ANTIQUITIES OF RAQQA

Client  Raqqa Museum

A part of a larger project engage with visitors to Raqqa Museum. After ISIS took over Raqqa, the museum's 6000 pieces on display were destroyed, sold or damaged beyond repair. The museum is now undergoing renovation and these are illustrations of a few of the damaged and stolen artifacts used to show how these artifacts once looked in the museum.

Since the archives were also destroyed the project was a big research mission to find to match elements and motifs in the missing and vandalised artifacts and to try and show the original craftsmen's work.

The artifacts include a tablet of the Goddess Ishtar, the Syrian goddess of fertility, love and war, a large mosaic panels depicting an ox and cypress tree and a line that symbolises the Euphrates river, a wandering gazelle with plants native to the banks of the Euphrates river, an Euphrates lion which is a rare depiction of an extinct animal.