ANA ASHUR Media and Translation Desk
A rare Assyrian artifact found on a roadside in Mosul
Nineveh - Assyria - Iraq
20-06-2010
A force of the 03rd Brigade - 02nd Iraqi army division, rapid intervention, found a rare Assyrian artifact thrown on the highway passing through al-Qahira (Cairo) neighbourhood in northern Mosul. The piece is made of marble with drawings in the form of a river and fish weighing 250 kg, the piece was delivered to the Nineveh Antiquities Directorate as Karim Ismail Hassoun al-Hamadani, the Director of Nineveh Antiquities and Heritage mentioned. He added that the piece will be sent to the Arts Commission in Baghdad to determine its age and he suggested that the piece more likely came from the Palace of the Assyrian King Sennacherib in the Assyrian area of Tel-Kiyonjok (archaeological site of Nineveh city). Al-Hamadani added that the piece does not show people or figures but it shows fish and a river which most probably is al-Khawsar River where King Sennacherib's Palace stood.
Al-Hamadani thanked the 02nd Brigade officers and soldiers for their efforts in preserving Nineveh's artifacts, while archaeologists called upon the government and local authorities in Nineveh to intensify their control on archaeological sites in Mosul, because finding a 250 kg artifact on a roadside neither registered or identified is a sure sign that there are gangs which are digging out these antiquities and then trying to smuggle them out of the country. The archaeologists also thanked the citizens who had reported the location of the piece and considered that a sense of high responsibility and awareness
Assyria National Assembly - ANA ASHUR (c) 2010 All Rights Reserved.
