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Missing National Heritage Artifact Spotted at a Wedding Party

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missing2It has been reported to WCHV that several items believed to be over hundreds of years old and considered to be valuable Persian national heritage artifacts were seen at a wedding party in Yazd Province, in Iran and was being used as a chair.  WCHV has been told that these items and more similar artifacts were discovered about four years ago in the Yazd  Province, and were cataloged, listed on the national heritage list of the country and were then supposed to be transferred a museum later.  However, last year, the associate director of the Iranian National Heritage Sites organization reported that those items had been destroyed by unknown individuals, until recently when others have reported seeing some of the same items at a wedding party and another at a conference.

missing1The items found four years ago reported to have included over fifty two artifacts, some made of rocks, with native paintings depicting scenes of hunting of mountain goats and tigers.

Exhibition on Mesopotamia at the Royal Ontario Museum

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Ontario museumA rare exhibition is currently on display now through January 5, 2014 at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World showcases hundreds of artifacts illustrating the achievements of these ancient empires. Highlights include a rare surviving Assyrian sculpture depicting King Ashurnasirpal II, and a terracotta relief of a striding lion that once adorned the palace of Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar II, who famously conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple and exiled the Jews to Babylon.

Mesopotamia, included the great ancient empires of Sumer, Assyria and Babylon. Encompassing present-day Iraq, northeast Syria, western Iran and southeast Turkey. The objects in the exhibition come from the British Museum’s rich collection as well as from the Royal Ontario Museum, the University of Chicago Oriental Institute Museum, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Also included are presentations of archaeological excavations conducted in the region in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The visitor will also experience audio-visual installments and a 3D fly-through of Babylon, highlighting the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

It has widely been reported in the media that following the American invasion in Iraq, looters and smugglers stole major pieces and artifacts from the Iraq National Museum, creating a major loss to the county’s wealth of national heritage. Many architectural remains have also been greatly damaged from war and devastation and artifacts of tremendous national value have been destroyed.

For more information visit Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.rom.on.ca

CyArk: 3D Laser Technology Helping to Preserve World Heritage

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CyArkIt is no longer science fiction to use the newest information technology and bio-technology techniques (as we have reported here on WCHV in the past) to help and preserve the World Heritage Sites. The reality is that today archeologists, scientists, and innovators from many different disciplines work together with the same goals: saving and preserving the world heritage sites for the future generations.

Now, a non-profit organization in the United States called CyArk – which stands for Cyber Archive – has an ambitious plan to scan hundreds of the planet’s world heritage sites with a 3D laser. CyArk wants to digitally preserve 500 world heritage sites within the next five years.  Late last month during a special conference in London (October 20-22, 2013), the organization officially announced its plans.

If you think this is an almost impossible task, CyArk begs to differ as it has already scanned 100 sites around the world, including Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, Tikal in Guatemala and Pompeii in Italy.  Sites are scanned using the latest laser technology, which can plot millions of points of data. CyArk collects all the information and then archives it online, where it is free for the public to access. Then any one from around the world can go online and see the information on monuments through photos, videos, animations, and virtual tours.  CyArk’s 3D scanners have a range of hundreds of feet and since everything is digitally captured and stored, they can scan the site from all different angles in a fraction of time that it takes to do the same thing using traditional methods.

CyArk will keep a digital map of all locations scanned before (as the organization announced) these sites are ravaged by “nature” including flooding, acid rain, earthquakes, or “man” including conflicts and acts of terrorism. CyArk believes in leaving a digital legacy for future generations after some buildings are long gone, but it is also about empowering local communities connected to these sites as reported by Metro, a UK newspaper.

During a recent TED Conference, Ben Kacyra, the inventor of the 3D laser Technology which is used by CyArk and the founder of the organization gave a talk about his plans and how he and his wife came to start the organization.  The idea for CyArk was born out of the destruction in 2001 by the Taliban of the two Bamiyan Buddhas. The Buddha statutes in Afghanistan were carved into a sandstone cliff face in the 6th century, and one of the Buddhas was actually 55m tall.  Ben Kacyra says that there was no detailed documentation of the Buddhas and he didn’t want other monuments to suffer a similar fate.  Kacyra also talks about the great loss of cultural information which occurred in the 2003 earthquake in the city of Bam in Iran. In fact, Kacyras and CyArk greatly feel concerned about the sites in areas of turmoil, conflict and war.

During the TED talk, Kacyra also talked about how CyArk’s data has already proved very crucial.  When a part of the Kasubi Tombs in Uganda – a Unesco World Heritage Site that we have reported on here at WCHV – was destroyed in a suspected arson attack in 2010, the UNESCO and Ugandan authorities approached CyArk and requested the information and data the organization had already gathered. The plan is to restore the buildings using this data.

CyArk states that the selection of the remainder of the 500 monuments will be based on a number of factors, including the short-term risk of destruction and the impact its preservation will have on the surrounding community. The date and all the information that CyArk gathers is stored in a safe place. A gold copy of archive data is kept in a bunker 220 ft (67m) below the ground in Pennsylvania by records storage company Iron Mountain. 

New Important Archeological Discovery in Iran

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banaye-tazeh-az-zaman-kourosh2At about the same time as many celebrated the Day of Cyrus the Great, Iranian and Italian archaeologists announced a major discovery in the Fars Province of Iran near the site of Persepolis.

According to the archaeologists, they have found what seems to be remains of a Babylonian temple with widespread use of decorated glazed clay bricks, colored motifs and frescos, and symbols of gods.  Many symbols pertaining to the God Marduk of the city of Babylon are adorned with 16 full lotus flowers.  Archeologists also believe that the temple most probably was built during the Cyrus reign.

It should be noted that Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BC and declared his decree of human rights and religion. He also freed the  enslaved Jews. So therefore, it is quite possible that after this time Babylonians built more temples and Jewish migration to Iran started at that time.

banaye-tazeh-az-zaman-kourosh1banaye-tazeh-az-zaman-kourosh3

Returned Persian Artifact Believed to be Fake

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cupAs reported by many news outlets as well as our WCHV a few weeks ago a Persian artifact believed at that time to be dated 700 BC, was returned by the US government to the Iranian government as a symbol of good will and a sign that perhaps the tense political relations between the two countries are changing. However, the recent publication by a retired Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Oscar White Muscarella clearly demonstrates that the artifact is fake (as reported by New Network Archeology).

In fact, it looks like that the artifact cannot be older than a couple of decades or even newer.  It has also been reported that the artifact was sold in 2002 to a wealthy New York Collector who was also given proof of authenticity by three prominent art dealers.  The rest of the story has been known to many: When the artifact arrived in NYC in 2003, it was confiscated and then stored away in a government warehouse for over a decade. Mr. Muscarella who has made these new claims has only seen a photograph of the artifact but is convinced that the item is fake. 

The structure of the artifact includes silver sections joined together to form a winged griffin that walks on splayed, clawed feet. Most improbable are three funnels (as suggested by Muscarella), two on the sides coming out of the body below the wings and one that protrudes the creature’s rear end. Muscarella went on to say: “The vessel has been consistently labeled a rhyton in print, but this would be correct only if the creature’s open mouth served as a pouring spout for liquids poured into the funnels (wine, water, body wastes?). It is a modern Iranian artifact.  For stylistic and technical reasons — the griffin’s head is frozen mute, its eyes stare, the head, wing and leg patterns are awkward and meaningless, and the leg rivets are modern: all attributes unlike any ancient conception — I condemned it as a forgery.”  

Now, there are still many questions and concerns to be addressed. Smuggling historical artifacts and national heritage is profitable and for smugglers who take great risk to take the pieces out of the original countries, there will always be a wealthy buyer somewhere across the world. The questions in this case are many: Who the original smuggler was (were) and how they managed to create a fake item and then smuggle it out of Iran to Switzerland and then sell it to an American buyer? In addition, how did three supposed experts actually authenticate the item in 2002?  

The main major question for us is how we could stop many more acts of smuggling of national heritage pieces that result in loss and in many cases the destruction of these beautiful artifacts from around the world.

Digital Heritage International Congress 2013

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“Digital Heritage International Congress 2013” will be held from October 28th to November 1st, 2013 in Marseille, France.  The Digital Heritage International Congress will bring together a multidisciplinary audience to debate, discuss and present digital technology applicable to the protection, documentation and understanding of humanity’s shared heritage, according to an EU website.  This conference is believed to be the largest international scientific event on digital heritage in history, bringing together hundreds of researchers, educators, scientists, industry professionals and policy makers. For the first time ever, under the patronage of UNESCO, the leading scientific and industry teams from across the digital and heritage communities will join together at a conference to explore the state-of-the-art and discuss future emerging technologies that will change research and preservation of world cultural heritage.  Participants will be guided through a series of interactive workshops and exhibitions dedicated to showcasing state-of-the-art technologies used in heritage preservation.

This event has been organized by CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) on behalf of the MAP Laboratory, in collaboration with local research institutions Provence (Aix-Marseille University, Arts et Métiers Paris Tech, CICRP, School of Architecture and INRIA).

For further information, please visit: 
http://www.digitalheritage2013.org/

Spiegel Magazine’s Attack on the Legacy of Cyrus the Great

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Article By: Professor Kaveh Farokh

 

Greetings to the Distinguished Staff of Der Spiegel Magazine,
Recently a number of my colleagues as well as students have brought the following article to my humble attention:

FALLING FOR ANCIENT PROPAGANDA
UN Treasure Honors Persian Despot
By Matthias Schulz
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,564395,00.html (German)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566027,00.html (English)

If the above report had been written by ideologues, it would not have been very surprising, as historical revisionism and political motivations do often accompany one another. It is however lamentable that a distinguished world-class magazine such as Der Speigel has chosen to perpetuate a series of half-truths that resemble the writings of conspiracy theorists. I will of course expostulate upon the narratives of the latter on item (7) below, but first allow me to briefly examine a number of statements made by Mr. Schulz in items (1) – (6).

(1) “Some Greeks praised the conqueror. Herodotus and Aeschylus (who lived after Cyrus’s death) called him merciful.”

Perhaps Mr. Schulz is not aware that it was not just “Some Greeks” who praised Cyrus. This is true despite the fact that Classical Greece and the Achaemenid Empire fought many bitter and bloody wars, notably at Marathon (490 BC), Thermopylae and Salamis (480 BC). It is also a fact that the mainland (European) Greeks fought hard against the Achaemenid Empire to retain their independence. Why would a nation that had fought so hard against the Achaemenid Empire, have any reason to selectively “flatter” Cyrus the Great? This is because the Greeks, who excelled in the disciplines of balanced thought and logical thinking realized that just because they were at war with the Achaemenid Empire did not mean that all members and rulers of that Empire were “evil”. Simply put, they did not allow their political passions to bias their views of “the other”, even if that other was a military opponent. Nobody forced the ancient Greeks to describe Cyrus the Great in a favorable manner. The Greeks in fact had written a virtual compendium of Cyrus entitled the Cyropedia of Xenophon.

To read the entire article continue at savepasargad.com

Pakistan’s “Moenjodaro” Facing Uncertain Future

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Mohenjo-daro

It is widely believed by archeologists that the city of Moenjodaro in southern Pakistan was remarkably advanced for its time, with sophisticated civil engineering and urban planning, and because of its size and the richness of its monuments, has been generally regarded as a capital of an extensive state.

Moenjodaro, which means “the mound of the dead’ was a major center of the pre-Hindu Indus civilization dating back to 3000 BC and one of the earliest cities in the world.  Archeologists estimate that over 40,000 people lived in Moenjodaro and the city which was rediscovered in 1922 has had extensive excavations but only one third of the site has been revealed so far.  The stupa mound, built on a massive platform of mud brick, is composed of the ruins of several major structures – Great bath, Great Granary, College Square and Pillared Hall – as well as a number of private homes.  The extensive lower city is a complex of private and public houses, wells, shops and commercial buildings.  These buildings are laid out along streets intersecting reach other at right angles, in a highly form of city planning that also incorporated important systems of sanitation and drainage (UNESCO).

However, the site which was  designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 is now facing major environmental threats from extreme summer heat and high temperatures, winter frosts, torrential rains and humid air as reported by the Telegraph newspaper.  The structures which are mostly made of clay bricks (hardened unbaked mud bricks) have greatly been damaged by the humidity during the monsoon season, and salt crystals blown and deposited on the clay has caused extensive breakage and damage to the structures.  All of these environmental factors have caused this significant archeological site to literally crumble. 

 

It is also greatly believed that there is a lot more funding needed to help to preserve and maintain the site otherwise, Pakistan’s “Moenjodaro” will face an uncertain future. 

Cyrus the Great Day:Common Ground for World Religions?

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Kristin-S-portrait-2-239x300Article by: Kristin Swenson, Ph.D.

On Oct. 29, in 539 B.C., Cyrus II rode into Babylon (about 50 miles south of modern Baghdad), and ancient sources say that its conquered masses threw palm fronds at his feet. Among the people who witnessed his arrival were those who had been taken captive some 50 years earlier when the Babylonian empire swept through the Middle East, destroying nations and dragging captives back to Babylon. They included people from ancient Israel who had witnessed the destruction not only of their nation, Judah, but also of its temple in Jerusalem. “By the rivers of Babylon,” a biblical psalm laments, “we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.”
Cyrus allowed those exiles to return home, to rebuild their communities and to reestablish their religious practices. Excerpt from Huffington Post

Happy Cyrus the Great Day

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This year, the twenty-ninth day of October 2013, coincides with the annual celebration of “Cyrus the Great Day” by Iranian people and many friends of culture across the globe. In 2005, the Pasargad Heritage Foundation – the first international NGO for preservation of the cultural heritage of Iran- that introduced the idea. At the time, Cyrus’ mausoleum in Iran- a monument registered on the UNESCO’s world heritage list – was in danger of being inundated and eventually destroyed. However, the hard work of this Foundation and timely intervention of UNESCO, human rights activists and organizations removed the danger and led to a world-wide recognition of Cyrus’ seminal contribution to the survival of our common human civilization. Such recognition has been further evidenced by the exhibition of Cyrus cylinder in a number of museums in major cities in United States of America. 

 

October 29, the “Cyrus the Great Day” and the anniversary of the first declaration of human rights. Twenty six centuries ago, when savagery was the dominant factor in human societies, a civilized and compassionate declaration was written on clay and issued to the “four corners of the world”, addressing important issues relevant to human rights; the very same issues that today we face and could also inspire and mobilize those who believe in human dignity and rights. 

This document, known as “The Declaration of Cyrus the Great,” emphasized the removal of all racial discrimination and slavery, and bestowing to all people, freedom to choose their places of residence, and practice their own chosen faith and religion, therefore, attempting to create peace amongst all nations. This Declaration could actually be considered a present from the Iranian people to all humanity, expressed through the words of Cyrus, the founder of the first empire in the Iran. In 1971, the general assembly of the United Nations recognized this declaration as the first Declaration of Human Rights.

From savepasargad.com