Syria, Ain Dara temple destroyed by Turkish air force attack

The Hittite temple of Ain Dara in Syria has been destroyed by a Turkish air force attack on Kurdish positions. This is a huge loss: the temple is in fact of ancient origin, and was active between 1300 B.C. and 740 B.C. It was one of the few surviving vestiges of Ain Dara, an ancient site dating back three thousand years. The temple was notable for its large lion carvings but also for its resemblance to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem (and since Solomon’s Temple was destroyed without trace, temples such as Ain Dara are important for understanding what the Jerusalemite temple looked like). The building was reportedly destroyed last Friday, and the news was released by the Syrian Ministry of Culture.

TheSyrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that some structures would still be standing, but half of the temple has been lost: the devastation is estimated to affect at least 60 percent of the temple. The temple at Ain Dara, an important edifice of the Hittite kingdom, the civilization that developed in present-day Turkey, was dedicated to the goddess Ishtar (or her Hittite counterpart Shaushka), the goddess of love in Babylonian mythology, and was richly decorated, many of which had been preserved in all their grandeur. The site was also known for the gigantic footprints carved into the floor, which, according to archaeologists, had been made as a symbol of the deity’s passage to earth: moreover, as archaeologists explain, this was a unique case.

The destruction of Ain Dara adds to the long and sad list of sites irreparably ruined or heavily damaged during the Syrian civil war, from the Old City of Aleppo to the antiquities of Palmyra.

In the large image, the temple before the destructions(credit), in the small photo (by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) the rubble after the Turkish attack.

Syria, Ain Dara temple destroyed by Turkish air force attack

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