Baghdad -- It does not seem that the 3,000-year-old Royal Library of Ashurbanipal in Mosul will reopen soon, even though international institutions and universities pledged to donate hundreds of titles to the project. This library was one of the victims of the war and the fighting between the Islamic State and the Iraqi forces and Popular Mobilisation Forces. The library stopped operating in 2014.
Early in the eighth century b.c.e., the nation of Assyria was weak politically and militarily. It was under the dominion of its northern neighbor, Urartu. When a weak king came to power in Urartu in 746--745 b.c.e., Assyria rebelled and a new ruler emerged. Pulu (or Pul) assumed the name Tiglath-Pileser iii after one of Assyria's greatest kings.
The British Museum's hidden basement galleries are to remain closed under its new masterplan for a sweeping redisplay of its collections--but what treasures do they hold? Among the antiquities still being stored there is the Banquet Scene (645-635BC), the world's finest single Assyrian relief sculpture, of the kind destroyed by Islamic State in Iraq.
Singing means different things to different people. For the women of the Assyrian Women's Choir, singing is hope. It is freedom. It is a form of expression. The sound is not important. The lyrics are secondary. What is evident is the joy in their faces when they belt out a tune. You see, the majority of the woman were not allowed to sing in their home countries of Iraq and Syria.
Known today also as Qal'at Sherqat, the ancient Assyrian city of Assur is located in the Saladin Governorate of modern day Iraq, about 280 km (174 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. This city was first settled by human beings during the 3 rd millennium BC, and is believed to have been occupied up until the 2 nd century AD.
Nineveh was the last capital of the Assyrian Empire, as well as its most populous city. It has even been claimed that Nineveh was the most populated city in the world for a period. In recent times, the remains of Nineveh have suffered much damage as a consequence of the war that has been raging on in the region.