Iraqi Authorities Open Archaeological Attraction Exhibiting Immense Ancient Assyrian Artifacts

An archaeological park was dedicated Sunday in northern Iraq. The park features 2,700-year-old carvings showing kings praying to the gods, and date from the reigns of the Assyrian kings Sargon II (721-705 BCE) and his son Sennacherib (705-681 BCE), both of whom are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Thirteen monumental bas-reliefs were cut into the rock walls of a 6-mile irrigation canal at Faida, in the north of the country. Each panel is around 16 feet wide and up to 7 feet tall. “Perhaps in the future others will be discovered,” said Bekas Brefkany, from the Department of Antiquities in Dohuk, in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. Regional authorities hope to open five such parks as “a tourist attraction and a source of income,” said Brefkany. Faida is the first of these. Archaeologists from Kurdistan and Italy’s University of Udine unearthed the findings during several recent digs. There are other rock reliefs in Iraq, said Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, professor of Near Eastern archaeology at the university, but none are as “huge and monumental” as these.