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The 3D-printed reproduction of the Assyrian statue was previously displayed at the Colosseum in Rome and the Unesco headquarters in ParisItaly has donated a reconstructed Assyrian statue to Iraq in what has been described as a “miracle of Italian cultural diplomacy”. Constructed in the ninth century BC, the 5m-tall Bull of Nimrud was destroyed by Isis fighters in 2015, before Italian artisans made a copy of the monument using 3D-printing technology. The replica, which was previously displayed at the Colosseum in Rome and the Unesco headquarters in Paris, has now been permanently relocated outside the entrance to the Basrah Museum....

In 701 B.C.E., an African king marched into Syria-Palestine to defend Judah against the invasion of Sennacherib, king of Assyria. Second Kings 19:9 mentions "Tirhakah, king of Cush," coming to the help of Hezekiah, who was up against the Assyrian superpower. Though the Cushites are mentioned only briefly in the biblical text, a number of scholars have argued that their involvement in the conflict against Assyria was decisive in the survival of Jerusalem at this critical historical juncture...The 25th Dynasty of Egypt, which lasted for about a hundred years, from the mid-eighth century to the mid-seventh century B.C.E., was Cushite...

Archaeologists in northern Iraq, working on the Mashki and Adad gate sites in Mosul that were destroyed by Islamic State in 2016, recently uncovered 2,700-year-old Assyrian reliefs. Featuring war scenes and trees, these rock carvings add to the bounty of detailed stone panels excavated from the 1840s onwards, many of which are currently held in the British Museum. They stem from the ancient city of Nineveh which, for a time, was likely the most dazzling in the world. There is evidence of occupation at the site already by 3,000 BC, an era known as the late Uruk period. But it...

Hasanlu developed into a significant commercial and production center during the early Iron Age (1400-800 B.C.), owing to its location on important trade and communication routes between Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The citadel at the center of the settlement contained an array of monumental buildings, including palaces, temples, and large multi-columned halls. The evidence Danti is studying confirms that the citadel met with a violent end. Many buildings were ransacked and burned, which caused them to collapse. In addition, the remains of more than 250 people were uncovered, some with signs of systematic execution. "The horrific level of violence evident in...

Archaeologists in northern Iraq have unearthed 2,700-year-old rock carvings featuring war scenes and trees from the Assyrian empire, an archaeologist has said. The carvings on marble slabs were discovered in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, where experts have been working to restore the site of the ancient Mashki Gate, which was bulldozed by Islamic State militants in 2016. IS overran large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and carried out a campaign of systematic destruction of museums and invaluable archaeological sites in their fervour to erase history. Fadhil Mohammed, the head of the restoration works, said the team were surprised...

Archaeologists recently unearthed ivory plaques found in a luxurious Iron Age residence in Jerusalem, a first-of-its-kind discovery at the site, shedding light on the owner's wealth and social status.The ivory pieces were found in a building from around the eighth or seventh century B.C., the First Temple era, in the City of David...Sifting through the ruins in the building, likely burnt during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., diggers found around 1,500 ivory fragments, said Reli Avisar from Tel Aviv University, which excavated the site along with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA)...The decorations consisted of frames with rosettes...

A bungled looting scheme has led archaeologists to an underground Iron Age complex in Turkey that may have been used by a fertility cult during the first millennium B.C., a new study finds.The ancient complex, which has yet to be fully investigated due to the instability of the structure, has rare rock art drawings on its walls featuring a procession of deities depicted in an Assyrian style. This art style appears to have been adapted by local groups, indicating how strongly the culture of the Neo-Assyrian Empire — which hailed from Mesopotamia and later expanded into Anatolia — spread to...

Separated by geography and language, there's not much that might seem to connect India's five dwindling Jewish communities – except praying in Hebrew, and food. ...Kolkata is home to the Baghdadi Jews, who were once abundant enough to warrant five synagogues; now there aren't enough for a minyan (minimum [10] male Jews required for liturgical purposes). Magen David and the smaller Beth El Synagogue were both classified as protected monuments and renovated by the Archaeological Survey of India in 2017. ...The story of disappearing Jewish populations finds echoes elsewhere in India. Jews are believed to have first arrived in India...

An international team of archaeologists and historians has completed an extensive analysis of a rare leather armor waistcoat recovered from the grave of an ancient horse-riding soldier in Northwest China. Notably, the climate in that region of China is desert-like and bone-dry. This is significant, because the arid conditions and lack of moisture in the soil allowed the leather armor to survive intact despite being buried for nearly 3,000 years. Under the supervision of archaeologist Patrick Wertmann from the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at University of Zurich, the research team members used radiocarbon dating procedures to establish the...

Archaeologists have excavated the first, and what they believe is the oldest, industrial wine press in northern Mesopotamia dating back more than 2,700 years and coinciding with a sharp rise in wine demand among the ruling imperial elites of Assyria.One of the world's earliest empires, Assyria was located in the northern part of Mesopotamia - most of modern-day Iraq, as well as parts of Iran, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey...Unearthed at the archaeological site of Khanis, near the northern Iraqi province of Dohuk, the discovery's value lies partly in its historical context, Bonacossi added.Assyrian scripture has previously pointed to an increased...

After faring thus badly the enemy departed, while the Greeks continued their march unmolested through the remainder of the day and arrived at the Tigris river. Here was a large deserted city; its name was Larisa, and it was inhabited in ancient times by the Medes. Its wall was twenty-five feet in breadth and a hundred in height, and the whole circuit of the wall was two parasangs. It was built of clay bricks, and rested upon a stone foundation twenty feet high... Near by this city was a pyramid of stone, a plethrum in breadth and two plethra in...

Unique flagstones of Rabat Tepe Raise QuestionsThe discovery of 3000-year-old flagstones in Rabat Tepe has surprised archaeologists. Tehran, 20 October 2005 (CHN) -- The first season of archaeological excavations in Rabat Tepe led to the discovery of 3000-year-old 180x180 cm flagstone, which have never been seen before in any Urartu historical sites. Similar flagstones have been found in Ancient Rome and Ancient Iran historical sites. Rabat Tepe is located near the town of Sardasht in West Azarbaijan province of Iran. It is believed that hill used to be the capital of Musasir government about 3000 years ago. Before setting on...

Among the individuals mentioned in those texts, 12 had Mesopotamian names, five had probably Aramaic names, one bore an Egyptian name, and one had a name with the Yahwistic component Yhw -- Netanyahu. The appearance of the foreign names in the documents, coupled with the scarcity of Yahwistic elements in them, points to the policy of forced resettlement for which the Neo-Assyrian state was notorious. The refugees' displacement in times of war -- a phenomenon, unfortunately, so familiar to us today -- was coupled with forced movements of conquered populations. The kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire formulated and used this...

A group of Italian archaeologists from the University of Udine in Italy has made significant progress at an ancient site in the Kurdistan Regionís Duhok province. Il Giornale DellíArte published some photos of the excavation site on Tuesday, describing the recent progress as "extraordinary." The new discovery includes the uncovering of 10 new rock inscriptions that show "the Assyrian ruler Sargon in the presence of divinity," which date back to 705-720 BC. The discovery took place along an ancient irrigation canal approximately seven kilometers long in the Faida district, located 20 kilometers south of Duhok. The joint project, called "Land...

More than 2,600 years ago, strange red clouds over Mesopotamia drew the attention of soothsayers across the land. Their royal reports have now helped confine the date of a severe solar storm that washed over the planet. Based on readings of carbon isotopes trapped in tree rings deposited around that time, astronomers already suspected there was a period of intense solar activity around the middle of the 7th century BC... And it seemed like it had pretty far-ranging effects. Earlier in the year, geologists reported similar signs of a storm from around this period in traces of radioactive particles buried...

Assyria conquered the kingdom of Israel, and deported many of the residents of Samaria and its surroundings to other Assyrian provinces, and brought deportees from other conquered territories to Samaria to take their place. Excavations at Tel Hadid, near Lod in Israel, have unearthed material remains that contribute to our understanding of these transformative years. Deportation of residents from rebellious vassal states was one of the ways Mesopotamian empires maintained control of their territory. This practice was devised, and largely used, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire... Mass deportations and resettlement of conquered peoples served as a fundamental tool of statecraft, economic...

The remains of a mysterious Jewish city populated decades before the destruction of the First Temple was discovered on a site near Beit Shemesh about six months ago. The findings not only revealed evidence of the renewal of Jewish settlement in the area following the destruction wrought by Sancheiriv but also revealed evidence of the idol worship the Jewish people engaged in at the time. The findings of figurines and idols in the Jewish city corroborated the Tanach's (Jewish Bible) attribution of the destruction of the First Temple to idolatry. Sancheiriv (Sennacherib), the king of Assyria from 705 BCE to...

Archaeologists unearth 3,300-year-old coffin at Tel Shadud thought to hold Canaanite official in service of Egyptian pharaoh :snip: Found alongside the new sarcophagus was a scarab seal ring encased in gold, carved with the name of Pharaoh Seti I, who ruled ancient Egypt in the 13th century BC. Seti I conquered the region of today's Israel in the first year of his reign in order to secure Egyptian trade routes and collect taxes for Egypt, said Ron Beeri, an archaeologist who participated in the dig. The man buried in the sarcophagus might have been a tax collector for the pharaoh,...

The Assyrian kings of the late tenth and early ninth centuries campaigned in the west and helped to reestablish regional control through infrastructure. However, it is Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883-859 B.C.E.) who is often considered the founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. His kingdom reached from the Taurus Mountains in the north to the Euphrates River in the west. He established a new capital city in Kalhu and built it into an impressive city with imperial wealth accumulated from taxes, trade, and the "tribute" payments extracted from vassal nations in exchange for their independence. This "yoke of Assur" was a great...

Archeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq. The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years. The archeologists also discovered settlement layers dating from the Akkadian Empire period (2340-2200 BC), which is regarded as the first world empire in human history. Scientists headed...