More than 2 years after the Islamic State (IS) group first rampaged through the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq, bombing and bulldozing 3000-year-old temples and statues, a mission to preserve what's left is underway.
This autumn, more than 20 archaeologists and conservators from Iraq and the United States will enter Nimrud, which is now controlled by the Iraqi government after nearby military successes.
They are following a strategy called “first aid for cultural heritage,” developed by an intergovernmental organization in Italy and first applied after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Its elements: Analyze the situation, assess the damage, protect at-risk heritage, and document for future rebuilding.
“The good news is that there's still an awful lot of archaeological site left at Nimrud, despite the attempt to obliterate it,” says Roger Matthews, an archaeologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom who is not involved in the rescue effort but runs RASHID International, a global network of experts that aims to safeguard the cultural heritage of Iraq.
According to reports from Iraqis who have visited, some big stone slabs “have been blown to smithereens,” Matthews says. But “others have been blown into large bits that can be put together.”
Because the stone that now litters the site, some of it piled more than 4 meters high, is water soluble and will degrade in the heavy rains of winter, archaeologists are eager to launch their rescue mission.
But the Nimrud Rescue Project, as it's called, and a United Nations group are still assessing whether mines and explosive devices are concealed on the site. “Nobody wants to send the crew out to start work if there's a chance of someone getting killed,” says Jessica Johnson, a conservator at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Conservation Institute in Suitland, Maryland, who is leading the U.S. side of the effort.
Nimrud, called Calah in the Bible, sprawls across 360 hectares and was once the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire. Beginning in the mid-1800s, archaeologists discovered thousands of statues and carved reliefs in its palaces, temples, and tombs. Collectively, the finds helped paint a picture of the empire, from its ivory trade to writing to burial practices.
Nimrud “is in the top five” of Mesopotamian sites, says the Museum Conservation Institute's Katharyn Hanson, the lead archaeologist on the project.
The site's most impressive structure was the Northwest Palace, guarded by gracious statues called lamassus—winged lions or bulls with human heads. “There are reliefs from this palace on display in every major museum in the world,” Hanson says.
Many of the reliefs remained at Nimrud, largely intact, until 2015 and 2016, when IS attacked the site. The group released a series of videos showing, among other things, the detonation of the Northwest Palace and a man destroying a lamassu with a power drill. The roofing structures that protected the palace and surrounding area were also blown up, their steel beams reduced to ribbons and mixed with the ancient stone.
In late 2016, Iraqi forces retook the region around Nimrud, near the large city of Mosul (see map, right). In January, archaeologist Zaid Ghazi Saadullah, the Iraqi team leader for the project, ventured into Nimrud to survey the damage.
“When I think of the first time I saw the site, I will start crying now,” Saadullah says through a translator.
“They made the explosions to the archaeological sites, then they used shovels and bulldozers to remove the artifacts from their original places.” Nearly everything in and around the Northwest Palace was smashed into bits.
IS attacked many ancient sites in Iraq, and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq, where Saadullah works, asked the Smithsonian offer help at Nimrud first, says Brian Lione, who specializes in cultural heritage management at the Museum Conservation Institute.
With $300,000 from the Department of State and $100,000 from the Smithsonian, the yearlong project began in April. The Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage, located a couple hours from Nimrud in Erbil, serves as headquarters for the rescue effort.
Time is of the essence because the artifacts urgently need protection. Building new roofing structures was ruled out as too complex.
Instead, the team will identify and inventory objects and rubble, trying to work out how pieces of smashed structures, statues, and friezes once fit together. They must also separate original materials from pieces of roofing structure and from parts of the site that were reconstructed in recent decades. Items will then be moved to storage facilities at the edge of Nimrud.
The emergency rescue effort follows a strategy developed largely by Aparna Tandon of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property in Rome. Archaeologists, members of the military, and other first responders all get special training. They learn how to document, photograph, and protect different types of materials; crate damaged objects; guard against looting; and more.
In July, Kent Severson, a conservator at the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture, and Design in Honolulu, visited Erbil to offer Iraqi team members a crash course in how to move massive chunks of stone. “We packed off to a big field in Erbil that is filled with destruction debris, demolition from houses including great chunks of concrete, all mixed up in dirt and very rough,” Severson says.
“This approximates the site at Nimrud.”
In sweltering summer heat, the team practiced tying concrete with nylon straps to lift it, pretending it was Nimrud's vulnerable gypsum. They experimented with using a chain hoist to maneuver the slabs onto wooden rollers and dollies, designed to mimic the stone cart they'd later use to traverse spaces too tight for a truck.
Now, the team is waiting for the all-clear to enter Nimrud—a first step, Saadullah hopes, toward ultimately rebuilding it. “My love for my heritage and for my country encourages me to start thinking where to start, how to start, to try to rescue this site,” he says. The team hopes to learn how realistic that goal is, Johnson says. “We're trying to get to the point where later on those decisions can be made.”
by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
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