Ennigaldi-Nanna: The World’s First Museum Curator Was a Woman
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 7, 2023
In 1925, when British archeologist Leonard Woolley and his team were excavating at Ur, in the modern-day Dhi Qar Governorate of Iraq, they d...
Showing posts with the label Iraq
Nimrud Lens: A 2,700-Year-Old Magnifying Glass
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 14, 2022
During excavations of the ancient Assyrian capital of Kalkhu (better known as Nimrud, in Iraq) in 1850, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard fo...
Code of Ur-Nammu: The Oldest Law in History
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 7, 2022
Some of the earliest legal codes concerning crimes and offenses and their punishment were formulated in the ancient Middle East. The Sumeria...
Did Abbas Ibn Firnas Make History’s First Flight?
Kaushik Patowary
May 9, 2022
Just outside Baghdad International Airport there is a statue of a man wearing a turban with feathered wings strapped over his arms, about to...
The Oldest Name in The World
Kaushik Patowary
Apr 12, 2022
Humans have been calling each other by names probably for hundreds of thousands of years ever since the first human beings evolved from Homo...
The Ziggurat of Dur-Kurigalzu
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 2, 2019
This enormous structure rising over the desert sands near the Euphrates River resembles a sandstone butte but is actually made of mud-brick...
The Marsh Arabs of Iraq
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 12, 2018
The two great rivers of ancient Mesopotamia—Tigris and Euphrates—rises in the Taurus mountains in southern Turkey, and after flowing through...
The Oldest Bridge In The World
Kaushik Patowary
Jun 19, 2018
The ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, located approximately midway between the modern cities of Baghdad and Basrah, in southern Iraq, is one o...
Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished Mosques
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 22, 2016
In the late 1990s, amidst rising poverty and with four million residents on the verge of famine, the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein deci...
The Round City of Baghdad
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 19, 2016
The city of Baghdad was founded in the 8th century as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, by its caliph al-Mansur. The Caliphate had just ...
The Great Ziggurat of Ur
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 4, 2016
In the middle of the third millennium BCE, the ancient Mesopotamians began building huge stepped platforms out of fired bricks called ziggur...
The Highway of Death
Kaushik Patowary
May 4, 2016
Twenty five years ago, one of the most brutal massacres in war history occurred in Iraq, along Highway 80, about 32 km west of Kuwait city. ...
Taq Kasra: The Archway of Ctesiphon
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 22, 2016
The ancient city of Ctesiphon, on the banks of Tigris, is located about 35 km southeast of modern Baghdad. Established in the late 120s BC, ...
Al-Shaheed Monument, Baghdad
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 14, 2016
During the 1970s and 1980s, Saddam Hussein’s government spent a lot of oil money in building monuments around Baghdad. Two of these are quit...
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Around the World
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 11, 2015
Throughout history, thousands of wars have been fought and millions of soldiers have lost their lives, but only an insignificant fraction of...
World’s Biggest Tire Graveyard in Sulabiya, Kuwait
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 9, 2015
An average automobile tire can travel around 30,000 kilometers before they need to be replaced. Tires that have reached the end of their li...
The Great Mosque of Samarra
Kaushik Patowary
Aug 8, 2014
The Great Mosque of Samarra is located in Samarra city, in Iraq, about 120 km north of Baghdad, on the banks of river Tigris. It was built i...
The Eternal Fire at Baba Gurgur
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 24, 2013
Baba Gurgur (literally "Father of Fire") is a large oil field near the city of Kirkuk which was the first to be discovered in Nort...
The Citadel Town of Erbil, Iraq
Kaushik Patowary
May 24, 2013
At the heart of the city of Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, lies an ancient mound of earth some 25 to 30 meters tall from the surrou...
Wadi Al-Salaam: The Largest Cemetery in The World
Kaushik Patowary
May 15, 2013
Wadi us-Salaam, which literally means the Valley of Peace, is an Islamic cemetery located in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq. The cemetery cove...
