Footnote

a In November 2002, before the war in Iraq, Professor Dan Cruickshank visited the region. He reported on BBC television: “On the edge of Mosul stands the vast ruined city of Nineveh, which​—along with Nimrud . . . was enthusiastically excavated by British archaeologists from the 1840s onwards. . . . The exploration of these Assyrian cities meant no less than the discovery of a long lost​—almost mythical—​civilisation that was known only from brief, enigmatic and far from flattering descriptions in the Bible.”