Saving Antiquities for Everyone

SAFE recommends

The Final Sack of Nineveh: The Discovery, Documentation, and Destruction of King Sennacherib's Throne Room at Nineveh, Iraq. By John Malcolm Russell.

Review by SENTA GERMAN

This book is the first to systematically describe and illustrate the modern destruction of a world class archaeological site, largely by the brutal forces of the illicit antiquities market. The site is the throne room of Sennacherib (a powerful 1 st millennium BC Assyrian King) at Nineveh, one of the most important archaeological sites in Iraq. For centuries the throne room contained scores of intricately carved large- and small-scale wall reliefs depicting Sennacherib's military campaigns, most notably, his 701 BC campaign to Jerusalem. However, as Russell documents, three separate forces have lead to the destruction of most of these reliefs, over only the last 170 years. First, during the clumsy removal of materials to the British Museum by the original English excavators of the site in the 19 th century a number of reliefs were destroyed. Then, for over a century after the departure of the excavators, large portions of the site were left exposed to the elements, resulting in further destruction. Finally, during the 1990s economic sanctions against Iraq, nearly all of the remaining reliefs in the throne room were broken up and sold on the illicit antiquities market. This final wave of destruction at Nineveh was all the more devastating, because the sudden appearance of Nineveh artifacts on the antiquities market heightened the demand for Assyrian wall reliefs, which accelerated the looting of similar sites.

Russell's book is uniquely important for two reasons. First, without his excellent photographic documentation of the remaining wall reliefs in Sennacherib's throne room taken during the late 1980s, knowledge of a great portion of these irreplaceable sculptures would be forever lost. Secondly, the book serves as an invaluable tool for law enforcement (matching the photographs with works in private hands may well lead to recoveries in the future) and all of those who fight the illicit antiquities trade. Only by thoroughly recording site destruction, which this book provides, can the scale of the illicit antiquities market be measured. And only when the scale of the problem is understood can corresponding action be devised and executed.