A five-year training program for Iraqi archaeologists will start at the British Museum. The aim is for them to learn the latest technology in order to rebuild Iraqi cultural heritage destroyed by the terrorist group IS (ISIS/ISIL).

Several cities in Iraq, for example, Nineveh, Nimrud, and Hatra, IS have devastated thousands of years of ancient monuments.

The British Museum now hope that their training program, which includes 50 Iraqi archaeologists and funded by the British Ministry of Culture, will provide them additional knowledge how to identify and in the future even rebuild Iraq’s unique world heritage cities.

Archaeologists with extensive field experience in Iraq will lead the program, which will run for six months. They will train Iraqis in techniques including 3-D scanning, emergency retrieval techniques, forensic collection and documentation techniques, together with conservation and restoration techniques, the British Museum said in a statement.

A museum spokeswoman said the program, which has been awarded a 3 million-pound grant from the U.K. government, would help Iraq to document the damage and start the process of reconstruction and preservation.

_____________
British Museum to work with experts from Iraq to set up Emergency Heritage Management programme
__________________________