Image Details

John Russell

In 1989–1990, John Malcolm Russell photographed this wall carving, which was stored in the Sennacherib Palace Site Museum at Nineveh (compare with photos of two additional wall carvings). This 3-foot-wide fragment shows slaves (possibly captured Israelites) hauling a heavy object. This slab was purchased on the antiquities market in the mid-1990s by Israeli collector Shlomo Moussaieff, who was then sued in a British court by the so-called Iraqi Interests Section—a group established at the Jordanian embassy to represent the interests of Iraq, with which Britain does not have diplomatic relations. Last year the parties reached a private agreement, in which Moussaieff agreed to release the carving to the Iraqi Interests Section in exchange for his expenses.