Reaching the culmination of a search that has been going on for the past several years, a team of archaeologists affiliated with the British Museum has finally unearthed the long-lost remains of a Sumerian palace and temple in the ancient city of Girsu on the southern plains of Iraq. These ruins date back to at least the middle of the third millennium BC, taking Mesopotamian archaeology to the very edge of the founding of modern civilization, a milestone credited to the ancient Sumerians.
It was the Sumerians who first invented writing and created the first code of laws, between the years 3,500 and 2,000 BC. Their innovations and accomplishments in art, religion, science, mathematics, architecture and societal organization helped set a template for future civilization builders in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia and the surrounding region.
The legendary city of Girsu, which is located at a site now known as Tello, was one of the first cities in the world and a major center of Sumerian culture and society. It is considered ‘the cradle of civilization’ and ‘one of the most important heritage sites in the world that very few people know about’ by the discoverers of its palace and temple, who were led by Dr. Sebastien Rey, a British Museum curator and expert on ancient Mesopotamian civilization .
Amazingly, this critically important archaeological site had not been explored for more than a century before the British Museum archaeologists arrived on the scene. Girsu was first discovered in 1877 by French archaeologist Ernest de Sarzec, and the site was so heavily picked over after that (more than 100,000 cuneiform tablets were removed during various excavations) that no one was certain if anything meaningful remained to be discovered. Constant warfare in the region in the 20 th century was another complication that kept people away from the area.
But Girsu was never really forgotten by archaeologists, and the dream of unearthing its most essential and foundational structures has now been achieved.
A cuneiform tablet recovered from Girsu (2350 BC). It gives an account of barley rations issued monthly to adults and children written. Public domain.
“It’s really huge,” Dr. Rey told an interviewer from the United Kingdom’s national news service PA Media , in reference to his team’s remarkable achievements in the field at Girsu in 2022. “You take any manuals of archaeology students at university and you have a section on ancient Girsu and you read that nothing is left, the archaeology has been excavated away, basically, and that’s what I was told when I was a student.”
“I always felt that that was a pessimistic view,” he continued. “If you had a set of new tools (and) technology, you can go back to those damaged 19th century excavations.”
Dr. Rey’s belief in the possibilities turned out to be right, much to the delight of those who are fascinated by the story of the great Sumerian civilization and its links to the beginning of modern history in ancient Mesopotamia.
A Palace, a Temple and a Peek into Our Civilization’s Incredible Past
Aerial survey technology opened new doors for archaeologists working at Girsu.
Subsequently the researchers also recovered more than 200 buried cuneiform tablets, which had been buried in piles of debris from 19 th century excavations. These texts proved to be detailed administrative records of activities in the city.
Reconstruction of the Sumerian palace at Girsu. Image Credit: British Museum
Dr. Rey was especially excited by the discovery of the city’s chief temple, which actually took place in 2015 (excavations were only completed in 2022, hence the reason why the temple has been introduced as a “new” discovery). This was the sanctuary of the great Mesopotamian God of War, Ningirsu, who was the son of the chief god of the Sumerian pantheon, Enlil. This temple itself was called Eninnu, and it would have been one of the most frequently visited sacred buildings in the ancient Mesopotamian world.
Dr. Rey recalled the moment he and his team found what he called the ‘door socket’ of the temple, which he described as the heart of an ancient holy city that would have been comparable to the Vatican in modern-day Rome.
It took Dr. Rey’s team eight excavation seasons to fully uncover the temple structure. With this huge undertaking finally completed, by last autumn they were ready to move on to the site of the newly discovered palace. Working frenetically, they were able to finish their initial excavation of the palace’s mudbrick walls before suspending operations for the rest of the year. They will return to the site when fieldwork resumes in March 2023, and will be focusing exclusively on the grand Sumerian palace for the rest of this year.
Source: taxo.info
