Islam was a religion which owed its rapid success to conquest. From 622 AD and led by Muhammed himself, Muslim armies swept across the Middle East and unified Arabia into a single entity. The greatest adversary they faced in their sweep eastward was mighty Persia. This ancient and venerable culture of fire worshippers had dominated the region for more than a millennium, ruled for the last four centuries by the house of Sasan. This Sasanian Empire was the second longest lived in Persia’s long history, but they too would fall to the Islamic armies, their culture subsumed and their religion, known as Zoroastrianism, crushed. One of the most decisive battles over the Sasanians occurred in 636 AD and is known as the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah. Muhammed did not live to see the battle. Instead it was the Rashidun Caliphate, the first Islamic caliphate founded in his name, which carried out his vision and conquered the Persians on that day. We know of the battle from the various Arabic accounts of this crucial early Islamic victory. But we have never been able to find the battlefield, until now. Using declassified spy satellite images, a team from the University of Durham have pinpointed the long-lost site of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, as published in Antiquity. The team, led by Durham University archaeologist Dr William Deadman, had not initially set out to search for the battlefield. They were using 1970s US satellite imagery to identify key points along the Darb Zubaydah pilgrimage route, one of seven such routes in Arabia and dating back 1,000 years to the Abbasid Caliphate, the third Islamic caliphate. Reviewing the satellite imagery the team realized that ancient sites and features were clearly visible from above. They were able to identify the remains of a distinctive 9.5km long double wall. At one end was a large military outpost with three layers of defenses on the edge of the desert, and at the other a Mesopotamian town. This feature, the outpost (known as al-’Udhayb) and the town all corresponded with the historical sources describing the location of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah. A key source, from the Muslim scholar Al-Tabari, describes the Sasanian and Arab drawing up facing each other on the bank of a river and “at the wall of Qudays, with the moat/canal behind.” The age of the satellite imagery was crucial to finding the site. Modern agriculture in the decades since the photographs were taken has destroyed much of the original double wall and obscured the ancient geography of the area. Without these old, outdated photos, it is possible that the battlefield would never have been found at all. Header Image: The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah as depicted in the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp. Source: Mir Sayyid Ali / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Ancient Cylinder Seals May Have Led to the First Writing
Writing is one of the most important inventions in the entire history of civilization. The ability to record conversations, agreements and stories is literally what separates history from prehistory, and those civilizations who wrote things down captured their cultural identity for all time in doing so. And now, in a new study published in Antiquity, a link has been made which may tell us where the first writing came from. The text, known as proto-cuneiform and one of our very earliest writing systems, has been shown to derive from cylinder seals in ancient Mesopotamia. Proto-cuneiform first appeared in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk around 3300 BC. The seals, which had been around for a thousand years at this point, feature detailed engravings which appear to directly link to this text. Cylinder seals are cylindrical, clearly, and designed to be pressed into clay like a rolling pin, leaving an impression somewhat like a frieze as the designs which cover the surface of the seal are rolled out. The seals predate literacy, but were used to keep track of trades with the designs representing hundreds of different commodities, some instantly recognizable, some obscure to this day. The new study, authored by Kathryn Kelley, Mattia Cartolano and Silvia Ferrara, makes a clear link between the symbols on these seals and the writing found at Uruk. This makes sense, as Uruk was a major trading hub and the development of the script from the seals would have driven administrative efficiency: it seems we learned to write so we could keep tabs on our goods. Trade was often linked to religion at this point, and this is borne out by some of the finds. The seals often depict a priestly figure receiving goods. A derivation of this is the figure EN in proto-cuneiform, a religious title which was apparently also used as a sign of quality in that you would be receiving “EN-level goods.” The goods represented on the seals had themselves became highly stylized over millennia of use. These representations were adopted, pretty much wholesale, by the Sumerians in their writing. Texts commonly start as pictographs in this way, with the most famous example being Egyptian hieroglyphs. This reveals something perhaps unexpected about this earliest writing, as well: it was collaborative. The fact that Uruk was a trade hub means that the seals came from all over the region, with different cultures providing their own depiction of their particular goods. Proto-cuneiform, and the birth of language, started as a way not for the people to record themselves, but to talk to other peoples and to work together. Header Image: A cylinder seal from Uruk: the designs on such seals may have been co-opted by the Sumerians and formed the basis for proto-cuneiform, one of the earliest forms of writing. Source: Louvre / Public Domain.
The Baghdad Battery: History Rewritten or History Misunderstood?
For those who search for the strange and unusual from history there are certain things which prove interesting time and again. Unexplained phenomena, disappearances and unsolved murders, these always appeal, and it is easy to understand why. A mystery solved is, after all, no mystery at all, and those that remain so allow for endless speculation from experts and amateurs alike. But the most appealing of such categories of mysteries from history is generally the so-called “out of place artifact”. These are discoveries, evidenced or surviving intact, which do not belong in the place they were found. Some are clearly mistakes or misidentifications, generally natural formed geology mistaken for something artificial. This is the case with miscategorized fossils, or the Balochistan sphinx: a mountain outcrop fallen victim to pareidolia. Erroneous conclusions also fall into this category: a lack of soot inside the pyramids does not mean the Egyptians had artificial lights, for example (and no, those aren’t incandescent lightbulbs depicted on their wall carvings). Some are hoaxes, obviously. Such hoaxes can be historical, such as the famous diamond hoax of 19xx when US investors were conned by precious stones scattered in a field, but most are modern, perpetrated by those who seek infamy, or at least recognition. This is the case with almost all UFO sightings, or alien encounters. But, once all of these false leads and fakes are filtered out, there remain a very few things from history where an explanation is not forthcoming. These “true” out of place artifacts are the ones which have the power to rewrite history, or at least to suggest that we do not fully understand how we came to be. These are generally items which appear too sophisticated for the time from which they came. These are items which suggest that the ancients, had they been a little more imaginative, could have achieved a technological leap that was missed for centuries, or even millennia. So it is with the Baghdad Battery. Electricity in Ancient Iraq In 1936 in Iraq, an excavation near to the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ctesiphon uncovered a strange trove of items. Gathered together in a group in what is now the Khujut Rabu, a suburb of Baghdad, these items from smallest to largest compromised an iron bar, a hollow copper tube, and a small clay pot. It appeared that the items belonged together and their size suggested that they could form a nested whole: the iron within the copper and both with the ceramic jar. This is how they were discovered and it is believed this is how they were to be arranged. Other things about the find intrigued the archaeologists. One end of the iron rod was insulated from the copper sheath around it by tarry bitumen. There was also a hollow between pot and copper and between copper and iron, with the latter designed to be fit neatly in the opening at the top of the clay container. Corrosion found inside the jar shows it was likely once filled with vinegar. Anyone with any electrical engineering will tell you that these are the components of a basic battery. This was certainly the conclusion of William Konig, then director of the National Museum of Iraq, but there were obvious problems. The first is the age. Konig thought the artifacts to be Parthian, no later than the 2nd century AD. Even if he was mistaken and the artifacts come from the later Sasanian empire, as the shape of the pot suggests, they would still be well over 1,500 years old. There are other problems, too. The copper part of the “battery” did not extend outside the pot, as would be required were it to operate as a battery and form a circuit. It may have been displaced during its long entombment but this was never suggested at the time. Bitumen, too, is not a great choice as an insulator. As the “battery” heated up during operation the bitumen would become pliable and potentially move away from its position separating the iron and copper elements, meaning the battery would need to be constantly replenished, or only operate for brief periods. Konig’s own conclusions are suspect, as well. He believed the battery to be a “galvanic cell” used for electroplating, but the items he suggested as candidates for such a treatment were in fact plated with mercury or gold in an entirely conventional way. Modern experiments have also shown the artifact would have been very poor as a power cell for such electroplating. And yet, the artifact exists? And it is not only the single artifact: similar items have been found nearby. Another excavation in the nearby Mesopotamian city of Selecia had found four more of such items, six years earlier in 1930. Like the Baghdad Battery, they consisted of a clay pot with an iron rod in the center, surrounded by another metal (here bronze instead of copper). Like the Baghdad Battery, they were sealed with bitumen. One, puzzlingly, contained shards of glass. Ten more such jars were found in 1931, this time in Ctesiphon itself. Varying metals including lead and lead compounds were found in these, but nothing so convincing as the Baghdad Battery itself. Cellulose fibers were also commonly found in these pots. So what is the Baghdad Battery, then? Given it appears to be a battery that does not work, could it be a curio, an experiment or only a partial find which was then abandoned? Could it be something else entirely? Such jars were used for storage of scrolls, important documentation protected from the harsh environment. And while this would explain the cellulose fibers found elsewhere, it does not explain the vinegar. It could just be that we are looking here at a true out of place artifact. An idea which, had those who witnessed it comprehended what they could achieve, could have changed the history of the world. Sadly though it seems likely that we will never know. With the US invasion of Iraq
