HATRA: Iraq unveiled three newly restored monumental statues in the ancient city of Hatra on Thursday after they were destroyed by militant Islamic State (ISIS) militants during a brief but brutal rule.
In 2015, jihadists released video footage of the realm of destruction in Hatra, where they brought weapons and pickaxes to the once vast ruins of one of the leading trading warehouses between the Roman and Parthian empires in the first and second centuries AD.
A Roman-style statue of a life-size figure and a series of facial reliefs on the side of the great temple were among the restored pieces shown to reporters.
“ISIS has destroyed everything important in this city,” said Ali Obeid Sholgham, senior antiquities officer. AFP.
The artworks were “destroyed and disintegrated – we found fragments all over the site,” said Khair al-Din Ahmed Nasser, the provincial antiquities chief.
“We found some pieces, replaced the missing ones with stones of the same type.” Restoration work in Hatra is being carried out by Iraqi experts, in collaboration with Italy’s International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, and with funding from the International Alliance for the Preservation of Heritage in Conflict.
ISIS has filmed similar acts of destruction by its militants at the Mosul Museum, 100 kilometers northeast of Hatra, and in Palmyra in neighboring Syria.
Iraqi government forces recaptured Hatra in 2017, just months before declaring victory over the jihadists who swept the north and west of the country three years ago.