The police escort brought us to Ur – an important city of ancient southern Mesopotamia, situated about 225 kilometers southeast of the site of Babylon and about 16 kilometers west of the present bed of the Euphrates River. In antiquity, the river ran much closer to the city; the...
Sumerian Uruk is an ancient Mesopotamian city located northwest of Ur (Tall Al-Muqayyar) in southeastern Iraq. The site was excavated from 1928 onward by the German Oriental Society and the German Archeological Institute. Uruk was one of the greatest cities of Sumer and was enclosed by...
Babylon was one of the largest, oldest settlements in Mesopotamia and the Middle East on the Euphrates River. It was the seat of successive powerful empires under such famous rulers as Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon was the capital of southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia) from the early...
After crossing some terrible checkpoints, we arrived at the Ctesiphon, an ancient city located on the left bank of the Tigris River about 32 kilometers southeast of modern Baghdad. It served as the winter capital of the Parthian Empire and later the Sāsānian Empire. The site is famous for...
We drove one hour with our guide Othman from @visitmosulofficial to Hatra (🎫 25000 IQD). It is a ruined city in the Al-Jazīrah region, 290 km northwest of Baghdad and 110 km southwest of Mosul. It was s religious and trading center of the Parthian empire. It flourished during the 1st and...
Khanzad Castle, also called Banaman Castle, is located on the road between Erbil and Shaqlawa. It was constructed during the time of the Kurdish Soran Emirate in the 16th century under the rule of Princess Khanzad and her brother Prince Suleiman Beg. For seven years, she ruled over two...
Shrine of Raban Boya It is situated in Shaqlawa at the foot of the Safeen Mountains. Christians know the cave as Rabanboya, while Muslims call it Sheikh Wso Rahman. We took a taxi to the parking (10000 IQD), and from there, we hiked for around 20 minutes the steep hill up to the cave. It...
Our last stop today was an Assyrian archaeological site Khinnis, also known as Bavian (🎫 5000 IQD), facing the River Gomel Su. There are remains of rock reliefs built by king Sennacherib around 690 BC. It was made to celebrate the construction of a complex system of canals whose aim was...
Just some two kilometers off the main road surviving pieces of an ancient aqueduct may have fed into the lost Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The muddy road is only for off-road vehicles. The aqueduct is part of the larger Atrush Canal built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib between 703 and...
Our next stop was supposed to be Halamata Cave – an archaeological site near Duhok. The caves contain the Assyrian relief carvings known as the Maltai reliefs. The reliefs all show a procession of nine figures (the Assyrian king worshipping the main divinities in the Mesopotamian...