The inscriptions, located at the Faida site, have been discovered in recent years by a mission involving Italian archaeologists from the University of Udine and their counterparts from the Kurdistan region.
The bas-reliefs date back to the reigns of the Assyrian king Sargon II (721-705 BC) and his son and successor Sennacherib.
Amidst a mountainous and rocky landscape, an official opening ceremony was organized on Sunday in the presence of the Governor of Dohuk, in Autonomous Kurdistan, and the Italian Ambassador to Iraq, Maurizio Greganti.
For now, access to the park will be “limited to foreign tourists… researchers and experts,” said Bekas Brefkany of the Dohuk antiquities general directorate.
The site contains a ten kilometer irrigation canal in length dating from the Assyrian period.
Thirteen monumental bas-reliefs carved into its walls have been discovered to date. “Perhaps more panels will be discovered in the future,” Bekas Brefkany said.
The bas-reliefs would have been commissioned by Sargon II or by Sennacherib, Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Italian co-director of the archaeological mission, explained in 2021 to AFP.
Each part of the bas-relief represents an Assyrian king praying before the seven most important divinities of the Assyrian pantheon, represented as statues.
King of Assyria in the 8th century BC, Sargon II established his capital in northern Iraqin the current Nineveh Plain, near Mosul.
The Faida site is the first of a total of five similar parks that the Kurdistan authorities want to create. In the long term, the project will be “a tourist attraction and a source of income,” Brefkany told AFP.
Iraq is the cradle of the civilizations of Sumer, Acad, Babylon and Assyriato which humanity owes writing and the first cities.
But the country has suffered from the looting of its antiquities for decades, especially after the US invasion in 2003 and the arrival of the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group ten years later. After decades of conflict, the country is tentatively opening up to tourism.
The entrance Archaeological site from 2,700 years ago discovered was first published in diary TODAY.
