ISIS destroy Hatra

[Thanas]

Spiegel is now reporting (link sadly in German) that ISIS has destroyed Hatra.

From wikipedia:

Hatra is the best preserved and most informative example of a Parthian city. It is encircled by inner and outer walls nearly 4 miles (6.4 km) in circumference and supported by more than 160 towers. A temenos (τέμενος) surrounds the principal sacred buildings in the city’s centre. The temples cover some 1.2 hectares and are dominated by the Great Temple, an enormous structure with vaults and columns that once rose to 30 metres. The city was famed for its fusion of Greek, Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Aramean and Arabian pantheons, known in Aramaic as Beiṯ Ĕlāhā ("House of God").

As somebody who works with inscriptions from Hatra, this is a devastating blow to me.

[Flagg]

I feel guilty at feeling almost worse about the destruction of artifacts than about all the innocent people being tortured, gays thrown off of roofs, and the general "kill them all and have fun doing it" attitude displayed by these evil cunts. And apparently they are obliterating everything they can find in Mosul

[Highlord Laan]

These animals have declared war on not just on everyone not them, but on the entirety of human history. Why the hell aren't burying them under a pig farm yet?

[Thanas]

More info from the guardian:

Islamic State militants have bulldozed ancient remains of the 2,000-year-old city of Hatra in northern Iraq.

An official said the tourism and antiquities ministry had received reports from its employees in Mosul, which is controlled by the radical Islamist group, that the site at Hatra had been demolished.

A nearby resident said he heard a powerful explosion early on Saturday and that neighbours had reported that Isis militants had destroyed some of the larger buildings in Hatra and were bulldozing other parts.

The destruction follows a similar incident this week when Isis fighters bulldozed the ancient Assyrian archaeological site of Nimrud, south of Mosul. Some of the works had survived for more than 1,500 years.

[...]


Saeed Mumuzini, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic party in Nineveh province, said Isis stole ancient gold and silver coins that were used by Assyrian kings and were stored in Hatra.

Hatra dates back 2,000 years to the Seleucid empire, which controlled a large part of the ancient world conquered by Alexander the Great. It is famous for its striking pillared temple at the centre of a sprawling archaeological site.

My only hope is that the site at Hatra was too huge to destroy in its entirety and that the massive stones are more resilient than I imagine.

[The Romulan Republic]

Vicious garbage. The sooner they are crushed like so many would-be world conquerors before them the better.

Edit: I also hope that the damage is not complete. The thought of such a site being lost after so long because of these petty fanatics is sickening.

[ray245]

Isn't Hatra quite well documented?

[Iroscato]

Perhaps we could have a general 'ISIS being subhuman pieces of shit' thread? They are killing people and destroying our common heritage with such alarming regularity that N&P is gonna flooded over the next few years/decades, however long it takes us to wipe these fuckers from the planet and destroy every last remnant of their twisted 'culture'.

[Bernkastel]

Sadly, I must agree with this suggestion. We're certainly going to get more news in the "ISIS does [insert assholery here]" category, so we might as well have a single thread for it all.

[Thanas]

Isn't Hatra quite well documented?

Yes but real work on the site hasn't been happening since Saddam had his tiff with the west.

[Broomstick]

It's plain ISIS is trying to destroy all history prior to what they designate as the start of civilization, removing the evidence of other cultures just as they remove those they deem other than themselves.

I swear, between ISIS, Boko Haram, and North Korea it's like these guys are reading books like 1984 and studying the worst parts of WWII and going "There are a lot of good ideas here - but no one has taken them far enough."

And I am also putting in for a "General ISIS dickery" thread. Which might also need to include "General Boko Haram dickery"

[Thanas]

They got precedent in that this is exactly how Saudi-Arabia (where the funding comes from) treats its own history - anything that is not muslim or does not fit the accepted narrative is destroyed.

[Broomstick]

I would be shocked if they were the first to do that.

Didn't the Ancient Egyptians try to write Hatsheput and Ahkenaten out of history?

(I'm wondering if I spelled those names correctly, apologies if I didn't)

[Prannon]

Building on what Broomstick is saying, and not to diminish what ISIS is doing in this case, but humans have been going about destroying their history since the beginning of time. You can look to the Pyramids of Giza for a very good example.

Fortunately, those are far, far, far less easy to destroy.

[Broomstick]

The thing is, modern technology allows more thorough destruction than was possible in the past.

[ray245]

Not to mention in the past it makes little sense to spend so much effort to destroy some ancient ruins that no one really cares about. The modern world do care a lot more about our past, which means those ruins now have far more symbolic value than it ever was.

[Iroscato]

Not to mention, we live in an age and civilisation that generally makes genuine efforts to study and preserve history and historic sites. Add in a media that can bring all this horrible shit to our screen in moments and it hurts a lot more than it used to.
EDIT: Didn't see above post when writing

[Broomstick]

In the past, some destruction was caused not by malice but for very pragmatic reasons - the pyramids and the Colosseum in Rome lost structural bits not so much because anyone actively wanted to destroy those structures but because it was just so damn easier to use those mammoth piles as a quarry instead of going out to an actual quarry and digging up/dressing new rock or pouring new concrete or making new bricks.

(It's not unusual today for bricks and other building materials to be recycled into new structures, this was even more true when producing such materials required a great deal of human labor without machinery to ease the burden of doing so.)

While such efforts certainly are destructive they are seldom completely destructive. The pyramids may be somewhat diminished, but the bulk of the structure still exists.

ISIS and the like are doing this not because they need to build a house or a wall, they're doing it to completely destroy something they do not like.

[cosmicalstorm]

I wonder how long until they take on the Pyramids?
Egypt seems to have shaken of the Brotherhood but that might change in time.

The Pyramids foundations survived even the RKV bombardment in The Killing Star

[Jaepheth]

Isn't Hatra quite well documented?

A Paleontologist friend of mine was telling me how research/publications can't be based on specimens in private collections because those findings can't be readily verified. (She's VERY against freelance fossil hunters for that reason)
In overly simple (probably) terms, once the repeatability is gone you can't do truly "legitimate" science anymore.

I would presume that it's similar for archeology. Privately held, or destroyed artifacts can't be verified to be what earlier reports claimed, and if those earlier records missed something then we'll never know now because you can't check the original.