ISIS is continuing to bulldoze its way through the cultural heritage of Iraq and Syria, with the ancient Assyrian capital of Khorsabad apparently the extremist group’s latest archaeological victim.
Iraq’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said Monday it had received reports that Khorsabad, about 19 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Mosul in northeastern Iraq, had been destroyed.
“We have warned before and we warn again that those gangs and their sick Takfiri ideology will continue to destroy and steal artifacts as long as there is no strong deterrent,” the ministry said in a statement. (A Takfiri is a Muslim who accuses another Muslim of apostasy.)
Assyrian King Sargon II built the palace at Khorsabad between 717 and 706 B.C. according to the Oriental Institute at Chicago University, which helped excavate the site during the last century.
Khorsabad, one of three cities that served as a capital during the empire’s reign, was abandoned after Sargon’s death in 705 B.C., the institute said.
Carved stone reliefs from the site are held in Baghdad, Chicago, Paris and Britain, it said.
Nimrud
Last week, the Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said ISIS had bulldozed the site of another ancient Assyrian capital, Nimrud.
Nimrud was a city in the Assyrian kingdom, which flourished between 900 B.C. and 612 B.C. The archaeological site is south of Mosul in northern Iraq.
“ISIS continues to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity,” the ministry said in a statement. “They violated the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed its ancient ruins.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “disturbed” by the reports.
“These depraved acts are an assault on the heritage of the Iraqi and Syrian people by an organization with a bankrupt and toxic ideology,” Kerry said in a statement.
“The Iraqi government recently nominated Nimrud to be placed on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites. In contrast, ISIL’s (ISIS’) twisted goal is clear: to eviscerate a culture and rewrite history in its own brutal image.”
Mosul Museum
The razing of Nimrud came a week after a video showed ISIS militants using sledgehammers to obliterate stone sculptures and other centuries-old artifacts in the Mosul Museum.
In a commentary for CNN, Cornell University archaeologist and classicist Sturt W. Manning wrote that such destruction spoke of “the human folly and senseless violence that drives ISIS. “
“The terror group is destroying the evidence of the great history of Iraq; it has to, as this history attests to a rich alternative to its barbaric nihilism.
“Worse, these acts of destruction supposedly in the name of religion are dishonest and hypocritical: the same ISIS also is busy looting archaeological sites to support its thriving illegal trade in antiquities, causing further incalculable harm,” Manning said.
Last year, Qais Hussain Rashid, director general of Iraqi museums, told CNN of the depredations carried out by ISIS militants.
“They cut these reliefs and sell them to criminals and antique dealers,” he said, gesturing toward an ornate carving dating back thousands of years.
“Usually they cut off the head, leaving the legs, because the head is the valuable part.”
Hatra
Rashid had particular fears about the preservation of the ancient ruined city of Hatra, or al-Hadr in Arabic, which dates back to the third-century B.C., and is south of Mosul.
ISIS took over the site in 2014, using it to store weapons and ammunition, to train fighters and to execute prisoners.
Established by the successors of Alexander the Great, Hatra became the capital of what some believe to be an early Arab kingdom that also included the fabled city of Petra in Jordan, according to the museum. It withstood attacks by the Roman Empire before falling in the third century to the Persian Sassanid Empire.
On March 8, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said reports that Hatra had been razed outraged him.
Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, said in an opinion column for CNN that Iraq’s heritage belonged to all its people and its destruction should be considered a war crime.
“The bulldozing of the archaeological site of Nimrud marked a new step in the cultural cleansing underway in Iraq. These acts are a deliberate attack against civilians, minorities, heritage sites and traditions. In the minds of terrorists, murder and destruction of culture are inherently linked,” Bokova wrote.
In an interview Monday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Bokova said it was difficult to assess the extent of the damage done by ISIS without UNESCO experts being on the ground at the sites.
While some of the artifacts damaged in the Mosul Museum were replicas, Bokova said, in Hatra “unfortunately the damage was authentic.”