TAL AJAJA, Syria”•When the Islamic State group captured Tal Ajaja, one of Syria’s most important Assyrian-era sites, they discovered previously unknown millennia-old statues and cuneiform tablets, and then they destroyed them.
The extremist group, which has ravaged archeological sites under its control in Syria and Iraq, was chased from Tal Ajaja in northeastern Hasakeh province in February by Kurdish fighters.
But the destruction IS wrought there over two years remains.
Perched on a large hill around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Iraqi border, the site is now a vision of desolation, riven with long tunnels.
Fragments of broken artifacts are strewn throughout and large holes dug by looters pockmark the ground.
The Assyrian empire, with its capital in Nineveh in modern-day Iraq, flourished in the first millennium BC.
It produced celebrated artifacts, particularly bas-reliefs often depicting scenes of war.
“Tal Ajaja, or ancient Shadikanni, was one of the main cities of Assyria,” said Cheikhmous Ali of the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archeology.
Most of the known treasures of Tal Ajaja, discovered in the 19th century, had long been removed and placed in museums in Syria or abroad.
But the jihadists, as well as local looters, dug up artifacts that archeologists had not yet uncovered, destroying or trafficking priceless pieces.
“They found items that were still buried, statues, columns. We’ve lost many things,” lamented Maamoun Abdulkarim, head of Syria’s antiquities department.
– ‘Barbarians’ -”More than 40 percent of Tal Ajaja was destroyed or ravaged by IS,” added Khaled Ahmo, director of the antiquities department in Hasakeh.
“The tunnels that were dug destroyed invaluable archeological strata” that would have revealed the economic, social and political history of the era, he told AFP.
In IS’s extreme interpretation of Islam, statues, idols and shrines amount to recognising objects of worship other than God and must be destroyed.