Conservators in Berlin piece together the Tell Halaf fragments over 60 years after they were damaged by Allied bombs. A group of 30 monumental sculptures from Tell Halaf, in Syria, have been reconstructed after being pulverised into 25,000 fragments in a bombing raid in World War II. Dating from soon after 1000 BC, the basalt statues were on display in Berlin until a combination of fire and water caused devastating damage.Following the war, there were legal and political problems in even considering restoration. Although the reunification of Germany in 1990 eased the difficulties, conservators initially feared that reconstruction of the sculptures would be impossible. However, the painstaking work eventually began in 2002 and is finally nearing completion.Tell Halaf lies in north-east Syria, close to the Turkish border and is now a Kurdish region. The site’s origins date back to 6000 BC, in late Neolithic times, but arguably the most important remains are those of the Aramaean civilisation, in the tenth century BC.In 1899 Tell Halaf was discovered by Baron Max von Oppenheim, a German diplomat based in Cairo. He later sought permission from the Ottoman authorities to excavate the site between 1911 and 1913. Work was interrupted by World War I, and his final dig took place in 1927. [...]