Case · Looting
The Mosul Museum Destruction
Heritage smashed and trafficked by ISIS
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Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
In 2015 ISIS filmed itself destroying Assyrian and Hatrene sculptures in the Mosul Museum, while smaller, portable antiquities were trafficked to fund the group. Much was lost forever.
The propaganda video showed militants toppling and drilling apart monumental statues — some originals, some casts — in an act of deliberate cultural erasure. At the ancient sites of Nimrud, Nineveh, and Hatra, the devastation extended to standing monuments.
Beyond the spectacle of destruction lay a quieter crime: the systematic looting and sale of smaller objects to finance the group, feeding the international market in blood antiquities.