Baghdad: Did you mean...?

The Story Begins from a Dead End August 25, 2015 was a very hot day of summer but its omen was a very promising one! That day, I was with my friend, Mr. Hashim Hama Abdulla, director of the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq, walking in the main...

This prism records the first eight campaigns of the Assyrian King Sennacherib (704-681 BCE). This six-sided baked clay document (or prism) was discovered at the Assyrian capital Nineveh, in an area known today as Nebi Yunus. It was acquired...

The mask of Warka, the first almost complete and life-size depiction of the human face in history, with respect to its anatomical details. It is made of marble and is about 20 cm tall. The eyes may have been inlaid with shells and lapis lazuli...

The votive or sacred Warka Vase is decorated with three horizontal registers and shows signs of repair in antiquity. The top register depicts a complete scene. Here, a naked man offers a bowl of fruits and grains to a Mesopotamian female...

Stele of a lion-hunt from Uruk, the oldest narrative Mesopotamian sculpture (in relief) and the first documented evidence of lion-hunting in Mesopotamia. It depicts two men hunting lions using a spear and arrows. One man is smaller than the...

This bronze statuette was found at the foundation deposits of the temple of Eanna at Nippur. The statue depicts Ur-Nammu, king of Ur, holding a basket on his head as the builder of the temple. Ur III (Neo-Sumerian) period, reign of Ur-Nammu...

The front panel of this dais depicts Shalmaneser III (r. 858-824 BCE), (on the right) handshaking Marduk-zakir-shumi (r. 855 - 819 BCE) (left), king of Babylon. Both are surrounded by guards and stand below a fringed canopy supported by poles...

The skeletal remains of a Neanderthal corpse, which was found inside the Paleolithic cave of Shanidar, Erbil Governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan. If you zoom in the image on the right clavicular bone, someone wrote, using a blue pen, "Shanidar I"...

This Phoenician carved ivory panel is one of an almost identical pair with one now in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. They originally formed part of a piece of furniture, perhaps a throne. The incised letter 'aleph' beside holes on the top and...

This is a very unique statue found in the 4th temple. This young man wears his full military uniform, which was exquisitely carved. He rests his left hand on the pommel of the hilt of a long sword while the right hand is raised in salutation...