3,000-year-old city wrecked by militants
Nimrud one of most important archaeological sites.
NIMRUD, IRAQ — The giant w i n g e d b u l l s t h a t o n c e stood sentry at the nearly 3,000-year- old palace at Nimrud have been hacked to pieces. The fantastic al human-headed creatures were believed to guard the king from evil, but now their stone remains are piled in the dirt, victims of the Islamic State group’s fervor to erase history.
The militants’ fanaticism devastated one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle East. But more than a month after the militants were driven out, Nimrud is still being ravaged, its treasures disappearing, piece by piece, imperiling any chance of eventually rebuilding it. “The good thing is the rub
No one is assigned to guard ble is still in situ,” she said. the sprawling site, much “The site is restorable.” less catalog the fragments To an untrained eye, that’s of ancient reliefs, chunks hard to imagine, seeing the of cuneiform texts, pieces extent of the destruction of statues and other rubble that the Islamic State group after the Islamic State blew up wreaked in March 2015. Salih nearly every structure there. estimated that 60 percent of
“When I heard about Nimthe site was irrecoverable. rud, my heart wept before my The site’s various struceyes did,” said Hiba Hazim tures — several palaces and Hamad, an archaeology protemples — are spread over fessor in Mosul who often took 900 acres on a dirt plateau. her students there. “My famA 140-foot-high ziggurat, or ily and neighbors came to my step pyramid, once arrested house to pay condolences.” the gaze of anyone entering
Perhaps the only vigilant Nimrud. Where it stood, there guardian left for the ruins is is now only lumpy earth. Just an Iraqi archaeologist, Layla past it, in the palace of King Salih. She has visited it mulAshurnasirpal II, walls are tiple times in recent weeks, toppled, bricks spilled into photographing the destrucgiant piles. The palace’s great tion to document it and badcourtyard is a field of cragering nearby militias to take tered earth. Chunks of cunecare of it. Walking across the iform writing are jammed broad dirt expanse of the ruin in the dirt. Reliefs that once on a December day, she was displayed gods and mythcalm, methodical and precise ical creatures are reduced as she pointed out things she to random chunks showing had seen on previous visits a hand or a few feathers of that were no longer in place. a genie’s wing.
Still, Salih does not despair. During a Dec. 14 assessShe searches out reasons for ment tour by UNESCO, a U.N. optimism. demining expert peered at a hole leading to a tomb that appeared to be int ac t . It might be rigged to explode, the expert said, and the UNESCO crew backed away.
The militants boasted of the destruction in high-definition video propaganda, touting their campaign to purge their self-declared “caliphate” of anything they deemed pagan or heretical.
T h e y d i s m a n t l e d t h e wi n ge d b u l l s , k n own a s lamassu, as purposefully as any decapitation they carried out in Mosul or the Syrian city of Raqqa. The bearded male heads of the statues are missing — likely taken to be sold on the black market, as the Islamic State has done with other artifacts. They then wired the entire palace with explosives and blew it apart, along with the temples of Nabu and of the goddess Ishtar.
It was a brutal blow to a site that gave the world a wealth of startling Mesopotamian art It had never been explored and deepened knowledge by archaeologists. about the ancient Mideast. “What exactly was inside
Nimrud was a capital of the it only ISIS knows,” said HerAssyrians, one the ancient rmann, using another acroworld’s earliest and most feronym for the Islamic State. cious empires. Known at the Touring the site, UNEStime as Kalhu, the city was CO’s representative to Iraq, the seat of power from 879Louise Haxthausen, called 709 BC, an era when Assyrian the destruction “absolutely armies expanded out across devastating.” the Levant, capturing Damas“The most important thing cus and other cities, crushright now is to ensure some ing the kingdom of Israel and basic protection,” she said. turning its neighbor Judah But the government has into a vassal. many priorities right now.
A British-Assyrian team first It is still fighting the Islamic excavated Nimrud in 1945, State in Mosul. Moreover, then it was re-excavated in there is a long and expenthe 1950s by Max Mallowan. sive list of needs in rebuildThough famous in his own ing the country from the right at the time, Mallowan Islamic State group’s legacy. is better known as the husTens of thousands of citizens band of Agatha Christie , who live in camps. Large swaths accompanied him and photoof the western city of Ramadi graphed and filmed the digs. were destroyed in the offen
“It’s just one of the most sive to wrest it from Islamic beautiful sites in the Middle State control. Other ancient East, or at least it was,” said sites remain in the militants’ Georgina Herrmann, a Brithands, including Nineveh ish archaeologist who worked — another ancient Assyrat Nimrud with Mallowan. ian c apital — in the heart “It used to be covered with of Mosul. wildflowers. You’d be there Salih is working to get interand there’d be bits of ancient national funding to pay somesculptures sticking out.” one to guard the site. But she
Besides the reliefs and statrecognizes that job will have ues, archaeologists dug up to go to one of the militia fachundreds of stone tablets tions of questionable motives written in cuneiform conand dependability. She has taining everything from treano illusions that the militias ties to temple and palace will provide full protection. records. The tombs of queens But she has grown used yielded troves of gold and to compromises that once jewelry. Iraqi archaeologists would have been unimagalso made a grisly find: more inable. Before she fled her than 100 skeletons inside a home in Mosul soon after palace well, including some the Islamic State takeover in with shackled hands and feet, 2014, she and other archaepossibly prisoners dumped ologists pleaded with the in when Nimrud was sacked militants to let them destroy in 610 BC. the city’s ancient tombs that
Salih, 40, came to Nimrud the group so despised. At a few days after the Islamic least that way, the buildings State fighters were driven out housing the tombs could be in early November. So far, spared. she is the only Iraqi antiquiThe plea was futile, and ties official to visit. the Islamic State detonated
She confirmed what satthe buildings and tombs. ellite images had already So she will negotiate now shown: sometime between with the militias to do as Sept. 1 and Nov. 4 as intermuch as they c an to prenational forces closed in, the serve Nimrud. Islamic State bulldozed the “T h e r e i s n ’ t a n o t h e r ziggurat. choice, as you see,” she said.