World's oldest wall painting unearthed in Syria

[Al-khiyal]

Archaeologists clean a painting at Djade al-Mughara Neolihic site,
northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, in this September 2007 handout photo

DAMASCUS, October 11, 2007 (Reuters) - French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.

The 2 square-meter painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo, team leader Eric Coqueugniot told Reuters.

"It looks like a modernist painting. Some of those who saw it have likened it to work by (Paul) Klee. Through carbon dating we established it is from around 9,000 B.C.," Coqueugniot said.

"We found another painting next to it, but that won't be excavated until next year. It is slow work," said Coqueugniot, who works at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.

Rectangles dominate the ancient painting, which formed part of an adobe circular wall of a large house with a wooden roof. The site has been excavated since the early 1990s.

The painting will be moved to Aleppo's museum next year, Coqueugniot said. Its red came from burnt hematite rock, crushed limestone formed the white and charcoal provided the black.

The world's oldest painting on a constructed wall was one found in Turkey but that was dated 1,500 years after the one at Djade al-Mughara, according to Science magazine.

The inhabitants of Djade al-Mughara lived off hunting and wild plants. They resembled modern day humans in looks but were not farmers or domesticated, Coqueugniot said.

"There was a purpose in having the painting in what looked like a communal house, but we don't know it. The village was later abandoned and the house stuffed with mud," he said.

A large number of flints and weapons have been found at the site as well as human skeletons buried under houses.

"This site is one of several Neolithic villages in modern day Syria and southern Turkey. They seem to have communicated with each other and had peaceful exchanges," Coqueugniot said.

Mustafa Ali, a leading Syrian artist, said similar geometric design to that in the Djade al-Mughara painting found its way into art throughout the Levant and Persia, and can even be seen in carpets and kilims (rugs).

"We must not lose sight that the painting is archaeological, but in a way it's also modern," he said.

France is an important contributor to excavation efforts in Syria, where 120 teams are at work. Syria was at the crossroads of the ancient world and has thousands of mostly unexcavated archaeological sites.

Swiss-German artist Paul Klee had links with the Bauhaus school and was important in the German modernist movement.

World's oldest wall painting unearthed in Syria

[Bent_Bladi]

how come it's always the white ppl who find out about the cool stuff arabs have??

[amalgamate]

It was probably an arab . maybe it's just that white people are taking charge of 'speaking' about it.

[Bent_Bladi]

gasp!! ur right.... eh ana bfarjeehon

[Al-khiyal]

Sur le site de Dja’de, un village sur la rive gauche de l’Euphrate :
Les plus vieilles peintures du monde découvertes en Syrie

Samedi 19 janvier 2008 -- Après quinze ans de fouilles à Dja’de, un village niché sur la rive gauche de l’Euphrate, dans le nord de la Syrie, une mission archéologique française vient de découvrir, dans une maison semi enterrée, des peintures murales remontant à 10 000 ou 11 000 ans avant notre ère. Une découverte extraordinaire à plus d’un titre. « D’abord par leur excellente conservation sur plus de 2 mètres de haut, sur un mur construit en terre, nous explique Eric Coqueugniot, archéologue du laboratoire Archeorient-Environnements et sociétés de l’Orient ancien au Centre français de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) et directeur de la mission.

Comment expliquer qu’après tant d’années, les peintures soient restées aussi fraîches ? Des indices permettent de croire que cette maison aurait été volontairement ensevelie. » Autre merveille : d’après les échantillons analysés, la peinture utilisée serait entièrement naturelle et donc, très fragile. « Composée de charbon pour le noir, de calcaire pilé pour le blanc et d’hématite pour le rouge, précise l’archéologue. Le tout serait mélangé par un liant qui n’a pas laissé de traces. »

Simple décoration ou peinture rituelle, il est encore trop tôt pour en déterminer le sens de ces motifs, des damiers formés de rectangles aux trois couleurs. « Elles sont sans doute un peu des deux. Car on ne les trouve pas dans une maison normale mais dans ce que l’on appelle un bâtiment communautaire, c’est-à-dire une maison qui servait de lieu de rassemblement. »

Enfin, la profondeur à laquelle a été découverte cette maison est elle-même incroyable. « Le travail de fouille est un travail de fourmi et nous décapons progressivement les couches. D’habitude, quand on trouve deux mètres de niveaux archéologiques, on s’estime déjà très content. Là, nous avons atteint 7 à 9 m de profondeur !, ajoute le chercheur aussi directeur de la revue Paléorient. C’est beaucoup pour une période comme le début du néolithique. » A l’automne, l’équipe retournera sur le site pour poursuivre les fouilles et déposer les peintures au Musée national d’Alep.

[Al-khiyal]

New discoveries in Syria suggest a little-known people fueled the rise of civilization

Who were the Hurrians?

With its vast plaza and impressive stone stairway leading up to a temple complex, Urkesh was designed to last. And for well over a millennium, this city on the dusty plains of what is now northeastern Syria was a spiritual center for a puzzling people called the Hurrians. All but forgotten by history, their origin remains obscure, but excavations led by husband-and-wife UCLA archaeologists Georgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati over the past quarter century reveal that the Hurrians were far more than just another wandering tribe in the fractious Middle East. And during last year's season, they found compelling evidence that the Hurrians not only strongly influenced the language, culture, and religion of later peoples, but also may have been present 1,000 years earlier - just as nearby Mesopotamians began to create the first cities.

That idea is at odds with a long-held belief among scholars that the Hurrians arrived much later from the Caucasus or some other distant region to the northeast, drawn to the fringes of civilization after the rise of the great southern Sumerian centers of Ur, Uruk, and Nippur. Scholars long assumed that the Hurrians arrived in the middle of the third millennium B.C., and eventually settled down and adopted cuneiform as a script and built their own cities. That theory is based on linguistic associations with Caucasus' languages and the fact that Hurrian names are absent from the historical record until Akkadian times.

But Piotr Michaelowski, an Assyriologist at the University of Michigan, notes that Hurrian, like Sumerian, is a language unrelated to Semitic or Indo-European tongues that dominated the region during and after the third millennium B.C. Perhaps, he suggests, the Hurrians were earlier inhabitants of the region, who, like the Sumerians, had to make room for the Semitic-speaking people who created the world's first empire based at Akkad in central Mesopotamia around 2350 B.C.

The discovery of a sophisticated city with monumental architecture, plumbing, stonework, and a large population contradicts the idea that Hurrians were a roving mountain people in a strange land. Far from being yet another rough nomadic tribe, such as the Amorites or Kassites who were latecomers to the Mesopotamian party, the Hurrians and their unique language, music, deities, and rituals may have played a key role in shaping the first cities, empires, and states. The language has died, the music faded, and the rituals are forgotten. But thanks to the sculptors, stone masons, and seal carvers at Urkesh, Hurrian creativity can shine once again.