Antiquities in Syria

Remains of a ziggurat in Syria (Mari c. 2000 BC)

I recently came across an article talking about the looting of antiquities in Syria. While this may seem like a minor issue compared to the scale of suffering that the conflict in causing in the region, it is still a serious issue.

Syria has been both the heartland and the cross roads of empires for thousands of years and contains priceless artefacts and historical sites. The cities of Mari and Ebla were already ancient by the time of Hammurabi, the famous Babylonian lawgiver. The city of Ugarit was one of the most powerful of the Bronze Age. Damascus has been one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in the world. Antioch was the main capital of the Seleucid Dynasty of Alexander's successors and was where the word "Christian" was coined. After its time as a wealthy Roman and Byzantine province Syria briefly served as the capital of the Islamic Caliphate before seeing the Seljuk, Crusader and Mamluk kingdoms until its ultimate incorporation into the Ottoman Empire until 1918.

The tells, cities, fortifications and castles of all these ancient cultures remain in Syria and, more importantly, the buried records, both written and archaeological, are crucial to the history of mankind. The looting that is occurring due to the conflict puts all of this at risk. Even if an artefact is not destroyed, the un-scientific removal of the piece from its context destroys the context of the artefact and forever diminishes its worth to history (Indiana Jones is a terrible archaeologist).

A piece of pottery will never have the value of a human life, but the wanton destruction.of knowledge hurts us all nevertheless. I thought that it was worth raising awareness of this.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/1214/492855-syria-unesco/

Original Sources

 Both writer and readers are probably a little sick of writing/reading blog posts that are extremely long. So this is a short post: Like, really short. When studying history it is vital to look at the source material. You can learn an awful lot by watching documentaries, reading encyclopaedias or summaries (or blogs) but nothing beats reading the source material in its full form.

So I’m posting a link to one of my favourite sites, which you can view by clicking here. It is one of the nicest collections of translations of rare primary documents that I have ever come across and it has material from remotest antiquity to modern documents. There are entire genres of literature that I didn’t even know existed until I spent time on this site. Some content is more useful than others and there are a few dead links, as it is an old site. But no matter what your area of historical interest it should have something for you. If you were to spend your time reading original historical writings and never looked at my blog again I would be delighted (although maybe you can do both?) so off you go now to check it out! Go on now! Shoo! Hope you enjoy it and maybe see you back here some stage in the future!