2,700-Year-Old Shields and Helmet Found at Ancient Castle in Turkey

Three bronze shields and one bronze helmet dating back 2,700 years were found by archaeologists excavating an ancient castle in Turkey, the country’s minister of culture and tourism announced on  Instagram and X earlier this month.

Ayanis Castle was a fortress near Lake Van in eastern Turkey erected by the Kingdom of Urartu (also known as the Kingdom of Van). At the height of its success, between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C.E., the kingdom was known for its military prowess and metalwork.

The shields and helmet were found in a temple complex devoted to Haldi, the chief god of Urartu, and were left as offerings to the god.

These are hardly the first or most extensive finds at the site, which included the discovery of a miniature bronze chariot likely used for transporting a cultic statue just last year.

“This castle is proving to be the richest Urartian site in Turkey for many reasons, not the least of which is the quantity of bronzes associated with the temple,” Paul Zimansky, a history professor at Stony Brook University who conducted archaeological work at Ayanis between 1997 and 2009, told Live Science.

Current excavations at the castle are being overseen by Mehmet Isikli, an archaeology professor at Ataturk University.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OMC, Nesian Mystik, Scribe, Brooke Fraser, Aradhna, Adeaze, Feature in 50 Iconic Aotearoa Music Moments  

Image
Nesian Mystik. Photo: Facebook The Official Music Charts turns 50 today. Produced by Recorded Music NZ, the Charts reflect the most popular singles and albums in Aotearoa each week. They are the only charts endorsed by the music industry and are compiled according to globally recognised guidelines. In celebration of the milestone anniversary, Recorded Music has identified 50 iconic Aotearoa music moments from the last five decades. The Charts’ 50-year history is rich with stories of pikitanga, or ascension – referring to those who demonstrate great potential and are climbing toward success.  Today is just the start of Charts celebrations during 2025 – Recorded Music will also be acknowledging a small number of New Zealand’s most successful artists as Aotearoa Charts Icons later in 2025. As well as 50 years of the Official Charts, 2025 marks 60 years of the Music Awards in Aotearoa, an anniversary which will be celebrated at the AMA event on Thursday 29 May, closing out Te Ma...
Read more

The Storied Collection of Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio’s Founder Heads to Auction at Sotheby’s Paris

Image
On April 10, Sotheby’s Paris will hold a sale dedicated to Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt, a Brazilian businesswoman and journalist and the founder of Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro. Bittencourt, who died in 2003, was a prodigious collector of mid-century Modernist masterpieces, including works by Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Max Ernst, as well as leading Brazilian artists of the era including Almir Da Silva Mavignier and Franz Krajcberg. For those unfamiliar with Bittencourt, that may soon change. Later this year, according to Sotheby’s, a biography by author Ricardo Cota will be released. Titled A Mulher que Enfrentou o Brasil (The Woman Who Faced Brazil), the book will tell how Bittencourt both shaped Brazil’s modern art scene and courageously defied the Brazilian military dictatorship of the ’60s and ’70s. In the 1940s, while Brazil’s cultural establishment remained skeptical of modernism, Bittencourt founded the MAM with little funding and against stif...
Read more

Middle East Fund Managers Now on Sotheby’s Reconfigured Board after Abu Dhabi Investment

In October, Sotheby’s announced that it had secured a $1 billion investment from ADQ, a sovereign wealth fund operated by Abu Dhabi’s government. Part of the arrangement stipulates that the auction house’s board would be reconfigured into a nine-person group, with three seats for managers associated with the Emirati fund. At the time, it was unclear how the board would be reconfigured. It meant that for the first time, financial authorities in the Middle East would have a significant presence in how the heritage company was run. This marked a shift in the makeup of its highest levels of management, positions which have historically been held by money managers and lawyers based in Western countries. In UK regulatory disclosures filed shortly after the announcement, Sotheby’s legal department said that H.E. Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi, the Minister of Investment Managing Director & CEO of ADQ, was one of the newly appointed directors to join the global auction house’s board. Alsuwaid...
Read more