The land between two rivers

The exhibition organized by the Centro Scavi Torino was a fundamental achievement in the history of Italian studies in the Near East. As Prof. Giorgio Gullini stated in the introduction to the catalogue, the exhibition’s theme is the “twenty years of experiences and activities for conducting research programmes, with constant updating and ongoing improvement of operational methodologies, in the context of a close interaction of physical, mathematical and natural sciences and historical sciences, aimed at reconstructing mankind’s past in moments and places determined from time to time, as thoroughly as possible”. Through original artefacts, reconstructions and illustrative panels, the exhibition analysed some basic aspects of the history of civilization in Mesopotamia, and specifically excavations, funerary customs, anthropological, zooarchaeological and ethnoanthropological elements of the sites of Tell Hassan, Tell Abu Husaini and Tell Yelkhi (Hamrin project), the cultural relations between East and West in the Hellenistic panorama that followed Alexander the Great (Seleucia on the Tigris, Choche, Kifrin), the cultural aspects of the areas adjacent to Mesopotamia (Jerash, the Atrek Valley), without overlooking the field activities of the archaeologists from the Centro Scavi Torino and the guidance, planning and scientific cooperation of the Italian Institutes in Baghdad (the Italian-Iraqi Institute of Archaeological Sciences and the Italian-Iraqi Centre for the Restoration of Monuments).