June Ishtar Jako has a master's degree in research from Macquarie University and spends a lot of time excavating at digs, especially in Nineveh, Northern Iraq.
Ms Jako said while the recent discovery of a 2700-year-old alabaster Lammasu statue was exciting, its head was dug up 30 years ago.
Lamassu are statues depicting creatures with human heads, eagle wings, and bodies resembling either bulls or lions that were thought to protect cities in Mesopotamia.
Pascal Butterlin, the leader of the French team which unearthed the statue's body, said the 18-tonne sculpture measured 3.8 by 3.9 metres.
He said the statue would have been erected at the entrance to the ancient city of Khorsabad, some 15 kilometres north of the modern city of Mosul, during the reign of King Sargon II (722 BCE to 705 BCE).
Not a 'new discovery'
However, Ms Jako said she believed the entire statue was discovered at the same time as the head - in 1993 - but that the body was re-buried to protect it from aggressors, both ruling and rampaging through, Iraq.
According to Mrs Jako, due to political instability in Iraq at that time under Saddam Hussein's rule, smugglers initially tried to take the head out of the country.
Luckily, the head was found at the Iraq-Syria border, and the smugglers were apprehended by the authorities, she added.
On her recent trip to Iraq, Ms Jako (R) was invited by a Heidelberg University team to explore the work carried out on the site of Nabi Yunus. Credit: June Jacob
She said the Iraqi government was currently deciding what to do with the statue as the museum wasn't able to accept it at present.
