The Mosul Museum ( ar, متحف الموصل) is the second largest museum in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
after the
National Museum of Iraq
The Iraq Museum ( ar, المتحف العراقي) is the national museum of Iraq, located in Baghdad. It is sometimes informally called the National Museum of Iraq, a recent phenomenon influenced by other nations' naming of their national museum ...
in
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
. It was heavily
looted
Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or rioting. ...
during the
2003 Iraq War
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...
. Founded in 1952, the museum consisted of a small hall until a new building was opened in 1972, containing ancient Assyrian artifacts. The museums net worth and content value are around 50 to 80 to 250 million according to
museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
specialists during 2013 at least. Dr. Hikmat Al-Aswad was the director from 2004 to 2011. The current director is Zaid Ghazi Saadallah.
ISIL seizure and destruction spree
In 2014 the
Islamic State
An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
occupied the museum as it was about to reopen after years of rebuilding. ISIL said that its statues were against Islam and threatened to destroy the museum's contents.
[Christopher Dickey]
"ISIS Is About to Destroy Biblical History in Iraq,"
''The Daily Beast
''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. It was founded in 2008.
It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 20 ...
'', July 7, 2014. Retrieved December 22, 2014
On 26 February 2015, a day after burning books from Mosul libraries, the group released a video showing the
destruction of artifacts in the museum and at the archaeological site at
Nimrud
Nimrud (; syr, ܢܢܡܪܕ ar, النمرود) is an ancient Assyrian city located in Iraq, south of the city of Mosul, and south of the village of Selamiyah ( ar, السلامية), in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a majo ...
, claiming the sites promoted "
Idolatry
Idolatry is the worship of a cult image or "idol" as though it were God. In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, the Baháʼí Faith, and Islam) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the A ...
". ISIL stated that they also intended to destroy the historic walls of
Nineveh
Nineveh (; akk, ; Biblical Hebrew: '; ar, نَيْنَوَىٰ '; syr, ܢܝܼܢܘܹܐ, Nīnwē) 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 ban ...
.
There has been quite some confusion whether artefacts destroyed by ISIL militants were originals or just copies.
Mossul
Mosul ( ar, الموصل, al-Mawṣil, ku, مووسڵ, translit=Mûsil, Turkish: ''Musul'', syr, ܡܘܨܠ, Māwṣil) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. The city is considered the second larg ...
's exiled governor
Atheel al-Nujaifi
Atheel al-Nujaifi ( ar, أثيل النجيفي; tr, Esil Nuceyfi; born 1958) is an Iraqi politician who was the Governor of Nineveh Governorate from April 2009 until May 2015.
Nujaifi was born into a Mawsili family in 1958. He is a brother ...
said that many of the most important works, except for the larger objects, were transferred to the
Baghdad Museum after the 2003
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
, the most valuable ones having been sent to Baghdad already after the 1991
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...
. Later in March, the director of Iraq's antiquities administration, Fawzye al-Mahdi, however, incorrectly stated that "none of the artifacts destroyed in the video was an original." As al-Nujaifi specified, "there were two items that were real and which the militants destroyed: one is a
winged bull and the other was the God of Rozhan."
It was revealed that ISIS has turned the artifact warehouse into a tax office – the "Diwan Zakat" – to collect dues from its Islamist fighters.
In 2017 the city of Mosul was recaptured by the Iraqi troops; the museum was described as damaged, with some artifacts likely plundered and sold off by ISIS troops, and others damaged or destroyed, sometimes intentionally.
Reactions
In late February,
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
director-general
Irina Bokova
Irina Georgieva Bokova ( bg, Ирина Георгиева Бокова; born 12 July 1952) is a Bulgarian politician and the former Director-General of UNESCO (2009–2017). During her political and diplomatic career in Bulgaria, she served, a ...
requested an emergency meeting of the
U.N. Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, and ...
"on the protection of Iraq's cultural heritage as an integral element for the country's security".
Post-liberation recovery
In 2018, th
International alliance for the protection of heritage in conflict areas (ALIPH) committed nearly US$1.5 million to rehabilitate the museum, in partnership with the
Louvre Museum
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, the
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
, and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to implement the project. The first measures were to stabilize the building (shoring up collapsing floors, removing live ordnance from the roof) and to safely store the museum's collection.
In cooperation with the Government of Iraq and Municipality of Mosul, the Iraqi civil society organisation Al-Ghad and the Mosul Artists’ Committee hosted the first event in Mosul Museum since the city's occupation in 2014. The art exhibition, ‘Return to Mosul’, opened on 29 January and closed on 3 February 2019, and brought together artistic voices from across Iraq and Mosul and enhanced them with technology including 3D printing and virtual reality experiences. It commissioned and exhibited paintings, photographs and sculpture that told the story of the city's occupation under the extremist organisation ISIS and articulated a vision of the local community's hopes for recovery and reconstruction. The exhibition brought together many different ethno-sectarian groups, previously fractured by the divisive actions and narratives of ISIS, and encouraged them to discuss their vision of a brighter, more tolerant future in Mosul. The exhibition was staged in the newly restored Royal Venue, in the old wing of the museum.
Reopening
On July 10, 2020, Iraq's newly appointed prime minister,
Mustafa Al-Kadhimi
Mustafa Abdul Latif Mishatat ( ar, مصطفى عبد اللطيف مشتت; born 5 July 1967), known as Mustafa al-Kadhimi, alternatively spelt Mustafa al-Kadhimy, is an Iraqi politician, lawyer and bureaucrat and former intelligence officer who ...
, reopened the Mosul Museum during his visit to mark six years since the ISIL occupation.
See also
*
List of museums in Iraq
*
Archaeological looting in Iraq
Archaeological looting in Iraq took place since at least the late 19th century. The chaos following war provided the opportunity to pillage everything that was not nailed down. There were also attempts to protect the sites such as the period betw ...
*
Destruction of cultural heritage by ISIL
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 ...
or ISIS in 2014-2015
*
Buddhas of Bamyan
The Buddhas of Bamiyan (or Bamyan) were two 6th-century monumental statues carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of Hazarajat region in central Afghanistan, northwest of Kabul at an elevation of . Carbon dating of the structural c ...
*
Rekrei
References
{{Authority control
Buildings and structures destroyed by ISIL
Attacks on museums