SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq’s Mosul museum and its 2,500-year-old treasures are being given a second life with efforts backed by French experts, after it was left in ruins by Islamic State (ISIS) militants.
Ancient artefacts were smashed into little pieces when ISIS militants seized the city of Mosul in 2014 and made it their seat of power for three years.
“We must separate all the fragments… it’s like a puzzle, you try to retrieve the pieces that tell the same story,” restoration worker Daniel Ibled, commissioned by France’s famous Louvre museum, told AFP.
Louvre is supporting Iraqi museum employees, AFP said.
“Little by little, you manage to recreate the full set,” Ibled said.
The scars of the artefacts destroyed by the militants remain today. The militants destroyed the largest and heaviest artefacts as they were filming themselves taking hammers to treasures they deemed heretical.
On the ground floor of the museum, the twisted iron bars of the foundation poke through a gaping hole, according to AFP.
In other rooms, stones of various sizes are scattered, some bearing etchings of animal paws or wings, AFP said. Others show inscriptions in cuneiform script.
The smallest of these fragments – no bigger than a fist – are lined up on a table, and experts are hard at work sorting through them.
For now, their efforts are focused on a winged lion from the city of Nimrud, jewel of the Assyrian empire, two “lamassu” – winged bulls with human heads – and the base of the throne of King Ashurnasirpal II.
These pieces, many dating back to the first millennium BC, are being revived with financing from the International Alliance for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Conflict Areas.
Alongside the Louvre, efforts are also being made by Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, which provides training for the museum’s teams, as well as the New York-headquartered World Monuments Fund, which is tasked with restoring the building.
The Louvre has tasked 20 people to help the restoration efforts, AFP cited director of the Louvre’s Department of Near Eastern Antiquities Ariane Thomas as saying.
After three missions this year, seven French experts will take turns visiting Iraq to help guide the restoration process, undertaken with about 10 museum employees, the news agency reported.
Once the restoration work is complete, an online exhibition will be held to unveil the work.
“When we said that with time, money and know-how, we could revive even the most damaged of works, this proves it,” Thomas said, according to AFP.
“Works that were completely destroyed have started to take form once again.”
