TEHRAN – A restoration and salvage work is to commence on the 4,000-year-old bas-reliefs of Anubanini and their surrounding landscape in western Iran. 

In addition, a group of archaeologists and cultural heritage expects have been tasked to propose legal boundaries for the bas-relief site by the means of experimental trenches, a local official said on Wednesday. 

Situated in northeastern edge of the modern Sarpol-e Zahab in Kermanshah province, about twenty kilometers east of the border between Iraq and Iran, the reliefs are associated with the Lullubi civilization are due to depicting Lullubian kings as conquerors.

They can be found on the northeastern edge of the modern Sarpol-e Zahab in Kermanshah province, about twenty kilometers east of the border between Iraq and Iran.

The site embraces six reliefs that are linked with the people known as Lullubi and Simurrums, who lived in the Zagros Mountain range almost 5,000 years ago.

The kingdom of Lullubi, in the valley of the Diyala river, is mentioned several times in the cuneiform texts from ancient Iraq; the first references date to the third millennium BC (Naram-Sin’s famous Victory Stela in the Louvre), while the most recent texts belong to the Neo-Assyrian age, according to Livius.org; a website on ancient history written and maintained since 1996 by the Dutch historian Jona Lendering.

All reliefs show the king, facing right and holding a bow and a battle-ax, standing on a defeated enemy; in the sky, symbols of the celestial deities can be seen.

One of the reliefs depicts a goddess holding two naked captives, which are tied to each other with ropes. Below the king and the deity, six other prisoners of war can be seen. 

Kermanshah is a cradle of civilization due to its antiquity and having Neolithic sites that have been yielded rich collections of stone tools and fossil bones. Anubanini bas-reliefs are widely believed to be the oldest of their kind in the country. 

AM