Mosul who jostle there: Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, Iraqi Turkmens, Armenians, Yazidi, Mandeans, Romani and Shabaks. The Mosul Museum contains many interesting finds from the ancient sites of the old Assyrian capital cities Nineveh and Nimrud. The Mosul Museum is a beautiful old building, around a courtyard and with an impressive façade of Mosul marble containing displays of Mosul life depicted in tableau form. Recently, On February 26, 2015, IS militants destroyed the ancient Assyrian artifacts of the museum. The English writer Agatha Christie lived in Mosul whilst her second husband, Max Mallowan, an archaeologist, was involved in
Nimrud assigned to Nabu, the god of writing and the arts, and as extensive fortifications. Nimrud has been one of the main sources of Assyrian sculpture, including the famous palace reliefs. Layard discovered more than half a dozen pairs of colossal guardian figures guarding palace entrances and doorways. These are "lamassu", statues with a male human head, the body of a lion or bull, and wings. They have heads carved in the round, but the body at the side is in relief. They weigh up to . In 1847 Layard brought two of the colossi weighing each including one lion and