Together they saw the


Revered for her suspenseful writing style and famous characterizations, newly uncovered photography reveals another talent of the British storyteller Agatha Christie.

Each year she accompanied her second husband Max Mallowan, a respected archaeologist, to his annual digs.

Throughout the 1950's, she captured breathtaking images of what they discovered, including the recovery of Iraq's lost city of Nimrud.

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Christie captured breathtaking images of what she and her husband discovered, including the famous statue of lamassu

Every winter, according to her grandson Mathew Prichard, 'they disappeared into Iraq or Syria and returned in May or June. To her it was just as important as writing.

'Her role, and she was quite old-fashioned about this ... Her role in the 1950's was to go on these digs with her husband and help him with the photography and dealings with the local labor force,' he said.

Among Mallowan's finds were a series of ivories, including one of a woman's face dubbed the Mona Lisa of Nimrud, which was extracted with great difficulty from a muddy well.

Mallowan built his career on digs in the 1950's in Nimrud, which survived 3,000 years only to be blown into rubble by Islamic State group conquerors last year. Christie, then in her 60s, was there to document his work, in photo and film

Another viewpoint of the Iamassu sculpture, captured by Christie in 1949, shows the figure which guarded the royal court from evil at the ancient site of Nimrud

Agatha Christie captured breathtaking images of her husband's archaeological digs throughout the 1950's

'She spent hours drying it and cleaning it off, with her face cream,' said Georgina Herrmann, a British archaeologist who worked there with Mallowan.

Other ivories were discovered smashed, and Christie delighted in assembling them, Herrmann said.

'Agatha was a passionate solver of jigsaw puzzles and crossword puzzles. She laid all these pieces out — there must have been hundreds of them — and put them together.'

She created the photos by painstakingly filtering water from the nearby Tigris River.

Besides the impressive structures photographed by Christie, archaeologists also uncovered a number of spectacular artifacts, including tombs of queens which contained jewelry and gold, and stone tablets inscribed with treaties and temple records.

Mallowan built his career on digs in the 1950's in Nimrud, which survived 3,000 years only to be blown into rubble by Islamic State group conquerors last year. Christie, then in her 60s, was there to document his work, in photo and film.

Iraqi archaeologists also found the skeletons of more than 100 bodies, some still shackled and bound - possible the remains of prisoners dumped on the site when the city was sacked in 610 BC.

A winged genie is depicted standing in front of a tree of life in the Palace of Assurnasipal II - taken by Christie in 1950

Every winter, according to her grandson Mathew Prichard, 'they disappeared into Iraq or Syria and returned in May or June. To her it was just as important as writing'

This Christie image shows two the two Assyrian winged bull deities of Iamassu from the front leading to the palace entrance

Christie had a well-documented interest in Middle Eastern culture, illustrated by her novels such as 'Death on the Nile' and 'Murder in Mesopotamia'.

Her non-fiction book 'Come Tell Me How You Live,' about a series of digs in Syria in the 1940's, is testament to her love for adventure, travel and the ancient sites of civilization.

'Inshallah, I shall go there again, and the things that I love shall not have perished from this earth,' she wrote in conclusion in 1944.

This picture, taken by the U.S. Army in 2008, shows the statues of the lamassu, the winged, human-headed bulls that stood at the gates of the palace

Christie and Mallowan would likely be heartbroken to learn of what the once great city has now become, many of the structures they worked tirelessly to unearth destroyed at the hands of ISIS.

'To say they would have thought it was a tragedy is an understatement,' grandson Mathew Prichard continued.

'If my grandparents could somehow be alive again and see the newspapers for a week, they would not have recognized the places where they had been and lived and worked.'

Islamic State fighters took over the site near the city of Mosul in 2014, and in 2015 smashed the winged bulls guarding the entrance and blew up the Northwest Palace where Mallowan made his most significant discoveries. The site, though liberated last month from the extremists, is reduced to rubble, largely unguarded and vulnerable to looters.

The remains of a large stone figure of a lamassu, an Assyrian winged bull deity, are piled near the gates of the ancient palace where they once stood in Nimrud

Little is being done to protect the site, with the restoration of ancient artifacts the least of concerns for residents and soldiers in the area - who fight just to survive every day.

There is no one assigned to protect the historic creations, which lie on a 900 acre dirt plateau which was once a step-pyramid, but now is reduced to mounds of dirt and splintered rock.

The desecration of Nimrud has been a purposeful move by ISIS to eradicate any evidence of paganism in the country, according to The Independent.

The militant group released a high-resolution propaganda video bragging of their destruction - then tore apart the winged bulls known as Iamassu, and stole the bearded heads on the statue, likely selling them on the black market. The entirety of the site was then rigged with explosives and blown to pieces.

Hermmann continued: 'It's just one of the most beautiful sites in the Middle East, or at least it was.'