Flight ban in Iraq’s Kurdish region halts dig for ancient city
RANYA: Ismael Nuraddini peers into a hole in the earth of Iraq’s Kurdistan region at what researchers believe could be remnants of a lost city dating back more than 2,000 years.
Pointing around the Qalatga Darband site, he recounts the discoveries of two statues that may help to prove this was once a thriving hub founded by Alexander the Great.
“One of them looks like Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty in ancient Greece. The other one could be Alexander,” Nuraddini, 62, told AFP.
Until recently the dig, some 330 km northwest of Baghdad, was buzzing with activity as a team of 15 archaeologists from both Iraq and abroad worked under the stewardship of the British Museum in London to uncover more invaluable treasures.
But now the site is silent as the foreign experts packed up and left last week to avoid becoming stranded after a spat between Iraq and the Kurdish authorities over a disputed independence referendum that saw Baghdad cut air links to the region.
The sudden disappearance of foreign experts has left Nuraddini guarding Qalatga Darband.
Archaeologists working on the site describe the find as “exceptional”, but it will take the British Museum project years longer to determine if it was linked to Alexander.
Some believe it could be a major city from Alexander’s empire that was lost from historical records for millennia.
But even if those hopes prove unfounded, it is still an important find.