The Museo Civico Medievale of Bologna is pleased to host in the Sala del Lapidario the exhibition Gli Assiri all’ombra delle Due Torri. An inscribed brick from the ziggurat of Kalkhu in Iraq and the excavations of the Iraqi-Italian Archaeological Mission in Nineveh, on display from 14 June to 17 September 2023.

The exhibition initiative, curated by Nicolò Marchetti, is promoted by Settore Musei Civici Bologna | Musei Civici d’Arte Antica, King Abdulaziz Chair for Islamic Studies | Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna and the Iraqi-Italian Archaeological Mission in Nineveh on the occasion of the restitution to Iraq of a Mesopotamian object seized in Italy by the Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Bologna and the Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape Superintendency for the metropolitan city of Bologna and the provinces of Modena, Reggio Emilia and Ferrara. It is a baked brick of the Assyrian king Salmanassar III (858-824 BC) with a cuneiform inscription revealing its safe provenance from the ziggurat (stepped temple-tower) of ancient Kalkhu (modern Nimrud), the first capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, destroyed in 2016 by ISIS iconoclasm.

36 lifelike replicas of Neo-Assyrian seals and cretulae and cuneiform texts from the excavation project at the 750-hectare, 12-km walled mega-site of Nineveh have been chosen to tell ancient and modern stories.
Among them is the reproduction of the brick of the Assyrian king Salmanassar III from the ziggurat of ancient Kalkhu seized by the Carabinieri. It belonged to a monument destroyed in 2016 by ISIS bulldozers, so the return to Iraq of an architectural element of a lost structure is also an important element on a symbolic level.

Also on display are two fragments of Palatine reliefs from the mid-7th century B.C. discovered by the Italian mission in 2022 in the North Palace of Assurbanipal and a further fragment from the collections of the Archaeological Museum of Venice, almost identical to the other two and also from the acropolis of Nineveh.

The exhibition is completed by the display in the Sala delle Arche, within the museum’s permanent collection, of three sculptures created by contemporary artists of Iraqi origin Baldin Ahmad, Resmi Al Kafaji and Qassim Alsaedy, who have been living in exile in Europe for over forty years and have united their research and common biographical events in the itinerant exhibition project Two Shores.

Museo Civico Medievale, Sala del Lapidario – Via Alessandro Manzoni, 4 – Bologna