Tur Abdin, Turkey -- During landscaping work in the vicinity of the village of Eshtrako (Turkish: Ortaca), inscriptions in Assyrian were discovered. The inscriptions are carved into stone and believed to belong to an ancient church, Gazete Sabro reports.

The inscriptions were discovered by a local resident who, upon noticing the ruins, continued the excavations, uncovering inscriptions that have been identified as written in Classical Assyrian (Estrangelo script).

The local gendarmerie was notified, after which they inspected the excavation site, secured the premises to protect the artifacts, and reported the findings to the management of the Midyat Museum Directorate.

The exact period to which the inscriptions belong is still under investigation. However, initial research by archaeologists estimates that the ruins date from the early Christian period, possibly the 4th or 5th century AD. The inscriptions are most likely concern inscriptions on tombstones located around this vanished church.

A definitive determination of the age and origin is expected as soon as the clearly legible inscriptions on the stones have been fully deciphered and analyzed.

Eshtrako was recently featured in part 6 of our series "On the Way to Sayfo Remembrance Day: Emptied Assyrian Villages." It is an ancient Assyrian village. A church dues register from 1870 mentions three Assyrian families and no priest. Before the Sayfo Genocide of 1915, twenty families lived there. In the 1970s, ten families lived in Eshtrako. Today, no Assyrians live there, only Kurds.

According to archival records, the village had two churches. The Mor Sobo Church is located at the entrance of the village. This site was turned into a walled water reservoir. This rendered the old church unusable, leaving only a few ruined walls behind. The site of the second church, the Mor Aday Church, is cleared. Only the foundations remain.