RecoVR Mosul: A collective reconstruction

For the first time ever, the general public will be able to explore historical sites and artefacts from Iraq’s Mosul Museum, which was destroyed by the Islamic State (IS), through virtual reality (VR). The Economist has teamed up with Project Mosul, a group dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage, to launch an initiative called RecoVR Mosul: A collective reconstruction which will be part of the Learning Technologies Exhibition, in Olympia Central in London. The VR experience involves crowd-sourced imagery to digitally reconstruct the heritage that has been destroyed from the Museum.

Viewers at the exhibition will be provided VR headsets to showcase the antiquities from Mosul which include:

• Mihrab of the Mosque Al Hasan: The Lion of Mosul
• Lamassus
• Box Tomb: The box of Yahya Bin Al-Kassim tomb (shrine) in Mosul, made of teak wood with botanical ornament and Arabic inscriptions
• Nirgul Tablet: The beauty goddess of Hatra (Atara’ta)
• Incense table with God Nirgul
• Sculpture from the ancient city of Hatra
• Nimrud wall frieze
• Hatrene Priest: A priest of Hatra

This vividly realistic experience of seeing centuries of heritage will be accompanied by a voiceover that takes the visitor through years of history.

According to archaeologists, Iraq’s northern city of Mosul had the majority of the country’s archaeological wealth, with over 3,500 sites of significance. This attack is just one example of how thousands of years of history can be lost in a second.

RecoVR Mosul aims to draw attention to a wider issue. The justification for IS’ acts on culture has left scholars baffled but Iraqi archaeologists offer more mercenary explanations. According to an archaeologist in Mosul, the jihadists attacking Mosul did not show the destruction of its most precious artefacts because they had already been smuggled abroad, the others were smashed on camera for publicity purposes. So rampant is the racketeering, says one Iraqi official, that antiquities trafficking is now a major source of IS revenue.