aphrodite). Of course, it will take far more research and excavations in order to confirm the link with Alexander as there are many gaps in the facts and figures that came to us.

The grass-grown walls of Qalatga Darband, running down to Lake Dokan. 

The fortifications defended the western border of the young Parthian Empire. In the foreground is one of the square towers under excavation. 

Photograph: Mary Shepperson/by permission of The British Museum - From The Guardian

The Kurdish region seems to be rich in archaeological sites as satellite images have found some 354 sites! One of the images taken near Qalatga Darband  and shared in the article from The Guardian shows an overgrown fortification wall interrupted every twenty meters or so by a square projecting tower – a very tempting project!

In the end, I’m afraid that Qalatga Darband is not high on the list of researchers and archaeologists as bigger names from history will claim priority once the staff is properly trained. After all, Iraq is home to rich historical sites like Nimrud, Ctesiphon, Nineveh, Ur, Uruk, Babylon, Borsippa, Hatra, and Seleucia-on-the-Tigris to name just a handful.

Arbela, near the Battlefield of Gaugamela

Erbil or Arbil is the capital of modern Kurdistan, an independent province in northern Iraq. In antiquity the city was named Arbela, situated north of the Mesopotamian plain where the Battle of Gaugamela took place in 331 BC between the armies of Alexander the Great and Great King Darius III of Persia. Erbil claims to be the world’s oldest continuously occupied settlement (older than Damascus, I wonder?) going back at least 6,000 years.

To the naked eye, Erbil has very little to offer to the curious archaeologist as many houses from the 19th and 20th century are cramped inside the old city walls, right on top of previous constructions. Most everything that is known about this city comes from ancient texts and sporadic artifacts found at other sites in Mesopotamia.

Since last year, the first traces of the ancient city have been revealed thanks to ground-penetrating radar. Two large structures in the center of the citadel may be the remains of the well-known temple dedicated to the goddess of love and war, Ishtar, who was consulted by the Assyrian kings for divine guidance. The Temple of Ishtar is mentioned as early as the 13th century BC, although it may rest on a much older sanctuary. It is said that her temple was made to “shine like the day”, a possible indication that it was coated with electrum (a mixture of silver and gold) that reflected the Mesopotamian sun.

Slowly these new finds give us an insight into the history of Arbela and of its growth since the rise of the mighty Assyrian Empire. This old city was located on a fertile plain and was the local breadbasket for thousands of years. It occupied a key position on the road connecting the Persian Gulf to the Anatolian inland. It is obvious that this prime location was coveted by many of its neighbors, of which the Sumerians may have been the first invaders around 2,000 BC. It is here that Alexander the Great became King of Asia in 331 BC after defeating the Persian King Darius in nearby Gaugamela. Later invaders were the Romans, Genghis Khan in the 13th century, the Afghan warlords in the 18th century and the very recent occupation by Saddam Hussein. Yet, Arbela survived, unlike other great Mesopotamian cities like Babylon or Nineveh.

Unfortunately during the twentieth century much of ancient Arbela fell in disrepair as refugees from the region’s conflicts replaced the town’s people who moved to more spacious housing outside the citadel. Now that these refugees also move to more comfortable accommodation, efforts are starting to renovate the largely mud-brick dwellings. Conservation work enables archaeologists to dig deeper into the mound, meanwhile listed as a World Heritage Site. With the help of aerial photos taken by the British Royal Air Force in the 1950’s, American spy satellite images from the 1960’s, and Cold War satellite imagery, combined with the ancient cuneiform tablets help to pinpoint the best locations for future digging.

It is still difficult to have a good comprehensive overview of such a long history. As far as we know now, Arbela was first mentioned on clay tablets unearthed at Ebla (in modern Syria) dating to circa 2300 BC. A few hundred years later, rulers of Ur in southern Mesopotamia claim to have destroyed the city during repeated and bloody campaigns. By 1200 BC, it is known that it prospered as an important Assyrian trading post where copper, cattle, pomegranates, pistachios, grain and grapes were common goods. At the height of its power in the 7th century BC, Assyria was ruled by kings like Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. A court poem found in Nineveh praised the city as “heaven without equal, Arbela!”, and its power is supported by a stone relief from the 7th century BC found at Nineveh showing the formidable city walls and arched gate.

By 612 BC the Assyrian Empire was destroyed and the Medes (maybe the ancestors of today’s Kurds), spared and occupied Arbela, which was still intact when the Persian King Darius I came to power about a century later. Soon the Achaemenid Empire stretched all the way from Egypt to India till Alexander the Great defeated King Darius III in the fall in of 331 BC on the plains of Gaugamela. The Persian king fled across the Greater Zab River to Arbela’s citadel to seek refuge in the Zagros Mountains where he was eventually killed by his own men.

Arbela’s oldest fortification had a 20 meters thick wall with a defensive slope, not unlike the one found at Nineveh, for instance. While most fortifications were rectangular, the wall around Arbela was a round one, enclosing both the citadel and the lower town – something we do find more to the south, in cities like Ur or Uruk. As houses in modern Erbil are being abandoned, the archaeologists have a good opportunity to start their investigations. It is very rewarding to discover a tomb with vaulted chamber of baked bricks that can be dated to the 7th century BC and definitely is Assyrian.

Using modern technology, some 77 square miles have been mapped containing some 214 archaeological sites going back as far as 8,000 years! It is not easy to account for a city’s history over such a long period of time, especially when that city is still being inhabited. After the Assyrians were gone came the Persians followed by the Greeks, and eventually Arbela became an essential outpost on the Roman frontier and the capital of the Province of Assyria. With the spreading of Christianity new communities flourished and the Sassanids ruled till the arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD.

Even today, Erbil makes the headlines with the conflicts in northern Iraq. Inevitably a great deal of the city’s heritage is doomed to disappear in modern warfare, but let’s hope for the best. Maybe, just maybe one day we may discover the treasures still buried underneath the old citadel and maybe even a small proof that Alexander and his army were here some 2,400 years ago.

[Pictures from Archaeology]

Alexander's outpost in the Gulf

Honestly, I raised my eyebrows when I first heard how the Asian conquests of Alexander the Great had left its traces on a rather desert island in the Persian Gulf off the coast of today’s Kuwait.

With the occupation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein the island of Failaka had not escaped to modern warfare, but maybe this is what made archaeologists aware of an earlier conquest of this sun-baked island by Nearchus, one of Alexander’s generals, in the 4th century BC. Luckily, joint excavations with the Greeks are now on their way, focussing on the remains of a citadel and a cemetery. Before that, the French had discovered the remnants of a Temple of Artemis, together with several Greek coins and statuettes. Well, well, …

In an interview, Michael Wood (In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great) reminds us how after the death of Alexander Hellenistic culture spread from India to Egypt. As an example, he mentions Uruk, near today’s Basra in southern Iraq where, even several hundreds of years after Alexander’s death, inscriptions show the names of local rulers in a mixture of ancient Babylonian and Greek. Alexander’s conquests of Asia have accelerated commerce in this part of the world, “the first globalisation” according to Michael Wood.

Failaka occupied a strategic position at the point where Tigris and Euphrates empty their waters in the Gulf. Michael Wood even expects to find traces of more ancient civilizations that thrived in the Gulf doing business with Mesopotamia as well as with the Indus Valley. It is generally accepted that the name Failaka comes from the Greek “fylaikio”, meaning outpost. We will remember that Alexander in 324 BC while building the Pallacopas canal spotted a good site for a new fortified town to settle some of his Greek mercenaries and old veterans no longer fit for service.

Further excavation work will centre around the ancient city of Icarea and the Greek team will also work on restoring what has already been uncovered earlier. Very promising indeed!

[pictures from news.bbc.co.uk]