Photographic exhibition Shahr I- SOKHTA When myth becomes history.
'I know a city that fills with sunshine every day and everything is enraptured in that moment' (Giuseppe Ungaretti)
Shahr-i Sokhta, which rises in the province of Zahedan, between the inhospitable Lut desert and the heights of Baluchistan, represents one of the most sought-after centers for archaeological investigation, both for being perfectly preserved due to saline concretions present throughout the surface that sealed finds and structures of the subsoil, both for being often associated, in archaeological literature, with the mythological Aratta who, localized by the Mesopotamian texts "where the sun rises", rivaled the rulers of the First Dynasty of Uruk (among whom remembers Gilgamesh), masters of Sumer and custodians of kingship after the Flood. The extraordinary discoveries in recent years have confirmed the exceptional nature of Shahr-i Sokhta which, although the custodian of an autonomous growth path, stands between the four great river civilizations (Indus, Tigris-Euphrates, Oxus and Halil) and literary civilizations of the Middle East, Central Asia and Southern Asia: the Sumerian one, whose literary links flow into mythology, that of Jiroft, cradle of a new and forgotten civilization until 2003, that of the Oxus with the extraordinary site of Djarkutan and that of the great centers of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, with which Shahr-i Sokhta maintained relations at various levels. The prosperity of the major center of Sistan, at the end of the third millennium BC, had to disappear, progressively and suddenly, for causes, mostly unknown and mysterious, which involved the major centers of all of eastern Iran, of Southern Asia and of Central. The new research in Shahr-i Sokhta allows us to present the center of Sistan as a center without a single elite, in which multiple ethnic groups coexisted (among these the presence of elements from Baluchistan, Turkmenistan and proto-Elamites of Western origins), devoid of defensive walls and a single object of offense, according to a heterarchic, peaceful organization with a clear matrilineal matrix.
13-28 July Free entry
Olivetan Monastery – Lecce
