Isis take sledgehammers to priceless Assyrian artefacts at M

[wautd]

Barbaric fuckers

Iraq: Isis take sledgehammers to priceless Assyrian artefacts at Mosul museum [VIDEO]

The Islamic State (Isis) has published a video showing militants destroying ancient artefacts in a Mosul museum with sledgehammer and pickaxes.

IS fighters are seen unveiling old statues in the Ninawa museum dating back to the Assyrian empire and then dragging them down to the ground, where they fall into pieces.

Then, they are depicted pounding 3,000-year-old sculptures with hammers until they are completely shattered. Tens of militants are seen using ladders, hammers and drills to destroy every statue in the museum, including a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity dating back to the 7th century BC.

"These ruins that are behind me, they are idols and statues that people in the past used to worship instead of Allah," a bearded IS militant tells the camera, with the immense, partially-demolished winged-bull in the background.

"The so-called Assyrians and Akkadians and others looked to gods for war, agriculture and rain to whom they offered sacrifices," he added, with reference to the ancient civilizations that lived in Mesopotamia for more than 5,000 years in what is now Iraq, eastern Syria and southern Turkey.

"The Prophet Mohammed took down idols with his bare hands when he went into Mecca. We were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them, and the companions of the prophet did this after this time, when they conquered countries."

"When God orders us to remove and destroy them, it becomes easy for us and we don't care even if they cost millions of dollars," he continues.

A professor at the Archaeology College in Mosul confirmed to the AP that the two sites shown in the video are the city museum and a site known as Nirgal Gate, one of the several gates of the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire Nineveh.

"I'm totally shocked," Amir al-Jumaili told the AP. "It's a catastrophe. With the destruction of these artifacts, we can no longer be proud of Mosul's civilization."

The video, dated February 2015 from Mosul and posted on a Twitter account used by IS, comes after Mosul's public library director Ghanim al-Ta'an told The Fiscal Times that IS members burned the city public library, which housed more than 8,000 rare old books and manuscripts.

"IS militants bombed the Mosul Public Library. they used improvised explosive devices," he said.

A history professor at University of Mosul told AP that Islamists began destroying the library earlier this month. Another report said 2,000 books were seen being loaded into pickup tracks.

Mosul is in the centre of 1,791 registered archeological sites, including four capitals of the Assyrian empire - Nineveh, Kalhu, Sur Sharrukin and Ashur.

Is there anything worse than a breating Cultist of the Islamofascist "state" these days?

[Borgholio]

Such things are quite painful to read about. I'm not an expert historian by any stretch but I would probably cry if I saw someone destroy a 2000 year old piece of history on the orders of an imaginary sky pixie.

[wautd]

I find this destruction of cultural heritage a form of a crime against humanity. Reminds me of the days when the taliban in Afghanistan detroyed priceless statues.

Can you imagine these Bronze Age troglodytes running amok in the Louvre?

[ray245]

This is especially painful to hear, especially when I have just completed my module on the Assyrians. It is sad when an organisation could still find legitimacy by destroying History. And it's not like Islam exist independently from Assyrian history either.

It would be ironic if people in the future did the same thing to the IS by erasing them from public/cultural memory.

I find this destruction of cultural heritage a form of a crime against humanity. Reminds me of the days when the taliban in Afghanistan detroyed priceless statues.

Can you imagine these Bronze Age troglodytes running amok in the Louvre?

The thing is they don't care about anything that is non-Islamic. They are happy that they could upset parts of the world that cares about history and culture, and they know we cannot do anything that could upset them.

That is one of the most saddening thing about the IS. It's the fact that nothing we do would upset them.

[K. A. Pital]

Not giving money and weapons to islamists like Taliban, ISIS, Al-Nusra and the very regimes of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would have been a welcome start. The West is also complicit in this barbarity - by nurturing radical islamism and strengthening it via ill-devised invasions and such.

I understand the outrage, but all this is the logical conclusion of some governments being trigger-happy or completely reckless in the so-called great game, another name for dumb adventurism and war.

Now, this is a political course pursued for decades since the late 1980s. It only ended up in the only way it could. Mind you, many of the ex-Baathists were not crushing museum pieces left and right while they were still Baath. Look at them now. It certainly says a lot about how smart the actions of the West in Iraq and Syria have been... To make them go from more or less secular to this level of insanity in only a few decades - bravo!

[loomer]

Muhammed weeps.

[FaxModem1]

Times like this, I come to the thinking we need a place like Shangri-La from Lost Horizon or Foundation from the Isaac Asimov series, so as to preserve all the knowledge and timeless treasures of history whenever human madness or cruelty comes into being.

[Patroklos]

Such things are quite painful to read about. I'm not an expert historian by any stretch but I would probably cry if I saw someone destroy a 2000 year old piece of history on the orders of an imaginary sky pixie.

Don't make excuses for them. These were orders given and carried out by human beings. Human beings far more similar to us than different. That's what makes it sad beyond the material loss.

[Borgholio]

Don't make excuses for them. These were orders given and carried out by human beings. Human beings far more similar to us than different. That's what makes it sad beyond the material loss.

I'm not making excuses. If someone's imaginary friend told them to wreck a priceless artifact and they carried out that order, the senselessness of the destruction is magnified compared to accidental damage or a well-meaning but misguided attempt by an amateur to transport or store said artifact.

[Terralthra]

According to the exiled Governor, most of the statues smashed were replicas, but at least some of them were original.

[SpottedKitty]

The thing is they don't care about anything that is non-Islamic. They are happy that they could upset parts of the world that cares about history and culture, and they know we cannot do anything that could upset them.

"If nothing is very different from you, what is a little different from you is very different from you." — Ursula K. Le Guin.

[Thanas]

I cried. So many generations of people built those, unearthed those and protected them and suddenly those assholes are destroying them.

It is like a modern day Protestant iconoclasm, the parallels between this and what went on in northern Europe in the 15th&16th century are striking.

[wautd]

In related news and around the same period

ISIS detonates large parts of Nineveh historical wall

ISIS Burns 8000 Rare Books and Manuscripts in Mosul - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/02/2 ... OttMF.dpuf

But I guess the 'news' about the movie Oscars was more important

[Patroklos]

I'm not making excuses. If someone's imaginary friend told them to wreck a priceless artifact and they carried out that order, the senselessness of the destruction is magnified compared to accidental damage or a well-meaning but misguided attempt by an amateur to transport or store said artifact.

Yes you are, because nobody's imaginary friend or actual god told them to do this. People told them. And people did this. I didn't mean you are giving them an excuse as much as I mean don't let them run with their excuse.

[Borgholio]

Yes you are, because nobody's imaginary friend or actual god told them to do this.

So who is this Allah in whose name they are destroying things?

People told them. And people did this.

And people are using the excuse that it's an affront to Allah. Thus, an imaginary friend told them to do it.

I didn't mean you are giving them an excuse as much as I mean don't let them run with their excuse.

I'm not letting them run with anything. I specifically said that the excuse "God told me to do it" makes the crime even worse by comparison.

[APlayerHater]

So they're destroying the statues because they think the ancient assyrians were foolish for believing in their Gods. Obviously, any Gods/prophets that might have cropped up during the last 1500 years are the right ones.

Looks like them ISIS boys are at it again.

[Broomstick]

I am deeply saddened but not at all surprised, these people are going to destroy everything not them so long as they exist. Anything and anyone in their path they do not approve of is doomed.

[whackadoodle]

So they're destroying the statues because they think the ancient assyrians were foolish for believing in their Gods. Obviously, any Gods/prophets that might have cropped up during the last 1500 years are the right ones.

Looks like them ISIS boys are at it again.

Look, it has nothing to do with the fact that they were Gods of Old. It has little to do with that they may be idols in the eyes of Sunni Islam. If that were the case, the Khufu pyramid would be have been destroyed long before the lion-angels of Innana on the Nenevah gate. Which is only being destroyed now.

The ISIS iconoclasts wreck these things, these precious, irreplaceable things because we of the West care about them. Every time a piece is destroyed, it is filmed, and - when Al-Jazirah bathes in the images of destruction - the only peoples who care are the Western folks bound to get pissed off by the wanton destruction of Things We Care About; and the Middle-Eastern antiquities experts, well - ISIS would rather kill them than deal with them.

If we didn't value these things, ISIS wouldn't give two shakes about them. They destroy them like a toddler throws a thing he can get his hands on; not because he HAS TO destroy it. It's because he CAN destroy it; and piss her parents off.

We care about these things (as did the Ba'athist Sunni, but I guess that is now a moot point), but most locals don't. The Pyramid's bring jobs, but nothing else does, so hey...

[FaxModem1]

They're now hocking the priceless items they have for a cash grab:

The Telegraph

Islamic State will try to profit from the treasures of Nimrud
With oil revenues falling, the terrorist group will resort to smuggling antiquities as another way of making money

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A winged bull with a human face at the archaeological site of Nimrud in 2001
A winged bull with a human face at the archaeological site of Nimrud in 2001 Photo: Karim Sahib/AFP
David Blair By David Blair12:46PM GMT 06 Mar 2015
Islamist fervour will not have been the sole reason for Isil's decision to loot the ancient city of Nimrud. The terrorists who pillaged the treasures bequeathed by history will also have been trying to make money.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) now controls an area roughly the size of Britain. That gives the insurgents plenty of ways of raising revenue – but also imposes huge costs.
Isil’s self-proclaimed goal, after all, is to build and govern a true “Islamic State”. In order to succeed, they must deliver at least basic services to the millions of people living within their domain, something that requires large sums of money.
At the outset of their campaign, Isil captured valuable oilfields in the deserts of eastern Syria. The terrorists have used these assets to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling oil.
But the American-led coalition is now doing its utmost to cut off these revenues. Western intelligence services have placed Isil’s oil business under the microscope with the aim of discovering the “various points, from upstream to downstream, which might present vulnerabilities,” said a senior US Treasury official.
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These studies have concluded that Isil's refineries are the weakest link in the chain. Facilities of this kind have duly become a priority target for US and allied air strikes in Syria. About 200 have been destroyed with “enormously disruptive” consequences for Isil’s finances, said the official.
“We believe there to be a major decrease in their oil revenues from those strikes,” he said. “It’s the reason why we think 2015 will show a substantially reduced set of oil revenues from 2014.”
With their oil business coming under pressure, Isil must find new ways of raising money. Asset-stripping the antiquities of Nimrud would be another obvious scheme. Some of these priceless treasures will probably be sold to smugglers.

Iraqi workers cleaning an archaeological site in Nimrud in 2001 (AFP)
Over 3,000 years ago, the Assyrian civilisation conquered large areas of the Middle East. The achievements of that empire will now be used to fund the altogether more nihilistic ambitions of the region’s new imperialists.

[LaCroix]

So they bulldoze everything to make us buy whatever they sell to us, just so they don't smash that, as well? Now that's what you call price gouging...