Tag: Cuneiform

Cyrus Cylinder row resolved: ‘Ancient declaration of human rights’ to visit Iran

The Cyrus Cylinder will go on loan to Tehran, Iran The British Museum has announced that it is lending the Cyrus Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran. Together with two fragments of contemporary cuneiform tablets, it will be the centrepiece of an exhibition that celebrates a great moment in the history of the Middle East.

The artefact which is described as ‘an ancient declaration of human rights’ by the United Nations was originally due to arrive in Iran in September 2009. At that time, the British Museum cited the ‘political situation’ in post-election Iran as the reason for the delay. In August this year, the loan was once again delayed, prompting Iran’s Cultural Heritage Organisation to declare it would cut all ties with the British Museum.

In a statement released today, the British Museum said that although political relations between Iran and the UK are at the moment difficult, the Cyrus Cylinder will after all be send to Tehran, where it will be on display for four months.

One of the chief tasks of our generation is to build a global community, where peoples of differing ideologies can live together in respect and harmony, said Karen Armstrong, author and commentator on religious affairs and a British Museum Trustee.

At a time of political tension, it is essential to keep as many doors of communication open as possible. We all have much work to do to build a peaceful world. This cultural exchange may make a small but timely contribution towards the creation of better relations between the West and Iran.

Objects are uniquely able to speak across time and space and this object must be shared as widely as possible.

In 2004, Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, wrote in ‘The whole world in our hands’ that the Cylinder may indeed be a document of human rights, and clearly linked with the history of Iran, but that it is in no real sense an Iranian document: it is part of a much larger history of the ancient Near East, of Mesopotamian kingship, and of the Jewish diaspora. According to McGregor, it is one of the British Museum’s tasks to resist the narrowing of the object’s meaning and its appropriation to one political agenda.

The two fragments of tablet that will accompany the Cylinder were also found in nineteenth century British Museum excavations in or near Babylon.

These fragments were identified by experts at the Museum earlier this year as being inscribed with parts of the same text as the Cylinder but do not belong to it. They show that the text of the Cylinder was probably a proclamation that was widely distributed across the Persian Empire.

Originally, the Cylinder was inscribed in cuneiform and buried in the foundations of a wall after Cyrus the Great, the Persian Emperor, captured Babylon in 539 BC. It stayed buried there until it wasdiscovered by an excavation team from theBritish Museumin 1879, which brought the ancient document to England. Cyrus’ Cylinder has been in London ever since.

The clay document records that, aided by the god Marduk, Cyrus captured Babylon without a fight. According to Cyrus (this part of the document is written as he himself is speaking)he abolished the labour-service of Babylon’s free population and restored shrines dedicated to Marduk and other gods. He also repatriated deported peoples who had been brought to Babylon; the decree that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild The Temple.

It is because of these enlightened acts, which were reasonably rare in antiquity (and quite the opposite of Nebuchadnezzar’s behaviour), that the Cylinder has become a symbol of tolerance and respect for different peoples and different faiths.

You could almost say that the Cyrus Cylinder is A History of the Middle East in one object and it is a link to a past which we all share and to a key moment in history that has shaped the world around us, comments MacGregor, referencing the museum’s ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ project.

Objects are uniquely able to speak across time and space and this object must be shared as widely as possible, he adds.

It does make you wonder. If this is true, shouldn’t the Elgin Marbles be allowed to have their s(t)ay in Greece?

‘Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands’ – The Penn Museum’s Near-East First

Excavations at Nippur, oil painting by Osman Hamdi Bey. 1904 (based on a photograph taken in 1893) In the 1880s, a time of great opportunities and great adventures, the University of Pennsylvania Museum organized America’s first archaeological expedition to the ancient Near East – to Nippur, a promising but far-flung Mesopotamian site then within the vast Ottoman Empire, now located in Iraq to the south of Baghdad. Nearly 130 years and 400 archaeological and anthropological expeditions later, the museum returns to ‘the Age of Exploration’ and their first Near Eastdig with the exhibition’Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands’ (September 2010 to February 2011).

‘Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands’ offers a gimps at the accomplishments, struggles, and fortunes of three adventurers whose lives intersected at Nippur: Osman Hamdi Bey, archaeologist, Director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum, and internationally renowned Turkish painter; John Henry Haynes, American archaeologist and photographer; and Hermann Vollrath Hilprecht, a German archaeologist, Assyriologist, and professor at Penn. The year 2010 marks the centennial of the deaths of Hamdi Bey and Haynes, and the demise of Hilprecht’s career due to scandal after he was accused of tampering with cuneiform inscriptions and withholding the finest discoveries for his personal collection. (Read up about the scandalin this excellent 1910 New York Times article about a dispute that continuously involves more and more persons, who originally had nothing to do with it. )

The Penn Museum’s exhibition sheds light on some of the late 19th century’s diplomatic obstacles and opportunities for ambitious archaeologists seeking to establish excavations in distant lands. As one of the most ancient Sumerian cities, Nippur was a prime choice for a major excavation, but it also posed major challenges. Located in the hard-to-reach marshes of southern Mesopotamia, the site offered a harsh climate, and was surrounded by warring tribes.

Ancient clay cuneiform tablet, ca. 1720 BCE, written in Sumerian. The famous literary text is called Hymn to the Goddess Inanna. Nippur. (Penn Museum Object number B7847).

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Episode 11: Age of Discovery

Christopher Naunton of the Egyptian Exploration Society explains the significance of discoveries by great explorers such as Flinders Petrie, Howard Carter and Giovanni Belzoni who revolutionised archaeology.

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Despite these, over the course of years, the excavations at Nippur provided archaeologists with a wealth of new information, and a trove of artefacts, including more than 30,000 cuneiform tablets, among them the largest collection of Sumerian literary tablets ever found. The cuneiform tablets formed the basis of the Penn Museum’s Babylonian Tablet Room and collection. Today, scholars continue to draw upon this vast core of material to develop an online dictionary of Sumerian, through the ongoing Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project.

‘Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands’ features two 19th century oil paintings by Osman Hamdi Bey: Excavations at Nippur, which has never before been on public exhibition, and At the Mosque Door. Also on display are about 50 photographs, many by Haynes, whose contributions as an archaeological photographer are only now being recognized, and more than 40 artefacts from the Nippur expedition (1889-1900), including a full-sized “slipper” coffin, incantation bowls (inscribed with spells to perform protective magic), figurines, and numerous clay cuneiform tablets bearing some of the earliest writing in the world.

Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands opensSunday, September 26, 2010 and running through February 6, 2011 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Admissionis $10 for adults; $7 for senior citizens (65 and above); $6 children (6 to 17) and full-time students with ID. Amission is free to Members, Penncard holders, and children 5 and younger.

Face-Off: Rosetta Stone ‘V’ Behistun Inscription

The Rosetta Stone and the Behistun inscriptions are both key to the decipherment of ancient languages that co-existed in time. What’s also interesting is that they were both discovered in the middle of wars and by military personnel. There is something quite ironic about armies hell-bend on destruction and division instead finding these hidden codes to decipher ancient words, the study of which will go on to unite the world.

Dr Campbell Thompson investigated Behistun on behalf of the British Museum and published his findings in 1937. He stated that:

“Two of the most important events in the advancement of historical knowledge have been the discovery of the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone and the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions on the Rock of Behistun. The former opened the door to the Wonderland of Egyptian history, and the latter brought daylight into the dark places of antiquity in the Middle East, revealing to the modern world the vanished civilizations of Mesopotamia in all the truth of contemporary record.” (Thompson, R. Campbell, The Rock of Behistun, Wonders of the Past, Edited by Sir J. A. Hammerton, Vol. II, New York: Wise and Co., 1937, p. 761).

The two scripts are obviously key, but let’s face it, in a head-to-head face-off between the two, which do you think would win? Let’s consider the facts…

Rosetta Stone

French Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard (1772-1832), under Napoleon, found a black stone when guiding construction works in the Fort Julien near the city of Rosetta. He immediately understood the importance of the stone and showed it to General Abdallah Jacques de Menou who decided that it should be brought to the institute, where it arrived in August, 1799.

The Rosetta stone (stela) was the confirmation of the control of the Ptolemaic kings ov er Egypt (196 BC). It contains a decree inscribed three times, in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek.

The inscription begins with praise of Ptolemy, and then includes an account of the siege of the city of Lycopolis (modern Assiut), and the good deeds done by the king for the temples.

The final part of the text describes the decree’s overriding purpose, the establishment of the cult of the king.

It ends by saying that it is to be made known that all the men of Egypt should magnify and honour Ptolemy V, and that the text should be set up in hard stone in the three scripts which it still bears today.

A translation of the text is available for everyone curious enough to read it!

The Rosetta Stone is 3 feet 9 inches long and 2 feet 41/2 inches wide, and in very good condition. It is dark grey-pinkish granite stone (originally thought to be basalt in composition) with writing on it in two languages, Egyptian and Greek, using three scripts, Hieroglyphic and Demotic Egyptian, and Greek.

On Napoleon’s defeat, the stone became the property of the English under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801). The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802 (apart from a short break in 1917, when, concerned about heavy bombing in London, it was stashed for two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway fifty feet below the ground at Holborn).

The text was deciphered by Jean Francois Champollion, who had previously compiled a Coptic dictionary and read Thomas Youngs writing on the subject of hieroglyphics. Champollion correctly identified the names of Cleopatra and Alexandrus.

In 1822 new inscriptions from a temple at Abu Simbel on the Nile were introduced into Europe and Champollion correctly identified the name of the pharaoh who had built the temple, Ramses.

Utilizing his knowledge of Coptic he continued to successfully translate the hieroglyphics until he had a stroke, paralytic disorder or nervous breakdown (reports vary)… and died at Paris in 1832 at the age of 41.

It is so popular that it cannot be described only by writing! Beyond the crowds at the British Museum taking a peak and trying to get a good picture of it, there is also a major language learning system named after it, and has become symbolic of languag in general.

It is one of the key objects that Egypt is trying to get back for good, even if they say it is only for the opening of the new Grand Egyptian Museum…

PLUS POINTS

It’s the number one visitor attraction at the British Museum, which is one of the most visited museums in the world, so it certainly ranks highest on drawing in tourists.
The decipherment of hieroglyphics by Champollion from the Rosetta Stone literally blasted Egyptology wide open, allowing many previously unscrutible scripts to be translated.
It’s the centre of a running dispute between Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquites and the British Museum; if everyone’s fighting over it, it must be good!

LET-DOWNS

It’s not much of a looker.

Behistun Inscriptions

The Behistun Inscription is known as the Persian Rosetta Stone, due to its role in the decipherment of the ancient scripts. It’s located in the mountains above Behistun, or Bisotun, in modern-day Iran.

The Behistan Inscription is a carved relief which, in antiquity, was named Bagastna, meaning ‘place where the gods dwell’. About 15 meters high by 25 meters wide, the inscription is 100 meters up a cliff and it is almost completely inaccessible – the mountainside was removed to make the inscription more visible after its completion.

The Behistun Inscription is written in three different scripts: Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian. The Old Persian text contains 414 lines in five columns; the Elamite text includes 593 lines in eight columns and the Babylonian text is in 112 lines.

The inscription was illustrated by a life-sized bas-relief of Darius, two servants, and ten one-metre figures representing conquered peoples; Faravahar floats above, giving his blessing to the king. One figure appears to have been added after the others were completed, as was (oddly enough) Darius’ beard, which is a separate block of stone attached with iron pins and lead. After the fall of the Persian Empire and its successors, and the fall of cuneiform writing into disuse, the nature of the inscription was forgotten.

The first historical mention of the inscription is by the Greek Ctesias of Cnidus, who noted its existence around 400 BC, but didn’t offer a translation. The inscription was then misinterpreted first by Arab travellerIbn Hawqal, around the mid-900s, who thought the text was a teacher punishing his pupils, and again by Robert Sherley, an Englishman on a diplomatic mission to Persia, who misread them as a representation of biblical figures.

In 1835, Sir Henry Rawlinson, a British army officer training the army of the Shah of Iran, decided to study the inscription. In a number of trecherous journeys to the site, he managed to make copies of the inscriptions, sometimes using papier mache.

He discovered that the first section of the text contained a list of Persian kings – and was identical to one found in a script by Herodotus. This allowed Rawlinson to decipher the code of cuneiform, leading to the possible translation of many more found texts.

The text is a statement by Darius, in which he writes about how the supreme god Ahuramazda choose him to dethrone an usurper named Gaumta, how he set out to quell several revolts, and how he defeated his foreign enemies.

The isolated rock along the road connected the capitals of Babylonia and Media (Babylon and Ecbatana), and this was maybe the ideal place for Darius I of Persia (522-486) who ruled the Persian Empire, to proclaim his military victories.

Now, the text is completely illegible from ground level, and there is a crack caused by a small stream of underground water, which would have been non-existent at the time of the inscription. It has caused considerable destruction to some figures. Sadly, the monument was further damaged when soldiers were taking potshots at it during World War II.

In 1999, a group of Iranian experts applied the photogrameteric method to the site. They took 2-D photos using two cameras and then transmuted them into 3-D pictures. The photogrameteric process is coming to an end.

PLUS POINTS

Nice location, pretty images – the Behistun Inscription definitely wins out on looks.
Scaling mountains with planks and swings – the decipherment of the inscription was pure Indiana Jones.

LET-DOWNS

It only provided the code to the Persian version of cuneiform used in that era.

Oldest Babylonian Cuneiform Seal Fragment in Egypt Discovered, at Hyksos Capital of Avaris

Austrian archaeologists have unearthed the oldest cuneiform seal inscription fragment ever found in Egypt. The piece dates to the Old Babylonian reign of King Hammurabi, who brought the world its first code of law, between 1792 – 1750 BC. Egypt’s culture minister Farouk Hosni announced the discovery today, made by the Austrian Archaeological Mission in a pit at Tel El-Daba, modern name of ancient Avaris, 120km north-east of Cairo in the Nile Delta.

Dr Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s antiquities chief, noted the seal was the second of its type excavated in the region. The first seal had been found in the palace of Hyksos King Khayan, who ruled Egypt between 1653 – 1614 BC. The previous oldest cuneiform seals had been found at Akhenaten‘s rogue capital city Amarna.

“The Hyksos had foreign relations and connections in the Near East that reached southern Mesopotamia.”

Austrian mission leader Dr Manfred Bietak says the two fragments could have huge repercussions for how the Hyksos, a Delta-based tribe who seized Egypt around ushering in the Second Intermediate Period, maintained ties with the Near East. “They are evidence that the Hyksos had foreign relations and extensive connections in the Near East that at this time reached southern Mesopotamia,” he says.

Avaris is a city steeped in multicultural heritage dating back over 3,000 years. It was first settled by Asiatic tribes around the time of the 12th Dynasty (2000 BC). It was also visited by Minoans, who painted magnificent frescoes on its buildings’ walls. Avaris’ Asiatic inhabitants would become rulers of Egypt around 1650 BC, when King Salitis ascended the throne. The Austrian mission has been present there since 2006 when it unearthed a royal Hyksos palace. A 5th Dynasty building has also been discovered at the site, which experts believe was an administrative centre.

Incas ‘Had Binary Language’

The lost Inca civilization of the Andes developed a seven-bit binary code using knotted string called Khipu, a leading American anthropologist argues. If true, the relics would have invented binary language around 500 years before the invention of the computer. The coloured textiles could have provided thousands of language permutations; around the same as the Sumerian cuneiform of 1,500 to 1,000 BC, according to Harvard University professor Gary Urton. The pre-Columbian expert’s findings could shatter the long-held belief that the enigmatic Incas, who were destroyed when the Spanish conquistadors garrotted last ruler Atahualpa in 1533, are the only Bronze Age culture without writing. Khipus have been thought to illicit information since 1923, when science historian L. Leland Locke claimed their coloured knots were used as abacuses. However, Locke’s findings only examined a tiny proportion of the 600 khipu in existence today, and Urton believes Locke to have deciphered less than half of the information on them. Urton announced his theory in 2003 – a year after beginning his Khipu Database Project, which aims to provide the world with a centralised repository of the mysterious pendants.

“Khipu were much more than mnemonic devices.”

“The most convincing evidence for this three-dimensional writing system is the khipu,” Urton tells Discovery News. “Their complexity would have been unnecessary if they were just mnemonic devices understood only by their makers.” Urton’s findings are based upon the seven different binary choices in making khipu. These include type of material (cotton or wool); direction of the knot; length of string; details on the knots and so on. A standard seven-bit code would effect 128 possibilities, but Urton believes the 24 different colours used boosts the total to 1,536 outcomes. This rivals early cuneiform, and is double that of Egyptian and Maya hieroglyphs. What Urton now needs is what he calls a ‘Rosetta khipu’, after the Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799, from which experts decoded the Egyptian language. “We have a sizeable number of khipu, and we have about a dozen documents that are written up from the khipu,” Urton adds. “What we don’t have yet is a match between a document and a khipu.” Bologna University pre-Columbian scholar Laura Laurencich-Minelli agrees in part with Urton’s assumptions. “Certainly, khipu were much more than mnemonic devices,” she says. Pre-Columbian American is sure to be grabbing more headlines in the near future, as the British Museum launches its ‘Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler‘ exhibition on September 24.

Assyrian Leader’s Doomed Pleas for Help Discovered

“Death will come out of it! No-one will escape! I am done!” It may sound like the death-knell of a tragic big screen hero, but it’s actually the desperate pleas for help of an ancient Assyrian leader, as his city awaits destruction at the hands of bloodthirsty Babylonian armies. The words have been discovered inscribed on a cuneiform tablet at the site of Tushan – an Assyrian city near Diyarbakir, SE Turkey. The tragic epsiode was written by Mannu-ki-Libbali in 630 BC, as a final call-to-arms for allies in the region – yet experts believe the tablet never met its intended recipient, and Tushan was soon torn to shreds by advancing Babylonian forces.

“Death will come out of it! No-one will escape! I am done!”

The demise of Tushan was the beginning of the end for the once-glorious Assyrian Empire, which crumbled under the weight of Mesopotamia’s marauding southerners just three years later. And from Mannu-ki-Libbali’s words, which comprise a 30-line soliloquy the size of a mobile phone, it’s apparent Tushan had been deserted long before the Babylonians stormed in. He pleads for commanders, craftsmen, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, bow and arrow makers, horses, bandage boxes and chariots to defend his city, yet: “Nobody mentioned in this letter, not one of them is there! How can I command?”

John MacGinnis is leading the University of Cambridge excavation which has thrown up the fascinating find. He tells the Times: “The letter is written during the process of downfall. The chances of finding something like this are unbelievably small.” The British Museum‘s Assyrian expert Irving Finkel is equally jubilant at the discovery. “It has an almost Hollywood quality,” he says. “This sense of the enemy are coming – I can hear their hooves.” Though he would have had professional scribes, experts believe Mannu-ki-Libbali could have written the dramatic epigraph, which is being held in the Diyarbakir Museum, himself. Cuneiform is said to have been the first ever writing form, and comprised triangles pressed into wet clay in different combinations. Some combinations could involve as many as 13 triangles.

Images by Andre Nantel andJill.