[CPProt.net] RE: Iraq Goverment Dam story posted today

Thu Jul 7 14:10:06 CEST 2005

Dear Cori Wegener,

Thank you very much for this correction. I must admit that sometimes I do
need specialists like you who are able to filter out incorrect information
from the abundance of information that is passing me each and every day.

Yours

Ton Cremers

  _____  

From: Cori Wegener [mailto:coriwegener at hotmail.com] 
Sent: 07 July 2005 14:03
To: moderator at cpprot.net
Subject: Iraq Goverment Dam story posted today

MSN Moderator:

Please note that the story below is quite old news from 2002.  The dam
project was abandoned after the U.S. invasion.  Having been posted in
Baghdad working with the Ministry of Culture, I know that Muyad Damerji no
longer works for the Ministry and that there are no archeological digs going
on in the country.  The British Museum conference on Nimrud that is
mentioned happened in March 2002.  I'm not sure what revived this old story.

Thanks very much for the service you provide.

Best regards,

Cori Wegener

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 07:03:27 +0200
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Subject: [CPProt.net] Iraqi government is building a dam wich will
destroy the capital of the ancient assyrian empire 
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Wednesday 6th July 2005 (22h42) : 
The Iraqi government is building a dam wich will destroy the capital of the
ancient assyrian empire 

Tigris dam damns Assur The Iraqi government is building a dam which will
obliterate the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire Martin Bailey , The
Art Newspaper
LONDON, July, 2005 - The Iraqi government is building a dam which will
destroy the ancient city of Assur, the former capital which gave its name to
Assyria. Although it has received no publicity outside Iraq, the dam across
the Tigris is likely to result in one of the greatest archaeological losses
of modern times. John Curtis, the British Museum’s keeper of Ancient Near
East, returned from a visit to Baghdad last month, and he told The Art
Newspaper that the project “will destroy most of the remains of Assur”. He
points out that the city, occupied by the Assyrians for some 2,000 years, is
“arguably the most important archaeological site in the Near East.”

Dr Curtis warns that the archaeological losses are likely to be even greater
than those caused by the Aswan High Dam in 1970, when temples along the Nile
were flooded. On that occasion, Unesco launched a huge international rescue
operation, but in the current political situation that would be impossible
in Iraq. The rapid timetable for the Iraqi dam and the unexcavated nature of
the remains at Assur would also make rescue work a major challenge.

Iraq is embarking on the dam because its hostile neighbour Turkey is taking
more water from the source of the Tigris. At times there is so little water
in the river downstream that it is apparently possible to walk across it at
Mosul, the main city of northern Iraq. The new dam will store water,
providing supplies for agriculture and the towns during the dry season.

The Makhul dam is being built 80 miles south of Mosul, spanning the Tigris
valley between the Jebel Makhul and Jebel Hamrin mountains. This will create
a lake which will run back for more than 20 miles and flood most of Assur.

The ancient city lies on a promontory, with its eastern edge on the flood
plain of the Tigris and its northern edge in the valley of the river’s old
course. The new lake would rise well above the lower levels of the ancient
city and the water table would cause severe damage higher up. In addition to
Assur, at least 100 other Assyrian sites would be lost or damaged by the new
lake. These include Kar Tukulti-Ninurta, the important city built in the
13th century BC just to the north of Assur.

Assyrian capital

Assur (or Ashur) became the capital of Assyria by 2000 BC and it remained
the religious centre of the empire until its capture by the Babylonians in
614 BC. It represented the centre of an empire which at its height stretched
from present-day Egypt to Iran.

German archaeologists began to excavate Assur in 1903 and many of the most
important finds are in Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum. But despite a
century of extensive excavations, large areas of the city remain virtually
uninvestigated. Only a third of the 34 temples which were recorded shortly
before the Babylonian invasion have been found. Still buried must be the
greatest works of art from the royal workshops of the 13th century BC,
residences of merchants from the 18th century BC and temples built before
the 21st century BC.

The commercial and residential areas of Assur were on the lower levels, and
these will be completely flooded by the Makhul Dam. Although the upper level
of the city is 100 feet above the present river, the new lake will mean a
substantial rise in the water table, and this will destroy most of the
archaeological remains. Cuneiform tablets, for instance, will simply turn to
mud.

In order to minimise damage to Assur, two solutions have been proposed by
Iraqi archaeologists. The first would be the construction of a coffer-dam or
dyke around the entire site of Assur. This would have to be several miles
long and would be very expensive, possibly several times more than the main
Makhul Dam. With the present shortage of government funds because of the
economic problems resulting from international sanctions it is difficult to
see Saddam Hussein being willing to divert resources for a coffer-dam.

The second proposal is that the Makhul Dam should not be as high as
originally planned, resulting in a smaller storage lake. However, this would
negate many of the benefits of the water storage project, probably making it
uneconomic. It would also still flood low-lying remains at Assur, and the
rise in the water table would cause further damage.

Rescue

Last month senior Iraqi government antiquities official Muayad Damerji told
The Art Newspaper that he personally believes that the solution is to “build
a concrete wall around Assur.” He admits it would be “very expensive”, but
points out that “we need water and we need Assur.”

Dr Damerji says that although the Ministry of Irrigation is considering a
coffer-dam, detailed information on the levels of the archaeological strata
has not yet been requested from the antiquities department. There is clearly
great concern over whether funds will be available for this protective
scheme.

It is difficult to discover what is happening on the ground, but work has
apparently begun on the foundations of the main dam. Completion is expected
to take around five years, and the project is being undertaken entirely by
Iraqi contractors. Although some archaeological excavations are currently
under way by German and Iraqi specialists, this is normal work and not a
rescue dig. Within the time available, it would be very difficult to mount
any large-scale excavation programme.

However, archaeologists have now decided to do what they can to mobilise
international support to save Assur. At an academic conference on Nimrud,
held at the British Museum in March, a resolution was approved which warned
of the damaging consequences of the Makhul Dam : “The conference urges all
concerned parties, both within Iraq and internationally, to explore every
possible means of preserving the site of Assur which is of unique importance
in the history of Iraq in particular and world civilisation in general.”

Friday, 1 July 2005

 <javascript:ol('http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m13277&l=i&size=1&hd=0');>
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m13277&l=i&size=1&hd=0

Transmis par Joëlle P.

by : Joëlle
Wednesday 6th July 2005

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