Posted on 09/20/2008 3:31:37 PM PDT by kronos77
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.
By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.
"The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal state is of great significance," he told The Associated Press. "We should view it as part of Russian history."
Kevin Brook, the American author of "The Jews of Khazaria," e-mailed Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, "Now I'm as confident as the archaeological team is that they've truly found the long-lost city,
The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
Lost Khazars Ping
Dictionary of the Khazars: novel from Serbian author Milorad Pavic(1984)
http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Khazars-M-Milorad-Pavic/dp/0679724613
Interesting. I assume it’s in English?
Yes, it is. translated on most major languages.
A so-called “Jewish Khazar” ring was buried in a grave in medieval Hungary:
“A silver ring found in a cemetery in Ellend, near Pécs in southwestern Hungary and not far from the villages of Nagykozár and Kiskozár, is believed to be of Khazar-Kabar origin. The ring, which dates from the second half of the eleventh century, was found next to a woman’s skeleton, and has thirteen Hebrew letters engraved on it as ornamentation.” - Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), pages 208-209, following the argument of Alexander Scheiber and Attila Kiss which was also adopted by Raphael Patai and Eli Valley. However, it does not spell out real Hebrew words, and is mixed with many non-Hebrew letters and symbols. Scheiber, Kiss, and others argued that the woman was from one of the two nearby Khazar villages.
Jewish symbols were placed on bricks at another burial site in medieval Hungary, which is now located in northern Serbia:
“In 1972, 263 graves were discovered near the village of Chelarevo, in the Vojvodina district of present-day Serbia... More important, Jewish motifs have been found on at least seventy of the brick fragments excavated from the graves. The Jewish symbols on the fragments include menorahs, shofars, etrogs, candle-snuffers, and ash-collectors. One of the brick fragments, which was placed over the grave of Yehudah, has a Hebrew inscription that reads, ‘Yehudah, oh!’ The skulls in the Chelarevo graves had Mongolian features...” - Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 251.
“One can conjecture that this burial ground belonged to the Kabar tribes which joined the Hungarians at the time when they discovered their fatherland. Some of the Kabars, arriving from Khazaria, apparently kept their Judaic religion.” - István Erdélyi, “Kabari (Kavari) v Karpatskom Basseyne.” Sovietskaya Arkheologiya 4 (1983): 179.
“The early-medieval graveyard and settlement at CHelarevo, near Novi Sad, offers the most numerous and most unusual finds with Jewish symbols. Along with several hundreds of graves of typically Avaric characteristics (judging by the pottery, jewellery and horsemen’s gear), excavations begun in 1972 produced several hundreds of graves of the same shape but lacking any additional burial objects.... each grave was marked by a fragment of a Roman brick (never a whole brick, although these were plentiful in the near-by older Roman sites) into which a menorah was cut, and most frequently two other Jewish symbols on its left and right sides: the shofar and an etrog, a lulav on some bricks, and even a small Jewish six-pointed star. Some 450 brick fragments have so far been found. The position and size of the incised motifs were adapted to the size and shape of each of the fragments, which means that the motifs were not there on the original whole bricks. Some of the fragments had a Hebrew inscription added - a name or a few words which, with the exception of JERUSALEM and ISRAEL, are difficult to decipher because of the damage. Some of the Hebrew characters are carved with great precision.... Several hypotheses have been proposed on the possible origin of a Jewish or Judaised population who marked the graves of their dead in this unusual way and had literate people among them. The influence of the Crimea Khazars has been mentioned in this context; their ruler, nobility and part of the population were Judaised in the 8 c., and many Jews who had emigrated from Asia Minor and Byzantium, lived among them.” - Ante Soric et al (editors), Jews in Yugoslavia: Muzejski prostor, Zagreb, Jezuitski trg 4. (Zagreb: MGC, 1989), page 28.
http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-diaspora.html
Wow... sometimes history is not kind to those who don't want to take side...
Very interesting.
Evidence from the Khazars themselves also undercuts the "neutrality" theory. Among other things, they printed coins containing the inscription "There is no God but God, and Moses is his Prophet," clearly mocking the central Islamic declaration of faith. If they were trying to avoid pissing off the Muslims, that was a pretty dumb thing to do.
Did wild Liberals invade?
Thanks Red_Devil 232.
Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital
AFP | Sept. 3, 2008
Posted on 09/03/2008 9:26:26 AM PDT by Alouette
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2073813/posts
|
|
|||
Gods |
Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Khazaria fought 3 wars for 90 years from 640 to 737 against the Caliphate. We took sides.
|
· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe · |
|||
Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discovery Dogpile Eurekalert LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only? |
|
||
|
· Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword · |
|||
Note: this topic is from . Just an update.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
