"Exposure 2026" It reveals the similarity between the ruins of the historical Mleiha region and ancient Greek cities
Sharjah, January 29 / WAM / His Excellency Issa Yousef, Director General of the Sharjah Antiquities Authority, confirmed that the antiquities documented the similarity between Sharjah and Greece, starting with the geographical location, its cultural importance, the common time frame in the Bronze Age, and the use of metals in tools and weapons, in addition to regional trade networks.
This came during a dialogue session entitled “Cultural Relations with Greece through Archaeological Discoveries in Sharjah,” which was held as part of the activities of the first day of the International Photography Festival “Xposure,” which began today and continues until February 4 at Aljada in Sharjah, under the slogan “A Decade of Visual Storytelling.”
The session comes within the framework of hosting Athens, the guest of honor of the festival, on the “Civilization Platform”, during which His Excellency the Director General of the Sharjah Archeology Authority reviewed the features of cultural and commercial relations between Sharjah and the Greek civilization in ancient Greece, based on archaeological discoveries. He pointed out that these discoveries represented material evidence of similarity and cultural communication that began during the Bronze Age from 3000 to 1300 BC and continued until the Hellenistic Age in 323 BC and revealed a movement Cultural goods and influences between the East and the West and their direct impact on the Arabian Gulf region. In this regard, a comparison was made between the finds in Mleiha and the finds displayed in the “National Museum of Antiquities of Athens”.
Issa Youssef said that the Hellenistic era was the beginning of relations between the East and the West with the conquests of Alexander the Great and the movement towards Syria, the Levant, Iraq and Persia, all the way to India, where the two cultures mixed, which resulted in the establishment of the Hellenistic culture. Commercially, Mleiha was nominated to be the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Oman in pre-Christian times, as well as the Seleucid Kingdom which was founded by Seleucus I after the death of Alexander, although the region had not been subject to direct control before. Hellenistic kingdoms, however, were economically integrated within their spheres of influence through exchange systems and commercial mediations.
His Excellency confirmed that the book of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, “The History of Oman from Human Settlement to the End of the Ibadi State,” constitutes an essential reference for inscriptions and finds.
His Excellency added that the cultural connection between the region and Greece was embodied in the coins discovered from the era of Seleucus I, referring to the book of His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah, which shed light on these archaeological discoveries, which included, in addition to the cash coins, a group of pottery, including the “amphora” jar, which documents the relationship with Athens and constitutes confirmed evidence of the cultural communication between the region and the island of Rhodes, as the black glazed jar dates back to the third century BC and is the first glazed jar to be made. Discover it.
His Excellency pointed out that these jars carry Greek inscriptions, which are the names and seals of what they call “industry commanders” or “the person responsible in the municipality for making jars” used to transport oils and liquids and are approved by the government on the island of Rhodes in terms of weight and size. That is why the names of the makers such as “Antimachus” and “Kiron” were engraved on the handles of those jars, stressing that the number of jar handles discovered in Mleiha reached 51 handles, which is a number that does not exist. In any other location in the Arabian Peninsula.
He added that these names are documented in the Greek archives, expressing the history of the work period of the “commander” (the person responsible for making the jars) and help researchers accurately date the pieces and the location. They are almost the same pieces documented in city records and artifacts in Greek museums, pointing out that these jars were buried with their owner in Greece, as well as in the archaeological cemeteries in Mleiha.
He said that in terms of the architectural similarity between the region and Greek civilization, the ancient forts of Mleiha resemble the forts of Qasr al-Hallabat and Qasr Bishara in the Levant, which were under direct Greek rule in the third century BC. The tombs of these forts include decorations that are historically the oldest and predate the architecture in Mada’in Saleh and Petra.
His Excellency revealed that 54 iron swords were found in those graves, which are the same swords displayed in Greek museums, noting that most of them are long swords, some of which reach more than 90 centimetres, and their handles are in the shape of a seahorse or horse’s head.
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