The video narrates the events starting from 2014 when Daesh conquered Mosul and destroyed a mosque due to their religious ideologies. During the dangerous debris clearance, a network of tunnels was discovered beneath the mosque, revealing Assyrian palatial ruins that had remained untouched for centuries. These ruins were the headquarters for Assyria's historically significant and feared army and represented the powerful Assyrian kings, unveiling rich artifacts and carvings.

This discussion highlights how Daesh aimed to exploit the hidden treasures of the Assyrian palace for financial gain, driving an extensive tunnel excavation beneath the mosque. Despite losing some artifacts, the remarkable discovery unveiled various valuable Assyrian antiquities, including carvings and Egyptian gold, providing a detailed glimpse into the complexity of Assyrian culture and warfare.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. excavator [ˈɛkskəˌveɪtər] - (noun) - A large machine for removing earth, especially made for digging and moving earth. - Synonyms: (digger, backhoe, trencher)

We had to bring the debris out, but you can't do that with an excavator because the danger that explosives would still be in the debris.

2. pickaxes [ˈpɪkˌæksɪz] - (noun) - Tools with a heavy metal head having a pointed end and a chisel end, used for breaking up rocks and other hard materials. - Synonyms: (tools, hammers, mattocks)

Daesh didn’t use machinery. They did it with pickaxes.

3. sieges [siːdʒɪz] - (noun) - Military operations in which troops surround a place to capture it by cutting off access to supplies or communication. - Synonyms: (blockades, attacks, assaults)

They fought and made sieges.

4. looted [ˈluːtɪd] - (verb) - To steal goods from a place, typically during a war or riot. - Synonyms: (stolen, pillaged, plundered)

The city was quite often looted.

5. depicting [dɪˈpɪktɪŋ] - (verb) - To represent or show something in a picture or story. - Synonyms: (representing, illustrating, portraying)

Some of the only carvings depicting Assyrian women ever unearthed.

6. ward [ wɔːrd] - (noun) - To guard or protect. - Synonyms: (guardianship, protection, safekeeping)

Walls provided a three dimensional model of a palace that had lain hidden for thousands of years.

7. sprawling [ˈsprɔːlɪŋ] - (adjective) - Spreading out in an uneven or uncontrolled way over a large area. - Synonyms: (expansive, spreading, extensive)

The effort has revealed an enormous sprawling complex designed to demonstrate the power of the king in the Assyrian society.

8. labyrinth [ˈlæbərɪnθ] - (noun) - A complicated network of paths or passages which makes it difficult to navigate. - Synonyms: (maze, network, tangle)

The team painstakingly mapped the labyrinth of underground passages tracing the course of Nebi Yunis.

9. lamassu [ˈlɑːmɑːsuː] - (noun) - Assyrian protective deity, often depicted as having a human head, the body of a bull or a lion, and bird wings. - Synonyms: (deity, guardian, spirit)

Its entrances adorned with grand symbolic statues called lamassu, or winged bulls.

10. reconstruction [ˌriːkənˈstrʌkʃən] - (noun) - The act of rebuilding or recreating something that was previously destroyed or existed in the past. - Synonyms: (restoration, rebuilding, recreation)

The team’s reconstruction shows that one palace room is more than 150ft long and almost 60ft wide.

Saving Ancient Assyrian History Nearly Destroyed By Terrorists - Secrets of the Dead - PBS

In 2014, when Daesh conquered Mosul, in their fundamental view of Islamic theology, it is forbidden to pray in front of a grave of a human being. So they simply blew up the mosque. And when I came first in this place here, there were six meters of debris here beneath the rest of the minaret, six meters. We had to bring the debris out, but you can't do that with an excavator because the danger that explosives would still be in the debris.

We found a barrel filled with dynamite which didn't explode. So it was really dangerous. It was so dangerous. But beneath the rubble, the team made a remarkable discovery. We discovered 650 meters of tunnels beneath the mosque. The tunnels are going in all directions. You know, here's a tunnel, there's a tunnel. Here is the next one. The underground is like a cheese from Switzerland, you know, full, full, full, full of holes. Daesh didn't use machinery. They did it with pickaxes. See, here's scratches of the pickaxe. So it must have been a huge amount of workers here in the tunnels. And people from the neighborhood told us that ordinary people on the street were forced to come here and to work.

Why did Daesh dig this vast network of tunnels? Their motivation had been hidden under the mosque for centuries. Daesh, as everybody else in this city, knew that under the mosque were the ruins of an Assyrian palace. The palace was untouched because it was sealed by the mosque which was above it. This palace was the headquarters of Assyria's feared army, the source of the empire's power.

Between the years 705 and 631 BCE, three warrior kings, Sennacherib, his son Esaradon and grandson Ashurbanipal, transformed Nineveh into the most powerful city in the world. Assyrians were very aggressive. Warfare was part of the everyday life and an important part of Assyrian economy. So they did, more or less every year, campaign. They fought and made sieges. And if they could capture a city, the city was quite often looted. The Assyrians stored their spoils of war in Nebiunis, where they remained untouched for more than 2,000 years. But this made the palace a prime target for Daesh to loot.

Daesh wanted to discover antiquities and to sell them on the black market in order to finance their war. Stefan's team has found stunning Assyrian artifacts, Egyptian gold from the time of the pharaohs, and some of the only carvings depicting Assyrian women ever unearthed, along with a vast number of cuneiform inscriptions. You still can read the name of the king who built the Palace.

This sign means palace of Sin. Ache Eriba, King of the world. The team worries about how much Daesh has stolen. Daesh will have found important things, but they are lost, you know, they sold them on the black market. But these tunnels led to one of the most important discoveries in Iraqi archaeology. We measured the whole tunnel system with GPS points and made 3D models of the whole tunnel system.

In 2022, the team painstakingly mapped the labyrinth of underground passages tracing the course of Nebi Yunis. Walls provided a three dimensional model of a palace that had lain hidden for thousands of years. The effort has revealed an enormous sprawling complex designed to demonstrate the power of the king in the Assyrian society. Military formed a society in the society and loyalty to the king was a very important thing. So the king had to present himself. He had to live together with his soldiers in a certain way and with his generals and officers.

The team's reconstruction shows that one palace room is more than 150ft long and almost 60ft wide, making it the largest room ever discovered in the empire. It was the throne room, its entrances adorned with grand symbolic statues called lamassu, or winged bulls. We are standing in front of a pair of winged bulls. This is an entrance giving access to the throne room, which is just behind us. And these winged bulls are meant to protect the king. They have a certain magical power. You know, they are partly a bull, but you see feathers here. So they are bulls with wings, but they had human heads.

Once these sacred icons were found all across Mosul in the city gate, in the Naga gate, for example, you had three pairs of such winged bulls. But just like the statues in the Mosul Museum, their religious symbolism made them a target for Daesh. They were completely destroyed by Daesh. There's nothing, almost nothing left. They completely destroyed. I couldn't look at that. It was so horrible. I turned it off, started to cry. But here under the earth, they left them more or less untouched. I don't know why, which is good luck for us. Well, they are badly damaged, but they still exist.

Daesh wanted to destroy the identity, the cultural identity of this country. But their attempt to erase the Assyrians from history has failed. Discoveries made at Nebi Yunis have provided the most complete picture of Assyrian culture ever assembled and are now offering new insights into Nineveh's rise to become the most powerful city in the ancient world.

Archaeology, Assyrian Culture, Historical Discoveries, Global, Inspiration, Technology, Pbs