Post-Conflict Virtual Recovery of the Architectural Heritage and the Religious History of Tell Nebi Yunus in Mosul, Iraq

The famous centuries-old Nebi Yunus Mausoleum in Mosul, Iraq, which according to local tradition contained the tomb of the Biblical and Qur'anic Prophet Jonah, was blown up on 24th July 2014 by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL members then tried to level to the ground what was left of the mausoleum by using bulldozers and found, by accident, the remains of a 7th-century-BC Late Assyrian palace under it. In an effort to find small objects of value, they systematically dug tunnels to loot the ancient building. In the past two years and within Heidelberg University’s archaeological project "Ausgrabungen im Alten Ninive", large parts of the tunnels have been documented in 3D using digital photogrammetry. Surprisingly, the georeferenced tunnel 3D scans once imported into a Geographic Information System (GIS) allow to precisely draw a floor plan of the ancient building – an inexcusable crime against Iraqi cultural heritage has led to a better understanding of a previously little known structure. But what else can we learn from the 3D models? Furthermore, the mound with its 2,700 years of partially known history, on which the mausoleum was built, is an example of a cultural heritage site which suffered from urban sprawl. By comparing R.A.F. aerial photographs from the 1920s with satellite images from the 1960s and UAV-based mapping from 2018, drastic changes in the physical appearance of this mound of ancient Nineveh become visible: First, the city of Mosul expanded after WWII, second, in the 1980s, then-president Saddam Hussein ordered a large-scale remodelling of the Nebi Yunus Mausoleum on top of the hill, which required old houses around it to be razed, third, the centuries-old place of worship itself and the Late Assyrian palace underneath were irreparably damaged by ISIL in 2014. How and to what degree of accuracy can this architectural heritage from different time periods be recovered? The thesis provides insights into how historical accounts, historical photographs, maps, paintings and engravings, digital photogrammetric scans can be used to virtually recover Tell Nebi Yunus as a multi-temporal virtual 3D reconstruction and to present it as a case of cultural dynamics.