FAIDA, Iraq — Authorities in northern
Iraq on Sunday unveiled an “archaeological park” of 2,700-year-old carvings from the
rule of the Assyrians, including some showing kings praying to the gods.
اضافة اعلان
The 13 stunning monumental rock-carved bas-reliefs
were cut into the walls of an irrigation canal that stretches for some 10km at
Faida in northern Iraq.
The panels, measuring five meters wide and two
meters tall, date from the reigns of Sargon II (721-705 BC) and his son
Sennacherib.
“Perhaps in the future others will be discovered,”
said Bekas Brefkany, from the department of antiquities in Dohuk, in Iraq’s
northern autonomous Kurdistan region.
Faida is the first of five parks the regional
authorities hope to create, part of a project aimed to be “a tourist attraction
and a source of income”, Brefkany added.
The carvings were unearthed during several digs over
recent years by archaeologists from Kurdistan and Italy’s University of Udine.
Last year, Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, professor of
Near Eastern archaeology at the university, said that, while there were other
rock reliefs in Iraq, none were so “huge and monumental” as these.
Iraq was the birthplace of some of the world’s
earliest cities. As well as Assyrians, it was once home to Sumerians and
Babylonians, and to some of humankind’s first examples of writing.
But in recent years, it has suffered as a location
for smugglers of ancient artifacts. Looters decimated the country’s ancient
past, including after the 2003 US-led invasion.
Then, from 2014–2017, Daesh group demolished dozens
of pre-Islamic treasures with bulldozers, pickaxes, and explosives. They also
used smuggling to finance their operations.
Some countries are slowly returning stolen items.
Last year, the US returned about 17,000 artifacts to
Iraq, pieces that mostly dated from the Sumerian period around 4,000 years ago.
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