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Agence France-Presse

A decade after jihadists ransacked Iraq’s famed Nimrud site, archaeologists have been painstakingly putting together its ancient treasures, shattered into tens of thousands of tiny fragments.
Once the crown jewel of the ancient Assyrian empire, the archaeological site was ravaged by Islamic State (IS) fighters after they seized large areas of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in 2014.
The precious pre-Islamic artefacts destroyed by the jihadists are now in pieces, but the archaeologists working in Nimrud are undaunted by the colossal task they face.
“Every time we find a piece and bring it to its original place, it’s like a new discovery,” said Abdel Ghani Ghadi, a 47-year-old expert working on the site.

More than 500 artefacts were found shattered at the site, located about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Mosul, the city in northern Iraq where IS established the capital of their self-declared “caliphate”.
Meticulous excavation work by Iraqi archaeologists has already yielded more than 35,000 fragments.
The archaeologists have been carefully reassembling bas-reliefs, sculptures and decorated slabs depicting mythical creatures, which had all graced the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II nearly 3,000 years ago.
Seen from above, the pieces of the puzzle gradually come together. Shards of what just several years ago was a single artefact are placed side by side, protected by sheets of green tarpaulin.

Bit by bit, the image of Ashurnasirpal II appears on one bas-relief alongside a winged, bearded figure with curly hair and a flower on its wrist, as the restoration brings back to life rich details carved in stone millennia ago.
Another artefact shows handcuffed prisoners from territories that rebelled against the mighty Assyrian army.
Partially reconstructed lamassus – depictions of an Assyrian deity with a human head, the body of a bull or a lion, and the wings of a bird – lay on their side, not far from tablets bearing ancient cuneiform text.
“These sculptures are the treasures of Mesopotamia,” Ghadi said. “Nimrud is the heritage of all of humanity, a history that goes back 3,000 years.”
Founded in the 13th century BC as Kalhu, Nimrud reached its peak in the ninth century BC when it became the capital of the Assyrian empire.
Propaganda videos released by IS in 2015 showed jihadists destroying monuments with bulldozers, hacking away at them with pickaxes or exploding them.
One of those monuments was the 2,800-year-old temple of Nabu, the Mesopotamian god of wisdom and writing.

IS fighters wreaked havoc at other sites too, like the once-celebrated Mosul Museum and ancient Palmyra in neighbouring Syria.
The jihadist group was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and the restoration project in Nimrud began a year later, only to be interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. It restarted in 2023.
Mohamed Kassim of the Academic Research Institute in Iraq said that “until now, it has been a process of collection, classification and identification”.
About 70 per cent of the collection work has been completed at the Assyrian palace site, with about a year’s worth of fieldwork left before restoration can begin in full force, Kassim said, noting it was a “complex operation”.
His organisation has been working closely with Iraqi archaeologists, supporting their drive to “save” Nimrud and preserve its cultural riches through training sessions provided by the Smithsonian Institution, with financial support from the United States.

Kassim said that the delicate restoration process will require expertise not found in Iraq and “international support” because of the extent of the “barbaric” destruction in Nimrud.
Nimrud is one of the most important ancient sites of the Mesopotamian civilisation, Kassim said, and is a testament to a golden age of “the art and architecture of the Assyrian civilisation”.
The site was first excavated by archaeologists in the 19th century and received international recognition for the immense lamassu figures that were taken to Europe to be exhibited in London’s British Museum and the Louvre in Paris.
Other artefacts from Nimrud have been on display in Mosul and Iraq’s capital Baghdad.
The site has also attracted figures such as British author Agatha Christie, who visited there with her archaeologist husband.

Meanwhile, Syrians returned this week to the National Museum of Damascus, reopened for the first time since Islamist-led forces seized the capital and ousted president Bashar al-Assad.
The antiquities museum closed its doors on December 7, a day before Damascus was taken by rebel forces, over fears of looting.
“We firmly shut the museum’s iron doors after we saw the situation was unstable,” said Mohamed Nair Awad, head of the national antiquities authority.

In the early hours of December 8, after Assad had fled and as rebels approached the capital, many soldiers and police officers from the forces of the deposed president’s government quit their posts.
With checkpoints unstaffed and no security personnel outside public institutions, looters were able to enter the central bank, several government ministries and other buildings.
Awad says his team immediately reached out to the new authorities, led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
“They sent us a group of fighters to protect the museum,” he says, adding that it survived unscathed.

This week, members of the public walked around the building and admired its collection.
Archaeology student Shahanda al-Baroudi, 29, was giving a friend abroad a tour of the museum via video call.
“When the regime fell, I remembered scenes from the Baghdad museum after the fall of Saddam Hussein and feared I wouldn’t see the artefacts again,” she said.
“I cried when I came back and discovered it had not been damaged.”
The collection at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was decimated by looters in the chaos that followed the 2003 US-led invasion of the country.
Outside the Damascus museum, Iyad Ghanem was among a group holding up signs demanding the new rulers help preserve the country’s cultural heritage.
Some artefacts at the museum date back more than 10,000 years, he said.
The museum’s vast collection includes tens of thousands of pieces, ranging from prehistoric blades and Greco-Roman sculptures to Islamic art.

The museum was closed for six years during Syria’s civil war, which broke out in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-Assad protests, to protect its precious artefacts from violence or looting.
It reopened in 2018, after Assad clawed back control of large swathes of the country.


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An archaeology expert catalogues destroyed artefacts - which range from bas-reliefs and sculptures to decorated slabs depicting mythical creatures - at the archaeological site of Nimrud, south of Mosul, Iraq, on January 3, 2025. Photo: AFP

The head of a lamassu statue lies at the archaeological site of Nimrud. Photo: AFP

An archaeology expert catalogues destroyed artefacts at Nimrud. Photo: AFP

People work at the site of Nimrud’s ruined Temple of Nabu. Photo: AFP

Archaeology experts catalogue destroyed artefacts at Nimrud. Photo: AFP

An archaeology expert cleans dirt from an artefact at Nimrud. Photo: AFP

People gather outside Syria’s National Museum of Damascus as it reopens to visitors, on January 8, 2025. Photo: AFP

People walk in the grounds of the National Museum of Damascus on January 8, 2025. Photo: AFP

People look at artefacts at the National Museum of Damascus on January 8, 2025. Photo: AFP

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Archaeologists are painstakingly putting together artefacts at Nimrud shattered by Islamic State jihadists, undaunted by the colossal task


Archaeologists are painstakingly putting together artefacts at Nimrud shattered by Islamic State jihadists, undaunted by the colossal task.
