In recent years the dominant discussion around Iraq’s cultural heritage has focused on ISIS’s deliberate destruction of ancient sites, yet since the start of the protests in Baghdad in October 2019, the use of Iraq’s ancient archaeological sites and artifacts in protest art requires us to revisit initial assessments. Immediately following ISIS’ destruction of cultural heritage sites in Iraq and Syria, archaeologists and others offered a wide range of explanations about the destruction. In much of this literature ISIS’ destructive acts were identified as performances of strength for both internal and external audiences at local and international levels. In other scholarly works the destruction was interpreted as a rejection of the West, the nation-state, secular nationalism, or a rebuttal against colonialism. Additional academic approaches portrayed the destruction as a performative act in the jihadi initiation process or a reenactment linking to earlier iconoclasm. Each of these attempts at an explanation provides a helpful perspective on the destruction, but the complexities of the symbolic use of Iraq’s ancient heritage are now, in retrospect, effectively viewed through the lens of the 2019 protest art in, and inspired by, Tahrir square. Iraq’s ancient heritage is incorporated into protest art as pan-Iraqi and non-sectarian symbols matching the 2019 protest movement’s written messaging and use of the national flag. As symbols of Iraq’s pluralism and diversity in both modern and ancient times, Iraq’s ancient heritage is highlighted in this protest art for the same reason that ISIS sought to destroy it. This paper details examples of ancient heritage in Iraq’s protest art juxtaposed with the convolutions of ISIS’s destruction to illustrate the connection to ancient sites and artifacts in Iraq and resilience in the face of heritage erasure.