The dig The site of Babylon – one of the oldest, richest, and most fabled cities of Antiquity – had attracted a succession of European antiquarian investigators during the 19th century, but it was not until the arrival of a German Oriental Society (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft) team led by Robert Koldewey (1855-1925) that scientific excavations were [...]
CWA travels to: Erbil Citadel
The World’s Longest Living Town Today, you will only get a view of Erbil Citadel ‘some four miles away’ from the window of a plane: there is a building boom going on in the modern city that surrounds the ancient settlement. Even so, the sight of the great citadel cannot fail to impress. It sits [...]
Layard at Nimrud
July 27, 2012
Filed Under: Issue 54, Great Discoveries, Iraq
On an overland ride from England to Ceylon in 1839, Austen Henry Layard became fascinated by the newly emerging archaeology of Mesopotomia (in modern Iraq).
Royal Tombs of Ur
September 3, 2011
Filed Under: Issue 49, Great Discoveries, Iraq
From the underground chambers of the Royal Tombs emerged a picture of a civilisation that was at once dazzling and sinister
Penn Museum’s First Excavations
This autumn the Penn Museum will hold an exhibition on their first-ever excavation at Nippur in modern Iraq. But it all centres on a most scandalous affair, as Richard Hodges, Director of the Penn Museum explains.
Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum
The Rape of Mesopotamia is not an exaggerated title, unfortunately. His book is an ‘autopsy of a cultural disaster’, writes Lawrence Rothfield, a former director of the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, an institution long associated with Mesopotamian archaeology. Indeed he draws heavily on the experience of McGuire Gibson, his archaeologist colleague [...]
Academics Deployed as Peace-Makers in Iraq
The expertise of anthropologists is being used to help the US military better understand the populations in the areas in which they operate
Iraq Looting
Five years on from the US occupation of Iraq, archaeologists have been attempting to quantify the scale of the damage to heritage sites
Uruk-Warqa, Iraq
Professor Roger Matthews, gives the low-down on Uruk-Warka in Iraq, seemingly the birth-place of writing and appears in the Bible
Iraq School
The Iraq school is in many ways in even a worse situation than the EES, as they are more reliant on Academy funding: of their total turnover of £100,000, some £60,000 comes from the British Academy: this is to be reduced to £30,000 for the next two years, and will then be cut completely. The [...]
Raqqa, the Crucible of Islamic Technology
A medieval site of massive industry: the once-booming and cosmopolitan city of Raqqa, on the banks of the Euphrates, Syria
Nimrud – The Treasures of the Queens
Excavations in north-west palace at Nimrud reveal burial of Queen Yaba, the Queen of Tiglath-pileser III, and her successors
Looting of the Iraq Museum Baghdad
A s the recent elections have shown, there are few items more controversial than the war in Iraq. Do we see it as being an unnecessary and aggressive war? Or do we see it as a noble attempt to rid Iraq of a hated tyrant? For archaeologists, the catalyst in this debate is the looting [...]
Letter from Baghdad
John Curtis sends a postcard from Baghdad considering heritage work after the Iraq war
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