As Islamic Militants Destroy Iraq Heritage, a Stunning Find in Kurdistan

BARCELONA, Spain – While the history of civilization is being demolished by war and religious zealots in the rest of Iraq, in the Kurdistan Region archeologists are marveling at a stunning discovery: the remains of a long-lost temple from the biblical kingdom of Urartu, dating back to the 9th century BC.

Kurdish archaeologist Dlshad Marf Zamua, who has studied the columns and other artifacts at the find, told Rudaw these were unearthed piecemeal over the past four decades by villagers going about their lives, digging for cultivation or construction. 

But only recently, after the discovery of life-size human statues and the unearthed columns, Zamua realized that the villagers had stumbled upon the temple of Haldi. That was one of the most important gods of Urartu, an Iron-Age kingdom around Lake Van in the Armenian highlands.

The temple was found in the village of Mdjeser, in the district of Bradost-Sidekan, the most northeastern corner of Iraq and bordering Iran and Turkey.

“The temple was recorded very well in the Assyrian and Urartian inscriptions,” explained Zamua, a doctoral student at Leiden University in the Netherlands who also teaches at Salahaddin University in Erbil.

“One of the reliefs depicts the plunder of the temple by the Assyrian King Sargon II in 714 BC,” said the researcher, who spent from 2005 to 2012 working on the site.

According to historical evidence and the recently uncovered sites, the ancient city of Musasir, located where Mdjeser is today, was home to Haldi’s temple.

Mdjeser was one of more than 4,000 villages destroyed during the Anfal campaign of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, which especially targeted the Kurds and is gaining international recognition as an act of genocide.

Even now some villagers will not return to rebuild their homes because of the troubles in Iraq, which have made things worse in this border region.

The ancient capital was known as Musasir by the Assyrians and as Ardini by the Urartians themselves.  It was among the lands that formed a string of buffer states between the two powers of the time, Assyria and Urartu.

Zamua also studied eleven human-size statues unearthed in the same area, which he believes are from the Scythian state of the 7th-6th century BC. They were originally erected above the graves of chieftains and warrior leaders.

“Most of the uncovered statues at Mdjeser and the neighboring Topzawa Valley have also a typical Scythian iconography,” Zamua said, explaining the figures were shown in real-life situations, such as holding a cup, strapping on a dagger or holding a hatchet, the preferred Scythian weapon.

At the temple, the columns are made of green basalt, and some with sandstone, limestone and marble.

“The importance of my research is that is the first time on the base of archaeological and textual data that we can show the penetration of the Scythians into Kurdistan during the 8th -7th centuries BC,” Zamua said.

“Kurdistan is one of the richest areas in the world in archaeology. There are thousands of archaeological sites -- caves, settlements, cities, citadels, castles, rock reliefs, bridges -- covering almost all the history and the lives of humans on earth from the stone ages to modern times.”

Luckily, the archaeological sites in Brodost-Sidekan are far from the rebellion and war raging across Iraq for more than a month.

Still, being an archeologist in Kurdistan is not easy, Zamua said, listing the dangers to include tens of thousands of unexploded land mines, especially from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Other hazards are Iranian shelling of the area, Zamua said, which happened last in June.  Turkish jets also have bombed the area several times in the past. 

As an archaeologist, Zamua worries about the impact of war and the Islamic State (IS) on sites that are some of the earliest records of civilization.

IS fighters have been destroying historical sites during their military conquests, especially targeting Shiite shrines.  

“In this chaotic situation they may loot ancient objects and sell them in the international black market to fund these groups,” Zamua said, voicing a growing concern.

He said that in this regard Kurdistan was acting very responsibly.

“Kurdistan is protecting its borders very well and the directorates of antiquities actively are trying to look at the archaeological sites to protect them,” he said.

He applauded the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for allowing foreign archeologists to work on sites. But he complained that, “there is no special fund for local archaeologists to start big projects.”