History Hunters International

The new Iranian empire

John — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:08:17 +0000

A bas relief sculpture at Naqsh-e Rostam, Iran, depicting the triumph of Shapur I over the Roman Emperor Valerian.

Having spent the last few years studying the series of great Iranian empires which preceded the conquest by Arabs, I’ve become familiar with the idea of an Iran bestriding the world like a Colosssus, as it has repeatedly and over a very long period, right into the modern era. (Maps of these empires, below.) My feeling is that we are seeing something more than a struggle for regional ‘hegemony’ by Iran.

Iranians are generally aware of their history and cultural heritage (as best they may, considering that much is lost, perhaps irretrievably). I am still being surprised at how technically-inventive this culture was thousands of years ago, and how this technology has not been lost, but is still being used and even adopted by others.

An ice-pit – Yakhchal – in Yazd Province. In 400 BCE, Persian engineers had already mastered the technique of storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert. Wind tower and qanat used for cooling.

To regard Iran as Third World, ‘Developing’ or in any way backward, would be to ignore how it has caught up in the last decades. Iran looks today to be a modern, technological nation. It’s military has a growing arsenal of very sophisticated weapons.

That apart, my interest is cultural and in that regard, I think I see signs [...]

Closing the Circle on the Great and the Good

John — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:45:50 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1AJjnl2y8U

March, 2003: The chief executive of News International admitting to a Select Committee of the UK Parliament to paying police for information: “We have paid the police for information in the past.”

Archaeology cannot be divorced from the cultural layers it studies – and within which it exists.

Our study of the archaeology of Greek magic and associated cultic and religious practices using chrest/good to conjure divine men into existence during the first centuries of the modern era, defines this term as ’the great and the good‘ and this became a foundation stone of Western Civilisation.

This same expression was used recently by a commentator describing the elite British circles of power in the on-going clash with the Fourth Estate, in which for many years the police, ministers of the crown and parliamentarians generally regarded criminal activity and complicity between the media, police and politicians as both normal and acceptable.

If this complicity is not to be regarded as conspiracy, then it is a societal norm in which the great and good regard themselves as above all others (which in a class-ridden society, they generally are) and as a final, logical consequence, above the law.

The present furore follows others in a crescendo:

Pension-selling scandals which made some very wealthy at the expense of pensioners. The Cash for Honours scandal in which police interviewed the Prime Minister. Banking crises of 2008-9 in which public funds were [...]

The Gordion Knot of Classical Antiquity

John — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:00:45 +0000

My interest in the subject I am following here began with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the work of John Allegro in the 1960s and later, Robert Eisenman. They showed that our history of the first centuries of this era – as we have understood it for the last two millennia – is profoundly wrong. This matters in a wider context, for this is the history of the origin of two religions – Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity – and Imperial Rome, which become the foundation stones of Western Civilisation.

Left: In April 1988, archeologists discovered a small jug of oil in the Qumran region that some believe is the oil used in the Temple. The find was announced by the New York Times on February 15, 1989, and a feature article was published in National Geographic Magazine in October of that year. After testing by the Pharmaceutical Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the substance was said be the Shemen Afarsimon hinted at in Psalm 133. The ancient Jewish community of Ein Gedi was known for its cultivation of the afarsimon.

A member of this website (Bart) suggested that the archaeology of early Buddhism was also of this period, as opposed to the accepted version, which places it in earlier centuries, and as it has strong Hellenistic influences, maybe we should consider the foundation of Buddhism as part of the history for Classical Antiquity. As our study of this progressed, another member (Lubby) , suggested that in this context we [...]

Archaeology: a personal view

John — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 10:01:45 +0000

A personal view.

Archaeology is the study of cultural layers. What do I mean by that?

The ‘-ology‘ means ‘field of study’, from the Greek -logia. It is used to mean a body of knowledge and in today’s world, a science.

‘Archaeo-‘ means ‘ancient’, so superficially at least, archaeology means merely the study of ancient things. The modern understanding, which imposes scientific enquiry and method upon scholarship, has taken this simple definition further.

Nowadays, archaeology is a scientific field of study and ‘ancient’ is no longer applied. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that archaeologists were recently studying a public building in my home town which I always regarded as modern and I have clear recollections of being used for its original purpose. Similarly, in London last year, archaeologists excavated a street for which there were still residents extant, able to describe in detail how they had lived in these houses.

‘Cultural layers’ means the impact mankind has made on the world. A layer is a period during which mankind made an impression on the earth. This could be the remains of a camp fire made by Neanderthals, the wreck of a ship on the seabed, or a city buried by time.

A landscape typically offers a limited variety of uses for people. A desert, for example, is suited to nomads, a fertile plain to farming, and a river ford for settlement and commerce. People through the ages therefore tend to utilise the same landscape in a similar manner, with [...]

Arbela (Erbil) in the archaeological news

John — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:58:00 +0000

This is one of the more important cities in understanding the history of Antiquity and the work there of a team of Czech archaeologists is making news.

Czech archaeologists find oldest settlement in Arbil, north Iraq ?TK | 8 MARCH 2010

Plzen, West Bohemia, March 5 (CTK) – An expedition of Czech archaeologists has found remains of an about 150,000-year-old prehistoric settlement in Arbil, north Iraq, which has been the so far oldest uncovered in this part of northern Mesopotamia, team head Karel Novacek told reporters Friday.

The archaeologists revealed a high number of items, mainly prehistoric stone tools, about nine metres under the ground in Arbil, capital of the Kurdish autonomous region, said archaeologist Novacek, from the University of West Bohemia in Plzen.

The eight-member expedition returned from Iraq at the end of last year. The team comprised experts from the University of West Bohemia, academic and university institutions in Prague and two companies.

Czech experts have succeeded in finding evidence of the oldest human settlement in the locality as all other finds of American expeditions working there 50 years ago are probably younger.

“We have been the first foreign expedition in this area since the second Gulf War in 2006,” Novacek added.

The project, supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR), has been the first professional Czech expedition to Mesopotamia, a cradle of human civilisation.

“The expedition has mainly focused on the town of Arbil that used to be one of the royal residential centres of ancient Assyria. [...]