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Ancient and ArchaeologyΒ  permalink

Aratta

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 5th June 2009

  Found it on a discussion on a French messagebaord. It seems that the location of Aratta is alreacy found from the beginning of the 21th century. I expect exspecilly some comments form lol beeble.
  
  
  
  I have seen in the French mmessage the French language version from the Arte film about the subject. While it is orginal a German film I found also the Geramn version on internet.
  
  Warm regards,
  
  Paul.

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 9th June 2009

  Paul, I've not seen the documentary but the team excavating this region have been accused of sensationalism by presenting their findings to the press long before they have submitted articles for peer review. The Halil Rud plain in the Jaz Murien depression had been neglected archaeologically, like much of Eastern Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan due to political upheavals, but recent surveys have revealed the area was settled extensively from the late Neolithic onwards. One must distinguish between the archaeological excavations that have concentrated on the settlement sites and the material goods used to wow the public that by and large were recovered from looters, smugglers and antiquities dealers and are thought to derive from ancient cemeteries in the region. There has been a tendency to assume the artifacts all come from the same layers as the late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze age phases of settlements. However it is all but impossible to date them directly, judge what time span the artifacts were used between or how they were distributed within society as they have been removed from their archaeological context. In fact it is hard to know whether all the material that has been confiscated is genuinely ancient. The most impressive settlement evidence is based around the two large mounds with substantial monumental architecture at Konar Sandel.
  
  It is Yousef Madjidzedah who is making most of the claims linking the settlement remains with Aratta. It would seem that Madjidzadeh's attempt to identify Konar Sandel A and B as Aratta is partly influenced by modern theories on the ethnogenesis of Iran. There has been a long tradition of Iranians tracing their national identity back to the Archaemenid Persians however like many national ethnogenesis narratives there have been several attempts to push this further into Prehistory. For example in 1998 Jahanshah Derakhshani suggested that the Aratta mentioned in Mesopotamian texts was linked to a group of Indo European speakers who eventually migrated into the Fars area of Iran and were the descendants of the Archaemenid Persians among others. Essentially there appears to be an attempt to link Aratta with Aryan. Note how Madjidzadeh wants to describe the material culture and language as proto Iranian as opposed to proto Elamite. The sites of Tepe Yahya and Shahr-i Sokhta (another proposed site of Aratta) that were excavated before the Iranian revolution were classified as proto Elamite but Madjidzadeh would like to include them within the separate "Jiroft" designation as well.
  
  Madjidzadeh is also the main proponent of the idea that the complex societies in this area are of greater antiquity than those in Mesopotamia. Again there appears to be a touch of modern national pride playing a part in wanting to trump the antiquity of Mesopotamian civilisation which in itself may derive from the recent geopolitical rivalry with Iraq. Saddam Hussein used the cultural heritage of the Tigris Euphrates basin extensively, portraying his regime as a continuation of their legacy as the birth of civilisation. It would appear that Madjidzadeh has had to resort to various myths and legends to justify his excavation's greater antiquity with particular emphasis on Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and to a lesser extent the story of Etana. He has taken the legendary wealth of Aratta and its portrayal of supplying material and craftsmen to Uruk as evidence for seeding the civilisation of Mesopotamia.
  
  It is likely that the settlements represent continuous development from the late Neolithic rather than the imposition of urbanism from outside the region but the does not support the idea that the development of complexity predates the complex societies of Mesopotamia. Most commentators, including colleagues of Madjidzadeh have tended to place Konar Sandel amongst the collection of complex archaic societies that developed in particular ecological settings on the periphery of the major urban centres termed secondary states. The development of more centrally organised urban settlement across Eastern Iran is thought to have been stimulated by the growth of urban centres in Mesopotamia and the Indus valley and their desire for raw materials for manufacturing as well as high status finished goods. The trade networks and political alliances established to secure these items thus allowed the elites of the region to cement their status. Though large and demonstrating social stratification, Konar Sandel A and B are not as densely settled or as nucleated as sites in Mesopotamia or the Indus Valley and would therefore appear to be less urbanised.
  
  Personally I doubt that Aratta actually existed mainly because their rulers do not feature amongst the royal dynasties recorded by Mespotamian scribes. The name only appears in poetry as an area of great wealth to the East of Elam that lost favour with certain Goddesses because of an argument with the King of Uruk. Daniel Potts has suggested that the region is actually the Kingdom of Marhashi that features in texts documenting the diplomatic and military activities of numerous other Bronze Age states during the late third millennium BC.

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 14th June 2009

  lol,
  
  thanks for your message. I made an elaborated answer to you and went several times to Google for some rectifications about what you wrote.
  I made an aside for my research (I am very busy for a French messageboard) about a book of "Shlomo Sand", which will be released soon by Amazon com in English "The invention of the Jewish People" (I wanted to give the French title too and went for perhaps the tenth time to Google and as expected it was "l'invention du peuple juif").
  
  When I returned to my "Type your message in the box below" my complete message was gone.
  
  Can it be that it was because I made an aside about the German documentary, where I said that I was a bit struck that the foreign female scientists had to wear a headscarf, I suppose to fit with the rules of the hosting country Iran. I was going on with the comment that scientists from all countries do whatever is neccesary to expand scientific research.
  
  No mood to edit again my whole elaborated message that I suddenly lost. I will come back to you after my holidays to France in some week or perhaps more. Nantes (the edict), St. Nazaire (the raid), Blois (the royal castle).
  
  Thanks again for your elaborated reply.
  
  Warm regards and with esteem,
  
  Paul.

  Link to this forum: Aratta

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• Message 4

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 29th June 2009

  Re: Message 2.
  
  lol,
  
  had again a look to the three parts of the documentary. Many monologues are in understandable English although they are immediately mixed with French. It's the advantage of subtitles that one, who understands some languages has always the choice to listen to the original or to chose the subtitles.
  
  I think you will be able to follow the documentary.
  The film was also viewed in the British Museum.
  [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
  
  Mods I know it is in French but it is the documentary I mentioned in the above link shown in the British museum. I didn't find it in English on internet. It is an exact copy of the English language film from the British museum.
  
  [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
  
  For part 2 and 3 of the 52 minutes documentary see the "related videos".
  
  As I saw it again the video don't say anything else from what you said? It says that civilisation was from the third millenium and contemporal with the two other civilisations: the Sumerian and the Indian.
  
  After some wild search by villagers, even brought some supervision from the opium traficants of the region, while there they could also earn some money, the whole site was policed by the Iranian government and our Iranian scientist, who was an expat in France was called back by the government to head the research. From 2002 he asked an international team including Americans and Europeans to assist his research. You will see in the documentary an American female professor from the university of Pennsylvenia: a certain Lipmann if I understood the name well.
  
  It seems to be found to be a civilisation based on trade with the Sumerian and Indian kingdoms. Trade of small objects of luxus they ornamented from several kind of stones found in the the environment of a 100 kilometer.
  
  I halt the message till tomorrow while again the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ closing time is nearing.
  
  Warm regards and with esteem,
  
  Paul.

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• Message 5

  , in reply to message 4.

  Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 1st July 2009

  Paul, I would be interested in seeing that film. Can you repost a reference to it again in a manner which doesn't offend the moderators? (ie. not a direct link)

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• Message 6

  , in reply to message 4.

  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 1st July 2009

  Addendum to message 4.
  
  lol,
  
  sorry. The mods were right. And I am happy that they didn't remove my whole message after their E-mail to me.
  
  The first link was indeed fully in English: a documentary shown in the British Museum: "Jiroft, lost kingdom of Aratta" by Oliver Julien Friday 2 February 2007 52 Minutes in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre of the British Museum. But if you go to the "about us" to know what kettle of fish one boards it brings you seemingly to an Aryan-Persian site and seemingly it is a Persian site in English language?
  
  Mind you in my research I found also if I remember it well some obscure! sites about Armenia and their links to Aratta.
  
  The second link I agree it is a French documentary, which is shown on ARTE and is also available in German. No links anymore in foreign language I promise.
  
  Warm regards and with esteem for all your contributions on these boards.
  
  Paul.

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• Message 7

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 1st July 2009

  Re: Message 5.
  
  Nordmann,
  
  put in Google the translation in French of "Aratta, at (Γ ) the (l') dawn (aube) of the (des) civilisations videos". First window fourth entry. Or even for Daily motion: first entries.
  
  Warm regards and with esteem for all you contributions on these boards.
  
  Paul.

  Link to this forum: Aratta

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• Message 8

  , in reply to message 6.

  Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 7th July 2009

  Paul, thankyou for the information. I did have a look at the French version of the documentary. Madjidzadeh has been obsessed with the location of Aratta for decades, pubishing an article summarizing efforts to locate the site in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies in 1976. As such there may be case of Madjizadeh identifying what he expected to find in the region given the fact that it was published three years after the identification of Anshan as Tell Malyan, mentioned as a land that Enmerker's army had to travel through to reach Aratta. Prior to this the focus of investigations had been Northern Iran and Azerbaijan because Anshan was presumed to be north of Elamite dynastic centres. Mind you he is far from alone in wanting to use archaeology to verify information derived from written sources as several postings on these boards demonstrate. Piotr Steinkeller, an advocate of the site being the Kingdom of Marhashi had similarly been looking for a site that would fit this location using the written evidence for years. That said Steinkellar has made a much better case for his identification.
  
  The archaeologist from Penn. State University is Holly Pittman, an Iranian specialist who had worked on the site of Tepe Yahya to the south west of the Halil Rud river. She was certainly very diplomatic when answering questions about whether the site was Aratta given that she was there at the invitation of the site director Madjidzadeh, stating that it could have seemed like the location of such a place to visitors from Mesopotamia rather than endorsing the view outright. It was also amusing to see her making fun of Madjidzedah's determination to find proof of the site of Aratta in whatever was unearthed when she jokingly translated the "script" that had been uncovered.
  
  Actually the publication of the scripts is one of the areas where the Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency have been accused of dragging their feet over releasing detailed information about what has been found. Where photos of the inscriptions have been publicly released, they have been in low resolution and as such not all the tablets with markings have been officially unveiled. However there have been leaks and the two most recent tablets looks far too pristine to be genuinely ancient. Furthermore there has been no consistent story about how they were discovered, at first one was reported to have been found lying in a local farmer's house and two more were recovered from the spoil of a pit dug half a mile from the site in order to erect a signpost. These stories were later amended to suggest that they were found in archaeologically secure levels. Such inconsistencies have lead to questions being raised about their validity. Nor can the matter be resolved scientifically as the bricks cannot be dated using thermoluminescence techniques because they have been re-baked as a means of preservation before they could be tested. That the "scripts" started to turn up after Madjidzadeh's claims that the site represented a separate civilisation were queried due to the lack of a writing system also raised a few eyebrows.
  
  That said the interpretation of these tablets as evidence of a fully fledged writing system has also been questioned. Some would rather identify them as either decorative symbols or ascribe them some form of mystical significance and thus they would be classified as pseudo glyphs. This may well place them in a similar category as Proto-Elamite scripts although it seems doubtful the material uncovered actually predates Proto-Elamite. The one securely provenanced piece appears to come from the mid to late third millennium BC on the basis of Carbon 14 dates derived from charcoal taken from the layer immediately before the construction of the ziggarut and would therefore appear to be later than the earliest examples of Proto Elamite or Eastern scripts.

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• Message 9

  , in reply to message 8.

  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 9th July 2009

  Re: Message 8.
  
  lol,
  
  thank you very much for all th trouble you have done for me to research this matter in depth. To be honest, as I know you I hadn't expected otherwise from you than that you would place the "whole story" in its "historical and "scientific" context.
  
  Your second paragraph. Yes as you now said Holly Pittman and you even better than me "catched" the irony of her words. Perhaps because I was listening too much to the French translation straight through her conversation . But that of the "script" was obvious both in French and in American .
  
  Thanking you again for all the work you invested in the research and with esteem and warm regards,
  
  Paul.
  
  PS. Doing research for the latest about the Neanderthaler for a French forum I came mainly on English languages sites. The young Frenchman I did research for seems to understand English too, so I think to include the English sites too overthere. I came on one particular video of 55 minutes from a symposium from some months ago in if I recall it well San Diego. I think if you type "art in Neanderthal and paleolithic cultures video" you will arrive at it. In the meantime I will seek our Neanderthal threads back and publish it there.

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