On Wednesday, ISIS destroyed an ancient temple dated back 2,500 years in Iraq’s northwestern Nineveh province and vowed to do the same to the legendary pyramids of Egypt.
The temple of Nabu, originally a Babylonian deity, was the god of wisdom at the time of the Assyrian kingdom in the 1st millennium B.C. ISIS considered the ancient temple a “symbol of apostasy”, urging its jihadis to destroy any such temple “that have been previously used by the enemies of Allah”.
“The Nabu temple was one of the most renowned archeological sites in Nineveh, before the ISIS jihadis destroy it,” head of Nineveh media office Raafat al-Zarari told ARA News. “This barbaric group is trying to eliminate the historical and cultural identity of Nineveh province through destroying such archeological sites.”
This is not the first time ISIS has gone after ancient realms. Last April, ISIS demolished the Gate of God which dates back to the 7th century BC.
“ISIS views historic shrines and temples they destroy as sacrilegious and a return to paganism,” Syrian antiquities chief Abdul Maamoun Abdulkarim told ARA News in an earlier report.
