Image credit: Mustafa Yahya
NEWS: 2,700 year old Assyrian Lamassu statue re-excavated in Khorsabad, Iraq
A huge Assyrian Lamassu statue, weighing around 19 tons and stretching 12 and a half feet in length, has been rediscovered by archaeologists in the Iraqi city of Khorsabad. The statue was originally found in 1992 by an Iraqi archaeological team. Unfortunately in 1995, thieves sawed the head off of the statue, dismembered it into multiple pieces, and attempted to smuggle the head out of Iraq. The thieves were caught and executed; the parts of the head were recovered and restored. The head has since been on display in the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad. As for the rest of the statue, it was reburied in order to protect it and has remained buried until now due to the turbulent events in the country over the past 30 years. Thankfully, the headless statue now sees the light of day once more, and is under close protection as the statue is worked on and decisions are made on its future.
A Lamassu was an Assyrian guardian deity depicted as a hybrid creature of a human head (typically male) on a strong quadrupedal body (typically a lion or bull) with large bird’s wings. Important buildings would often have two large Lamassu statues flanking their entrance. This newly rediscovered Lamassu statue was built in 721 BC under the reign of Sargon II. Sargon wished for Khorsabad (Dur-Sharrukin to give its ancient name) to be the capital of his kingdom but these plans were scrapped following Sargon’s death in battle in 705 BC.
The excavation work was conducted by a joint team of Iraqi and French archaeologists led by Dr Ahmed Fakak Al-Badrani, the Iraqi Minister of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities. French archaeologist Pascal Butterlin, professor of Middle East archaeology at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne university, told France24:
“I never unearthed anything this big in my life before. Normally, it's only in Egypt or Cambodia that you find pieces this big. The attention to detail is unbelievable.”
The Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) along with the archaeology team are now looking into ways to reunite the body with its head.
29/10/2023