Chicago :
What Ancient Kurdish History?
Dr. Donny George
New York
I read the fine and correct words of Mr. Fred Aprim in the last issue of your esteemed Magazine about the article that mentioned the Kurds and their history (click here).
From my own specialty and my over thirty years of experience in the field of archaeology, and having hundreds of archaeologists as friends and colleagues, I have never heard of such big lie and falsification, and twisting of the history.
The Kurds, with respect to them all, have no ancient history and antiquities according to the Iraqi Antiquities Law, the last of which was #55 in the year 2002. In that law anything that is older than 200 years is considered antiquity and ancient history, and the Kurds are not included in that time
frame, because as Mr. Aprim mentioned, they only began to show up in the northern parts of Iraq by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, as traveling tribes.
There is no shame in that some people have no long history, but it is shameful if these same people try to steal the history of other people. THERE ARE NO DOCUMENTS THAT MENTION THE KURDS IN THE HISTORY OF MESOPOTAMIA, as far as I, a responsible person in the Iraqi antiquities, am concerned. No one has even heard of the Kurdish scholar mentioned in Aprim's article, and Mr. Shayda is not an archaeologist. He is a surveyor working in the Inspector's Office of Antiquities in Kirkuk.
I do not wish to belabor this issue, but I need to say three things:
1. There are many attempts to re-write the history of the Kurds, and to grab real history of real people and attach themselves to that history, without any shame, as it is said in Arabic: "Unless you you feel shame, you will do what you want."
2. We must speak up, because the Kurds are working diligently to completely demolish and wipe out the Assyrians, and re-name them as "Christian Kurds", and all these attempts in the re-writing of history, fall in the same line.
3. The writer of the article should have asked a real historian and archaeologists and no one else.
Dr. Donny George is a world-renown archaeologist and the former Chairman of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in
2025-11-04 05:44:33