As we are getting closer to the Cyrus the Great Day 2019, we at WCHV look at parts of the world where people celebrate the life of the great Persian King, Cyrus.
One of these countries is the Republic of Tajikistan. Tajikistan is a country in Central Asia surrounded by Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It’s known for rugged mountains and popular for hiking and climbing. The Fann Mountains, near the national capital Dushanbe, have snow-capped peaks that rise over 5,000 meters. The range encompasses the Iskanderkulsky Nature Refuge, a notable bird habitat named for Iskanderkul, a turquoise lake formed by glaciers.
Tajikistan was a part of Persian Empire and today, the country still celebrate the Persian New Year, Nawruz and most people speak Farsi. In fact, Cyropolis or “The City of Cyrus” which was an ancient city founded by Cyrus the Great in 544 BCE to mark the northeastern border of his Achaemenid Empire is believed to be the same location as the modern day city of Istaravshan in Tajikistan.

In the capital city, Dushanbe, the Cyrus (the) Great Park is a beautiful park with beautiful
statutes of animals as well as a large statute of the Persian King, Cyrus. In the video created by the Tajikistan tourism (below), they show the Cyrus Great Park on a beautiful spring day with women in colorful clothing walking and children playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Y-_MdQ-yE

The love of Persian culture in fact is quite apparent in Tajikistan as Dushanbe also has another park named after the great Persian poet, Rudaki. Abū ‘Abd Allāh Ja’far ibn Muḥammad al-Rūdhakī, better known as Rudaki, and also known as “Adam of Poets”, was a Persian poet regarded as the first great literary genius of the Modern Persian language. Rudaki composed poems in the‌ modern Persian alphabet and is considered a founder of classical Persian literature.

In another part of Dushanbe one can find the statute of another Persian poet, Ferdowsi. Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi, or Ferdowsi was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh, which is the world’s longest epic poem created by a single poet, and the national epic of Greater Iran.

The Egyptian government is hailing the discovery of more than 20 wooden coffins as “one of the largest and most important” archaeological finds in the past few years. The coffins were found in Assasif, a necropolis on the west bank of the Nile River. Egyptian officials have not given the time frame from which the coffins date, but the site where they were found was once part of the ancient city of Thebes.

Thebes was the royal capital of the ancient Egypt. Early monuments can be traced as far
back as the 11th dynasty, which occurred between 2081 and 1939 BCE. Authorities said more details about the coffins would be divulged in a news conference Saturday.

Egypt is on a roll with its digging into the past. Last week, the Antiquities Ministry announced that archaeologists had found 30 workshops for the manufacturing and processing of funeral furniture for the tombs of kings in the Valley of the Kings, which served as the primary burial site for pharaohs from the 18th to the 20th dynasty.

Archaeologists have found the skeletons of six babies in a medieval “house of the dead” near Poland’s border with Ukraine. In 2017, famers started noticing bones appearing in their fields in the village Gródek nad
Bugiem, so they swiftly informed the nearby Hrubieszów Museum about the grisly findings. Rightfully so as the bones led to astonishing discoveries – burials from 11th century, the times of Bolesław I the Brave and his famous battle with Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Rus, which took place somewhere nearby.
Excavation work on the site was led by Dr Tomasz Dzieńkowski from the Maria Curie-
Skłodowska University’s Institute of Archaeology and has covered a site about 300
meters from a medieval stronghold. Scientists uncovered fragments of fabric with golden thread near a skeleton, and this year’s works were yielding similar finds until they came across a large pit with a three-metre diameter. Inside were the numerous remains of incinerated people, as well as a dog’s skull, the bones of an adult’s hand and a broken clay pot. On its edge, archaeologists, to their surprise, came across well-preserved baby skeletons.
Bartłomiej Bartecki from the Hrubieszów Museum told PAP: “It could have been a so-
called ‘house of the dead’ or a monumental family tomb, with a similar form to the
homes of that time. Half-dugout, which were partly burrowed in the ground, and were
usually covered by a gable roof.” The unusual discovery dates back to 11th century.
Read more:
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/skeletons-of-six-babies-found-during-
archaeological-dig-8067

A recently discovered archaeological site in Ireland is “hugely significant” and likely “unique to Ireland.”
Twenty-five years ago, John McCullen was working the land at his farm in Beamore, County Meath, when a window fell from one of the ruins that dotted his property. He
climbed up the ruin to put it back and noticed a few unusual things: one of the building materials was red sandstone, which isn’t available locally, and there were pigeon boxes, which had been used by people in the 16th and 17th centuries.
As a recent Irish Times profile details, he’d long heard stories about a Georgian landlord, a linen mill, and a monastery dating back centuries earlier. But what was the real history
of his family’s land?
With the help of archaeologists Matthew and Geraldine Stout, he secured a €50,000 grant
from the FBD Farm Trush, to be distributed over the course of three years – provided the
first month of excavation proved that the site was of significant interest.  McCullen can now rest assured that his land is of archaeological and historical
importance.

NAPLES, ITALY- The Independent Recording a  fresco that graphically depicts the impending combat victory of one gladiator over another has been uncovered in Pompeii’s Regio v. The victor, identified as a murmillo-type gladiator by his weapons and armor, stands over a cowering foe equipped in the Thracian manner. The latter has sustained deep gashes to the wrist, legs, and chest, and is holding up a finger to beg for mercy. The fresco, which measures roughly four feet by five feet, was found in what appears to have been a basement tavern or store. The floor above may have housed the proprietors or been used as a brothel. Massimo Osanna, superintendent for Pompeii, says it is very likely the establishment was frequented by gladiators, whose barracks were not far from the site.

According to a report in The Scotsman , a team of researchers under the direction of archaeologist Warren Bailie of GUARD Archaeology have returned to the site of the Wilkhouse, an eighteenth-century public house in the Scottish Highlands that served
farmers who were walking with their livestock to market. Coins uncovered at the site suggest the drove road that passed the pub had been in use since the late sixteenth century. Bailie said the pub’s double chimneys, slate roof, and lime-washed walls reflected the “modernity and affluence” that had been growing in the region in the mid-seventeenth century, since drovers’ inns were usually drystone structures with wooden shutters, low walls, central hearths, and thatched roofs. The excavation revealed the remains of meals of rabbit, birds, fish, and whelks, and shards of drinking glasses. An inverted cross found on a hearth stone may have been intended to keep witches from flying down the chimney, Bailie added. The pub fell out of use by 1819, however, due to the Highland Clearances, in which landowners evicted their tenants in order to enclose their fields for more profitable large-scale sheep herding