ARBIL/BAGHDAD (Reuters) -
Ultra-radical Islamist militants in northern Iraq have destroyed a
priceless collection of statues and sculptures from the ancient Assyrian
era, inflicting what an archaeologist described as incalculable damage
to a piece of shared human history.
A video published by Islamic
State on Thursday showed men attacking the artifacts, some of them
identified as antiquities from the 7th century BC, with sledgehammers
and drills, saying they were symbols of idolatry.
"The Prophet ordered us to get
rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they
conquered countries after him," an unidentified man said in the video.
The smashed articles appeared to
come from an antiquities museum in Mosul, the northern city which was
overrun by Islamic State last June, a former employee at the museum told
Reuters.
The militants shoved stone
statues off their plinths, shattering them on the floor, and one man
applied an electric drill to a large winged bull. The video showed a
large exhibition room strewn with dismembered statues, and Islamic songs
played in the background.
Lamia al-Gailani, an Iraqi
archaeologist and associate fellow at the London-based Institute of
Archaeology, said the militants had wreaked untold damage. "It’s not
only Iraq’s heritage: it’s the whole world’s," she said.
"They are priceless, unique.
It's unbelievable. I don’t want to be Iraqi any more," she said,
comparing the episode to the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the
Afghan Taliban in 2001.
As well as Assyrian statues of
winged bulls from the Mesopotamian cities of Nineveh and Nimrud, Gailani
said the Islamic State hardliners appeared to have destroyed statues
from Hatra, a Hellenistic-Parthian city in northern Iraq dating back
around 2,000 years.
Eleanor Robson, professor of
Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London, also said on
Twitter that statues from Hatra and Nineveh had been wrecked, though she
added that some objects shown in the video were modern replicas.
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