Replicating the tombs, statues, temples and
archaeological sites is happening even without the support
of international organisations. Artists are reconstructing
the past. In Iraq, Ninos Thabet, an 18-year-old who studied
art at Mosul University, is putting his creativity to good use.
He is working on creating miniature replicas of the statues
destroyed in the 3,000-year-old Assyrian city of Nimrud,
south of Mosul, when it was overrun. Thabet fled Mosul with
his family to the Kurdish capital, Erbil, and has since created
more than 50 miniatures of the now lost statues. In Jordan,
Syrian artists in the Zaatari refugee camp came together for
a special project aimed at reconstructing Syrian artefacts and
cultural sites destroyed during the war.
Further afield in Italy, replicas of several masterpieces
vandalised or destroyed in Syria and Iraq have been recreated.
The replicas have been featured in a UNESCO-sponsoredDespite efforts to salvage and
recreate the remnants of ongoing
cultural vandalism, the thinking
that supports such demolitions
has not dissipated
above A lamassu
- an Assyrian deity
comprised of a human’s
head and a lion’s body
with wings – from
Nimrud displayed in the
Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York
to P right Soldiers in
Al Hatra, an ancient,
now-ruined city
southwest of Mosul
in Iraqbottom right The great
colonnade at Apamea in
Syria, which has been
partially destroyed by
the Islamic StateIMAGE © WIKICOMMONS