Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae receives Syrian Order of Merit for his contribution to archaeological excavations in Syria – VP News – ‘forbidden to speak’

2023-06-18 19:09:50

Friends of Syria site Ora Pro Siria broke the news that Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae has been awarded the Syrian Order of Merit in recognition for his contributions to archaeological excavations.

In particular, it is reported that the Syrian Minister of Culture, Lubana Mechaweh, said that Matthiae spent almost 40 years of his life excavating the archaeological site of Ebla and remained head and director of the Italian archaeological mission at Tell Mardikh from 1963 to 2011 when work on the site was halted due to the war in Syria.
“He also founded an archaeological mission in Tell Afes and another in Tell Tuqan,” he added, noting that Matthiae has always considered Syria his second homeland and despite all the obstacles and pressures he returned in 2022 after 11 years of mandatory absence, as scientific director of a new Italian mission. “Between 1963 and 2019 he published about 185 scientific articles on Syria, its civilization and its archaeological sites, and 23 works which are among the most important scientific references on ancient Syrian civilizations, in particular on the archaeological site of Ebla”.

In his speech on this occasion, Paulo Matthiae expressed his gratitude for having obtained the highest degree of merit for Ebla, “Country of a very important civilization”, the most important in the history of the Ancient East and the Middle East for centuries .
He clarified that the importance of Ebla dates back to the year 23 BC “This is important for all history due to the emergence of a new language and culture after the discovery of the palace of Ebla, and thus Syria strengthened its position and prestige to reach the same level as the civilization of the Nile and Mesopotamia,” he concluded.

The work of the archaeologist Paolo Matthiae takes place in a fundamental geographical area for the birth of human civilizations. The “cradle of civilization”, as it is defined, is found in Mesopotamia, today’s southern Iraq, and in Egypt, but also in Upper Syria, a region that differs ecologically from the previous ones. Lower Mesopotamia, in particular, was a vast alluvial valley formed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and, not too dissimilar from the Nile Valley, has a natural environment characterized by a vast range of cultivated lands, arid steppes and marshy marshes. In the Nile valley, on the other hand, the course of the river flows almost unchanging between green lands and arid deserts, without any significant variation. In Upper Syria, on the other hand, the territory deserves attention for its characteristics, such as the presence of cliffs at high altitudes and the influence of rainfall, which increases as one approaches the Taurus mountain range, which forms the northern border of the so-called Fertile Crescent, where cereals, vines and olive trees grow. Archaeological research has been working for decades on these politically unstable and humanly tried regions, looking for answers on the protagonists of those changes that have made these apparently inhospitable places the welcoming cradles of ancient human civilizations.

In Lower Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, the “urban revolution” led to the formation of the first city-states and the first territorial state. This phase took place in the 4th millennium BC and accelerated in the 3rd millennium BC, in the Late Uruk and Gemdet Nasr phase for Mesopotamia and Nagada IIIB-C for Egypt. This cultural development was revolutionary and led to the formation of cities with never before seen population concentrations, surrounded by walls, with monumental public architecture and settlement hierarchies, complex agrarian economy and specialized professional classes, stable ruling elite and growing social inequality, as well as the employment writing for administrative purposes.

This new formula of social life was characterized by the increase of the population within the city walls, by the expansion of the cities and by the increase in the number and density of the urban centres. However, a possible limitation of the “urban revolution” was given by the environment of the alluvial valleys, which seemed to be an insurmountable conditioning for the affirmation of the new urban and state model.

The challenge was won by the protagonists of “secondary urbanization”, in particular Ebla in Western Syria and Urkish in North-Eastern Syria, who were born and thrived in ecologically different environments from the flood valleys thanks to a different extensive dry agriculture and food supplementation among several agricultural crops and animal species. Furthermore, these cities overexploited the resources of critical raw materials, such as timber from forests and metals from the surrounding mountains. Ebla and Urkish demonstrated that the “urban revolution” was not limited to floodplains, but could also be achieved in less favorable environments. . This also demonstrates the importance of technological innovation and efficient management of natural resources for the development of city-states and territorial states.

Secondary urbanization led to the emergence of large cities such as Mari, located on the bank of the Euphrates River, which developed as an important commercial and political center of northern Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC
In these cities, writing was even more important; the discovery of the Ebla archives has made it possible to understand the political, economic and social life of the city and to reconstruct the withidria of the commercial exchanges of the time.
The traders of the city-states had at their disposal a great diversity of raw materials and finished products, as well as advanced production tools and technologies, which granted the ruling class considerable power over natural resources, workers and markets.

In this context, cuneiform writing, the first hieroglyphic writing system, also developed, with the use of wedge-shaped writing tools on clay tablets. Cuneiform writing allowed the spread of knowledge and facilitated the development of commerce and the bureaucracy of the city-states.
In conclusion, the “urban revolution” was a fundamental stage in the history of humanity, which led to the birth of complex social, political and economic systems based on the development of cities and territorial states. This development was made possible thanks to technological innovation, efficient management of resources and writing, which allowed the diffusion of knowledge and the development of trade and bureaucracy.

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To understand, at least as a hint, the importance of the scientific work that prof Matthiae has carried out, discovering an ancient civilization similar to the civilization of the Nile Valley and parallel to the Mesopotamian civilization, we report from the Rimini Meeting website the part of the conference held in 2014 by the professor on the occasion of the presentation of the exhibition FROM THE DEEP TIME: AT THE ORIGIN OF COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNITY IN ANCIENT SYRIA