17吃瓜

UNEARTHING THE PAST SINCE 1900

NEWS@17吃瓜E-NEWSLETTER

ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY E-NEWSLETTER

PAST 17吃瓜NEWS, MONTH BY MONTH

17吃瓜LEGACY CIRCLE MEMBERS

LIFETIME HONOR ROLL OF DONORS

FY26 HONOR ROLL OF DONORS

17吃瓜ANNUAL MEETING

2026 Study of Collections Fellowship Report

Irene Bald Romano, School of Art and School of Anthropology, University of Arizona

I am pleased to present this final report of the results of my research funded in part by ASOR鈥檚 Study of Collections Fellowship during the summer of 2026. This research project is focused on a group of Late Hellenistic (2nd or early 1st centuries BCE) Greek marble sculptures excavated between 2016 and 2021 in a large Parthian administrative building or manor house (Area E Building) in Qalatga Darband, a fortified ancient town in northern Mesopotamia (eastern Iraqi Kurdistan). In November 2023, I was invited by the excavator, Dr. John MacGinnis, to study and publish these sculptures, now housed in Rania and in the Slemani Museum in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan, and in October 2025, I had the opportunity to travel to Kurdistan to examine the material.

Dr. John MacGinnis, Dr. Irene Bald Romano, Dr. Hashim Hama Abdullah, Director Slemani Museum Oct 2025.
Dr. John MacGinnis, Dr. Irene Bald Romano, and Dr. Hashim Hama Abdullah, Director of the Slemani Museum, Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, October 2025.

The group includes around 70 marble fragments, comprising at least 10-11 statuettes that are purely Greek in style, scale, themes, material (white marble), and manufacturing techniques, forming a consistent corpus that was likely acquired on a single occasion. It is very rare to find such a large group of Greek sculptures in this part of the ancient world, and key research questions relate to where and by whom were they manufactured, how did they come to be in this particular town and building, and how were they used. There is evidence from parallel examples of sculptures of this period that these statuettes were probably manufactured in the Greek islands, possibly Rhodes or Delos, and transported east. They may have been booty taken during the wars between the Seleucid Greeks and the Parthians in the 2nd century BCE or collected by a philhellenic Parthian elite (a royal family member or governor or the like) who resided in the Area E Building.

Irene Bald Romano study sculptures from Qalatga Darband in Slemani Museum October 2025.
Irene Bald Romano studies sculptures from Qalatga Darband in the Slemani Museum, Sulaymaniyah, October 2025.

Critical at this stage of my research leading to the final publication of these sculptures are: 1) analysis of the marble which is now being conducted by scientists at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna; 2) examination of similar sculptures of this period in key places such as Delos, Rhodes, and Kos, which I conducted in fall 2025 and this past summer; and 3) library research to identify comparable Greek material. For the latter, with my travel to and living expenses in Athens largely supported by the 17吃瓜Fellowship, I used the unparalleled Blegen Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. I have completed a draft of a manuscript for a long article or book-length publication, to be co-authored with Dr. MacGinnis. We are awaiting the results of the analysis of the marble from colleagues at the Austrian Academy of Sciences which will be integrated into the manuscript with an appendix added with the full scientific information. We hope to submit the manuscript to a press before the end of the calendar year.

Irene Bald Romano and John MacGinnis at Qalatga Darband, Kurdistan October 2025.
Irene Bald Romano and John MacGinnis at Qalatga Darband, Iraqi Kurdistan, October 2025.

I am extremely grateful to 17吃瓜and its donors for awarding me this fellowship to further my research on a topic that I believe is important from many perspectives. These finds lie at the nexus of critical moments in Late Hellenistic and Roman history in the East, adding to our picture of cultural interactions among minority Greek populations, the Parthians and their vassal kingdoms, and the Romans in the region. I am also deeply appreciative to John MacGinnis and many colleagues who have assisted me with this project, including those in Kurdistan who provided overwhelmingly enthusiastic support.聽

Browse the News Archive

Leave a Reply