30.4.05
Battle for the ruins of Uruk in Iraq
A shepard is battling looters at the archaeological site of Uruk in Iraq, according to this report.
Mr Altubi, 65, calls himself custodian of the dead city of Uruk.
...
"When I saw them [looters], I shouted at them to leave, get off this land. What is buried here doesn't belong to any man. It belongs to the world," Mr Altubi said.
Uruk was the most important site in southern Mesopotamia, and probably the entire Middle East, in the 4th-3rd millennia BCE, the period in which the legendary king Gilgamesh supposedly built the city's walls. But, in Iraq, it's almost impossible not to find antiquities when you dig a little bit anywhere.
If this story is true, it's a good one.
A shepard is battling looters at the archaeological site of Uruk in Iraq, according to this report.
Mr Altubi, 65, calls himself custodian of the dead city of Uruk.
...
"When I saw them [looters], I shouted at them to leave, get off this land. What is buried here doesn't belong to any man. It belongs to the world," Mr Altubi said.
Uruk was the most important site in southern Mesopotamia, and probably the entire Middle East, in the 4th-3rd millennia BCE, the period in which the legendary king Gilgamesh supposedly built the city's walls. But, in Iraq, it's almost impossible not to find antiquities when you dig a little bit anywhere.
If this story is true, it's a good one.
