(Mosul) American and Iraqi archaeologists have discovered in Mosul, a major metropolis of Iraq, eight 2,700-year-old marble bas-reliefs depicting war scenes from the time of the powerful kings of Assyria, announced on Wednesday a local manager.
Posted at 2:30 p.m.
The discovery was made at the site of Mashki, one of the historic gates of the ancient city of Nineveh located in Mosul. The monumental gate was bulldozed by the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group, during their reign of terror imposed between 2014 and 2017 on the northern metropolis.
The eight gray marble bas-reliefs date back to the era of Assyrian King Sennacherib (705-681 BC), according to a statement from the Iraqi Council of Antiquities and Heritage. This king will rebuild and expand Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire, including erecting a magnificent palace.
On the bas-reliefs unearthed a week ago, we can notably see a soldier in profile preparing to shoot an archery, but also palm trees and finely chiseled trees.
“We believe that these rooms were moved from the palace of Sennacherib and reused by the grandson of the king, to renovate the door of Mashki and to enlarge the guard room”, explained to AFP Fadel Mohamed Khodr, leader of the archaeological mission that restores the site.
The first builders had knowingly erased the carved decorations on the bas-reliefs, adds the expert. “Only the part buried underground has retained its carvings,” Khodr added.
These vestiges “are the first to have been discovered on this site relatively intact and having kept their original appearance”, he rejoices.
Nineveh was “the oldest and most populous city of the Assyrian Empire, imperial capital and major crossroads between the eastern Mediterranean and the Iranian plateau”, recalls on its website the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in the Areas in conflict (ALIPH).
After the destruction inflicted by IS, ALIPH has been funding the reconstruction since 2021 of the Mashki Gate by a team of archaeologists from the American University PENN and their Iraqi counterparts.
From 2014 until its military defeat in Iraq at the end of 2017, IS occupied large swathes of territory and considered Mosul its “capital” in the country.
Iraq has suffered for decades from the looting of its antiquities: after the American invasion of 2003 and then with the arrival of the IS, which had engaged in “cultural cleansing”, according to the UN, by razing a part of the remains of ancient Mesopotamia, or by reselling parts on the black market.