Harmansah, ISIS

9
8/17/2019 Harmansah, ISIS http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/harmansah-isis 1/9  The American Schools of Oriental Research is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Near Eastern Archaeology. http://www.jstor.org ISIS, Heritage, and the Spectacles of Destruction in the Global Media Author(s): Ömür Harmanşah Source: Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 78, No. 3, Special Issue: The Cultural Heritage Crisis in the Middle East (September 2015), pp. 170-177 Published by: The American Schools of Oriental Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5615/neareastarch.78.3.0170 Accessed: 11-09-2015 15:25 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/  info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 38.68.67.196 on Fri, 11 Sep 2015 15:25:52 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Transcript of Harmansah, ISIS

Page 1: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 19

The American Schools of Oriental Research is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize preserve and extend access to Near

Eastern Archaeology

httpwwwjstororg

ISIS Heritage and the Spectacles of Destruction in the Global MediaAuthor(s) Oumlmuumlr HarmanşahSource Near Eastern Archaeology Vol 78 No 3 Special Issue The Cultural Heritage Crisis inthe Middle East (September 2015) pp 170-177Published by The American Schools of Oriental ResearchStable URL httpwwwjstororgstable105615neareastarch7830170Accessed 11-09-2015 1525 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms amp Conditions of Use available at httpwwwjstororgpage infoaboutpoliciestermsjsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars researchers and students discover use and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarshipFor more information about JSTOR please contact supportjstororg

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 29

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah

170 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

Nineveh Nebi Yunus Head of Assyrian gate sculpure (lamassu) during the Iraqi Excavations (May 1990) Source httparchivecyarkorghead-of-fallen-lamassu-1-medi

ISIS H983141983154983145983156983137983143983141 983137983150983140983156983144983141 S983152983141983139983156983137983139983148983141983155 983151983142 D983141983155983156983154983157983139983156983145983151983150

983145983150 983156983144983141 G983148983151983138983137983148 M983141983140983145983137

I n a recent article posted on al-Monitor Massoud Hamed

pointed out that in its recent ac tivities the IslamicState (ISIS) is implementing a scorched-earth policy

in north-central Syria in the region o Kobanecirc and ell Abyad located west o the Euphrates and adjacent to theurkish border he area mainly comprises agro-pastoralcommunities with largely a Kurdish majority (Hamed 2015)he Islamic State militants are reported to have emptiedand demolished towns in this region and are now targetingthe countryside the Islamic State has been burning agri-cultural ields to devastate the landscapes o livelihood and

the sources o subsistence or these communities Scorched-earth is a harsh deeply historical military policy that aimsto annihilate entire landscapes o livelihood and to denybasic human right to live or local communities even aterthe battle is over

The Scorched EarthOne highly prominent aspect o ISISrsquos program o destruc-tion in Syria and Iraq that has come to the media attentionrecently is their program o cultural heritage destructionthat took the orm o smashing artiacts in archaeologicalmuseums iconoclastic breaking and bulldozing o archaeo-

logical sites dynamiting o shrines tombs and other holysites o local communities and burning o libraries andarchives In this paper I ocus on ISISrsquos destruction o ar-chaeological heritage I argue that this destruction can beseen as a orm o place-based violence that aims to anni-hilate the local sense o belonging and the collective senseo memory among local communities to whom the heritagebelongs hereore heritage destruction can be seen as partand parcel o this scorched-earth strategy described aboveI also argue that the Islamic State coordinates and choreo-graphs these destructions as mediatic spectacles o violence

aimed at objects and sites o heritage and these spectaclestake place as re-enactments or historical perormances thatare continuously and careully communicated to us throughISISrsquos own image-making and dissemination apparatus thatincreasingly utilizes the most advanced technologies o vi-sualization and communication I will also pose questionsabout the relatively weak responses rom the archaeologicalcommunity around the world that rarely went beyond thestereotypical expression o ldquodismayrdquo to ISISrsquos heritage de-struction At the same time I will try to answer the why andhow o ISISrsquos dislike o archaeological heritage in the contexto late capitalism

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 39NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 171

Consuming ISISSince the summer o 2014 the Islamic State has developedan unusual practice o deliberately damaging archaeologicalsites and museums along-side its continued attackson local shrines and holyplaces that are dear to lo-

cal communities In well-publicized news reportsoten issued by ISIS itselprominent heritage sitesincluding the Mosul Muse-um the archaeological siteso Nineveh Nimrud andHatra and possibly Ashurand Palmyra were reportedto have been attacked orthreatened to be destroyedhrough a series o care-

ully disseminated videosand imagery the world wasshown how ancient sculp-tures were smashed andhow the standing architec-ture in archaeological sites were blown up hese violent actsand their high-tech mediatic representation accomplishedmany goals at once rom humiliating the local communi-ties to broadcasting a radi-cal ideology o religiousanaticism in order to re-cruit new transnationalmilitants all the way todeying the common val-ues attached to culturalheritage in the globalizedworld And all o this tookplace in the midst o wide-spread claims o how ISISsupported its operationspartly through looting andtraicking o antiquities2

Tese constitute a verydisturbing development orarchaeologists historians

and heritage specialists o theMiddle East rom around theworld Since February 2015ISISrsquos systematic violenceagainst heritage has gainedmomentum and caused anunprecedented number odiscussion platorms to ormwhile heroic efforts emergedrom western institutionsor heritage documentationand preservation3 Tese e-

orts seem largely to have been repeating the tired rhetoric osalvaging antiquities in the event o armed conflict rom thehands o ldquoviolent extremistsrdquo and raising global awareness al-

though they remain largelyineffective in addressing theunique challenge o the Is-lamic Statersquos counter-heritage

campaign that takes place asa media perormance on aglobal scale

On February 26 2015ISIS posted a (now iconic) video on Youube showingthe deliberate destruction owhat seemed to be authen-tic ancient sculpture in theMosul Museum and the ar-chaeological site o Kuyun- juk (the citadel o ancient

NinuwaNineveh) in IraqiKurdistan Immediately ol-lowing this posting a heateddebate sprang up in the me-dia and on social network-

ing sites such as Facebook and witter on the ate o antiquitiesin the hands o ISIS In these debates the violence was quicklyand confidently characterized as medieval iconoclasm ignorant

Figure 1 ISIS militants decapitate the ldquoheritage of humanityrdquo Jehad Awartani

Published with the permission of the author

Figure 2 ISIS militants carry a decapitated ancient Assyrian lamassu sculpture from Nineveh Iraq Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli

Published with the permission of the author

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 49172 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

backwardness and anti-west-ern arrogance4 Although ISISremoved the video rom pub-lic view the very next day itwas widely disseminated andobsessively broadcast in thou-sands i not millions o copies

on the web and recirculatedincessantly on news agen-ciesrsquo websites Facebook pro-files tweets and blog postsMany users o these outletshad a visceral reaction to the video and quickly shared the video both to inorm otherso ISISrsquos barbaric acts and todeclare their own cosmopoli-tan humanitarian civilizedcondemnation o these un-

civilized acts against antiqui-ties Whereas blog writers andusers o Facebook and witterusually rerain rom posting videos o violence against hu-man bodies such as behead-ings executions or pornog-raphy it seemed acceptable torepost the destruction o an-cient artiacts Not only thatbut it also gained popularityas a virtual act o resistanceagainst ISISrsquos inhumanity In

these acts o reposting and in-cessant global sharing these videos that had actually beenchoreographed and careullyedited by ISIS assumed theinnocently mediating objec-tive status o a news item Tesocial media user reactionwas importantly not an acto recoil but on the contraryan emotional engagement asa amiliar consumerist habit

For example in the be-ginning paragraphs o the33rd report o the Syrian Heri-tage Initiative we are told byMichael Danti and his co-authors that ldquo[r]ecent videoootage and photographs re-leased by Islamic State makemost reports readily verifi-able in February and Marchhowever there have been anumber o unverified reports

Figure 3 ISIS militants threaten an Assyrian kingrsquos statue Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli

Published with the permission of the author

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 59NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 173

posted by Iraqi sources Tese reports lack videophotographicevidence and have not as yet been claimed by Islamic Staterdquo(Danti et al 2015 emphasis mine) For the authors o the re-port visual media takes on the status o unmediated ldquoreadily verifiablerdquo evidence From a critical art historical point o viewthis is a worrisome and rather naiumlve understanding o how visu-al media works or it dangerously depoliticizes the medium o

representation and assigns a documentary value to it by virtueo its visuality completely disregarding its complex relationshipto the exercise o power5

Among the archaeological authorities proessional organi-zations and experts o Near Eastern archaeology and globalheritage much o the debate has concentrated myopically onthe very content o the videos ollowed by a series o stereotypi-cal statements o condemnation and dismay by various proes-sional organizations Public media ran to the experts the ar-chaeologists academics museum proessionals were asked toidentiy in the video what archaeological artiacts were reallydestroyed and which ones

were authentic Hopes wereraised that some o the arti-acts might be akes or repli-cas while speculations con-centrated on the fine detailso the demolition such asthe metal bars made visiblewithin the core o the statuesand the quick and suspiciouscrumbling o some o theHatra statues According tothese analyses multiple LateAssyrian sculpture rom the

8thndash7th century 983138983139983141 site oNineveh and the 1stndash2nd cen-tury 983139983141 Roman-Parthiansite o Hatra were shown tobe smashed to pieces or mu-tilated with the use o varioustools such as sledgehammersand drills In this debate the video posted by ISIS took therole o objective documenta-ry evidence through whichthe destruction o authentic

antiquities was studied Littlediscussion seems to have appeared in the public media aboutthe authorship o the video and ew questions have been raisedabout its staged theatrical spectacle-like character Te onlyquestion about the authenticity o the video was again about itscontents were the sculptures real relics o Mesopotamian heri-tage or not Tis complacent acceptance o ISIS-authored imag-ery as documentary is possibly more worrisome or our humancondition than the destruction o antiquities themselves

Furthermore we watch the videos produced by ISIS as evi-dence or ISISrsquos destruction o images and thereore identiyISIS militants as iconoclasts and this claim o idol-breaking is

also what ISIS happily embraces with clear reerences to theearly Islamic past to which I return below However we ail tonotice the obvious ISISrsquos relentless production o images I thenask How is it that we are convinced o ISIS militantsrsquo hatred oidols and representations while we consume the very powerulimages that constantly flow through the global media and those videos that have since ironically become some the most iconic

representations o contemporary violence against humanityIt is correct that ISISrsquos own severe and obsessive ideology oshirk (the worship o images or alse gods as equals to Allah)will also deny these videos as representations But this selec-tive and paradoxical understanding o representation must beread precisely as a power discourse and i we are to be criticalo ISIS we must challenge that power discourse not accept itPerhaps the most powerul response to ISISrsquos power discoursethrough antiquities destruction came rom Muslim cartoon-ists Jehad Awartani and Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli whose workplay with similar paradoxes between the violent practices and

the political rhetoric o ISIS

while touching on the com-mon equation o global hu-manity with global heritage(figs 1ndash3)6 Te cartoonistsgive the western media andacademics an important les-son the uncritical readingo ISISrsquos visual productionsas documentary simply en-dorses and helps ISISrsquos pro-paganda machine

ISIS and

the Spectaclesof DestructionAs an art historian I amconcerned less about what the ISIS videos show butmore interested in the pro-duction o images them-selves ie why the video wasproduced by ISIS in the irstplace how the video pres-ents these acts o material violence and how it is re-

ceived by its audience Hereor a brie moment just or the sake o argument I wouldlike us to treat the ISIS videos not as items o archival re-source something to be mined or objective inormation butas artiacts o ideological discourse which will then allow usto question their documentary status By doing this we canalso challenge the videorsquos documentary status by pointing outits perormative character In the ISIS video rom February2015 careully costumed perormers with devoutly coiedbeards are shown in the Mosul Museum attacking sculptureon pedestals Given the act that ISIS is an organization com-posed o volunteers coming rom a vast variety o nationali-

Figure 4 Guardian gate sculpture from the Palace of Assyrian king Sargon II at

Dur-Sharruken From P E Botta and E Flandin Eugegravene Monument de Ninive

Band 1 Architecture et sculpture Paris 1849 Pl 45

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 69174 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

ties rom countries in Europe the Middle East and beyondit is not hard to recognize the choreographed nature o theact and the costumes and looks o its actors which are com-mented in the above mentioned cartoons Using clumsy andexplicitly primitive gestures the militants use the orce otheir bodies to topple the statuary and use sledgehammersand pickaxes to crumble them to pieces hese perormances

highlight a direct and bodily attack on the statues and can be

imagined as a re-enactment o the 7 th century 983139983141 destruc-

tion o idols in the Karsquoaba which they requently and explic-itly cite his is an atavistic perormance that deliberatelyabducts the legacy o a medieval heritage and appropriates itas religious genealogy to serve the very enrichment o ISISrsquosultra-modern imagery-machine As the authors o A lictedPowers put it ldquoerror can take over the image-machinery ora moment ndash and a moment in the timeless echo chamber othe spectacle may now eternally be all there isrdquo (Boal et al2008 28)

Te sections o the video that involve the Assyrian colossalsculpture at the gates o Nineveh are less successul ISIS ac-tors had to switch to electric drills to mutilate the aces o the

giant lamassu figures which were made rom ldquothe hard stoneo the mountain with a grain-like texturerdquo according to the7th century 983138983139983141 Assyrian king Sennacheribrsquos (705ndash681 983138983139983141)imperial inscriptions which boast about opening a new quar-ry or the construction o his palace (Moorey 1994 344) (figs4-5) oppling these immense stone creatures is a dauntingtask Despite their ailure in destroying the giant guardians

o the Assyrian gates I would argue that the ISIS enactors

deliberately chose these figures or acts o deacing particu-

larly due to their animate and intimidating posture their ee-rily hybrid eatures bringing together a human ace bullrsquos orlionrsquos body and eaglersquos wings and their immense superhu-man scale (fig 4) oppled and sledgehammered statuary oHatra is coupled with the deacing o the Assyrian magicalbeings all o which present to us a perect re-enactment andhistoricized archaic celebration o late antique and medievalidol-breaking rituals in varying degrees o success I providethis perormance-based analysis o ISIS videos as an alterna-tive to the heritage-conscious responses o academics in theMiddle East and the western world which take the videos aspure documentary evidence

Figure 5 Orthostat relief from the Assyrian king Sennacheribs (705ndash681BCE) ldquoPalace without Rivalrdquo at Nineveh (Southwest Palace) Court VI

depicting the transport of quarried gate sculpture British Museum

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 79NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 175

Heritage DiscourseIt is also important to contextualize the powerul affect othese perormances with respect to our contemporary globalregime o monetary and his-torical value that is attachedto antiquities Te destruc-tion o the Mosul antiquities

in ISIS-propagated visualmedia derives its efficacyand power directly rom the very notion o authenticityand rom the relic-like sta-tus o antiquities globallyas well as rom the politi-cal economy o the circula-tion o antiquities in globalmarkets which seems to bean ever-flourishing industry(Fig 6) Tis global industry

is supported and sustainedby the increasing demandor illicit antiquities aroundthe world (See eg Kersel2012) ISISrsquos perormativeacts o destruction appropri-ate these transnational as-sociations and value systemso global heritage to choreo-graph effective spectaclesin an attempt to allure theirsympathizers and patronsrecruit urther anaticshumiliate local communi-ties while annihilating theirsense o heritage and offendthe humanitarian West Tisis the multi-directional goaland effect o ISISrsquos acts oheritage destruction

As indicated by manypostings on various blogs7 ISIS had disseminated alsenews a ew weeks prior tothe videorsquos release that the

walls o Nineveh in Mosul were being dynamited Tis newsitem o ambiguous authorship had been circulated globally inthe social media by millions Later archaeologists and officialsin Mosul confirmed that no such destruction had (yet) takenplace although these statements were hardly reported in thepopular media Cultural heritage specialists around the worldtook a deep breath o relie until the video was released in lateFebruary I we assume to some level that the destruction oantiquities did take place in Nineveh and the Mosul Museumand continues to take place then it can be argued that theglobal media representation o the destruction took place be- ore the act o destruction itsel and not afer In this case the

so-called representation o the destructive event precedes theactual act o destruction which is to say that the documentaryclaim o the visual imagery propagated by ISIS should be con-

sidered by necessity as alseTis only demonstrates thepowerul role o new mediatechnologies on the physical

acts o destruction itsel andreverses our hierarchies oreality versus representation

ISISrsquos HeritageDestruction as aHyperreal RealityShowI argue here that ISISrsquos me-dia perormances operatemuch like a reality showthat eectively mobilizes

the consumerism o visualmedia he production othe videos and photograph-ic imagery that presents uswith ISISrsquos horrendous actso violence whether againsthuman bodies sacred build-ings cultural heritage andarchaeological sites or mu-seum antiquities are otenthe real purpose o theirinterest It is important topoint out that to produce

these videos they have de-liberately chosen (in a calcu-lated way) ancient statuarythat are itting or the his-toricized enactment o idoldestruction and not any othe hundreds o other small-er antiquities present in theMosul Museum hese vid-eos and photographic imag-ery are staged perormanceswhere the physical acts o

violence and destruction orm the consequence o their ilm-ic activity We must responsibly consider the possibility thatwhat we treat on our Facebook proiles tweets and blogs asdocumentation o violence is in act the raison drsquoetre o ISISrsquosbiopolitics I extend this argument to suggest that the Assyr-ian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (i theywere indeed destroyed) or the sole purpose o producing the video We cannot and should not see the ilmic representa-tion as a document Its stark reality lies in its representationmuch like the mentality o the production o a reality showhe main purpose is the production o the show What hap-pens in it is indeed real although completely staged Con-

Figure 6 The so-called ldquoGuennol Lionnessrdquo an ancient Near Eastern fgurine

which was sold at a Sothebyrsquos Auction on December 5 2007 for an exorbitant

amount See Harmanşah and Witmore 2007

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

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Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 2: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 29

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah

170 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

Nineveh Nebi Yunus Head of Assyrian gate sculpure (lamassu) during the Iraqi Excavations (May 1990) Source httparchivecyarkorghead-of-fallen-lamassu-1-medi

ISIS H983141983154983145983156983137983143983141 983137983150983140983156983144983141 S983152983141983139983156983137983139983148983141983155 983151983142 D983141983155983156983154983157983139983156983145983151983150

983145983150 983156983144983141 G983148983151983138983137983148 M983141983140983145983137

I n a recent article posted on al-Monitor Massoud Hamed

pointed out that in its recent ac tivities the IslamicState (ISIS) is implementing a scorched-earth policy

in north-central Syria in the region o Kobanecirc and ell Abyad located west o the Euphrates and adjacent to theurkish border he area mainly comprises agro-pastoralcommunities with largely a Kurdish majority (Hamed 2015)he Islamic State militants are reported to have emptiedand demolished towns in this region and are now targetingthe countryside the Islamic State has been burning agri-cultural ields to devastate the landscapes o livelihood and

the sources o subsistence or these communities Scorched-earth is a harsh deeply historical military policy that aimsto annihilate entire landscapes o livelihood and to denybasic human right to live or local communities even aterthe battle is over

The Scorched EarthOne highly prominent aspect o ISISrsquos program o destruc-tion in Syria and Iraq that has come to the media attentionrecently is their program o cultural heritage destructionthat took the orm o smashing artiacts in archaeologicalmuseums iconoclastic breaking and bulldozing o archaeo-

logical sites dynamiting o shrines tombs and other holysites o local communities and burning o libraries andarchives In this paper I ocus on ISISrsquos destruction o ar-chaeological heritage I argue that this destruction can beseen as a orm o place-based violence that aims to anni-hilate the local sense o belonging and the collective senseo memory among local communities to whom the heritagebelongs hereore heritage destruction can be seen as partand parcel o this scorched-earth strategy described aboveI also argue that the Islamic State coordinates and choreo-graphs these destructions as mediatic spectacles o violence

aimed at objects and sites o heritage and these spectaclestake place as re-enactments or historical perormances thatare continuously and careully communicated to us throughISISrsquos own image-making and dissemination apparatus thatincreasingly utilizes the most advanced technologies o vi-sualization and communication I will also pose questionsabout the relatively weak responses rom the archaeologicalcommunity around the world that rarely went beyond thestereotypical expression o ldquodismayrdquo to ISISrsquos heritage de-struction At the same time I will try to answer the why andhow o ISISrsquos dislike o archaeological heritage in the contexto late capitalism

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 39NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 171

Consuming ISISSince the summer o 2014 the Islamic State has developedan unusual practice o deliberately damaging archaeologicalsites and museums along-side its continued attackson local shrines and holyplaces that are dear to lo-

cal communities In well-publicized news reportsoten issued by ISIS itselprominent heritage sitesincluding the Mosul Muse-um the archaeological siteso Nineveh Nimrud andHatra and possibly Ashurand Palmyra were reportedto have been attacked orthreatened to be destroyedhrough a series o care-

ully disseminated videosand imagery the world wasshown how ancient sculp-tures were smashed andhow the standing architec-ture in archaeological sites were blown up hese violent actsand their high-tech mediatic representation accomplishedmany goals at once rom humiliating the local communi-ties to broadcasting a radi-cal ideology o religiousanaticism in order to re-cruit new transnationalmilitants all the way todeying the common val-ues attached to culturalheritage in the globalizedworld And all o this tookplace in the midst o wide-spread claims o how ISISsupported its operationspartly through looting andtraicking o antiquities2

Tese constitute a verydisturbing development orarchaeologists historians

and heritage specialists o theMiddle East rom around theworld Since February 2015ISISrsquos systematic violenceagainst heritage has gainedmomentum and caused anunprecedented number odiscussion platorms to ormwhile heroic efforts emergedrom western institutionsor heritage documentationand preservation3 Tese e-

orts seem largely to have been repeating the tired rhetoric osalvaging antiquities in the event o armed conflict rom thehands o ldquoviolent extremistsrdquo and raising global awareness al-

though they remain largelyineffective in addressing theunique challenge o the Is-lamic Statersquos counter-heritage

campaign that takes place asa media perormance on aglobal scale

On February 26 2015ISIS posted a (now iconic) video on Youube showingthe deliberate destruction owhat seemed to be authen-tic ancient sculpture in theMosul Museum and the ar-chaeological site o Kuyun- juk (the citadel o ancient

NinuwaNineveh) in IraqiKurdistan Immediately ol-lowing this posting a heateddebate sprang up in the me-dia and on social network-

ing sites such as Facebook and witter on the ate o antiquitiesin the hands o ISIS In these debates the violence was quicklyand confidently characterized as medieval iconoclasm ignorant

Figure 1 ISIS militants decapitate the ldquoheritage of humanityrdquo Jehad Awartani

Published with the permission of the author

Figure 2 ISIS militants carry a decapitated ancient Assyrian lamassu sculpture from Nineveh Iraq Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli

Published with the permission of the author

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 49172 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

backwardness and anti-west-ern arrogance4 Although ISISremoved the video rom pub-lic view the very next day itwas widely disseminated andobsessively broadcast in thou-sands i not millions o copies

on the web and recirculatedincessantly on news agen-ciesrsquo websites Facebook pro-files tweets and blog postsMany users o these outletshad a visceral reaction to the video and quickly shared the video both to inorm otherso ISISrsquos barbaric acts and todeclare their own cosmopoli-tan humanitarian civilizedcondemnation o these un-

civilized acts against antiqui-ties Whereas blog writers andusers o Facebook and witterusually rerain rom posting videos o violence against hu-man bodies such as behead-ings executions or pornog-raphy it seemed acceptable torepost the destruction o an-cient artiacts Not only thatbut it also gained popularityas a virtual act o resistanceagainst ISISrsquos inhumanity In

these acts o reposting and in-cessant global sharing these videos that had actually beenchoreographed and careullyedited by ISIS assumed theinnocently mediating objec-tive status o a news item Tesocial media user reactionwas importantly not an acto recoil but on the contraryan emotional engagement asa amiliar consumerist habit

For example in the be-ginning paragraphs o the33rd report o the Syrian Heri-tage Initiative we are told byMichael Danti and his co-authors that ldquo[r]ecent videoootage and photographs re-leased by Islamic State makemost reports readily verifi-able in February and Marchhowever there have been anumber o unverified reports

Figure 3 ISIS militants threaten an Assyrian kingrsquos statue Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli

Published with the permission of the author

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 59NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 173

posted by Iraqi sources Tese reports lack videophotographicevidence and have not as yet been claimed by Islamic Staterdquo(Danti et al 2015 emphasis mine) For the authors o the re-port visual media takes on the status o unmediated ldquoreadily verifiablerdquo evidence From a critical art historical point o viewthis is a worrisome and rather naiumlve understanding o how visu-al media works or it dangerously depoliticizes the medium o

representation and assigns a documentary value to it by virtueo its visuality completely disregarding its complex relationshipto the exercise o power5

Among the archaeological authorities proessional organi-zations and experts o Near Eastern archaeology and globalheritage much o the debate has concentrated myopically onthe very content o the videos ollowed by a series o stereotypi-cal statements o condemnation and dismay by various proes-sional organizations Public media ran to the experts the ar-chaeologists academics museum proessionals were asked toidentiy in the video what archaeological artiacts were reallydestroyed and which ones

were authentic Hopes wereraised that some o the arti-acts might be akes or repli-cas while speculations con-centrated on the fine detailso the demolition such asthe metal bars made visiblewithin the core o the statuesand the quick and suspiciouscrumbling o some o theHatra statues According tothese analyses multiple LateAssyrian sculpture rom the

8thndash7th century 983138983139983141 site oNineveh and the 1stndash2nd cen-tury 983139983141 Roman-Parthiansite o Hatra were shown tobe smashed to pieces or mu-tilated with the use o varioustools such as sledgehammersand drills In this debate the video posted by ISIS took therole o objective documenta-ry evidence through whichthe destruction o authentic

antiquities was studied Littlediscussion seems to have appeared in the public media aboutthe authorship o the video and ew questions have been raisedabout its staged theatrical spectacle-like character Te onlyquestion about the authenticity o the video was again about itscontents were the sculptures real relics o Mesopotamian heri-tage or not Tis complacent acceptance o ISIS-authored imag-ery as documentary is possibly more worrisome or our humancondition than the destruction o antiquities themselves

Furthermore we watch the videos produced by ISIS as evi-dence or ISISrsquos destruction o images and thereore identiyISIS militants as iconoclasts and this claim o idol-breaking is

also what ISIS happily embraces with clear reerences to theearly Islamic past to which I return below However we ail tonotice the obvious ISISrsquos relentless production o images I thenask How is it that we are convinced o ISIS militantsrsquo hatred oidols and representations while we consume the very powerulimages that constantly flow through the global media and those videos that have since ironically become some the most iconic

representations o contemporary violence against humanityIt is correct that ISISrsquos own severe and obsessive ideology oshirk (the worship o images or alse gods as equals to Allah)will also deny these videos as representations But this selec-tive and paradoxical understanding o representation must beread precisely as a power discourse and i we are to be criticalo ISIS we must challenge that power discourse not accept itPerhaps the most powerul response to ISISrsquos power discoursethrough antiquities destruction came rom Muslim cartoon-ists Jehad Awartani and Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli whose workplay with similar paradoxes between the violent practices and

the political rhetoric o ISIS

while touching on the com-mon equation o global hu-manity with global heritage(figs 1ndash3)6 Te cartoonistsgive the western media andacademics an important les-son the uncritical readingo ISISrsquos visual productionsas documentary simply en-dorses and helps ISISrsquos pro-paganda machine

ISIS and

the Spectaclesof DestructionAs an art historian I amconcerned less about what the ISIS videos show butmore interested in the pro-duction o images them-selves ie why the video wasproduced by ISIS in the irstplace how the video pres-ents these acts o material violence and how it is re-

ceived by its audience Hereor a brie moment just or the sake o argument I wouldlike us to treat the ISIS videos not as items o archival re-source something to be mined or objective inormation butas artiacts o ideological discourse which will then allow usto question their documentary status By doing this we canalso challenge the videorsquos documentary status by pointing outits perormative character In the ISIS video rom February2015 careully costumed perormers with devoutly coiedbeards are shown in the Mosul Museum attacking sculptureon pedestals Given the act that ISIS is an organization com-posed o volunteers coming rom a vast variety o nationali-

Figure 4 Guardian gate sculpture from the Palace of Assyrian king Sargon II at

Dur-Sharruken From P E Botta and E Flandin Eugegravene Monument de Ninive

Band 1 Architecture et sculpture Paris 1849 Pl 45

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 69174 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

ties rom countries in Europe the Middle East and beyondit is not hard to recognize the choreographed nature o theact and the costumes and looks o its actors which are com-mented in the above mentioned cartoons Using clumsy andexplicitly primitive gestures the militants use the orce otheir bodies to topple the statuary and use sledgehammersand pickaxes to crumble them to pieces hese perormances

highlight a direct and bodily attack on the statues and can be

imagined as a re-enactment o the 7 th century 983139983141 destruc-

tion o idols in the Karsquoaba which they requently and explic-itly cite his is an atavistic perormance that deliberatelyabducts the legacy o a medieval heritage and appropriates itas religious genealogy to serve the very enrichment o ISISrsquosultra-modern imagery-machine As the authors o A lictedPowers put it ldquoerror can take over the image-machinery ora moment ndash and a moment in the timeless echo chamber othe spectacle may now eternally be all there isrdquo (Boal et al2008 28)

Te sections o the video that involve the Assyrian colossalsculpture at the gates o Nineveh are less successul ISIS ac-tors had to switch to electric drills to mutilate the aces o the

giant lamassu figures which were made rom ldquothe hard stoneo the mountain with a grain-like texturerdquo according to the7th century 983138983139983141 Assyrian king Sennacheribrsquos (705ndash681 983138983139983141)imperial inscriptions which boast about opening a new quar-ry or the construction o his palace (Moorey 1994 344) (figs4-5) oppling these immense stone creatures is a dauntingtask Despite their ailure in destroying the giant guardians

o the Assyrian gates I would argue that the ISIS enactors

deliberately chose these figures or acts o deacing particu-

larly due to their animate and intimidating posture their ee-rily hybrid eatures bringing together a human ace bullrsquos orlionrsquos body and eaglersquos wings and their immense superhu-man scale (fig 4) oppled and sledgehammered statuary oHatra is coupled with the deacing o the Assyrian magicalbeings all o which present to us a perect re-enactment andhistoricized archaic celebration o late antique and medievalidol-breaking rituals in varying degrees o success I providethis perormance-based analysis o ISIS videos as an alterna-tive to the heritage-conscious responses o academics in theMiddle East and the western world which take the videos aspure documentary evidence

Figure 5 Orthostat relief from the Assyrian king Sennacheribs (705ndash681BCE) ldquoPalace without Rivalrdquo at Nineveh (Southwest Palace) Court VI

depicting the transport of quarried gate sculpture British Museum

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8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 79NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 175

Heritage DiscourseIt is also important to contextualize the powerul affect othese perormances with respect to our contemporary globalregime o monetary and his-torical value that is attachedto antiquities Te destruc-tion o the Mosul antiquities

in ISIS-propagated visualmedia derives its efficacyand power directly rom the very notion o authenticityand rom the relic-like sta-tus o antiquities globallyas well as rom the politi-cal economy o the circula-tion o antiquities in globalmarkets which seems to bean ever-flourishing industry(Fig 6) Tis global industry

is supported and sustainedby the increasing demandor illicit antiquities aroundthe world (See eg Kersel2012) ISISrsquos perormativeacts o destruction appropri-ate these transnational as-sociations and value systemso global heritage to choreo-graph effective spectaclesin an attempt to allure theirsympathizers and patronsrecruit urther anaticshumiliate local communi-ties while annihilating theirsense o heritage and offendthe humanitarian West Tisis the multi-directional goaland effect o ISISrsquos acts oheritage destruction

As indicated by manypostings on various blogs7 ISIS had disseminated alsenews a ew weeks prior tothe videorsquos release that the

walls o Nineveh in Mosul were being dynamited Tis newsitem o ambiguous authorship had been circulated globally inthe social media by millions Later archaeologists and officialsin Mosul confirmed that no such destruction had (yet) takenplace although these statements were hardly reported in thepopular media Cultural heritage specialists around the worldtook a deep breath o relie until the video was released in lateFebruary I we assume to some level that the destruction oantiquities did take place in Nineveh and the Mosul Museumand continues to take place then it can be argued that theglobal media representation o the destruction took place be- ore the act o destruction itsel and not afer In this case the

so-called representation o the destructive event precedes theactual act o destruction which is to say that the documentaryclaim o the visual imagery propagated by ISIS should be con-

sidered by necessity as alseTis only demonstrates thepowerul role o new mediatechnologies on the physical

acts o destruction itsel andreverses our hierarchies oreality versus representation

ISISrsquos HeritageDestruction as aHyperreal RealityShowI argue here that ISISrsquos me-dia perormances operatemuch like a reality showthat eectively mobilizes

the consumerism o visualmedia he production othe videos and photograph-ic imagery that presents uswith ISISrsquos horrendous actso violence whether againsthuman bodies sacred build-ings cultural heritage andarchaeological sites or mu-seum antiquities are otenthe real purpose o theirinterest It is important topoint out that to produce

these videos they have de-liberately chosen (in a calcu-lated way) ancient statuarythat are itting or the his-toricized enactment o idoldestruction and not any othe hundreds o other small-er antiquities present in theMosul Museum hese vid-eos and photographic imag-ery are staged perormanceswhere the physical acts o

violence and destruction orm the consequence o their ilm-ic activity We must responsibly consider the possibility thatwhat we treat on our Facebook proiles tweets and blogs asdocumentation o violence is in act the raison drsquoetre o ISISrsquosbiopolitics I extend this argument to suggest that the Assyr-ian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (i theywere indeed destroyed) or the sole purpose o producing the video We cannot and should not see the ilmic representa-tion as a document Its stark reality lies in its representationmuch like the mentality o the production o a reality showhe main purpose is the production o the show What hap-pens in it is indeed real although completely staged Con-

Figure 6 The so-called ldquoGuennol Lionnessrdquo an ancient Near Eastern fgurine

which was sold at a Sothebyrsquos Auction on December 5 2007 for an exorbitant

amount See Harmanşah and Witmore 2007

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 3: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 39NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 171

Consuming ISISSince the summer o 2014 the Islamic State has developedan unusual practice o deliberately damaging archaeologicalsites and museums along-side its continued attackson local shrines and holyplaces that are dear to lo-

cal communities In well-publicized news reportsoten issued by ISIS itselprominent heritage sitesincluding the Mosul Muse-um the archaeological siteso Nineveh Nimrud andHatra and possibly Ashurand Palmyra were reportedto have been attacked orthreatened to be destroyedhrough a series o care-

ully disseminated videosand imagery the world wasshown how ancient sculp-tures were smashed andhow the standing architec-ture in archaeological sites were blown up hese violent actsand their high-tech mediatic representation accomplishedmany goals at once rom humiliating the local communi-ties to broadcasting a radi-cal ideology o religiousanaticism in order to re-cruit new transnationalmilitants all the way todeying the common val-ues attached to culturalheritage in the globalizedworld And all o this tookplace in the midst o wide-spread claims o how ISISsupported its operationspartly through looting andtraicking o antiquities2

Tese constitute a verydisturbing development orarchaeologists historians

and heritage specialists o theMiddle East rom around theworld Since February 2015ISISrsquos systematic violenceagainst heritage has gainedmomentum and caused anunprecedented number odiscussion platorms to ormwhile heroic efforts emergedrom western institutionsor heritage documentationand preservation3 Tese e-

orts seem largely to have been repeating the tired rhetoric osalvaging antiquities in the event o armed conflict rom thehands o ldquoviolent extremistsrdquo and raising global awareness al-

though they remain largelyineffective in addressing theunique challenge o the Is-lamic Statersquos counter-heritage

campaign that takes place asa media perormance on aglobal scale

On February 26 2015ISIS posted a (now iconic) video on Youube showingthe deliberate destruction owhat seemed to be authen-tic ancient sculpture in theMosul Museum and the ar-chaeological site o Kuyun- juk (the citadel o ancient

NinuwaNineveh) in IraqiKurdistan Immediately ol-lowing this posting a heateddebate sprang up in the me-dia and on social network-

ing sites such as Facebook and witter on the ate o antiquitiesin the hands o ISIS In these debates the violence was quicklyand confidently characterized as medieval iconoclasm ignorant

Figure 1 ISIS militants decapitate the ldquoheritage of humanityrdquo Jehad Awartani

Published with the permission of the author

Figure 2 ISIS militants carry a decapitated ancient Assyrian lamassu sculpture from Nineveh Iraq Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli

Published with the permission of the author

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 49172 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

backwardness and anti-west-ern arrogance4 Although ISISremoved the video rom pub-lic view the very next day itwas widely disseminated andobsessively broadcast in thou-sands i not millions o copies

on the web and recirculatedincessantly on news agen-ciesrsquo websites Facebook pro-files tweets and blog postsMany users o these outletshad a visceral reaction to the video and quickly shared the video both to inorm otherso ISISrsquos barbaric acts and todeclare their own cosmopoli-tan humanitarian civilizedcondemnation o these un-

civilized acts against antiqui-ties Whereas blog writers andusers o Facebook and witterusually rerain rom posting videos o violence against hu-man bodies such as behead-ings executions or pornog-raphy it seemed acceptable torepost the destruction o an-cient artiacts Not only thatbut it also gained popularityas a virtual act o resistanceagainst ISISrsquos inhumanity In

these acts o reposting and in-cessant global sharing these videos that had actually beenchoreographed and careullyedited by ISIS assumed theinnocently mediating objec-tive status o a news item Tesocial media user reactionwas importantly not an acto recoil but on the contraryan emotional engagement asa amiliar consumerist habit

For example in the be-ginning paragraphs o the33rd report o the Syrian Heri-tage Initiative we are told byMichael Danti and his co-authors that ldquo[r]ecent videoootage and photographs re-leased by Islamic State makemost reports readily verifi-able in February and Marchhowever there have been anumber o unverified reports

Figure 3 ISIS militants threaten an Assyrian kingrsquos statue Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli

Published with the permission of the author

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 59NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 173

posted by Iraqi sources Tese reports lack videophotographicevidence and have not as yet been claimed by Islamic Staterdquo(Danti et al 2015 emphasis mine) For the authors o the re-port visual media takes on the status o unmediated ldquoreadily verifiablerdquo evidence From a critical art historical point o viewthis is a worrisome and rather naiumlve understanding o how visu-al media works or it dangerously depoliticizes the medium o

representation and assigns a documentary value to it by virtueo its visuality completely disregarding its complex relationshipto the exercise o power5

Among the archaeological authorities proessional organi-zations and experts o Near Eastern archaeology and globalheritage much o the debate has concentrated myopically onthe very content o the videos ollowed by a series o stereotypi-cal statements o condemnation and dismay by various proes-sional organizations Public media ran to the experts the ar-chaeologists academics museum proessionals were asked toidentiy in the video what archaeological artiacts were reallydestroyed and which ones

were authentic Hopes wereraised that some o the arti-acts might be akes or repli-cas while speculations con-centrated on the fine detailso the demolition such asthe metal bars made visiblewithin the core o the statuesand the quick and suspiciouscrumbling o some o theHatra statues According tothese analyses multiple LateAssyrian sculpture rom the

8thndash7th century 983138983139983141 site oNineveh and the 1stndash2nd cen-tury 983139983141 Roman-Parthiansite o Hatra were shown tobe smashed to pieces or mu-tilated with the use o varioustools such as sledgehammersand drills In this debate the video posted by ISIS took therole o objective documenta-ry evidence through whichthe destruction o authentic

antiquities was studied Littlediscussion seems to have appeared in the public media aboutthe authorship o the video and ew questions have been raisedabout its staged theatrical spectacle-like character Te onlyquestion about the authenticity o the video was again about itscontents were the sculptures real relics o Mesopotamian heri-tage or not Tis complacent acceptance o ISIS-authored imag-ery as documentary is possibly more worrisome or our humancondition than the destruction o antiquities themselves

Furthermore we watch the videos produced by ISIS as evi-dence or ISISrsquos destruction o images and thereore identiyISIS militants as iconoclasts and this claim o idol-breaking is

also what ISIS happily embraces with clear reerences to theearly Islamic past to which I return below However we ail tonotice the obvious ISISrsquos relentless production o images I thenask How is it that we are convinced o ISIS militantsrsquo hatred oidols and representations while we consume the very powerulimages that constantly flow through the global media and those videos that have since ironically become some the most iconic

representations o contemporary violence against humanityIt is correct that ISISrsquos own severe and obsessive ideology oshirk (the worship o images or alse gods as equals to Allah)will also deny these videos as representations But this selec-tive and paradoxical understanding o representation must beread precisely as a power discourse and i we are to be criticalo ISIS we must challenge that power discourse not accept itPerhaps the most powerul response to ISISrsquos power discoursethrough antiquities destruction came rom Muslim cartoon-ists Jehad Awartani and Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli whose workplay with similar paradoxes between the violent practices and

the political rhetoric o ISIS

while touching on the com-mon equation o global hu-manity with global heritage(figs 1ndash3)6 Te cartoonistsgive the western media andacademics an important les-son the uncritical readingo ISISrsquos visual productionsas documentary simply en-dorses and helps ISISrsquos pro-paganda machine

ISIS and

the Spectaclesof DestructionAs an art historian I amconcerned less about what the ISIS videos show butmore interested in the pro-duction o images them-selves ie why the video wasproduced by ISIS in the irstplace how the video pres-ents these acts o material violence and how it is re-

ceived by its audience Hereor a brie moment just or the sake o argument I wouldlike us to treat the ISIS videos not as items o archival re-source something to be mined or objective inormation butas artiacts o ideological discourse which will then allow usto question their documentary status By doing this we canalso challenge the videorsquos documentary status by pointing outits perormative character In the ISIS video rom February2015 careully costumed perormers with devoutly coiedbeards are shown in the Mosul Museum attacking sculptureon pedestals Given the act that ISIS is an organization com-posed o volunteers coming rom a vast variety o nationali-

Figure 4 Guardian gate sculpture from the Palace of Assyrian king Sargon II at

Dur-Sharruken From P E Botta and E Flandin Eugegravene Monument de Ninive

Band 1 Architecture et sculpture Paris 1849 Pl 45

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 69174 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

ties rom countries in Europe the Middle East and beyondit is not hard to recognize the choreographed nature o theact and the costumes and looks o its actors which are com-mented in the above mentioned cartoons Using clumsy andexplicitly primitive gestures the militants use the orce otheir bodies to topple the statuary and use sledgehammersand pickaxes to crumble them to pieces hese perormances

highlight a direct and bodily attack on the statues and can be

imagined as a re-enactment o the 7 th century 983139983141 destruc-

tion o idols in the Karsquoaba which they requently and explic-itly cite his is an atavistic perormance that deliberatelyabducts the legacy o a medieval heritage and appropriates itas religious genealogy to serve the very enrichment o ISISrsquosultra-modern imagery-machine As the authors o A lictedPowers put it ldquoerror can take over the image-machinery ora moment ndash and a moment in the timeless echo chamber othe spectacle may now eternally be all there isrdquo (Boal et al2008 28)

Te sections o the video that involve the Assyrian colossalsculpture at the gates o Nineveh are less successul ISIS ac-tors had to switch to electric drills to mutilate the aces o the

giant lamassu figures which were made rom ldquothe hard stoneo the mountain with a grain-like texturerdquo according to the7th century 983138983139983141 Assyrian king Sennacheribrsquos (705ndash681 983138983139983141)imperial inscriptions which boast about opening a new quar-ry or the construction o his palace (Moorey 1994 344) (figs4-5) oppling these immense stone creatures is a dauntingtask Despite their ailure in destroying the giant guardians

o the Assyrian gates I would argue that the ISIS enactors

deliberately chose these figures or acts o deacing particu-

larly due to their animate and intimidating posture their ee-rily hybrid eatures bringing together a human ace bullrsquos orlionrsquos body and eaglersquos wings and their immense superhu-man scale (fig 4) oppled and sledgehammered statuary oHatra is coupled with the deacing o the Assyrian magicalbeings all o which present to us a perect re-enactment andhistoricized archaic celebration o late antique and medievalidol-breaking rituals in varying degrees o success I providethis perormance-based analysis o ISIS videos as an alterna-tive to the heritage-conscious responses o academics in theMiddle East and the western world which take the videos aspure documentary evidence

Figure 5 Orthostat relief from the Assyrian king Sennacheribs (705ndash681BCE) ldquoPalace without Rivalrdquo at Nineveh (Southwest Palace) Court VI

depicting the transport of quarried gate sculpture British Museum

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 79NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 175

Heritage DiscourseIt is also important to contextualize the powerul affect othese perormances with respect to our contemporary globalregime o monetary and his-torical value that is attachedto antiquities Te destruc-tion o the Mosul antiquities

in ISIS-propagated visualmedia derives its efficacyand power directly rom the very notion o authenticityand rom the relic-like sta-tus o antiquities globallyas well as rom the politi-cal economy o the circula-tion o antiquities in globalmarkets which seems to bean ever-flourishing industry(Fig 6) Tis global industry

is supported and sustainedby the increasing demandor illicit antiquities aroundthe world (See eg Kersel2012) ISISrsquos perormativeacts o destruction appropri-ate these transnational as-sociations and value systemso global heritage to choreo-graph effective spectaclesin an attempt to allure theirsympathizers and patronsrecruit urther anaticshumiliate local communi-ties while annihilating theirsense o heritage and offendthe humanitarian West Tisis the multi-directional goaland effect o ISISrsquos acts oheritage destruction

As indicated by manypostings on various blogs7 ISIS had disseminated alsenews a ew weeks prior tothe videorsquos release that the

walls o Nineveh in Mosul were being dynamited Tis newsitem o ambiguous authorship had been circulated globally inthe social media by millions Later archaeologists and officialsin Mosul confirmed that no such destruction had (yet) takenplace although these statements were hardly reported in thepopular media Cultural heritage specialists around the worldtook a deep breath o relie until the video was released in lateFebruary I we assume to some level that the destruction oantiquities did take place in Nineveh and the Mosul Museumand continues to take place then it can be argued that theglobal media representation o the destruction took place be- ore the act o destruction itsel and not afer In this case the

so-called representation o the destructive event precedes theactual act o destruction which is to say that the documentaryclaim o the visual imagery propagated by ISIS should be con-

sidered by necessity as alseTis only demonstrates thepowerul role o new mediatechnologies on the physical

acts o destruction itsel andreverses our hierarchies oreality versus representation

ISISrsquos HeritageDestruction as aHyperreal RealityShowI argue here that ISISrsquos me-dia perormances operatemuch like a reality showthat eectively mobilizes

the consumerism o visualmedia he production othe videos and photograph-ic imagery that presents uswith ISISrsquos horrendous actso violence whether againsthuman bodies sacred build-ings cultural heritage andarchaeological sites or mu-seum antiquities are otenthe real purpose o theirinterest It is important topoint out that to produce

these videos they have de-liberately chosen (in a calcu-lated way) ancient statuarythat are itting or the his-toricized enactment o idoldestruction and not any othe hundreds o other small-er antiquities present in theMosul Museum hese vid-eos and photographic imag-ery are staged perormanceswhere the physical acts o

violence and destruction orm the consequence o their ilm-ic activity We must responsibly consider the possibility thatwhat we treat on our Facebook proiles tweets and blogs asdocumentation o violence is in act the raison drsquoetre o ISISrsquosbiopolitics I extend this argument to suggest that the Assyr-ian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (i theywere indeed destroyed) or the sole purpose o producing the video We cannot and should not see the ilmic representa-tion as a document Its stark reality lies in its representationmuch like the mentality o the production o a reality showhe main purpose is the production o the show What hap-pens in it is indeed real although completely staged Con-

Figure 6 The so-called ldquoGuennol Lionnessrdquo an ancient Near Eastern fgurine

which was sold at a Sothebyrsquos Auction on December 5 2007 for an exorbitant

amount See Harmanşah and Witmore 2007

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 4: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 49172 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

backwardness and anti-west-ern arrogance4 Although ISISremoved the video rom pub-lic view the very next day itwas widely disseminated andobsessively broadcast in thou-sands i not millions o copies

on the web and recirculatedincessantly on news agen-ciesrsquo websites Facebook pro-files tweets and blog postsMany users o these outletshad a visceral reaction to the video and quickly shared the video both to inorm otherso ISISrsquos barbaric acts and todeclare their own cosmopoli-tan humanitarian civilizedcondemnation o these un-

civilized acts against antiqui-ties Whereas blog writers andusers o Facebook and witterusually rerain rom posting videos o violence against hu-man bodies such as behead-ings executions or pornog-raphy it seemed acceptable torepost the destruction o an-cient artiacts Not only thatbut it also gained popularityas a virtual act o resistanceagainst ISISrsquos inhumanity In

these acts o reposting and in-cessant global sharing these videos that had actually beenchoreographed and careullyedited by ISIS assumed theinnocently mediating objec-tive status o a news item Tesocial media user reactionwas importantly not an acto recoil but on the contraryan emotional engagement asa amiliar consumerist habit

For example in the be-ginning paragraphs o the33rd report o the Syrian Heri-tage Initiative we are told byMichael Danti and his co-authors that ldquo[r]ecent videoootage and photographs re-leased by Islamic State makemost reports readily verifi-able in February and Marchhowever there have been anumber o unverified reports

Figure 3 ISIS militants threaten an Assyrian kingrsquos statue Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli

Published with the permission of the author

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 59NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 173

posted by Iraqi sources Tese reports lack videophotographicevidence and have not as yet been claimed by Islamic Staterdquo(Danti et al 2015 emphasis mine) For the authors o the re-port visual media takes on the status o unmediated ldquoreadily verifiablerdquo evidence From a critical art historical point o viewthis is a worrisome and rather naiumlve understanding o how visu-al media works or it dangerously depoliticizes the medium o

representation and assigns a documentary value to it by virtueo its visuality completely disregarding its complex relationshipto the exercise o power5

Among the archaeological authorities proessional organi-zations and experts o Near Eastern archaeology and globalheritage much o the debate has concentrated myopically onthe very content o the videos ollowed by a series o stereotypi-cal statements o condemnation and dismay by various proes-sional organizations Public media ran to the experts the ar-chaeologists academics museum proessionals were asked toidentiy in the video what archaeological artiacts were reallydestroyed and which ones

were authentic Hopes wereraised that some o the arti-acts might be akes or repli-cas while speculations con-centrated on the fine detailso the demolition such asthe metal bars made visiblewithin the core o the statuesand the quick and suspiciouscrumbling o some o theHatra statues According tothese analyses multiple LateAssyrian sculpture rom the

8thndash7th century 983138983139983141 site oNineveh and the 1stndash2nd cen-tury 983139983141 Roman-Parthiansite o Hatra were shown tobe smashed to pieces or mu-tilated with the use o varioustools such as sledgehammersand drills In this debate the video posted by ISIS took therole o objective documenta-ry evidence through whichthe destruction o authentic

antiquities was studied Littlediscussion seems to have appeared in the public media aboutthe authorship o the video and ew questions have been raisedabout its staged theatrical spectacle-like character Te onlyquestion about the authenticity o the video was again about itscontents were the sculptures real relics o Mesopotamian heri-tage or not Tis complacent acceptance o ISIS-authored imag-ery as documentary is possibly more worrisome or our humancondition than the destruction o antiquities themselves

Furthermore we watch the videos produced by ISIS as evi-dence or ISISrsquos destruction o images and thereore identiyISIS militants as iconoclasts and this claim o idol-breaking is

also what ISIS happily embraces with clear reerences to theearly Islamic past to which I return below However we ail tonotice the obvious ISISrsquos relentless production o images I thenask How is it that we are convinced o ISIS militantsrsquo hatred oidols and representations while we consume the very powerulimages that constantly flow through the global media and those videos that have since ironically become some the most iconic

representations o contemporary violence against humanityIt is correct that ISISrsquos own severe and obsessive ideology oshirk (the worship o images or alse gods as equals to Allah)will also deny these videos as representations But this selec-tive and paradoxical understanding o representation must beread precisely as a power discourse and i we are to be criticalo ISIS we must challenge that power discourse not accept itPerhaps the most powerul response to ISISrsquos power discoursethrough antiquities destruction came rom Muslim cartoon-ists Jehad Awartani and Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli whose workplay with similar paradoxes between the violent practices and

the political rhetoric o ISIS

while touching on the com-mon equation o global hu-manity with global heritage(figs 1ndash3)6 Te cartoonistsgive the western media andacademics an important les-son the uncritical readingo ISISrsquos visual productionsas documentary simply en-dorses and helps ISISrsquos pro-paganda machine

ISIS and

the Spectaclesof DestructionAs an art historian I amconcerned less about what the ISIS videos show butmore interested in the pro-duction o images them-selves ie why the video wasproduced by ISIS in the irstplace how the video pres-ents these acts o material violence and how it is re-

ceived by its audience Hereor a brie moment just or the sake o argument I wouldlike us to treat the ISIS videos not as items o archival re-source something to be mined or objective inormation butas artiacts o ideological discourse which will then allow usto question their documentary status By doing this we canalso challenge the videorsquos documentary status by pointing outits perormative character In the ISIS video rom February2015 careully costumed perormers with devoutly coiedbeards are shown in the Mosul Museum attacking sculptureon pedestals Given the act that ISIS is an organization com-posed o volunteers coming rom a vast variety o nationali-

Figure 4 Guardian gate sculpture from the Palace of Assyrian king Sargon II at

Dur-Sharruken From P E Botta and E Flandin Eugegravene Monument de Ninive

Band 1 Architecture et sculpture Paris 1849 Pl 45

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 69174 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

ties rom countries in Europe the Middle East and beyondit is not hard to recognize the choreographed nature o theact and the costumes and looks o its actors which are com-mented in the above mentioned cartoons Using clumsy andexplicitly primitive gestures the militants use the orce otheir bodies to topple the statuary and use sledgehammersand pickaxes to crumble them to pieces hese perormances

highlight a direct and bodily attack on the statues and can be

imagined as a re-enactment o the 7 th century 983139983141 destruc-

tion o idols in the Karsquoaba which they requently and explic-itly cite his is an atavistic perormance that deliberatelyabducts the legacy o a medieval heritage and appropriates itas religious genealogy to serve the very enrichment o ISISrsquosultra-modern imagery-machine As the authors o A lictedPowers put it ldquoerror can take over the image-machinery ora moment ndash and a moment in the timeless echo chamber othe spectacle may now eternally be all there isrdquo (Boal et al2008 28)

Te sections o the video that involve the Assyrian colossalsculpture at the gates o Nineveh are less successul ISIS ac-tors had to switch to electric drills to mutilate the aces o the

giant lamassu figures which were made rom ldquothe hard stoneo the mountain with a grain-like texturerdquo according to the7th century 983138983139983141 Assyrian king Sennacheribrsquos (705ndash681 983138983139983141)imperial inscriptions which boast about opening a new quar-ry or the construction o his palace (Moorey 1994 344) (figs4-5) oppling these immense stone creatures is a dauntingtask Despite their ailure in destroying the giant guardians

o the Assyrian gates I would argue that the ISIS enactors

deliberately chose these figures or acts o deacing particu-

larly due to their animate and intimidating posture their ee-rily hybrid eatures bringing together a human ace bullrsquos orlionrsquos body and eaglersquos wings and their immense superhu-man scale (fig 4) oppled and sledgehammered statuary oHatra is coupled with the deacing o the Assyrian magicalbeings all o which present to us a perect re-enactment andhistoricized archaic celebration o late antique and medievalidol-breaking rituals in varying degrees o success I providethis perormance-based analysis o ISIS videos as an alterna-tive to the heritage-conscious responses o academics in theMiddle East and the western world which take the videos aspure documentary evidence

Figure 5 Orthostat relief from the Assyrian king Sennacheribs (705ndash681BCE) ldquoPalace without Rivalrdquo at Nineveh (Southwest Palace) Court VI

depicting the transport of quarried gate sculpture British Museum

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 79NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 175

Heritage DiscourseIt is also important to contextualize the powerul affect othese perormances with respect to our contemporary globalregime o monetary and his-torical value that is attachedto antiquities Te destruc-tion o the Mosul antiquities

in ISIS-propagated visualmedia derives its efficacyand power directly rom the very notion o authenticityand rom the relic-like sta-tus o antiquities globallyas well as rom the politi-cal economy o the circula-tion o antiquities in globalmarkets which seems to bean ever-flourishing industry(Fig 6) Tis global industry

is supported and sustainedby the increasing demandor illicit antiquities aroundthe world (See eg Kersel2012) ISISrsquos perormativeacts o destruction appropri-ate these transnational as-sociations and value systemso global heritage to choreo-graph effective spectaclesin an attempt to allure theirsympathizers and patronsrecruit urther anaticshumiliate local communi-ties while annihilating theirsense o heritage and offendthe humanitarian West Tisis the multi-directional goaland effect o ISISrsquos acts oheritage destruction

As indicated by manypostings on various blogs7 ISIS had disseminated alsenews a ew weeks prior tothe videorsquos release that the

walls o Nineveh in Mosul were being dynamited Tis newsitem o ambiguous authorship had been circulated globally inthe social media by millions Later archaeologists and officialsin Mosul confirmed that no such destruction had (yet) takenplace although these statements were hardly reported in thepopular media Cultural heritage specialists around the worldtook a deep breath o relie until the video was released in lateFebruary I we assume to some level that the destruction oantiquities did take place in Nineveh and the Mosul Museumand continues to take place then it can be argued that theglobal media representation o the destruction took place be- ore the act o destruction itsel and not afer In this case the

so-called representation o the destructive event precedes theactual act o destruction which is to say that the documentaryclaim o the visual imagery propagated by ISIS should be con-

sidered by necessity as alseTis only demonstrates thepowerul role o new mediatechnologies on the physical

acts o destruction itsel andreverses our hierarchies oreality versus representation

ISISrsquos HeritageDestruction as aHyperreal RealityShowI argue here that ISISrsquos me-dia perormances operatemuch like a reality showthat eectively mobilizes

the consumerism o visualmedia he production othe videos and photograph-ic imagery that presents uswith ISISrsquos horrendous actso violence whether againsthuman bodies sacred build-ings cultural heritage andarchaeological sites or mu-seum antiquities are otenthe real purpose o theirinterest It is important topoint out that to produce

these videos they have de-liberately chosen (in a calcu-lated way) ancient statuarythat are itting or the his-toricized enactment o idoldestruction and not any othe hundreds o other small-er antiquities present in theMosul Museum hese vid-eos and photographic imag-ery are staged perormanceswhere the physical acts o

violence and destruction orm the consequence o their ilm-ic activity We must responsibly consider the possibility thatwhat we treat on our Facebook proiles tweets and blogs asdocumentation o violence is in act the raison drsquoetre o ISISrsquosbiopolitics I extend this argument to suggest that the Assyr-ian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (i theywere indeed destroyed) or the sole purpose o producing the video We cannot and should not see the ilmic representa-tion as a document Its stark reality lies in its representationmuch like the mentality o the production o a reality showhe main purpose is the production o the show What hap-pens in it is indeed real although completely staged Con-

Figure 6 The so-called ldquoGuennol Lionnessrdquo an ancient Near Eastern fgurine

which was sold at a Sothebyrsquos Auction on December 5 2007 for an exorbitant

amount See Harmanşah and Witmore 2007

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 5: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 59NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 173

posted by Iraqi sources Tese reports lack videophotographicevidence and have not as yet been claimed by Islamic Staterdquo(Danti et al 2015 emphasis mine) For the authors o the re-port visual media takes on the status o unmediated ldquoreadily verifiablerdquo evidence From a critical art historical point o viewthis is a worrisome and rather naiumlve understanding o how visu-al media works or it dangerously depoliticizes the medium o

representation and assigns a documentary value to it by virtueo its visuality completely disregarding its complex relationshipto the exercise o power5

Among the archaeological authorities proessional organi-zations and experts o Near Eastern archaeology and globalheritage much o the debate has concentrated myopically onthe very content o the videos ollowed by a series o stereotypi-cal statements o condemnation and dismay by various proes-sional organizations Public media ran to the experts the ar-chaeologists academics museum proessionals were asked toidentiy in the video what archaeological artiacts were reallydestroyed and which ones

were authentic Hopes wereraised that some o the arti-acts might be akes or repli-cas while speculations con-centrated on the fine detailso the demolition such asthe metal bars made visiblewithin the core o the statuesand the quick and suspiciouscrumbling o some o theHatra statues According tothese analyses multiple LateAssyrian sculpture rom the

8thndash7th century 983138983139983141 site oNineveh and the 1stndash2nd cen-tury 983139983141 Roman-Parthiansite o Hatra were shown tobe smashed to pieces or mu-tilated with the use o varioustools such as sledgehammersand drills In this debate the video posted by ISIS took therole o objective documenta-ry evidence through whichthe destruction o authentic

antiquities was studied Littlediscussion seems to have appeared in the public media aboutthe authorship o the video and ew questions have been raisedabout its staged theatrical spectacle-like character Te onlyquestion about the authenticity o the video was again about itscontents were the sculptures real relics o Mesopotamian heri-tage or not Tis complacent acceptance o ISIS-authored imag-ery as documentary is possibly more worrisome or our humancondition than the destruction o antiquities themselves

Furthermore we watch the videos produced by ISIS as evi-dence or ISISrsquos destruction o images and thereore identiyISIS militants as iconoclasts and this claim o idol-breaking is

also what ISIS happily embraces with clear reerences to theearly Islamic past to which I return below However we ail tonotice the obvious ISISrsquos relentless production o images I thenask How is it that we are convinced o ISIS militantsrsquo hatred oidols and representations while we consume the very powerulimages that constantly flow through the global media and those videos that have since ironically become some the most iconic

representations o contemporary violence against humanityIt is correct that ISISrsquos own severe and obsessive ideology oshirk (the worship o images or alse gods as equals to Allah)will also deny these videos as representations But this selec-tive and paradoxical understanding o representation must beread precisely as a power discourse and i we are to be criticalo ISIS we must challenge that power discourse not accept itPerhaps the most powerul response to ISISrsquos power discoursethrough antiquities destruction came rom Muslim cartoon-ists Jehad Awartani and Mehdi ldquoAmordquo Rasooli whose workplay with similar paradoxes between the violent practices and

the political rhetoric o ISIS

while touching on the com-mon equation o global hu-manity with global heritage(figs 1ndash3)6 Te cartoonistsgive the western media andacademics an important les-son the uncritical readingo ISISrsquos visual productionsas documentary simply en-dorses and helps ISISrsquos pro-paganda machine

ISIS and

the Spectaclesof DestructionAs an art historian I amconcerned less about what the ISIS videos show butmore interested in the pro-duction o images them-selves ie why the video wasproduced by ISIS in the irstplace how the video pres-ents these acts o material violence and how it is re-

ceived by its audience Hereor a brie moment just or the sake o argument I wouldlike us to treat the ISIS videos not as items o archival re-source something to be mined or objective inormation butas artiacts o ideological discourse which will then allow usto question their documentary status By doing this we canalso challenge the videorsquos documentary status by pointing outits perormative character In the ISIS video rom February2015 careully costumed perormers with devoutly coiedbeards are shown in the Mosul Museum attacking sculptureon pedestals Given the act that ISIS is an organization com-posed o volunteers coming rom a vast variety o nationali-

Figure 4 Guardian gate sculpture from the Palace of Assyrian king Sargon II at

Dur-Sharruken From P E Botta and E Flandin Eugegravene Monument de Ninive

Band 1 Architecture et sculpture Paris 1849 Pl 45

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 69174 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

ties rom countries in Europe the Middle East and beyondit is not hard to recognize the choreographed nature o theact and the costumes and looks o its actors which are com-mented in the above mentioned cartoons Using clumsy andexplicitly primitive gestures the militants use the orce otheir bodies to topple the statuary and use sledgehammersand pickaxes to crumble them to pieces hese perormances

highlight a direct and bodily attack on the statues and can be

imagined as a re-enactment o the 7 th century 983139983141 destruc-

tion o idols in the Karsquoaba which they requently and explic-itly cite his is an atavistic perormance that deliberatelyabducts the legacy o a medieval heritage and appropriates itas religious genealogy to serve the very enrichment o ISISrsquosultra-modern imagery-machine As the authors o A lictedPowers put it ldquoerror can take over the image-machinery ora moment ndash and a moment in the timeless echo chamber othe spectacle may now eternally be all there isrdquo (Boal et al2008 28)

Te sections o the video that involve the Assyrian colossalsculpture at the gates o Nineveh are less successul ISIS ac-tors had to switch to electric drills to mutilate the aces o the

giant lamassu figures which were made rom ldquothe hard stoneo the mountain with a grain-like texturerdquo according to the7th century 983138983139983141 Assyrian king Sennacheribrsquos (705ndash681 983138983139983141)imperial inscriptions which boast about opening a new quar-ry or the construction o his palace (Moorey 1994 344) (figs4-5) oppling these immense stone creatures is a dauntingtask Despite their ailure in destroying the giant guardians

o the Assyrian gates I would argue that the ISIS enactors

deliberately chose these figures or acts o deacing particu-

larly due to their animate and intimidating posture their ee-rily hybrid eatures bringing together a human ace bullrsquos orlionrsquos body and eaglersquos wings and their immense superhu-man scale (fig 4) oppled and sledgehammered statuary oHatra is coupled with the deacing o the Assyrian magicalbeings all o which present to us a perect re-enactment andhistoricized archaic celebration o late antique and medievalidol-breaking rituals in varying degrees o success I providethis perormance-based analysis o ISIS videos as an alterna-tive to the heritage-conscious responses o academics in theMiddle East and the western world which take the videos aspure documentary evidence

Figure 5 Orthostat relief from the Assyrian king Sennacheribs (705ndash681BCE) ldquoPalace without Rivalrdquo at Nineveh (Southwest Palace) Court VI

depicting the transport of quarried gate sculpture British Museum

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 79NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 175

Heritage DiscourseIt is also important to contextualize the powerul affect othese perormances with respect to our contemporary globalregime o monetary and his-torical value that is attachedto antiquities Te destruc-tion o the Mosul antiquities

in ISIS-propagated visualmedia derives its efficacyand power directly rom the very notion o authenticityand rom the relic-like sta-tus o antiquities globallyas well as rom the politi-cal economy o the circula-tion o antiquities in globalmarkets which seems to bean ever-flourishing industry(Fig 6) Tis global industry

is supported and sustainedby the increasing demandor illicit antiquities aroundthe world (See eg Kersel2012) ISISrsquos perormativeacts o destruction appropri-ate these transnational as-sociations and value systemso global heritage to choreo-graph effective spectaclesin an attempt to allure theirsympathizers and patronsrecruit urther anaticshumiliate local communi-ties while annihilating theirsense o heritage and offendthe humanitarian West Tisis the multi-directional goaland effect o ISISrsquos acts oheritage destruction

As indicated by manypostings on various blogs7 ISIS had disseminated alsenews a ew weeks prior tothe videorsquos release that the

walls o Nineveh in Mosul were being dynamited Tis newsitem o ambiguous authorship had been circulated globally inthe social media by millions Later archaeologists and officialsin Mosul confirmed that no such destruction had (yet) takenplace although these statements were hardly reported in thepopular media Cultural heritage specialists around the worldtook a deep breath o relie until the video was released in lateFebruary I we assume to some level that the destruction oantiquities did take place in Nineveh and the Mosul Museumand continues to take place then it can be argued that theglobal media representation o the destruction took place be- ore the act o destruction itsel and not afer In this case the

so-called representation o the destructive event precedes theactual act o destruction which is to say that the documentaryclaim o the visual imagery propagated by ISIS should be con-

sidered by necessity as alseTis only demonstrates thepowerul role o new mediatechnologies on the physical

acts o destruction itsel andreverses our hierarchies oreality versus representation

ISISrsquos HeritageDestruction as aHyperreal RealityShowI argue here that ISISrsquos me-dia perormances operatemuch like a reality showthat eectively mobilizes

the consumerism o visualmedia he production othe videos and photograph-ic imagery that presents uswith ISISrsquos horrendous actso violence whether againsthuman bodies sacred build-ings cultural heritage andarchaeological sites or mu-seum antiquities are otenthe real purpose o theirinterest It is important topoint out that to produce

these videos they have de-liberately chosen (in a calcu-lated way) ancient statuarythat are itting or the his-toricized enactment o idoldestruction and not any othe hundreds o other small-er antiquities present in theMosul Museum hese vid-eos and photographic imag-ery are staged perormanceswhere the physical acts o

violence and destruction orm the consequence o their ilm-ic activity We must responsibly consider the possibility thatwhat we treat on our Facebook proiles tweets and blogs asdocumentation o violence is in act the raison drsquoetre o ISISrsquosbiopolitics I extend this argument to suggest that the Assyr-ian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (i theywere indeed destroyed) or the sole purpose o producing the video We cannot and should not see the ilmic representa-tion as a document Its stark reality lies in its representationmuch like the mentality o the production o a reality showhe main purpose is the production o the show What hap-pens in it is indeed real although completely staged Con-

Figure 6 The so-called ldquoGuennol Lionnessrdquo an ancient Near Eastern fgurine

which was sold at a Sothebyrsquos Auction on December 5 2007 for an exorbitant

amount See Harmanşah and Witmore 2007

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 6: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 69174 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

ties rom countries in Europe the Middle East and beyondit is not hard to recognize the choreographed nature o theact and the costumes and looks o its actors which are com-mented in the above mentioned cartoons Using clumsy andexplicitly primitive gestures the militants use the orce otheir bodies to topple the statuary and use sledgehammersand pickaxes to crumble them to pieces hese perormances

highlight a direct and bodily attack on the statues and can be

imagined as a re-enactment o the 7 th century 983139983141 destruc-

tion o idols in the Karsquoaba which they requently and explic-itly cite his is an atavistic perormance that deliberatelyabducts the legacy o a medieval heritage and appropriates itas religious genealogy to serve the very enrichment o ISISrsquosultra-modern imagery-machine As the authors o A lictedPowers put it ldquoerror can take over the image-machinery ora moment ndash and a moment in the timeless echo chamber othe spectacle may now eternally be all there isrdquo (Boal et al2008 28)

Te sections o the video that involve the Assyrian colossalsculpture at the gates o Nineveh are less successul ISIS ac-tors had to switch to electric drills to mutilate the aces o the

giant lamassu figures which were made rom ldquothe hard stoneo the mountain with a grain-like texturerdquo according to the7th century 983138983139983141 Assyrian king Sennacheribrsquos (705ndash681 983138983139983141)imperial inscriptions which boast about opening a new quar-ry or the construction o his palace (Moorey 1994 344) (figs4-5) oppling these immense stone creatures is a dauntingtask Despite their ailure in destroying the giant guardians

o the Assyrian gates I would argue that the ISIS enactors

deliberately chose these figures or acts o deacing particu-

larly due to their animate and intimidating posture their ee-rily hybrid eatures bringing together a human ace bullrsquos orlionrsquos body and eaglersquos wings and their immense superhu-man scale (fig 4) oppled and sledgehammered statuary oHatra is coupled with the deacing o the Assyrian magicalbeings all o which present to us a perect re-enactment andhistoricized archaic celebration o late antique and medievalidol-breaking rituals in varying degrees o success I providethis perormance-based analysis o ISIS videos as an alterna-tive to the heritage-conscious responses o academics in theMiddle East and the western world which take the videos aspure documentary evidence

Figure 5 Orthostat relief from the Assyrian king Sennacheribs (705ndash681BCE) ldquoPalace without Rivalrdquo at Nineveh (Southwest Palace) Court VI

depicting the transport of quarried gate sculpture British Museum

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 79NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 175

Heritage DiscourseIt is also important to contextualize the powerul affect othese perormances with respect to our contemporary globalregime o monetary and his-torical value that is attachedto antiquities Te destruc-tion o the Mosul antiquities

in ISIS-propagated visualmedia derives its efficacyand power directly rom the very notion o authenticityand rom the relic-like sta-tus o antiquities globallyas well as rom the politi-cal economy o the circula-tion o antiquities in globalmarkets which seems to bean ever-flourishing industry(Fig 6) Tis global industry

is supported and sustainedby the increasing demandor illicit antiquities aroundthe world (See eg Kersel2012) ISISrsquos perormativeacts o destruction appropri-ate these transnational as-sociations and value systemso global heritage to choreo-graph effective spectaclesin an attempt to allure theirsympathizers and patronsrecruit urther anaticshumiliate local communi-ties while annihilating theirsense o heritage and offendthe humanitarian West Tisis the multi-directional goaland effect o ISISrsquos acts oheritage destruction

As indicated by manypostings on various blogs7 ISIS had disseminated alsenews a ew weeks prior tothe videorsquos release that the

walls o Nineveh in Mosul were being dynamited Tis newsitem o ambiguous authorship had been circulated globally inthe social media by millions Later archaeologists and officialsin Mosul confirmed that no such destruction had (yet) takenplace although these statements were hardly reported in thepopular media Cultural heritage specialists around the worldtook a deep breath o relie until the video was released in lateFebruary I we assume to some level that the destruction oantiquities did take place in Nineveh and the Mosul Museumand continues to take place then it can be argued that theglobal media representation o the destruction took place be- ore the act o destruction itsel and not afer In this case the

so-called representation o the destructive event precedes theactual act o destruction which is to say that the documentaryclaim o the visual imagery propagated by ISIS should be con-

sidered by necessity as alseTis only demonstrates thepowerul role o new mediatechnologies on the physical

acts o destruction itsel andreverses our hierarchies oreality versus representation

ISISrsquos HeritageDestruction as aHyperreal RealityShowI argue here that ISISrsquos me-dia perormances operatemuch like a reality showthat eectively mobilizes

the consumerism o visualmedia he production othe videos and photograph-ic imagery that presents uswith ISISrsquos horrendous actso violence whether againsthuman bodies sacred build-ings cultural heritage andarchaeological sites or mu-seum antiquities are otenthe real purpose o theirinterest It is important topoint out that to produce

these videos they have de-liberately chosen (in a calcu-lated way) ancient statuarythat are itting or the his-toricized enactment o idoldestruction and not any othe hundreds o other small-er antiquities present in theMosul Museum hese vid-eos and photographic imag-ery are staged perormanceswhere the physical acts o

violence and destruction orm the consequence o their ilm-ic activity We must responsibly consider the possibility thatwhat we treat on our Facebook proiles tweets and blogs asdocumentation o violence is in act the raison drsquoetre o ISISrsquosbiopolitics I extend this argument to suggest that the Assyr-ian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (i theywere indeed destroyed) or the sole purpose o producing the video We cannot and should not see the ilmic representa-tion as a document Its stark reality lies in its representationmuch like the mentality o the production o a reality showhe main purpose is the production o the show What hap-pens in it is indeed real although completely staged Con-

Figure 6 The so-called ldquoGuennol Lionnessrdquo an ancient Near Eastern fgurine

which was sold at a Sothebyrsquos Auction on December 5 2007 for an exorbitant

amount See Harmanşah and Witmore 2007

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 7: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 79NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015) 175

Heritage DiscourseIt is also important to contextualize the powerul affect othese perormances with respect to our contemporary globalregime o monetary and his-torical value that is attachedto antiquities Te destruc-tion o the Mosul antiquities

in ISIS-propagated visualmedia derives its efficacyand power directly rom the very notion o authenticityand rom the relic-like sta-tus o antiquities globallyas well as rom the politi-cal economy o the circula-tion o antiquities in globalmarkets which seems to bean ever-flourishing industry(Fig 6) Tis global industry

is supported and sustainedby the increasing demandor illicit antiquities aroundthe world (See eg Kersel2012) ISISrsquos perormativeacts o destruction appropri-ate these transnational as-sociations and value systemso global heritage to choreo-graph effective spectaclesin an attempt to allure theirsympathizers and patronsrecruit urther anaticshumiliate local communi-ties while annihilating theirsense o heritage and offendthe humanitarian West Tisis the multi-directional goaland effect o ISISrsquos acts oheritage destruction

As indicated by manypostings on various blogs7 ISIS had disseminated alsenews a ew weeks prior tothe videorsquos release that the

walls o Nineveh in Mosul were being dynamited Tis newsitem o ambiguous authorship had been circulated globally inthe social media by millions Later archaeologists and officialsin Mosul confirmed that no such destruction had (yet) takenplace although these statements were hardly reported in thepopular media Cultural heritage specialists around the worldtook a deep breath o relie until the video was released in lateFebruary I we assume to some level that the destruction oantiquities did take place in Nineveh and the Mosul Museumand continues to take place then it can be argued that theglobal media representation o the destruction took place be- ore the act o destruction itsel and not afer In this case the

so-called representation o the destructive event precedes theactual act o destruction which is to say that the documentaryclaim o the visual imagery propagated by ISIS should be con-

sidered by necessity as alseTis only demonstrates thepowerul role o new mediatechnologies on the physical

acts o destruction itsel andreverses our hierarchies oreality versus representation

ISISrsquos HeritageDestruction as aHyperreal RealityShowI argue here that ISISrsquos me-dia perormances operatemuch like a reality showthat eectively mobilizes

the consumerism o visualmedia he production othe videos and photograph-ic imagery that presents uswith ISISrsquos horrendous actso violence whether againsthuman bodies sacred build-ings cultural heritage andarchaeological sites or mu-seum antiquities are otenthe real purpose o theirinterest It is important topoint out that to produce

these videos they have de-liberately chosen (in a calcu-lated way) ancient statuarythat are itting or the his-toricized enactment o idoldestruction and not any othe hundreds o other small-er antiquities present in theMosul Museum hese vid-eos and photographic imag-ery are staged perormanceswhere the physical acts o

violence and destruction orm the consequence o their ilm-ic activity We must responsibly consider the possibility thatwhat we treat on our Facebook proiles tweets and blogs asdocumentation o violence is in act the raison drsquoetre o ISISrsquosbiopolitics I extend this argument to suggest that the Assyr-ian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (i theywere indeed destroyed) or the sole purpose o producing the video We cannot and should not see the ilmic representa-tion as a document Its stark reality lies in its representationmuch like the mentality o the production o a reality showhe main purpose is the production o the show What hap-pens in it is indeed real although completely staged Con-

Figure 6 The so-called ldquoGuennol Lionnessrdquo an ancient Near Eastern fgurine

which was sold at a Sothebyrsquos Auction on December 5 2007 for an exorbitant

amount See Harmanşah and Witmore 2007

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 8: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 89176 NEAR EASERN ARCHAEOLOGY 783 (2015)

trary to what has been argued about ISIS as an anachronisticand medieval entity in its ideology and mentality I argue thatISIS is a super-modern phenomenon incorporating the mostpowerul tools o hyperreality in disseminating their violentacts Accordingly we mustind better ways to dealwith ISISrsquos propaganda ma-

chine more critically andgo beyond rantically try-ing to identiy what in their videos was destroyed andwhat was not

Re-enactments ofIconoclasmFinally this discussion bringsus back to the heated debatesin the afermath o the ali-ban governmentrsquos dynamit-

ing o rock-cut Buddha re-lies o the Bamiyan Valleyin March 2001 which pro- voked thoughtul academicresponses such as FinbarrBarry Floodrsquos detailed analy-sis in Art Bulletin 84 (Flood2002) As with the BamiyanBuddhas ISISrsquos destructiono Mosul antiquities espe-cially sculpture were char-acterized as a modern act oiconoclasm I propose that

the element o iconoclasmexists in ISISrsquos acts onlyas a historical reerence arhetoric and perhaps morepowerully as an archaizingre-enactment o the ideaIconoclasm is understood asa historically pervasive tac-tic o removing the animacyagency effective power andpresent liveliness o imagesand is attested in the history

o all monotheistic religionsnot just Islam (Ellenbogenand ugendhaf 2011)

Iconoclastic acts have also been used as a strategy to coun-ter the powerul memory o a political power as in the gaugedeyes o an image o an Akkadian king rom the MesopotamianBronze Age (ig 7) the erased aces o the Egyptian QueenHatshepsutrsquos statuary in Deir el Bahari and the Roman prac-tices o damnatio memoriae (Elsner 2003) Yet iconoclasticacts have rarely involved a complete breaking o idols and im-agery ndash rather they have involved the mutilation o danger-ous components o liveliness such as the head eyes and ace

I we consider ISISrsquos acts as iconoclasm then we will have toaccept that they considered the museum antiquities as ani-mated and posing a threat to their own religious practice Dowe really think this is the case Furthermore labeling ISISrsquos

acts as iconoclasm naivelycategorizes them as time-less acts against iguration

On the contrary I considerthese as perormative acts oproducing imagery o vio-lence in the public spherewhile using the discursivetools o image-breaking inthat particular perormanceby citing histories o icono-clasm I preer to see ISISrsquosdestructive work as oper-ating in the realm o whatBruno Latour amously

called ldquoiconoclashrdquo ndash thecontemporary and perpetu-al image wars in the publicsphere both destructive andconstructive and driven byadvanced technologies ocapitalist hypermodernitynew media mobilizationand the global economy othe extensive consumptionand regeneration o violentimagery (Latour 2002) Inthis sense I see ISIS not at all

as an anachronistic religiousphenomenon but as emerg-ing rom the very dynamicculture o our super-mod-ern moment It is througha critical engagement withthis supermodernity that wecan develop the intellectualtools needed to respond re-sponsibly to a phenomenonsuch as ISIS which contin-ues to take lives and annihi-

late local communities as Iwrite this

Notes1 A shorter version o this article has been published at jadaliyyacom2 United Nations Security Councilrsquos Resolution 2199 dated 10 Febru-

ary 2015 states that ldquoall Member States shall take appropriate stepsto prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and otheritems o archaeological historical cultural rare scientific and reli-

gious importance illegally removed rom Iraq since 6 August 1990and rom Syria since 15 March 2011rdquo with the concern that ISISAl-Nusrah Front and other terrorist organizations ldquoare generat-

Figure 7 Copper head of Akkadian ruler (2250ndash2200 BCE)Iraq Museum Baghdad

This content downloaded from 386867196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC

Page 9: Harmansah, ISIS

8172019 Harmansah ISIS

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullharmansah-isis 99

Figure 7 ArchField artifacts and loci displayed in same geographic space as SfM and LiDAR scans (visualized in ArtifactVis2)

Image by N G Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oumlmuumlr Harmanşah is Associate Proessor o Art History at the University o Illinois at ChicagoHe is the author o two monographs Cities and the Shaping o Memory in the Ancient Near East(Cambridge University Press 2013) and Place Memory and Healing An Archaeology o Anato-lian Rock Monuments (Routledge 2015) Since 2010 he has been directing the Yalburt YaylasıArchaeological Landscape Research Project a regional survey in central western urkey Hespecializes on the archaeology o the ancient Near East as well as questions o landscape placeand political ecology

ing income rom engaging directly or indirectly in the looting andsmuggling o cultural heritage items rom archaeological sites mu-seums libraries archives and other sites in Iraq and Syria which isbeing used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their

operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacksrdquoSee httpwwwunescoorgnewfileadminMULIMEDIAHQERIpdUN_SC_RESOLUION_2199_ENpd (accessed June 15

2015)3 One such example is UNESCOrsquos recent initiative Unite4Heritage

a campaign launched by Irina Bokova the Director-General oUNESCO that aims ldquoto counter the propaganda o cultural cleans-ing and the destruction o cultural heritage to support Iraqi youthand to mobilise young people across the world or its protectionrdquo

See ldquoUnite4Heritage campaign launched by UNESCO Director-General in Baghdadrdquo March 28 2015 httpwhcunescoorgennews1254

4 For a critical view o ISISrsquos iconoclasm see Elliott Colla ldquoOn theIconoclasm o ISISrdquo httpwwwelliottcollacomblog201535on-the-iconoclasm-o-isis (accessed July 24 2015)

5 For a critical assessment o the political and ethical status o photog-raphy in the context o the Middle East see Azoulay 20126 See Christiane Gruber ldquoIgnored and Unreported Muslim Cartoon-

ists Are Poking Fun at ISISrdquo httpwwwnewsweekcomignored-and-unreported-muslim-cartoonists-are-poking-un-isis-332040(accessed July 25 2015)

7 See or example Sam Hardy ldquoIslamic State has toppled sledge-hammered and jackhammered (drilled out) arteacts in MosulMuseum and at Ninevehrdquo httpsconflictantiquitieswordpresscom20150226iraq-mosul-museum-nergal-gate-nineveh-de-struction (accessed July 14 2015)

References

Azoulay Ariella 2012 Te Civil Contract o Photography CambridgeMA Te MI Press Zone Books

Boal Iain A J Clark Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts 2008

Afflicted Powers Capital and Spectacle in a New Age o War Chicago Verso

Danti Michael D Matt revithick ate Paulette Allison CuneoKathryn Franklin and David Elitzer 2015 Syrian Herit-

age Initiative Weekly Report 33 March 23 2015 httpwwwasor-syrianheritageorgsyrian-heritage-initiative-weekly-re-port-33-march-23-2015 (accessed June 15 2015)

Ellenbogen Josh and Aaron ugendhaf eds 2011 Idol Anxiety Stan-ord CA Stanord University Press

Elsner Jaś 2003 Iconoclasm and the Preservation o Memory Pp209ndash32 in Monuments and Memory Made and Unmade Robert SNelson and Margaret Olin eds Te University o Chicago PressChicago and London

Finbarr Barry Flood 2002 Between Cult and Culture BamiyanIslamic Iconoclasm and the Museum Te Art Bulletin 844641ndash59

Hamed Massoud 2015 Te Islamic Statersquos Scorched Earth Policy inKobani Al-Monitor httpwwwal-monitorcompulseorigi-nals201506islamic-state-burn-agriculture-lands-kobani-syria

htmlixzz3dC0qMk00 (accessed June 15 2015)Harmanşah Oumlmuumlr and Christopher Witmore 2007 Te EndangeredFuture o the Past International Herald ribune December 21

2007 httpwwwihtcomarticles20071221opinionedwhit-morephp

Kersel Morag M 2012 he Value o a Looted Object ndash Stake-holder Perceptions in the Antiquities rade Pp 253ndash74 inhe Oxord Handbook o Public Archaeology John CarmanCarol McDavid and Robin Skeates eds Oxord OxordUniversity Press

Latour Bruno 2002 What is Iconoclash Or is Tere a World Beyondthe Image Wars Pp 14ndash37 in Iconoclash Image Wars in Science

Religion and Art Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel eds Cambridge

MA Te MI PressMoorey P R S 1994 Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries

Te Archaeological Evidence Oxord Clarendon Press

This content downloaded from 38 68 67 196 on Fri 11 Sep 2015 152552 UTC