An Islamic State (IS) propaganda film released on 11 April shows the destruction of the most important antiquities of Nimrud. The Art Newspaper has information suggesting that the attack occurred on 2 April, since residents some miles away reported hearing an explosion and then seeing thick clouds of dust.
Nimrud was one of the world’s greatest cities in the ninth century BC and its destruction represents the greatest single cultural loss in modern Iraq. In terms of archaeological knowledge the loss is likely to turn out to be even worse than the looting of the Baghdad Museum in 2003, following the fall of Saddam Hussein. The use of explosives represents an escalation of IS techniques after the one-by-one destruction of antiquities at the Mosul museum and Hatra in the past few weeks.
The latest IS propaganda film appears to show extremists driving towards Nimrud, which lies 30 kilometres south of Mosul, in northern Iraq. They enter the north-west palace of Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled Assyria from 883 to 859 BC, heading for one of the series of rooms that are lined with gypsum reliefs depicting court scenes. Then they attack the panels with sledgehammers, toppling them. Near the entrance they use a powerful electric drill to break up a lamassu, a sculpture of a human-headed winged beast. Worst of all, they finally bring in a row of oil drums with explosives, which they detonate. After the cloud of dust has settled, all that is left of Ashurnasirpal’s palace is a large crater, filled with fragments.
Although the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard excavated and removed most of the reliefs in the 1840s (many of these are now at the British Museum and other museums) and in subsequent excavations, around 50 were left, where until recently they could be seen in situ. Unlike most of those removed, which were subsequently cleaned and moulded for casts, some of those excavated in the 1950s still had traces of original pigment.
Initial reports of Nimrud’s destruction have failed to mention that the explosion probably obliterated four royal tombs, which were relatively recently discovered in the throne room. Max Mallowan, the husband of Agatha Christie, excavated the room in 1950 but the tombs were only discovered in 1991 by the Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmud. As well as the bones of Assyrian queens, they contained magnificent gold treasure, which was fortunately taken to Baghdad shortly before the fall of Saddam, where it was safely stored in the vaults of the national bank.
On 5 March the Iraqi ministry of tourism and antiquities in Baghdad claimed Nimrud had been “razed by heavy military vehicles”. However, at this stage Nimrud probably lay untouched, and the IS destruction then took place a month later. Despite the threat after IS occupation, at that stage there was nothing that archaeologists could have done to save the site. Measures had been taken in recent years to secure the rooms containing the reliefs, but these precautions proved ineffective against determined extremists with heavy equipment and dynamite. Archaeologists are speculating over whether IS militants may have looted some reliefs for future sale.
The loss of the palace of Ashurnasirpal II may well turn out to represent the worst case of deliberate destruction of an historic site since the Second World War. Although the blowing up of the two Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001 is comparable, that was the loss of two huge sculptures, whereas Ashurnasirpal's palace represented the heart of a city and a civilisation.