British Museum Department of the Middle East group of stone reliefs from the excavations of Max von Oppenheim at Tell Halaf that was purchased in 1920. More material followed from the excavations of Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in 1935–1938 and from Woolley at Alalakh in the years just before and after the Second World War. Mallowan returned with his wife Agatha Christie to carry out further digs at Nimrud in the postwar period which secured many important artefacts for the museum. The collection of Palestinian material was strengthened by the work of Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho in the 1950s and the acquisition in
Assyrian independence movement Circassian and Chechen militias proceeded to massacre tens of thousands of Assyrians in the Hakkari mountains of ancient Assyria (upper Mesopotamia, present-day southeastern Turkey) prior to any alliance between the Assyrians and the British or Russians. Following the unprovoked massacres of tens of thousands of unarmed Assyrian civilians by the Ottoman Turkish Army and their allies, the Patriarch of the Assyrians, Mar Shimun XIX Benjamin, declared war on the Ottomans on behalf of the Assyrian nation. The Assyrian army under General Dawid, the patriarch's brother, led the Assyrians in a successful breaking of an encircling Ottoman army maneuver, and across