Archaeologists uncover 4,700-year-old Sumerian town

BAGHDAD - Iraqi archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a Sumerian town dating back to 2,700 BC, including what the head of the excavation team said could be the oldest cemetery known to mankind.

"Remains show that the town stretched over six square kilometres and excavations started in 1999 have uncovered many houses, a palace, a temple and a huge cemetery," said Haidar Abdulwahad, head of the archaeology team.

"The cemetery has thousands of tombs dating from between 2,300 and 2,600 BC, which is the oldest cemetery in the history of mankind," Abdulwahad told AFP.

"We found curled-up skeletons of men, women and children," he said. "The team has also found pottery, figurines, jars, glasses and jewellery as well as other items such as knives and axes."

Abdulwahad said the palace covered 2,500 square metres and was surrounded by a wall 2.5 metres thick.

But the head archaeologist said that the site had been pillaged in 1991 in the thick of the Gulf War in which Iraqi occupation troops were expelled from neighbouring Kuwait.

"Around 4,000 archaeological pieces were stolen, with antiques traffickers smuggling some of their booty into Turkey."

Despite the looting, the head of Iraq's department of archaeology and heritage, Donni George, dubbed the discovery as "an important event because it will throw light on the Sumerian era."

"The town, whose name is not known, was probably an administrative and religious centre, given it had a temple, palace ziggurat and cemetery," he said.

The town lies in the desert region of Um al-Aqareb, or "mother of the scorpions", almost 300 kilometres south of Baghdad and so called because of its large number of scorpions.

It is just 120 kilometres north of Ur, the most splendid of all the ancient Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia, witnessing its peak in about 4,000 BC.

Ur, which contains the remains of the famous ziggurat - a three-tiered edifice standing more than 17 metres high - spreads out over nine square kilometres and houses a mass of temples, palaces and royal tombs.

Ur, the Biblical birthplace of Abraham, has been linked to Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, who is one of the main figures in Assyrian and Babylonian mythology.

Iraq, and especially the northern province of Kurdistan, contains more than 10,000 archaeological sites, most of which have still not yet been uncovered, according to official statistics.

Iraq has repeatedly accused foreigners of financing the theft of archaeological pieces and pointed an accusing finger at diplomats posted in Baghdad and UN employees.

Before the embargo imposed on Iraq in August 1990 for invading Kuwait, Iraq played host to numerous foreign archaeological expeditions each year.