More bad news

This is a re-worked version of a photograph that I took some 7 years ago. Against the rules I know but I feel it important to record the context in my journal.

This huge and splendid lion was hewn out of the solid basalt some 3500 years ago. It stood at the approach to the Neo-Hittite temple of Ishtar at Ain Dara in northern Syria, near to the Turkish border. The basalt temple, itself surrounded by a monumental frieze of winged lions and sphinxes, sits on top of a mighty tell rising over 30 metres above the plain below. 

A few days ago the temple was almost completely destroyed by a Turkish air strike against the Kurds. What an insane world we do occupy.