Islamic State militants have wantonly destroyed antiquities at the Mosul Museum and the Nergal Gate Museum at Nineveh, in northern Iraq. The Islamic extremist group has released a five-minute video that shows the deliberate smashing of dozens of large sculptures. In one scene, viewed by The Art Newspaper, a man wields a powerful electric drill to break up a huge figure of a mythical beast on the archaeological site of Nineveh. In the Mosul Museum galleries, statues are toppled, shattering when they hit the floor. Islamic State militants then use sledgehammers to break them into pieces. The commentary explains that they are being destroyed as symbols of pre-Islamic gods.
International specialists who know the two museums confirm that the video appears to be authentic. The sculptures being destroyed are a mixture of ancient originals and modern plaster casts.
The Mosul Museum is the second largest in Iraq, after the Baghdad Museum. Some of its galleries were looted during the US-led invasion in 2003. But The Art Newspaper understands that the bulk of the collection had been removed to safety shortly before the invasion, and is now held securely elsewhere in Iraq. The Mosul Museum has remained closed for the past 13 years, but last year it was stormed by Islamic State. Most of the antiquities that remained at the museum were large items that could not be moved, although ultimately this failed to protect them from organised vandals using heavy equipment.
The objects destroyed in the Mosul Museum appear to have mainly come from Nineveh, probably along with some from Hatra. Nineveh, which lies within Mosul (north east of the city centre), was at its height in the seventh century BC. Hatra, 110 kilometres southwest of Mosul, was built in the third century BC.
In addition to the Mosul Museum, Islamic State militants attacked the Nergal Gate at Nineveh where a huge sculpture of a mythical beast was destroyed with an electric drill. Named after the Mesopotamian god Nergal, the gate had been excavated by Austen Layard in the mid 19th century.
“We strongly condemn this act of catastrophic destruction to one of the most important museums in the Middle East,” says Thomas Campbell, the director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in a statement. “This mindless attack on great art, on history, and on human understanding constitutes a tragic assault not only on the Mosul Museum, but on our universal commitment to use art to unite people and promote human understanding. Such wanton brutality must stop, before all vestiges of the ancient world are obliterated.” The British Museum also issued a statement on the vandalism at Mosul: “The museum is very concerned to see the reports that militants have destroyed objects in the Mosul Museum and the Nergal Gate Museum on the edge of Nineveh. We naturally deplore all such acts of vandalism and destruction of cultural heritage, and continue to monitor the situation to the best of our ability.”