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Mosul: Iraqi troops find Assyrian treasures in network of Isis tunnels Mosul: Iraqi troops find Assyrian treasures in network of Isis tunnels
(about 3 hours later)
Two great winged bulls carved from stone and dating from the Assyrian empire have been found intact under the ground of Mosul. Deep under a monument destroyed by Isis in Mosul, Iraqi archaeologists have discovered carvings dating from almost 2,000 years earlier in a network of escape tunnels dug by the extremists.
But as fighting rages to evict the Isis from the main city in northern Iraq, it will be a race against time to save the archaeological treasures uncovered in the tunnels. Archaeologists in the west are avid for more news and better quality photographs of the carved stone reliefs, which appear to represent priests and religious ceremonies. The tunnels were dug under a high mound damaged in 2014 when Isis blew up a beautiful 12th-century mosque, believed to hold the tomb of the prophet Jonah.
The jihadists dug the network of tunnels to plunder artefacts under a hill reputedly housing the tomb of the Prophet Jonah, the Nabi Yunus shrine which they dynamited in July 2014. The discovery of a previously unknown temple and possible palace entrance, dating back to the Assyrian period and probably carved in the 5th or 6th century BC, is a rare piece of good news in the context of so much deliberate destruction and looting by Isis of pre-Islamic archaeology.
“We fear it could all collapse at any time,” entombing the treasures, said Layla Salih who is in charge of antiquities for Nineveh province. British Museum experts in touch with their colleagues in Iraq led by Saleh Noman – who was in the first group of Iraqi archaeologists trained in London to survey and rescue whatever has survived – believe that the Isis tunnels ran so deep under the centuries of mudbrick making up the ancient mound of Nabi Yunus, that they hit a temple carved into the bedrock.
“There are cave-ins in the tunnels every day.” “So far we have only seen poor quality photographs - but they are extremely exciting,” said Sebastien Rey, lead archaeologist at the Iraq Emergency Heritage Management Programme at the British Museum. “I met Saleh at the Unesco conference in Paris 10 days ago, and was able to discuss it with him and look his photographs, and there is no doubt that they have found something of great significance.
Iraqi authorities discovered the underground labyrinth, from which Isis plundered to sell on the black market, after they recaptured east Mosul at the end of January. “The reliefs are unique, they have features which we have not seen anywhere else – they are not at all like the well-known Assyrian hunting and banqueting scenes such as we have in the museum.
Miraculously, several valuable pieces survived the looting. “We also have reports – but as yet no photographs – that they have found two lamassu, the famous winged bull figures, which would suggest that they may have been flanking the entrance to a palace, with some form of temple as an annex.
Salih said the artefacts date back to the eighth century BC in the Assyrian period and hail from the palace of King Esarhaddon whose existence in the area was known to Iraqi archaeologists. “The archaeologists are incredibly brave. They are working in extreme danger, with the mudbrick in danger of collapse at any time. When it is safe to mount a full rescue excavation this will be a major operation, needing a great deal of resources which will certainly mean international support.”
Two mural sculptures in white marble show the winged bulls with only the sides and feet showing. Rey is particularly excited by his colleague’s reports of inscriptions in the stone: the Assyrian rulers, very usefully to archaeologists, were fond of elaborate and boastful inscriptions that included their names, dates and achievements.
The tunnels lead to bas-reliefs with inscriptions in cuneiform alphabet and two mural sculptures of four women’s faces from the front. It was known that there were layers of earlier history under the Nabi Yunus mosque, but it had never been fully excavated.
“These finds are very important. They teach us more about Assyrian art. In general, their sculptures show people in profile, whereas here we have women face on,” said Salih. If the tentative dating of the carvings proves correct, they date from the final period of the once vast Assyrian empire, splintering under external attack and internal power struggles, after centuries in which it dominated Mesopotamia and the great city of Nineveh was the largest in the world.
She said Isis had not been able to extract many of the treasures for fear of the hill collapsing altogether but other removable artefacts, especially pottery, were takenplundered. Magnificent carved panels and the gigantic winged bulls, from the palaces and temples of the emperor Sennacherib, are in museums across the world, including the British Museum.
Iraqi authorities found 107 items of pottery in a house east of Mosul that were in good condition and most likely exhumed from the tunnels of Nabi Yunus. According to the AFP news agency, Layla Salih, head of the antiquities service for the region, reported that more than 100 pieces of pottery in good condition, believed looted from the tunnels by Isis, have been recovered from a house in Mosul, and many more portable objects are assumed to have been taken.
After their capture of swathes of Iraqi territory to the north and west of Baghdad in 2014, the jihadists carried out a widespread campaign of destruction of archaeological and religious sites. The Unesco conference in Paris in February was told by the deputy Iraqi culture minister, Qais Rashid, that in the Mosul region alone at least 66 archaeological sites had been destroyed by Isis, some of them converted into car parks. He said that Muslim and Christian places of worship had suffered “massive destruction”, and thousands of manuscripts had been looted.
Many shocking scenes were filmed and posted on the internet, such as the destruction of Nimrud, jewel of the Assyrian empire founded in the 13th century BC, with a bulldozer, pickaxes and explosives.