Ancient Temple discovered in Kurdistan Region
Erbil (IraqiNews.com) An ancient temple, dating back to the Iron Age 2,500 years ago, has been discovered. The temple contains some statues of the size of normal human and huge pillars in the area of (Tobzawa), Kurdistan province.
The Dutch student, Deschad Marv Zuma, who is attending his doctoral thesis at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, said: “I didn’t do excavation, just archaeological soundings the villagers uncovered these materials accidentally.”
The colonnade was found inside the village in Kurdistan, while the rest of the other monuments, which included a bronze statue of a wild goat, found in the area of convergence of Iraq’s borders with Iran and Turkey.
In the temple, it was found on several statues of the size of normal human, length of 7.5 feet. They are made of limestone, basalt, sandstone and some of them partially broken. The existing monuments in the Kurdistan region extend to several civilizations, but a large part of the archaeological sites have not been excavated yet.
“One of the best results of my fieldwork is the uncovered column bases of the long-lost temple of the city of Musasir, which was dedicated to the god Haldi,” Marf Zamuatold Live Science in an email. Haldi was the supreme god of the kingdom of Urartu. His temple was so important that after the Assyrians looted it in 714 B.C., the Urartu king Rusa I was said to have ripped his crown off his head before killing himself.
He “threw himself on the ground, tore his clothes, and his arms hung limp. He ripped off his headband, pulled out his hair, pounded his chest with both hands, and threw himself flat on his face.”
The location of the temple has long been a mystery, but with the discovery of the column bases, Marf Zamua thinks it can be narrowed down.
Additionally, Marf Zamua analyzed an ancient carving of Musasir, discovered in the 19th century at Khorsabad. The carving, he found, shows hillside houses with three windows on the second floor and a doorway on the ground floor. Such a design can still be seen today in some villages, the bottom floor being used as a stable and storage area, he noted.
Marf Zamua presented the discoveries recently in a presentation given at the International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, held at the University of Basel in Switzerland. In addition to his doctoral studies, Marf Zamua teaches at Salahaddin University in Erbil, which is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.