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...

A statue of Ea, the Akkadian god of water (related to the Sumerian god Enki). Ea is enthroned and holds a cup in his left hand, the right hand has been lost to time. He is accompanied by two creatures (half human and half fish) reclining...

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...

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 Vase of Warka (also called Uruk Vase) is one of the earliest surviving examples of narrative art. It was excavated (in fragments) by a German excavation team in a temple complex dedicated to the goddess Inanna at the city of Uruk (in...

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...

Baked clay statue of the Mesopotamian god Enlil, from the Scribal Quarter at Nippur, Iraq, 1800-1600 BCE. Iraq Museum, Baghdad.

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 scene is part of a long one depicting Sumerians milking cows and preparing dairy products. The scene once decorated a frieze on the facade of the Temple of Ninhursag at Tell al-'Ubaid, in modern-day Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq. Early Dynastic...