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Article: The Spoils of War.(relics from ancient cities in Iraq not being properly excavated, and how the threat of war will affect ancient sites)
- Article from:
- U.S. News & World Report
- Article date:
- February 10, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sennacherib was King of the Universe, King of the Four Corners of the World, and King of Assyria. From his lofty perspective on a throne in Nineveh, just outside the modern Iraqi city of Mosul, those titles all meant the same thing: unparalleled power. Nineveh was the largest city in the known world in Sennacherib's day, about 700 B.C., and his palace one of the grandest, its walls decorated with reliefs depicting his feats in war and engineering.
Art historian John Russell knows those walls well. Just before the last Gulf War, he photographed thousands of feet of carved reliefs covering Sennacherib's 90-foot-long throne room. So he was shocked when, in 1995, he ...