3000 year old city (Nimrud) wrecked by ISIS left for looters

[Tanuki]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nimrud-3000-year-old-city-wrecked-by-isis-is-left-for-looters/

"The giant winged Bulls that once stood sentry at the nearly 3,000-year-old palace at Nimrud have been hacked to pieces. The fantastical human-headed creatures were believed to guard the king from evil, but now their stone remains are piled in the dirt, victims of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s fervor to erase history.

The militants’ fanaticism devastated one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle East. But more than a month after the militants were driven out, Nimrud is still being ravaged, its treasures disappearing, piece by piece, imperiling any chance of eventually rebuilding it, an Associated Press team found after multiple visits last month.
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The site’s various structures - several palaces and temples - are spread over 900 acres on a dirt plateau. A 140-foot-high ziggurat, or step pyramid, once arrested the gaze of anyone entering Nimrud. Where it stood, there is now only lumpy earth. Just past it, in the palace of King Ashurnasirpal II, walls are toppled, bricks spilled into giant piles. The palace’s great courtyard is a field of cratered earth. Chunks of cuneiform writing are jammed in the dirt. Reliefs that once displayed gods and mythical creatures are reduced to random chunks showing a hand or a few feathers of a genie’s wing.
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They dismantled the winged bulls, known as lamassu, as purposefully as any decapitation they carried out in in Mosul or the Syrian city of Raqqa. The bearded male heads of the statues are missing - likely taken to be sold on the black market as ISIS has done with other artifacts. They then wired the entire palace with explosives and blew it apart, along with the temples of Nabu and of the goddess Ishtar.
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But the government has many priorities right now. It is still fighting ISIS in Mosul. Moreover, there is a long and expensive list of needs in rebuilding the country from ISIS’legacy. Tens of thousands of citizens live in camps. Large swaths of the western city of Ramadi were destroyed in the offensive to wrest it from ISIS control. Mass graves are unearthed nearly every day in former ISIS territory, with more than 70 discovered already. Other ancient sites remain under ISIS control, including Nineveh - another ancient Assyrian capital - in the heart of Mosul.

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