Nineveh
Field activities
The summer of 2002 saw the completion of a diagnostic campaign to update the situation recorded by J. Russell’s study (1998). In the autumn of 2002, a photographic and stereophotogrammetric campaign aiming to increase our knowledge of the current state of conservation and capable of providing further data that could be transferred to stereophotogrammetric bases also began.
A further aspect is the one concerning the future presentation of a monumental complex constituting a sort of open-air museum. In fact, the operations allowed a preliminary project of the possible covering of the palace’s throne room to be proposed.
Other decisive aspects of the project included the petrographical study of the orthostats and the analysis of the different types of decay, with the consequent restoration strategies.
The petrographic study made by the ICR experts has provided an interesting mass of information which should be useful when conservation work can be re-started in ancient Nineveh: it provides a secure basis for understanding the mechanisms of deterioration of the materials and deciding the preventive and conservative measures required before any definitive restoration work and arrangement of the archaeological site is undertaken .
Therefore there is still hope of being able to intervene quickly and decisively to safeguard these reliefs which represents, despite the significant damage suffered up till now, one of the most important masterworks of Assyrian court art in its original context.