The second hall of the Mosul Cultural Museum presented the Late Antiquity period, including masterpieces from the site of Hatra.
Hatra, a prosperous city
Hatra (now al-Hadr) is in Northern Mesopotamia, about 100 kilometres southwest of Mosul. It developed between the 1st century BC and the first three centuries AD to become the capital of a powerful kingdom allied with the Parthian Empire. Hatra was an important caravan centre at the crossroads of trade routes linking the Iranian, Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Mediterranean worlds. The main route ran from Seleucia on the Tigris River to Nisibis and also gave access to Palmyra. Hatra was also an important religious centre for the Arab tribes of the steppe, whose main deity was the sun god Shamash. Shamash was presumably worshipped in the monumental complex that dominated the sacred precinct. The city was destroyed in AD 241 by the Sassanid King Shapur I.
The modern history of the site
The site was surveyed by a German project between 1903 and 1911, and then from 1951 onwards, it was excavated by Iraqi, Italian and Polish archaeologists. Excavations revealed a monumental complex of religious buildings and an imposing system of fortifications. Since the 1950s, Hatra has been the subject of a reconstruction and restoration plan by the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), and it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985. Hatra suffered extensive destruction caused by Daesh in 2015.
Remarkable remains
The Great Sanctuary, with its many temples built within a monumental temenos (a sacred enclosure), testifies to a mastery of construction techniques as well as the application of an Eastern vision to the classical orders.
As the Hatra Hall in the Mosul Cultural Museum illustrates, the artistic production of Hatra was a mixture of Mesopotamian, Syrian-Levantine, Greco-Roman and Parthian traditions. The Aramaic inscriptions on the works of art — in the form of prayers, blessings and dedications — contributed to a better understanding of the history of Hatra, of its kings and of its elite who sponsored the shrines in which sculptures were offered. The Hatra Hall was the scene for the videos of destruction of the Mosul Cultural Museum put on social media by Daesh on 26 February 2015. The pieces have unfortunately completely disappeared.
