Nineveh, also known in early modern times as Kouyunjik, was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River and was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the largest city in the world for several decades. Today, it is a common name for the half of Mosul that lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and the country's Nineveh Governorate takes its name from it.
Hatra was an ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia located in present-day eastern Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. The city lies 290 km (180 mi) northwest of Baghdad and 110 km (68 mi) southwest of Mosul.
Dura-Europos was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 metres above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in present-day Syria. Dura-Europos was founded around 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, who founded the Seleucid Empire as one of the Diadochi of Alexander the Great. In 113 BC, Parthians conquered the city, and held it, with one brief Roman intermission, until 165 AD. Under Parthian rule, it became an important provincial administrative centre. The Romans decisively captured Dura-Europos in 165 AD and greatly enlarged it as their easternmost stronghold in Mesopotamia, until it was captured by the Sasanian Empire after a siege in 256–57 AD. Its population was deported, and the abandoned city eventually became covered by sand and mud and disappeared from sight.
Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city located in Iraq, 30 kilometres (20 mi) south of the city of Mosul, and 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of the village of Selamiyah, in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a major Assyrian city between approximately 1350 BC and 610 BC. The city is located in a strategic position 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of the point that the river Tigris meets its tributary the Great Zab. The city covered an area of 360 hectares. The ruins of the city were found within one kilometre (1,100 yd) of the modern-day Assyrian village of Noomanea in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq.
Lama, Lamma, or Lamassu is an Assyrian protective deity.
Assyriology is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia and of the related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolothic pre Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as circa. 8000 BC through to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD
Aššur (; Sumerian: 𒀭𒊹𒆠 AN.ŠAR2KI, Assyrian cuneiform: Aš-šurKI, "City of God Aššur"; Syriac: ܐܫܘܪ Āšūr; Old Persian 𐎠𐎰𐎢𐎼Aθur, Persian: آشور: Āšūr; Hebrew: אַשּׁוּר, ʾAššūr, Arabic: اشور), also known as Ashur and Qal'at Sherqat, was the capital of the Old Assyrian city-state (2025–1364 BC), the Middle Assyrian Empire (1363–912 BC), and for a time, of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC). The remains of the city lie on the western bank of the Tigris River, north of the confluence with its tributary, the Little Zab, in what is now Iraq, more precisely in the al-Shirqat District of the Saladin Governorate.
Ashur-nasir-pal II was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC.
The Department of the Middle East, numbering some 330,000 works, forms a significant part of the collections of the British Museum, and the world's largest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas.
The Kingdom of Hatra was a 2nd-century Arab kingdom located between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire, mostly under Parthian suzerainty, located in modern-day northern Iraq.
Tell al-Rimah is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in Nineveh Province (Iraq). Its ancient name may have been either Karana or Qattara. It is located in Nineveh Province (Iraq), roughly 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of Mosul and ancient Nineveh in the Sinjar region.
Sanatruq I was the first king of Hatra, an ancient city in northern Mesopotamia.
Parthian art was Iranian art made during the Parthian Empire from 247 BC to 224 AD, based in the Near East. It has a mixture of Persian and Hellenistic influences. For some time after the period of the Parthian Empire, art in its styles continued for some time. A typical feature of Parthian art is the frontality of the people shown. Even in narrative representations, the actors do not look at the object of their action, but at the viewer. These are features that anticipate the art of medieval Europe and Byzantium.
The following lists events that happened in 2015 in Iraq.
The destruction of Mosul Museum artifacts became publicly known on February 26, 2015, when the group known as ISIL released a video showing their destruction.
Deliberate destruction and theft of cultural heritage has been conducted by the Islamic State since 2014 in Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent in Libya. The destruction targets various places of worship under ISIL control and ancient historical artifacts. In Iraq, between the fall of Mosul in June 2014 and February 2015, IS had plundered and destroyed at least 28 historical religious buildings. Valuable items from some buildings were looted in order to smuggle and sell them to foreigners to finance the running of the Islamic State.
Professor Malcolm Andrew Richard Colledge was a British archaeologist who made many visits to the Middle East and was an expert in the art of Palmyra. He was arrested in Jordan and Turkmenistan in the course of his work.
Rekrei, or Project Mosul, is a digital preservation project that uses the collaboration of different sources (crowdsource), primarily photos and images, to help to reconstruct and preserve cultural heritage. Rekrei collects images from lost sites, artifacts, or artwork, hoping to construct 3D models quite similar, if not identical, to original objects. Such cultural heritage sites and objects include those in threat of being damaged or destroyed, whether by natural forces or human influences.
The 2017 Western Nineveh offensive, code-named Operation Muhammad, Prophet of God, was launched by the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the western Nineveh province of northern Iraq in late April 2017.
The Temple of Atargatis in Dura-Europos was one of the main temples of the city. The temple was built in the first century AD, when the city was under Parthian rule, and excavated in 1928–1929 under the direction of Maurice Pillet. The temple is located south of the center of the city and occupies the northeastern part of the H2 block. The cult building is close to the temple of Artemis Azzanathkona. A relief from the sanctuary of the temple shows the goddess Atargatis, with lions by both sides, accompanied by her husband Hadad. A cult standard is depicted between the two deities, above the lion on the left. It is perhaps the main cult image in the temple. The temple has a courtyard with a monumental entrance and three sanctuaries on the back wall as well as a pronaos in front of it. Atargatis was the mother of Adonis. Hadad and Adonis could also be worshipped here. There were also remains of wall paintings. There are various rooms around the courtyard, some of them with benches along the walls. Some of these rooms could have served as chapels for other deities, while other rooms were dining rooms for the cult community.
