Nimrud’s broken glory lies in dust after Daesh onslaught
nimrud (Iraq) — In a field outside an ancient palace in the Assyrian city of Nimrud, shattered remains of intricate carvings lie broken in the dust.
Remnants of elaborate wall panels and colossal statues of winged bulls, they stood at the site for nearly three millennia, reminders of a mighty empire which stretched across the Middle East.
At the northern edge of the old city, a ziggurat — or terraced pyramid — towered over the palace and nearby temples.
The ziggurat has been reduced to a pile of dirt, with tyre tracks all over it, apparently flattened by bulldozers in the last two months before militants were driven out of the site by Iraqi forces on Sunday.
Palace walls have been stripped of the carved facades which adorned them. Just a few pieces remain in place, while fragments of the winged bulls — or lamassus — which stood at one of the palace entrances lie in a pile outside.
Carefully engraved feathers can still be seen on one of them, lying close to what appears to be a foot of one of the mythical carved creatures. Several tablet fragments seem to contain symbols from cuneiform, an ancient Semitic language.
“There were about 200 ancient panels. Daesh stole some of them and destroyed the rest,” Maj-Gen Dhiya Kadhim Al Saidi said on a visit to the site on Wednesday, three days after it was recaptured.
A tribal fighter from the area said the ziggurat had been destroyed by the militants in the last two months as the Iraqi army advanced towards Nimrud, confirming evidence from satellite pictures which showed its steady destruction since September.
Saidi said Daesh had been driven about 3.5km northwest of Nimrud, but the area had not yet been cleared of possible bombs and booby traps.
Nimrud lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, 30km south of Mosul where Iraqi soldiers are battling to crush Daesh. Mosul is the largest city under the militants’ control in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.
Counter-terrorism forces breached Daesh defences in the east of Mosul two weeks ago but have faced resistance from the militants who have deployed suicide car bombs, snipers and waves of counter-attacks.
Daesh still controls other Assyrian landmarks including the ruins of Nineveh and Khorsabad, as well as the 2,000-year-old desert city of Hatra, famed for its pillared temple which blended Graeco-Roman and eastern architecture.
The United Nations cultural agency Unesco has condemned the destruction at Nimrud as a war crime and an attack on the world’s shared heritage, pointing to ancient Mesopotamia’s role as a cradle of civilisation where early urban centres flourished and cuneiform writing on clay was developed.
In neighbouring Syria, Daesh was driven out of the city of Palmyra eight months ago, after dynamiting monuments including two temples and Palmyra’s imposing triumphal arch.
The Iraqi army used drones earlier in the week to monitor the Nimrud site after retaking it from Daesh.
The antiquities authority says it is still working to set up field teams to assess the damage, but says it hopes some of the ruins can be salvaged. —