On Thursday, the bulldozers of the Islamic State (Isil) began levelling the remains of a site as archaeologically significant as any in the world. Until now Nimrud, some 20 miles south-east of Mosul, in Northern Iraq, has boasted ruins dating back more than 3,000 years. The pulverising of the ancient city follows hot on the heels of other grotesque and heartbreaking Isil acts of vandalism. Only last week, a video was released showing the destruction of antiquities in Mosul's museums and the painstaking demolition of ancient sculptures too vast to topple.
The goons behind these acts of barbarism appreciate more cynically than anyone the publicity value of a rapid turnover of atrocities. One snuff video succeeds another in a murderous churn. But if I am honest, no images from the hell that is the Islamic State have upset me more than those which showed a winged bull more than two-and-a-half thousand years old being deliberately and methodically power-drilled. Can the destruction of statues matter more than the loss of human life?
An answer, perhaps, is to be found in a Christian legend reported of Assyria, an ancient kingdom that incorporated what is today Mosul and its surroundings. In AD 362, the daughter of the Assyrian king, dying of an incurable illness, was restored to full health by the prayers of a local Christian saint. So impressed by this miracle was her brother, Prince Behnam, that he turned his back on his ancestral religion and accepted baptism. His martyrdom swiftly followed; for Behnam's father, Sennacherib, outraged by his apostasy, had him put to death. When the king in turn fell sick, his wife had a dream which revealed that only his own baptism would serve to cure him.
The king, bowing to the inevitable, not only agreed to become a Christian but also to found a number of monasteries. One of them, named after his son, was established near the city of Mosul. From the 4th century until the present day, the monastery of Saint Behnam has served as a monument to the enduring Christian faith of the Assyrian people. Then, last July, Islamic State fighters turned up. "You have no place here any more," they told the monks. Saint Behnam's monastery was not the only church to be abandoned. In Mosul too, Masses have stopped being said for the first time in more than one-and-a-half thousand years.
Over the past two weeks Isil fighters have targeted Assyrian villages and taken hundreds hostage. But with their assault on Mosul's churches, monasteries, museums and Nimrud, it is clear that, for Isil, eliminating enemies is not enough; they are determined to erase all traces of Assyrian culture and civilisation from their blood-boltered caliphate.
