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Iraqi federal police inspect the inside of Mosul's heavily damaged museum Khalid Mohammed AP/Press Association Images

PHOTOS: Priceless remains lie in ruins at Mosul museum

Iraqi forces recently retook the building from the so-called Islamic State group.

IT WAS ONCE home to priceless archaeological treasures, but these days you get into Mosul museum in Iraq’s second city via a gaping hole in the basement.

In the darkness lies a pile of rubble — all that remains of two ancient Assyrian statues of winged bulls, smashed to pieces by Islamic State group jihadists.

Iraqi forces announced that they retook the building from IS last Tuesday as they pushed into west Mosul as part of a vast offensive to oust the jihadists from the northern city.

Taking the museum was a symbolic victory.

In a notorious video issued in February 2015, the jihadists were seen attacking items at the museum with sledgehammers and pneumatic drills, destroying priceless pre-Islamic artefacts.

Today, the museum is in ruins — nothing escaped the attackers.

In a darkened hall, a heap of stones marks the spot where tourists once admired two imposing “lamassu” statues, Assyrian winged bulls with human faces.

The two-metre-tall monuments weighed more than four tonnes, according to Iraqi archaeologist Layla Salih.

In the rubble, what appear to be the remains of carved legs and wings can be seen. Other pieces of smashed stone bear inscriptions in the cuneiform alphabet.

Amid the ruins, a hole leads to the basement, where twisted iron bars are visible in the foundations.

From time to time, an explosion rocks the building, a plain structure of ochre rock, as Iraqi forces fire rockets at IS positions.

mosul2 Burnt ancient books and manuscripts inside Mosul's heavily damaged museum Khalid Mohammed AP / Press Association Images Khalid Mohammed AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

On the first floor, two Iraqi snipers huddle behind narrow windows, their weapons trained. An IS sniper is operating nearby.

Assyria, with its capital Nineveh in the area of present-day Mosul, was a kingdom in northern Mesopotamia that became one of the most powerful empires in the ancient Middle East.

Assyrian art is famous for its bas-reliefs showing scenes of war.

‘Destroyed on the spot’ 

As well as the two lamassu, the museum housed a winged lion of similar proportions, Salih says.

The three lost sculptures “were among the most valuable pieces in the museum”, she says.

The building had housed 100 objects, she adds, and all but six of them were originals.

Antiquities weighing more than four tonnes were impossible for them to steal, so they were destroyed on the spot.

The second-most important museum in Iraq, the building also housed Hellenic objects dating from centuries before the Christian era.

But now, the iron and wood showcases are empty, covered with broken glass.

Labels discarded on the ground bear witness, in Arabic and English, to inestimable losses: ”Two silver goblets found in the royal cemetery of Ur… dating from 2,600 BC.”

“Various small objects found in the royal palaces of Nimrud – 9th century BC.”

MOSUL3 Ancient destroyed artefacts Khalid Mohammed AP / Press Association Images Khalid Mohammed AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

Others mention pottery, marble or alabaster tablets and a Mamluk-era copper candleholder decorated with floral motifs.

IS jihadists seized a string of ancient sites in their lightning 2014 advance across Iraq and Syria.

After declaring their supposed caliphate that summer, they plundered and destroyed several of them.

The jihadists cast their destruction of artefacts as the religiously mandated elimination of idols, but they have had no qualms about selling smaller pieces on the black market to fund their rule.

In one video, they were seen using bulldozers, pickaxes and explosives to demolish Nimrud, a jewel of the Assyrian empire founded in the 13th century BC.

At Mosul museum, little survived except two massive, dark coffins decorated with inscriptions from the Koran. Salih says they belonged to 13th century Shiite imams.

“A restoration is possible, but it will be difficult to know if we will find all the fragments, or if some are missing,” she says.

© AFP 2017

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    Mute throw9away
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    Mar 13th 2017, 7:54 PM

    Animals

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    Mute Mary Murphy
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    Mar 13th 2017, 9:18 PM

    @throwaway animals wouldn’t do this. Mind numbing stupid people did it

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    Mute Tony Hardwicke
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    Mar 13th 2017, 9:29 PM

    Think the Brits were right to take the artefacts out of these dumps 100 odd years ago

    41
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    Mute Ian O' Connor
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    Mar 13th 2017, 10:26 PM

    If by dump you mean the cradle of human civilisation

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    Mute Anton Friendo
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    Mar 14th 2017, 7:24 AM

    Cradle of Crazy

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    Mute Peter Gavin
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    Mar 13th 2017, 8:47 PM

    Absolute savages. They should be hunted to the last man

    83
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    Mute winston smith
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    Mar 13th 2017, 9:54 PM

    When you see any group of mindless thugs wantonly destroying priceless historical artifacts they are sewing the seeds of their own destruction. This dangerous cancerous destruction must be eradicated or it will infect all of civilisation including the religion they purport to fight for.

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    Mute OpenBorders
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    Mar 13th 2017, 10:23 PM

    @winston smith: Reminds me of those on the Alt-Right currently destroying Jewish tombstones in America, animals.

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    Mute Christian Sparrow
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    Mar 14th 2017, 2:47 AM

    According to CNN and jpost the damaged headstones was a result of environmental causes and poor maintenance of the graveyard. http://m.jpost.com/#/app/article/483246

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    Mute Tony Gordon
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    Mar 13th 2017, 7:58 PM

    I don’t lament for the loss of art, the huge loss of life is what should bring tears to our ears.

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    Mute yelkcub
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    Mar 13th 2017, 8:06 PM

    @Tony Gordon:I lament the loss of both.

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    Mute Piotrek Król
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    Mar 13th 2017, 8:07 PM

    @Tony Gordon:

    Unless you are a brute of some kind, it’s possible to lament the loss of both.

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    Mute Buster VL
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    Mar 13th 2017, 8:22 PM

    Art and history are the stuff that makes us. Isis want to take civilisation back to the Neolithic age.

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    Mute OpenBorders
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    Mar 13th 2017, 10:24 PM

    @Buster VL: Between ISIS and the Alt-Right, we could all be living in caves within a few decades.

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    Mute Qwerty
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    Mar 13th 2017, 10:29 PM

    6 billion+ humans

    Very few massive, ancient, perfectly preserved artefacts from the ancient world.

    Artefacts last indefinitely, humans last for a few decades.

    Not politically correct to say, but loss of artefacts is infinitely worse.

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    Mute Pat O'Dwyer
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    Mar 13th 2017, 8:50 PM

    Here is some room for hope. I hope she succeeds despite dire opposition from the Military Industrial Complex , Wall street, and of course many warmongering politicians who are shareholders in the above institutions. Brave Woman.
    “Dr. Rand Paul Introduces Tulsi Gabbard’s “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” in Senate
    This week, U.S. Senator Rand Paul introduced the Stop Arming Terrorists Act (S. 532) to prevent American taxpayers’ money from being used to directly or indirectly support armed militants who are allied with or often working under the command of al-Qaeda, ISIS, or other terrorist groups. The legislation serves as a companion bill to H.R. 608, which Representative Tulsi Gabbard (HI-2) reintroduced in January.

    http://www.activistpost.com/2017/03/dr-rand-paul-introduces-tulsi-gabbards-stop-arming-terrorists-act-senate.html

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    Mute Joe Doyle
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    Mar 13th 2017, 10:17 PM

    Islamic State Spastics

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    Mute Rosa Parks
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    Mar 14th 2017, 3:32 PM

    Don’t let these crackpots into Ireland

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    Mute Yenreit
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    Mar 14th 2017, 8:57 AM

    Was never like this until ‘Merika interfered.
    But let’s not dwell on the root cause.

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