New additions to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register

25 May 2025

On 17 April 2025, UNESCO announced 74 new documentary heritage collections that have been added to the Memory of the World Register, bringing the total number of collections to 570. Among these collections are two inscriptions, one in cuneiform and the other in Luwian hieroglyphs and Phoenician.

The UNESCO World Heritage List identifies sites considered to be of outstanding cultural or natural importance, for the purpose of preserving and protecting them. The list currently includes 1,223 such sites. Numerous proposals have been submitted by the 196 State parties that have ratified the World Heritage Convention, and many sites are included on the tentative lists proposed by these parties. For example, Iraq has proposed, among other sites, the ancient Dur-Kurigalzu, now known as Aqar Quf, not far from Baghdad, which was the Kassite capital in the middle of the 2nd millennium, and Nippur, on the Middle Euphrates, that was inhabited continuously for six millennia and was a religious and cultural capital for many centuries. Turkey likewise hopes to have certain archaeological sites listed, including Kültepe, ancient Kanesh, not far from Kayseri, an Assyrian trading post at the beginning of the 2nd millennium, and Zeugma, in the province of Gaziantep, a Hellenistic site from 300 BCE.

The Memory of the World programme is less well known. Launched in 1992, its aim is to ‘combat collective amnesia by calling for the preservation of the precious archives and collections of libraries around the world and ensuring their wide dissemination’. Collections are added to the Memory of the World Register every two years, and the new list for 2025 has just been disclosed, with two new additions discovered on the island of Bahrain and in Turkey.

In 2012, a local archaeological team unearthed fragments of stone vessels originally placed in the tomb of an 18th-century BCE king of ancient Dilmun, corresponding to Bahrain. Four fragments bear a cuneiform inscription written in the Akkadian language, with the name of the buried king, Yagli-El, a name of Amorite origin, thus linking the Dilmun dynasty to those of Babylon, Mari and Aleppo. Yagli-El is defined as the son of the king Rimum, known elsewhere, and servant of the god Inzak of Agarum. Dilmun, then an independent kingdom, controlled the trade routes in the Persian Gulf. It was a strategic port between the Indus Valley and southern Iraq, and maintained relations with the various kingdoms of Mesopotamia and Syria. The local dynasty collapsed around 1720 before experiencing a revival in the middle of the following century.

The site of Karatepe in Cilicia (Turkey), about a hundred kilometres north-east of Adana, corresponding to the Neo-Hittite fortified site of Azatiwadaya, was discovered more than seventy years ago. It was built in the 8th century by the petty king Azatiwada, a vassal of the king of Que, and is remarkable for its bilingual inscriptions carved on doors and bas-reliefs. The inscription in Phoenician – the alphabet from which the Greek alphabet originated – is one of the longest recorded in this script and has enabled the deciphering of Luwian hieroglyphs, in use from the 15th century onwards and recording an Indo-European language related to Hittite. The inscription recounts the activities of the kings of the region, designated as belonging to the house of Mopsos, and the founding of the fortified site by Azatiwada. Among the measures he took, the king claims to have improved security in his kingdom: ‘so that women now walk on isolated paths where men were afraid to go’, thus highlighting the role of women in society.

Various documentary collections in cuneiform from Anatolia are already included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, such as the archives of the Hittite chancellery in Hattusa (Boğazköy) since 2001, and those of Assyrian merchants discovered in Kanesh since 2015. Strangely, however, no cuneiform corpus from Iraq, such as the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, or from Syria, such as the royal archives of Ebla, are included in this register. Given that devastating wars have irreparably damaged the cultural heritage of these countries, I believe it is urgent to help preserve these precious archives and propose their inclusion in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.