51. Archaeology from Mount Karkas to Southern Mesopotamia.

Geography for this Post Highlighted in Yellow

Blue Modern Place Names shown beside Black Fictional Names

Last week, we began our 50-week journey through the Fertile Crescent at the village of Abyaneh on the slopes of Mount Karkas. Fifty miles northwest lies Kashan, Iran, where we find the excavation of Tepe Sialk and the hypothesized Zayandeh River Culture which would link the Tepe Sialk civilization to the contemporaneous civilization of Southern Mesopotamia. One hundred miles south of Abyaneh is Isfahan. You will note how little is said in the Isfahan article about prehistory–virtually nothing. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to see progress from scientific archaeology in Iran for the foreseeable future. The Wikipedia articles are skimpy because the published scientific archaeology is skimpy. Here is the latest, a 1942 Oriental Institute publication covering Tepe Siyalk (Sialk) reprinted in 1957.

Pre-Islamic archaeology in the interior appears to be at a standstill in Shiite Iran e.g. the study of the Zayandeh River Culture is receiving about as much priority as the study of the Indus Valley Civilization in Sunni Pakistan. Islamic governments do not encourage study of pre-Islamic civilizations with their own archaeologists, because of the prevalent Islamic worldview that all important world history started with the prophet Mohammed. Nor do their dangerous environments encourage international archaeologists to excavate, and this danger has increased immeasurably since September 11, 2001.

Archaeology of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age in the interior – anything which does not support the Islamic narrative – is receiving virtually no support from the Iranian government, which sits atop the vast unexcavated evidence at the great crossroad of civilizations which preceded Islam in that region for millennia . It is a far graver issue than the mere prioritization of excavations of Israelite strata over non-Israelite strata in Israel– which practice is relatively benign and essentially a question of economic priorities. If a major university with proper credentials has funding for excavations in Israel, they are likely to receive approval of their plan, with adequate controls of course. Diametrically opposite to this, we witnessed the willful and massive destruction of antiquities in Afghanistan by the Sunni Taliban, and are witnessing more of the same in Iraq by the Sunni ISIS.

It takes little imagination to foresee the end of scientific archaeology with this programmatic destruction of discovery and truth-telling about the past in the Cradle of Civilization, should those movements consolidate their dominion. The only regional artifacts still safe are those that have not been excavated and those in museums outside the region–which makes a mockery of the politically-correct view that priceless ancient artifacts should remain in the custody of the present government of the land where they were found, regardless of the fact that they will not or cannot protect them from cultural Luddites currently overrunning or about to overrun such lands. And of course we are ignoring the inconvenient political question about what relationship dynastic Egypt or Mesopotamia has to current Islamic governments–such as the Sultan who stripped the white veneer from the pyramids to make mosques in Cairo. Here are “progressive” opinions on this issue. I think we need to re-evaluate our opinions about repatriation of artifacts to the Fertile Crescent in the clear light of the rampant and unpredictable looting and destruction now prevailing. As long as local (Sharia or secular) governments tolerate and don’t repudiate religious jihad and violence against artifactual evidence of prior forms of worship, we should turn a deaf ear to such pleas.

There is some good news. Capitalizing upon archaeology done apiece with that of Mesopotamia in the past two centuries, knowledge of the Elamic culture in western Iran is much more developed than that of the Zagros Mountains. Moving southwest from Mt. Karkas to Susa, we enter the western extremities of Mesopotamia and the Proto-Elamite culture during the period 3400-2500 BC, which was moving apace with the Uruk culture — and could rightly be said to have been integral to it. Choga Mish was a nearby predecessor to Susa on the Susiana plain, worshiped like most other late Neolithic cultures, grew large and prosperous in the late Uruk period, then was suddenly abandoned after 2,000 years of settlement in the early 3rd millennium BC. Choga Mish was apparently caught between cross currents of economic development at the end of the Uruk period, and became obsolete. You can read the OI’s full account on Choga Mish by downloading a free PDF of a book that sells for $90 in hard copy. Another predecessor settlement, recently discovered, was Choga Bonut, the first settlement on the Susiana plain, about 7200 BC.

If you take away no other insight from this post regarding the scanty understanding of Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Early Bronze Age cultural movements in Iran’s interior, take this: no substantial new insights into the Indo-Iranian cultural developments in the interior of Iran, nor of its links to Uruk-Mesopotamia and Harappan-India, will be forthcoming until peaceful relations with the non-Islamic world are reestablished, and Islamic and non-Islamic scientific archaeologists are free to dig and report truthfully.

Out of this same Susiana plain, two millennia later, will come King Cyrus the Great to forge the last great indigenous civilization to arise within Mesopotamia: the Persian. The cuneiform Cyrus Cylinder below records this king’s political decree that the captive religions in the empire (proscribed by the just defeated Babylonians) and captives exiled to Babylon from their native countries (by the just defeated Babylonians) were to return to their homelands and reinstate the worship of their indigenous gods.

Cyrus Cylinder found in excavated foundation of temple in Babylon.

One of those suppressed religions was that of Israel, and Cyrus’s specific decree announcing their release and command to rebuild is recorded along with various commendations of Cyrus in the Bible books: 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Isaiah, and Daniel.

Arriving on the Susiana plain, we have now reached Southern Mesopotamia. In the next post, we will explore this region and examine its major cities, including Susa, Ur, and Eshnunna, these three of which I used in Ausgrenor, the first novel in my epic Raising Up Pharaoh sextet.

Thanks for visiting,

R. E. J. Burke