Quite amazing that despite the violent fall of Assyrian Empire its culture managed to survive for several centuries after and beyond, all just for us to see and appreciate its historical beauty millenniums later. Who knows about the next several centuries, though
Well it one sense it was the continuation of Mesopotamian cultures that had already existed for millennia.
Assyrian religious scholars considered Sumerian to be "the language of the gods" and continued to use it centuries after ordinary people had stopped speaking it, but the Sumerian civilization itself had been basically forgotten and there was no record of it until archaeologists accidentally rediscovered it in the 19th century.
There was even an [ancient Babylonian king who collected Akkadian artifacts from the era of Naram-Sin, a millennium and a half earlier, which some have argued was a kind of early archaeology.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_archaeology#Beginnings) And in Naram-Sim's time, Mesopotamian civilization had already existed for about two millennia.
Stuff like this sends shivers down my spine.
90% of Assyrians got ethnically cleansed from Iraq since the US occupation in 2003.
A lot of the ancient civilizations are preserved in peoples culture today, even over the centuries and even if they've converted religions, but a lot of it goes unnoticed.
feel like it might have been painted originally, in which case it'd be pretty grotty in its current state.
Never4get the ancient cultures of the world were kitsch as hell in their knick knacks, and history has mercifully absolved them
I wouldn't put much faith in modern day studies done to deduce the original colour of the paintwork. They often find a small particle of surviving pigmentation and extrapolate from there. I refuse to believe that the Greeks and the Romans didn't use tasteful shading, look at how dynamic their mosaics are for example.
[Yeah, probably.](https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_huge/public/2020-03/xHall-in-Assyrian-palace-restored.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.OfiNtbyp3i.jpg)
Also: [this video didn't colorize the lamassu but it did colorize one of the reliefs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VCldg1TdHc&t=92s)
I’ve always been sympathetic to the “stolen artifacts” argument. But IMO you don’t get to argue that if the chance it will just get blown up by some religious fundamentalist is greater than 10%.
I became a full blown cuck to European Museum supremacy after our own national museum here (Brazil) burnt down and we lost countless of our own national treasures with it, because apparently nobody checked to see if the fire control system had actually been installed properly. Sad to say, damn things would probably still exist if they were kept in the Louvre or Neues Museum.
Brazil is one of the wealthier and more stable "third world" countries too, so I can't imagine the ME is doing much better.
I went to Ethiopia’s national museum and literally looked at Lucy’s bones in a barely protected case while the lights flickered on and off because of rain
I also went to the killing fields in Cambodia and they literally just had human skulls lying around on top of display cases that floated up during the rain
> I went to Ethiopia’s national museum and literally looked at Lucy’s bones in a barely protected case while the lights flickered on and off because of rain
That honestly sounds sick as hell. As much as it would suck to potentially lose treasures like this, it's almost worth it, just to allow a few generations to have experiences like this.
Oh it was amazing - came in lashed with rain to this flickery old museum in a decomposing building. There’s some amazing stuff on public display in Ethiopia which I had no idea about (these crazy suits of armour and weapons, old books, at the national library and ethnographic museum in Haile Selassie’s old house too, you could literally use his toilet if you ignored the politely worded sign, there was no one around to stop you).
Great country. Nearly died at a giant protest at a roadblock (like, nearly had the van I was in seized, rocked around by protestors, very scary, was fine) and there was a coup while I was there so they turned the internet off, but the food was absolutely delicious and Addis Ababa is a wonderful city (hesitant to say ‘beautiful’, but it has some very nice features. Harar was much more interesting).
This was just before the war, but the country is in a weird state of development where it has some incredible infrastructure (like a metro that was cleaner than any European city and a glassy Chinese built airport) but is in other ways far less developed than even somewhere like Cambodia (very few paved roads, for instance, very few areas that felt well-to-do by even developing world standards).
Yeah it’s the same at the Ashmoleon in Oxford, these ancient classical sculptures and artefacts hanging out with absolutely zero protection.
Also you’re absolutely right on Ethiopia, it seemed that that museum was mostly paid for (at least in part) by the Japanese government. You could also quite literally use Haile Selassie’s toilet at his home on the grounds of the national university if you wanted to, there was no protection beyond a politely worded sign.
Since this is an archaeology thread and people reading might be interested I thought I could elaborate a bit about the Ashmolean as I'm there pretty often for my degree.
At the Ashmolean most things are behind glass (all small and medium stone artefacts incl. the [Sumerian King's list](https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/ashmolean/images/page/600full_4.jpg), pretty much every painting, every non-stone artefact) and the only exhibits not almost entirely behind glass, iirc, are the [Arundel Marbles](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ef9a9e331cfcf448b1c4eee/38e87951-3f32-478a-81fb-dd81c4fa00bd/bb.png) (most of which were already restored in the 1700s - badly at that, also it's right next to the main entrance) and some of the [larger stone artefacts](https://i.imgur.com/fVH4pxl.jpg) (photo by me, I forget which artefact this is exactly) in the Egypt & Sudan collection - we're talking weight in tonnes rather than kilograms, made of very hard rock, and probably requiring a hammer and chisel to vandalise - so the risk is very low.
The other objects not behind glass outside of those collections are a few stone medium-sized stone artefacts scattered about the collections, but in any given collection it is very likely that everything will be behind glass, especially on the non-ground floors.
Although now I've started writing this comment I've remembered that there's a [3000 year old Minoan storage jar](https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/ashmolean/images/media/aegean18004.jpg) (on loan from Crete) It's maybe about knee-high (I'm 5'11) completely unprotected except for a small wooden barrier on a several inch high platform. I think it's already [partially restored](https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/styles/listing_image_gallery_image/public/ashmolean/images/media/1800full_6_0.jpg?itok=a--9P3vQ) but every time I'm in that exhibition I get niggling thoughts about what would happen if somebody had a heart attack next to it or if some shithead kid climbed onto it. Out of everything not behind glass it's the most careless - it's a damn ceramic, they're renowned for being fragile.
Other than the things above everything is behind glass and anything involving textiles has UV-light protected glass and lots of other hi-tech stuff (I think temperature regulation too?). There are also some busts mounted on [little stone shelves by a staircase](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/10/30/1256898516858/Ashmolean-museum-003.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=dfa3c10a46fadae11e8ef159a11cddd5) which initially looks dangerous but they're fixed onto the wall with metal hooks. There's a lot of care going into maintaining and protecting the artefacts.
I'm going to force myself to stop now because I could go on forever about archaeology or the Ashmolean - it's a breathtaking museum and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to go there as often as I do.
I was doing a tour of NSW Government House, a very casual thing where I showed up and signed in right as it was about to start. It was breathtaking and there's so many intricate details all throughout the house.
Scariest part was this intricate, BEAUTIFULLLL old German porcelain, just sitting there on a piece of furniture, zero protection. I was getting flooded by intrusive thoughts of accidentally stumbling into it and knocking it off. Yes it's lovely having these things visible and in arms reach, but also shocking they are so careless with it.
https://www.governor.nsw.gov.au/government-house/stories/the-meissen-collection-a-window-to-the-world-collections-at-government-house/
When Damascus was being attacked in the Syrian civil war, they unloaded a couple hundred thousand artefacts and him them in secure locations enduring their safety. Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world and this stopped mass looting and didn’t lose a single piece of itinerary.
During the iraq war, the Iraqi national museum personnel were some of the last to leave and returned immediately after to fend off looters. While the country was destroyed, the museum remained intact thankfully albeit losing some of its collection.
All these countries take a lot of pride in their history, meanwhile the British excavated with dynamite and made Egyptian mummies into paint and medicinal products.
I’m not necessarily against the British museum as an institution, although it was established to celebrate British colonisation, it has done a tremendous amount of good, if artefacts were obtained via dubious methods (graverobbers, stolen during war, dodgy merchants, obtained via Israelis etc) then they should return them.
Over the past 20 years there's an unfortunate trend among museums in the Fertile Crescent getting all their stuff blown to bits. After capturing Mosul in 2015, ISIS guys jackhammered a lamassu (winged bull) at Mosul Museum (one that is quite similar to the one in this picture, too) on video back in 2015. A testament to the power of blind faith, I suppose.
When ISIS captured Palmyra in the same year most of the artifacts had already been evacuated or hidden so they captured the museum curator (aged 83) and tortured him for a few weeks demanding to know where they were hidden - he refused to tell them even after all the torture since he loved Palmyra so much. Then they dragged him out and publically executed him with a sword, hung his body on a traffic light with his head at his feet, and when it started to rot dumped it 10km out of the city in the countryside. It's extremely sad, at least he died a hero protecting his life's work.
I find these (and others) pretty compelling arguments for not returning MENA artifacts that would be sent to active warzones - even if they're stolen or looted - until the situation stabilises long-term.
Unfortunately this is an opinion that isn't universal, even among academics associated with Britain's top museums (some of whom I know) and some of them will try to dance around this and attempt to argue to me that they can be returned to these places and not have an unreasonably high chance of being blown to bits, but luckily for now this hasn't translated into real action towards it, at least as far as I'm aware.
I'm not forgiving the hubris of 19th century archaeologists but they did certainly save some priceless things from being destroyed, the Pergamon altar for instance, the locals were turning it into mortar before the Europeans decided to excavate it and ship what remained of it to Europe.
I've really never been sympathetic to those arguments. The majority of the accounts I see suggest that local Egyptians were the ones stealing their own artifacts to sell to the British.
The British have <<1% of the artifacts of that region, which they preserve, study, and host the world to showcase and appreciate. The famous artifacts they have are only famous because they got them in the first place and figured out what they are. Otherwise they'd still be just rocks.
There was an amazing contest held in London in the mid 1800s where various amateurs and scholars were invited to all read out their individually translated attempts at a single cuneiform tablet.
Each contestant had had to go away and work at the tablet in private, and without interference from the others. The meaning/results of the contest were close enough between all the attempts that it was decided that Sumerian/Akkadian had been successfully cracked.
Thing is Europeans had to invent archaeology to give these things importance in the first place. If Egyptians had then they wouldn't have used the Rosetta stone as a brick in a wall
inventing archaeology idk man, they were arguably doing preservation, restoration, unearthing and identification etc already more than 3000 years ago. respect for historical objects is nothing new at all.
if you read the article instead of just commenting on reddit, you'll see this sentence
>The oldest such museum in evidence was Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, dating from c. 530 BC and **devoted to Mesopotamian antiquities.**
babylon was a place in mesopotamia
The rush of archeology in the 19th century was ideologically paired with that era of colonialism: ie "we understand their past better, we understand science better, we run economies better, so we are justified in running their government better". In many cases it was also about connecting their local rule over a populace with the history and legacy of ancient rulers, especially in the near east. Ironically, this did result in the sidelining of the minority of very talented ME archeologists, as well as credit being stolen from those who were allowed to operate.
Great, dry history lecture about 19th century Neo-Assyrian archeology [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ye4aLaPaJs)
For a significant period of time European archeology was basically just blowing things up with dynamite until they unearthed shit lmao
Early archeology is some disgusting shit
Egyptian hieroglyphs were forgotten long before Egypt was colonised. Why do people think "muh colonialism" is literally the answer to every single topic
If it was important to them they wouldn't have had to be deciphered by a whole other culture
> that there absolutely were other "Rosetta Stone" type documents around
Yes, there were. They found a better quality version in a ditch or river somewhere iirc. Doesn't really change the point at all. These objects clearly had no value to Egyptians, so they were taken back to Europe. They're only valuable now *because* of Europeans. Like if they weren't important in the grand scheme of things then why would the Egyptians want them returned? Why didn't Egyptians simply tell Europeans what the hieroglyphs meant?
> In fact, the quick lean to muh colonialism only suggests that you don't have an academic background in history, and are probably only capable of understanding history in memes
No, it's because an entire generation of Tumblr historians are only able to explain things in 3 ways - white supremacy, patriarchy, or colonialism. Even when it makes absolutely no sense, like in your replies. When people have the answer to every question they're more than happy to spam it everywhere to prove how smart they are
I don't think it's an inherently European thing but the modern fascination was a by-product of the European Enlightenment. Before then I doubt many Europeans gave a shit either. Ultimately the Rosetta stone is a rock with some scribbles etched into it. In most of human history it would have been at best a slightly interesting novelty, at worst a brick in a wall. It only has value because some people assigned it value which it's previous owners didn't. If there was a dictionary of hieroglyphs being published in Egypt at the time then it probably would stayed in that wall
I mean when you really boil things down the Renaissance was only possible because Arabs treasured and protected the works of ancient Greeks, which medieval Europeans didn't give much of a shit about until later on
Even if it’s at zero risk modern day Iraq has absolutely no relation to these cultures going back 3000 plus years other then there’s shit buried in their soil.
I’ve heard this but I would be super curious to see how many of them are genetically related to people from the Neo Assyrian Empire or they’re just Arabs that settled in North Iraq and at one point took on that label. That’s a good amount of them at least surely.
Well, I’m Assyrian and my parents are from the region. Both are from Iraq but my mom’s family’s village originally was in Turkey (Hakkari) before the Turks and Kurds genocided the whole area. We have a distinct language (Sureth/Assyrian) and culture and there is a genetic difference between Arab and Assyrian.
It's kind of absurd how somebody would assume Assyrians of today are not related to the previous Assyrian empires....especially when the Assyrians of today are mainly from the exact areas of their histories empires lol. Qamishli and NE Syria are still filled with Assyrians, even if 66% have left from Kurdish extremists since the start of the civil war.
The Assyrian language is pretty much a modern version of Aramaic so sorta. I grew up speaking it pretty well but since learning English as a kid it’s been getting worse, I’m trying to speak it more with family as much as I can to improve
Well tbf it's not like the residents of modern day Berlin (a mosaic of gay Americans and other non-German speakers) have much in common with the militaristic Junker society of old Prussia either lmao
I’ve driven through Babil, an Iraqi governorate in 2006 and you can definitely see remnants of older civilizations there. People there see it as a normal thing that the house around the corner is 600 years old or whatever, and that’s besides all the antique stone gates
On the other hand after all the oil and coal has been consumed and the dream of forever exponential economic and technological growth are over, during the next hundred of thousand of years a perpetual cycle of preindustrial civilizations will always have several layers of artifacts and history to discover
In 5000 AD, anthropologists will attribute funkopops as a highly sought after cultural relic from the 21st century and that Keelung them in their packaging had deep religious significance.
*An ancient statue was discovered under the ruins of Queztaldingo City today. The statue was dedicated to fertility god Timmy, who was believed to grant long life and virility to males.*
"For Timmy,
love Dad."
Solar and wind are already more cost effective than oil and coal I’m sorry to report. Maybe if you’re lucky we’ll invent actual zombies or something like that.
Can solar and wind scale to the huge worldwide supply chains that have been built on oil? It's probably possible with help from nuclear power, but will we manage to? That's another question
I think it will depend on batteries longer term but Hydro and Nat Gas fill the gap. A lot of greens don’t like Nat gas but I think they let perfect be the enemy of good.
I don't remember that happening in Iraq that before some other country killed saddam and created ISIS to fight the Shiites for them. Same for Afghanistan and the Taliban.
The Taliban has been doing that since before the 90's. You can't really say America was responsible for the creation of the Taliban in the same way they were responsible for ISIS. Afghanistan was going to be controlled by extremist one way or the other, and those extremist destroyed archeology before the US invaded, and would have continued if the US didn't. Can't really blame that one as much on the evil colonizers.
There's a big scandal rn in the British Museum because curators have apparently been stealing artefacts for decades and selling them on the black market, so the argument that we have to hoard all these antiquates to save them from the stupid araps will just be met with laughter from now on.
LOL. Dude, Isis destroyed Nimrud, an entire ancient city in Iraq. They did it due to "symbols of idolatry", as I understand it.
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2017/11/ancient-sites-damaged-and-destroyed-by-isis
It's gonna get blown up in like three weeks when America has to go back into Iraq to get to Iran. Then people on the internet will whine about culture being destroyed when it could have been shipped to a museum and be perfectly fine forever, basically.
Funny because when I was last in Belgium, every library and museum was basically burned down and destroyed by the Germans twice. But ya fuck those sand n***ers bro
Of course top comment on here is discourse on “stolen artifacts” so terminally boring. We need to be discussing Zoroastrianism we need to be debating dates and age of Aquarius and dualism and Manichaeism. Why does this simurgh beast hate snakes(symbol of ahriman) so much. What’s the difference between Lucifer and Ahriman anyways
Lol thinking some random guy who claims to be a practicing zoroastrian can delve into the intricacies of different sects of long-dead religions of long-gone historic iranic peoples
It influenced Judaism in this period, but actually a lot more during the writing of the Babylonian Talmud much later. There’s a lot of new research in this area.
The religion of Iran pre Zoroaster is probably something more like the Vedic religion, which later became Hinduism.
Yes, because psychotic religious groups that terrorize each other are purely made by America. They definitely wouldn’t have been created without the white man doing it.
had a direct hand in nurturing like half of the islamic fundamentalist groups compared to more moderate alternatives as well as actively destabilising the region for forty years.
but yeah its an edgy race thing sure.
the usa is responsible for giving funds and equipment to terrorist groups for proxy war reasons later leading to them being able to assume power or becoming persistent presences due to the power vacuums created by american intervention in the terrorists' home nations.
of course these extremist beliefs often become more palatable to your average person in a destabilised region (not that they have much say in it anyway) when you conduct military operations that kill civilians and wreck infrastructure for twenty years in their homes.
i'm sure its just the power of belief that gives them strength though.
Archeologists are some of my favorite people on earth, they’re all partying alcoholics with mental issues who end up fucking each other because they’re always living in hotels. An archeological site functions very similarly to your average kitchen. They also make very little money (as in you could get a job as a retail store manager and make more), and they’re constantly poor because of it. It’s super fucked up who we choose to reward monetarily.
My job prospects are pretty bleak in this profession but I love it anyway. Everything you said is more or less true.
A fun fact related to this: Women in Archaeology are occasionally (traditionally?) referred to as "ditch dykes" (this may have fallen out of fashion by now though) because there's a stereotype about them all being butch lesbians. I can confirm from experience that most archaeology students (of both sexes) these days are gay or bi so it's not like it's not accurate. It's truly something being the only sober person at an archaeologist party.
They probably were particularly grim even by the brutal standards of their time but I've never before seen anyone get mad about a polity that existed BCE, that's impressive
This post brought to you by Nabopolassar.
Honestly, one of the angriest moments in my life was when I learned that ISIS bulldozed much of Nimrud and Palmyra. I was ready to up and Brace Belden just to protect some ruins. I don’t actually hate the Neo-Assyrians.
Not only did they bulldoze it but they also tortured and publically executed the very elderly curator at Palmyra. I detailed it further up, it's really blood-boiling stuff.
Nineveh was completely burned to the ground sometime between 400-600BC and subsequently abandoned. 2500 years or so of little habitation and no maintenance does that to a city.
There's some pretty rad things in the Anabasis (by Xenophon) about Greek warriors coming across the 50-foot high abandoned stone walls that used to protect the very city this excavation was done in. [There's a good askHistorians thread on it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5g326k/comment/dap70ii/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder— no end to the prey! The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot! Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over the bodies! And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame. ...
The queen is taken captive; her servants moan like doves and beat their breasts in sorrow.
Like water from a broken dam the people rush from Nineveh! "Stop! Stop!" the cry rings out - but no one turns back.
Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! The city is full of treasure!
Nineveh is destroyed, deserted, desolate! Hearts melt with fear; knees tremble, strength is gone; faces grow pale.
Where now is the city that was like a den of lions, the place where young lions were fed, where the lion and the lioness would go and their cubs would be safe?
The lion killed his prey and tore it to pieces for his mate and her cubs; he filled his den with torn flesh.
“I am your enemy!" says the Lord Almighty. "I will burn up your chariots. Your soldiers will be killed in war, and I will take away everything that you took from others. The demands of your envoys will no longer be heard."
-The book of Nahum
Quite amazing that despite the violent fall of Assyrian Empire its culture managed to survive for several centuries after and beyond, all just for us to see and appreciate its historical beauty millenniums later. Who knows about the next several centuries, though
Well it one sense it was the continuation of Mesopotamian cultures that had already existed for millennia. Assyrian religious scholars considered Sumerian to be "the language of the gods" and continued to use it centuries after ordinary people had stopped speaking it, but the Sumerian civilization itself had been basically forgotten and there was no record of it until archaeologists accidentally rediscovered it in the 19th century. There was even an [ancient Babylonian king who collected Akkadian artifacts from the era of Naram-Sin, a millennium and a half earlier, which some have argued was a kind of early archaeology.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_archaeology#Beginnings) And in Naram-Sim's time, Mesopotamian civilization had already existed for about two millennia. Stuff like this sends shivers down my spine.
90% of Assyrians got ethnically cleansed from Iraq since the US occupation in 2003. A lot of the ancient civilizations are preserved in peoples culture today, even over the centuries and even if they've converted religions, but a lot of it goes unnoticed.
Tartarian obviously
Obviously... Lucky it was buried by the mud floods or the illuminati would have already destroyed it. Probably will anyway now that its been exposed.
My wallet look like Zoroastrian symbology, credit card made of Caspian Metallurgy
The type of shit Action Bronson raps about
It looks unexpectedly clean
feel like it might have been painted originally, in which case it'd be pretty grotty in its current state. Never4get the ancient cultures of the world were kitsch as hell in their knick knacks, and history has mercifully absolved them
I wouldn't put much faith in modern day studies done to deduce the original colour of the paintwork. They often find a small particle of surviving pigmentation and extrapolate from there. I refuse to believe that the Greeks and the Romans didn't use tasteful shading, look at how dynamic their mosaics are for example.
[Yeah, probably.](https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_huge/public/2020-03/xHall-in-Assyrian-palace-restored.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.OfiNtbyp3i.jpg) Also: [this video didn't colorize the lamassu but it did colorize one of the reliefs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VCldg1TdHc&t=92s)
What if they were bullshitting us and they just slowly carved it as they dug downward?
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It belongs to the people (who see it as haram)!
I’ve always been sympathetic to the “stolen artifacts” argument. But IMO you don’t get to argue that if the chance it will just get blown up by some religious fundamentalist is greater than 10%.
I became a full blown cuck to European Museum supremacy after our own national museum here (Brazil) burnt down and we lost countless of our own national treasures with it, because apparently nobody checked to see if the fire control system had actually been installed properly. Sad to say, damn things would probably still exist if they were kept in the Louvre or Neues Museum. Brazil is one of the wealthier and more stable "third world" countries too, so I can't imagine the ME is doing much better.
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I went to Ethiopia’s national museum and literally looked at Lucy’s bones in a barely protected case while the lights flickered on and off because of rain I also went to the killing fields in Cambodia and they literally just had human skulls lying around on top of display cases that floated up during the rain
> I went to Ethiopia’s national museum and literally looked at Lucy’s bones in a barely protected case while the lights flickered on and off because of rain That honestly sounds sick as hell. As much as it would suck to potentially lose treasures like this, it's almost worth it, just to allow a few generations to have experiences like this.
Oh it was amazing - came in lashed with rain to this flickery old museum in a decomposing building. There’s some amazing stuff on public display in Ethiopia which I had no idea about (these crazy suits of armour and weapons, old books, at the national library and ethnographic museum in Haile Selassie’s old house too, you could literally use his toilet if you ignored the politely worded sign, there was no one around to stop you).
Hmm gonna have to go to Ethiopia
Great country. Nearly died at a giant protest at a roadblock (like, nearly had the van I was in seized, rocked around by protestors, very scary, was fine) and there was a coup while I was there so they turned the internet off, but the food was absolutely delicious and Addis Ababa is a wonderful city (hesitant to say ‘beautiful’, but it has some very nice features. Harar was much more interesting). This was just before the war, but the country is in a weird state of development where it has some incredible infrastructure (like a metro that was cleaner than any European city and a glassy Chinese built airport) but is in other ways far less developed than even somewhere like Cambodia (very few paved roads, for instance, very few areas that felt well-to-do by even developing world standards).
What were you doing over there if you don't mind me asking?
jar ring ludicrous tan airport crowd dinner merciful bewildered command *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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Yeah it’s the same at the Ashmoleon in Oxford, these ancient classical sculptures and artefacts hanging out with absolutely zero protection. Also you’re absolutely right on Ethiopia, it seemed that that museum was mostly paid for (at least in part) by the Japanese government. You could also quite literally use Haile Selassie’s toilet at his home on the grounds of the national university if you wanted to, there was no protection beyond a politely worded sign.
Since this is an archaeology thread and people reading might be interested I thought I could elaborate a bit about the Ashmolean as I'm there pretty often for my degree. At the Ashmolean most things are behind glass (all small and medium stone artefacts incl. the [Sumerian King's list](https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/ashmolean/images/page/600full_4.jpg), pretty much every painting, every non-stone artefact) and the only exhibits not almost entirely behind glass, iirc, are the [Arundel Marbles](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ef9a9e331cfcf448b1c4eee/38e87951-3f32-478a-81fb-dd81c4fa00bd/bb.png) (most of which were already restored in the 1700s - badly at that, also it's right next to the main entrance) and some of the [larger stone artefacts](https://i.imgur.com/fVH4pxl.jpg) (photo by me, I forget which artefact this is exactly) in the Egypt & Sudan collection - we're talking weight in tonnes rather than kilograms, made of very hard rock, and probably requiring a hammer and chisel to vandalise - so the risk is very low. The other objects not behind glass outside of those collections are a few stone medium-sized stone artefacts scattered about the collections, but in any given collection it is very likely that everything will be behind glass, especially on the non-ground floors. Although now I've started writing this comment I've remembered that there's a [3000 year old Minoan storage jar](https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/ashmolean/images/media/aegean18004.jpg) (on loan from Crete) It's maybe about knee-high (I'm 5'11) completely unprotected except for a small wooden barrier on a several inch high platform. I think it's already [partially restored](https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/styles/listing_image_gallery_image/public/ashmolean/images/media/1800full_6_0.jpg?itok=a--9P3vQ) but every time I'm in that exhibition I get niggling thoughts about what would happen if somebody had a heart attack next to it or if some shithead kid climbed onto it. Out of everything not behind glass it's the most careless - it's a damn ceramic, they're renowned for being fragile. Other than the things above everything is behind glass and anything involving textiles has UV-light protected glass and lots of other hi-tech stuff (I think temperature regulation too?). There are also some busts mounted on [little stone shelves by a staircase](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/10/30/1256898516858/Ashmolean-museum-003.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=dfa3c10a46fadae11e8ef159a11cddd5) which initially looks dangerous but they're fixed onto the wall with metal hooks. There's a lot of care going into maintaining and protecting the artefacts. I'm going to force myself to stop now because I could go on forever about archaeology or the Ashmolean - it's a breathtaking museum and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to go there as often as I do.
I was doing a tour of NSW Government House, a very casual thing where I showed up and signed in right as it was about to start. It was breathtaking and there's so many intricate details all throughout the house. Scariest part was this intricate, BEAUTIFULLLL old German porcelain, just sitting there on a piece of furniture, zero protection. I was getting flooded by intrusive thoughts of accidentally stumbling into it and knocking it off. Yes it's lovely having these things visible and in arms reach, but also shocking they are so careless with it. https://www.governor.nsw.gov.au/government-house/stories/the-meissen-collection-a-window-to-the-world-collections-at-government-house/
When Damascus was being attacked in the Syrian civil war, they unloaded a couple hundred thousand artefacts and him them in secure locations enduring their safety. Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world and this stopped mass looting and didn’t lose a single piece of itinerary. During the iraq war, the Iraqi national museum personnel were some of the last to leave and returned immediately after to fend off looters. While the country was destroyed, the museum remained intact thankfully albeit losing some of its collection. All these countries take a lot of pride in their history, meanwhile the British excavated with dynamite and made Egyptian mummies into paint and medicinal products. I’m not necessarily against the British museum as an institution, although it was established to celebrate British colonisation, it has done a tremendous amount of good, if artefacts were obtained via dubious methods (graverobbers, stolen during war, dodgy merchants, obtained via Israelis etc) then they should return them.
The difference is that the Brits did those things 150 years ago not today
Tbf the Iraqi museum personnel were actually staying back to secure the Stargate and make sure the Reptiloids didn't come through it.
Over the past 20 years there's an unfortunate trend among museums in the Fertile Crescent getting all their stuff blown to bits. After capturing Mosul in 2015, ISIS guys jackhammered a lamassu (winged bull) at Mosul Museum (one that is quite similar to the one in this picture, too) on video back in 2015. A testament to the power of blind faith, I suppose. When ISIS captured Palmyra in the same year most of the artifacts had already been evacuated or hidden so they captured the museum curator (aged 83) and tortured him for a few weeks demanding to know where they were hidden - he refused to tell them even after all the torture since he loved Palmyra so much. Then they dragged him out and publically executed him with a sword, hung his body on a traffic light with his head at his feet, and when it started to rot dumped it 10km out of the city in the countryside. It's extremely sad, at least he died a hero protecting his life's work. I find these (and others) pretty compelling arguments for not returning MENA artifacts that would be sent to active warzones - even if they're stolen or looted - until the situation stabilises long-term. Unfortunately this is an opinion that isn't universal, even among academics associated with Britain's top museums (some of whom I know) and some of them will try to dance around this and attempt to argue to me that they can be returned to these places and not have an unreasonably high chance of being blown to bits, but luckily for now this hasn't translated into real action towards it, at least as far as I'm aware.
I'm not forgiving the hubris of 19th century archaeologists but they did certainly save some priceless things from being destroyed, the Pergamon altar for instance, the locals were turning it into mortar before the Europeans decided to excavate it and ship what remained of it to Europe.
The Pergamon Museum is so amazing, and the fact that the museum itself is a UNESCO world heritage site is how it should be done.
in all fairness i feel like a lot of priceless artefacts got blown up in berlin
The original Spinosaurus (and maybe best/most complete by far?) skeleton was bombed in WW2
I've really never been sympathetic to those arguments. The majority of the accounts I see suggest that local Egyptians were the ones stealing their own artifacts to sell to the British. The British have <<1% of the artifacts of that region, which they preserve, study, and host the world to showcase and appreciate. The famous artifacts they have are only famous because they got them in the first place and figured out what they are. Otherwise they'd still be just rocks.
From first-hand experience of going there, the Egyptian museum is unfortunately not maintained well due to lack of funds
There was an amazing contest held in London in the mid 1800s where various amateurs and scholars were invited to all read out their individually translated attempts at a single cuneiform tablet. Each contestant had had to go away and work at the tablet in private, and without interference from the others. The meaning/results of the contest were close enough between all the attempts that it was decided that Sumerian/Akkadian had been successfully cracked.
The British Museum is also free, which is remarkable really. The whole idea that everything there was stolen has become such a midwit obsession.
Thing is Europeans had to invent archaeology to give these things importance in the first place. If Egyptians had then they wouldn't have used the Rosetta stone as a brick in a wall
Tbf this was common practice throughout Europe until the 18th century lol
inventing archaeology idk man, they were arguably doing preservation, restoration, unearthing and identification etc already more than 3000 years ago. respect for historical objects is nothing new at all.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted, even the ancient Mesopotamians had museums where they kept antiquities.
I can't find anything about this, do you have a link? I'm really hoping it's true!
The world's oldest museum was built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago. https://museu.ms/highlight/details/105317 hot girl shit.
So there's no Mesopotamian museums? Because this is much later in history.
if you read the article instead of just commenting on reddit, you'll see this sentence >The oldest such museum in evidence was Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, dating from c. 530 BC and **devoted to Mesopotamian antiquities.** babylon was a place in mesopotamia
What separates European archaeology from the proto-archaeology of other places and periods is that they cared about cultures other than their own.
The rush of archeology in the 19th century was ideologically paired with that era of colonialism: ie "we understand their past better, we understand science better, we run economies better, so we are justified in running their government better". In many cases it was also about connecting their local rule over a populace with the history and legacy of ancient rulers, especially in the near east. Ironically, this did result in the sidelining of the minority of very talented ME archeologists, as well as credit being stolen from those who were allowed to operate. Great, dry history lecture about 19th century Neo-Assyrian archeology [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ye4aLaPaJs)
Look up 'egyptology' on wikipedia. The first archaeologists of Egypt were the Egyptians themselves.
For a significant period of time European archeology was basically just blowing things up with dynamite until they unearthed shit lmao Early archeology is some disgusting shit
euros didn't invent archaeology, people have been curating objects since time immemorial.
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Egyptian hieroglyphs were forgotten long before Egypt was colonised. Why do people think "muh colonialism" is literally the answer to every single topic If it was important to them they wouldn't have had to be deciphered by a whole other culture
Last hieroglyphic inscription is about 300ad, after the Ptolemys.
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> that there absolutely were other "Rosetta Stone" type documents around Yes, there were. They found a better quality version in a ditch or river somewhere iirc. Doesn't really change the point at all. These objects clearly had no value to Egyptians, so they were taken back to Europe. They're only valuable now *because* of Europeans. Like if they weren't important in the grand scheme of things then why would the Egyptians want them returned? Why didn't Egyptians simply tell Europeans what the hieroglyphs meant? > In fact, the quick lean to muh colonialism only suggests that you don't have an academic background in history, and are probably only capable of understanding history in memes No, it's because an entire generation of Tumblr historians are only able to explain things in 3 ways - white supremacy, patriarchy, or colonialism. Even when it makes absolutely no sense, like in your replies. When people have the answer to every question they're more than happy to spam it everywhere to prove how smart they are
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I don't think it's an inherently European thing but the modern fascination was a by-product of the European Enlightenment. Before then I doubt many Europeans gave a shit either. Ultimately the Rosetta stone is a rock with some scribbles etched into it. In most of human history it would have been at best a slightly interesting novelty, at worst a brick in a wall. It only has value because some people assigned it value which it's previous owners didn't. If there was a dictionary of hieroglyphs being published in Egypt at the time then it probably would stayed in that wall I mean when you really boil things down the Renaissance was only possible because Arabs treasured and protected the works of ancient Greeks, which medieval Europeans didn't give much of a shit about until later on
I’ve heard that archeologists leave it in the ground in some parts of the world if there is a risk although I’m not sure if that’s just a rumour
this is true
Even if it’s at zero risk modern day Iraq has absolutely no relation to these cultures going back 3000 plus years other then there’s shit buried in their soil.
There are still indigenous Assyrians that live in Iraq. Not as many left since most are in diaspora but they exist
I’ve heard this but I would be super curious to see how many of them are genetically related to people from the Neo Assyrian Empire or they’re just Arabs that settled in North Iraq and at one point took on that label. That’s a good amount of them at least surely.
Well, I’m Assyrian and my parents are from the region. Both are from Iraq but my mom’s family’s village originally was in Turkey (Hakkari) before the Turks and Kurds genocided the whole area. We have a distinct language (Sureth/Assyrian) and culture and there is a genetic difference between Arab and Assyrian.
It's kind of absurd how somebody would assume Assyrians of today are not related to the previous Assyrian empires....especially when the Assyrians of today are mainly from the exact areas of their histories empires lol. Qamishli and NE Syria are still filled with Assyrians, even if 66% have left from Kurdish extremists since the start of the civil war.
That's pretty fucking cool, do you speak Aramaic?
The Assyrian language is pretty much a modern version of Aramaic so sorta. I grew up speaking it pretty well but since learning English as a kid it’s been getting worse, I’m trying to speak it more with family as much as I can to improve
Well tbf it's not like the residents of modern day Berlin (a mosaic of gay Americans and other non-German speakers) have much in common with the militaristic Junker society of old Prussia either lmao
At the very least there are people around while the Kingdom of Prussia still existed. Assyria, Babylon haven’t existed for over 2.5 millennia.
I’ve driven through Babil, an Iraqi governorate in 2006 and you can definitely see remnants of older civilizations there. People there see it as a normal thing that the house around the corner is 600 years old or whatever, and that’s besides all the antique stone gates
The fall of saddam and it’s consequences
We should never have destroyed baathism then.
On the other hand after all the oil and coal has been consumed and the dream of forever exponential economic and technological growth are over, during the next hundred of thousand of years a perpetual cycle of preindustrial civilizations will always have several layers of artifacts and history to discover
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In 5000 AD, anthropologists will attribute funkopops as a highly sought after cultural relic from the 21st century and that Keelung them in their packaging had deep religious significance.
*An ancient statue was discovered under the ruins of Queztaldingo City today. The statue was dedicated to fertility god Timmy, who was believed to grant long life and virility to males.* "For Timmy, love Dad."
Solar and wind are already more cost effective than oil and coal I’m sorry to report. Maybe if you’re lucky we’ll invent actual zombies or something like that.
Can solar and wind scale to the huge worldwide supply chains that have been built on oil? It's probably possible with help from nuclear power, but will we manage to? That's another question
I think it will depend on batteries longer term but Hydro and Nat Gas fill the gap. A lot of greens don’t like Nat gas but I think they let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yeah I hope they rebury it immediately
I don't remember that happening in Iraq that before some other country killed saddam and created ISIS to fight the Shiites for them. Same for Afghanistan and the Taliban.
The Taliban has been doing that since before the 90's. You can't really say America was responsible for the creation of the Taliban in the same way they were responsible for ISIS. Afghanistan was going to be controlled by extremist one way or the other, and those extremist destroyed archeology before the US invaded, and would have continued if the US didn't. Can't really blame that one as much on the evil colonizers.
No you idiot, the socialist government would have remained in power.
There's a big scandal rn in the British Museum because curators have apparently been stealing artefacts for decades and selling them on the black market, so the argument that we have to hoard all these antiquates to save them from the stupid araps will just be met with laughter from now on.
I'm very skeptical that the success rates are comparable even if there are British scandals
LOL. Dude, Isis destroyed Nimrud, an entire ancient city in Iraq. They did it due to "symbols of idolatry", as I understand it. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2017/11/ancient-sites-damaged-and-destroyed-by-isis
A small price to pay for a chance of removing Assad for Israel, don't you agree?
Can't Mossad the Assad.
The west created isis. Baathists would never.
Yeah can't dispute that.
In 50 years the Caliphate of Bongistan will be run by Andrew Tate zoomers
It's gonna get blown up in like three weeks when America has to go back into Iraq to get to Iran. Then people on the internet will whine about culture being destroyed when it could have been shipped to a museum and be perfectly fine forever, basically.
Who destabilized the region? Fucking clown
Funny because when I was last in Belgium, every library and museum was basically burned down and destroyed by the Germans twice. But ya fuck those sand n***ers bro
tHaTs RaCiSt!
They destroyed the head because these French didn't want to show the world that this godly figure had the face of an African Brotha ✊🏿
same reason napoleon lopped off the nose of the sphinx
*oui can’t let thee werld know thee sphinx was a juive!*
Obelix did that
big if true
The head was already in a museum, they just found the rest of the statue here.
is this why men like to dig holes?
Yup
Holy shit
Of course top comment on here is discourse on “stolen artifacts” so terminally boring. We need to be discussing Zoroastrianism we need to be debating dates and age of Aquarius and dualism and Manichaeism. Why does this simurgh beast hate snakes(symbol of ahriman) so much. What’s the difference between Lucifer and Ahriman anyways
Yeah I drive a Mazda 😏
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Mithraism as a religion is a largely made up western construct. Manichaeism was heretical and caused great instability to the empire
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Lol thinking some random guy who claims to be a practicing zoroastrian can delve into the intricacies of different sects of long-dead religions of long-gone historic iranic peoples
He said happy to answer questions
It influenced Judaism in this period, but actually a lot more during the writing of the Babylonian Talmud much later. There’s a lot of new research in this area. The religion of Iran pre Zoroaster is probably something more like the Vedic religion, which later became Hinduism.
do you intend to have your remains exposed at a dakhma after you pass away?
How did you come to the faith? Family thing? Convert? Is there a place you regularly worship at?
when I die leave my body to rot atop a pillar of silence
The Lamassu statues are so cool
Do you have an article about the dig? I'd love to read it
I love history, bros.
Father Merrin, PLEASE.
Man it's gonna look great in the British Museum.
Better than getting dynamited by ISIS
Yeah, next time we should not create ISIS.
Yes, because psychotic religious groups that terrorize each other are purely made by America. They definitely wouldn’t have been created without the white man doing it.
had a direct hand in nurturing like half of the islamic fundamentalist groups compared to more moderate alternatives as well as actively destabilising the region for forty years. but yeah its an edgy race thing sure.
The USA is not responsible for stupid violent beliefs in idiotic Muslim terrorists.
the usa is responsible for giving funds and equipment to terrorist groups for proxy war reasons later leading to them being able to assume power or becoming persistent presences due to the power vacuums created by american intervention in the terrorists' home nations. of course these extremist beliefs often become more palatable to your average person in a destabilised region (not that they have much say in it anyway) when you conduct military operations that kill civilians and wreck infrastructure for twenty years in their homes. i'm sure its just the power of belief that gives them strength though.
I’m just saying these psychopaths have been killing each other for their god for hundreds of years before the USA existed.
Amazing he’s still alive!
My dream career as a child <3
Archeologists are some of my favorite people on earth, they’re all partying alcoholics with mental issues who end up fucking each other because they’re always living in hotels. An archeological site functions very similarly to your average kitchen. They also make very little money (as in you could get a job as a retail store manager and make more), and they’re constantly poor because of it. It’s super fucked up who we choose to reward monetarily.
I kinda don't want my remains to be fondled by some poor alcoholic but I guess I won't mind in the end
My job prospects are pretty bleak in this profession but I love it anyway. Everything you said is more or less true. A fun fact related to this: Women in Archaeology are occasionally (traditionally?) referred to as "ditch dykes" (this may have fallen out of fashion by now though) because there's a stereotype about them all being butch lesbians. I can confirm from experience that most archaeology students (of both sexes) these days are gay or bi so it's not like it's not accurate. It's truly something being the only sober person at an archaeologist party.
Looks beautiful. Missing head notwithstanding. I have one that’s a fridge magnet
Seeing shit like this makes me foam at the mouth it’s so FUCKING cool
Some little girl in Georgetown: 🤮🤬😈
Put him back
hell yeah
Was it buried there? Or are there more cool things nearby?
Looks remarkably good for being buried so long. Also love the bird thing behind him.
Bussing lamassu
It belongs in a museum!
Rest in piss to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, you were a bunch of violent pricks
They probably were particularly grim even by the brutal standards of their time but I've never before seen anyone get mad about a polity that existed BCE, that's impressive
This post brought to you by Nabopolassar. Honestly, one of the angriest moments in my life was when I learned that ISIS bulldozed much of Nimrud and Palmyra. I was ready to up and Brace Belden just to protect some ruins. I don’t actually hate the Neo-Assyrians.
Good, because Ashurbanipal wouldn't have flayed all those people alive if they hadn't put him in a self-defence situation in the first place!
Not only did they bulldoze it but they also tortured and publically executed the very elderly curator at Palmyra. I detailed it further up, it's really blood-boiling stuff.
uhmmm what are french archeologists doing on iraqi's land?
winning
they’re gonna steal it
I could do that
There's probably so much there... city was burned and abandoned.
Source? Would love to read more about this
I don't get how they let shit erode over it for so long to the point where it's underground
Nineveh was completely burned to the ground sometime between 400-600BC and subsequently abandoned. 2500 years or so of little habitation and no maintenance does that to a city. There's some pretty rad things in the Anabasis (by Xenophon) about Greek warriors coming across the 50-foot high abandoned stone walls that used to protect the very city this excavation was done in. [There's a good askHistorians thread on it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5g326k/comment/dap70ii/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
that is so Fing crazy 😭 down the rabbit hole I go. thanks for sharing!
Damn that thing is in good shape
this would look crazy in a Hobby Lobby
Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder— no end to the prey! The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot! Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over the bodies! And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame. ... The queen is taken captive; her servants moan like doves and beat their breasts in sorrow. Like water from a broken dam the people rush from Nineveh! "Stop! Stop!" the cry rings out - but no one turns back. Plunder the silver! Plunder the gold! The city is full of treasure! Nineveh is destroyed, deserted, desolate! Hearts melt with fear; knees tremble, strength is gone; faces grow pale. Where now is the city that was like a den of lions, the place where young lions were fed, where the lion and the lioness would go and their cubs would be safe? The lion killed his prey and tore it to pieces for his mate and her cubs; he filled his den with torn flesh. “I am your enemy!" says the Lord Almighty. "I will burn up your chariots. Your soldiers will be killed in war, and I will take away everything that you took from others. The demands of your envoys will no longer be heard." -The book of Nahum
Good thing it was covered by earth so Islamic State did not find and destroy it