The Iraq War & Archaeology Archive 1

The Iraq War & Archaeology
Reviewed Articles Archive One: First 1/2 of April 2003

This is the first archive of the reviewed articles of The Iraq War & Archaeology web site.

Francis Deblauwe, Ph.D.

The articles and other information are listed chronologically, most recent first.

Archive Seventy-Five: May 2006
Archive Seventy-Four: 2nd 1/2 of April 2006
Archive Seventy-Three: 1st 1/2 of April 2006
Archive Seventy-Two: 2nd 1/2 of March 2006
Archive Seventy-One: 1st 1/2 of March 2006
Archive Seventy: 2nd 1/2 of February 2006
Archive Sixty-Nine: 1st 1/2 of February 2006
Archive Sixty-Eight: 2nd 1/2 of January 2006
Archive Sixty-Seven: 1st 1/2 of January 2006
Archive Sixty-Six: 2nd 1/2 of December 2005
Archive Sixty-Five: 1st 1/2 of December 2005
Archive Sixty-Four: 2nd 1/2 of November 2005
Archive Sixty-Three: 1st 1/2 of November 2005
Archive Sixty-Two: 2nd 1/2 of October 2005
Archive Sixty-One: 1st 1/2 of October 2005
Archive Sixty: 2nd 1/2 of September 2005
Archive Fifty-Nine: 1st 1/2 of September 2005
Archive Fifty-Eight: 2nd 1/2 of August 2005
Archive Fifty-Seven: 1st 1/2 of August 2005
Archive Fifty-Six: 2nd 1/2 of July 2005
Archive Fifty-Five: 1st 1/2 of July 2005
Archive Fifty-Four: 2nd 1/2 of June 2005
Archive Fifty-Three: 1st 1/2 of June 2005
Archive Fifty-Two: 2nd 1/2 of May 2005
Archive Fifty-One: 1st 1/2 of May 2005
Archive Fifty: 2nd 1/2 of April 2005
Archive Forty-Nine: 1st 1/2 of April 2005
Archive Forty-Eight: 2nd 1/2 of March 2005
Archive Forty-Seven: 1st 1/2 of March 2005
Archive Forty-Six: 2nd 1/2 of February 2005
Archive Forty-Five: 1st 1/2 of February 2005
Archive Forty-Four: 2nd 1/2 of January 2005
Archive Forty-Three: 1st 1/2 of January 2005
Archive Forty-Two: 2nd 1/2 of December 2004
Archive Forty-One: 1st 1/2 of December 2004
Archive Forty: 2nd 1/2 of November 2004
Archive Thirty-Nine: 1st 1/2 of November 2004
Archive Thirty-Eight: 2nd 1/2 of October 2004
Archive Thirty-Seven: 1st 1/2 of October 2004
Archive Thirty-Six: 2nd 1/2 of September 2004
Archive Thirty-Five: 1st 1/2 of September 2004
Archive Thirty-Four: 2nd 1/2 of August 2004
Archive Thirty-Three: 1st 1/2 of August 2004
Archive Thirty-Two: 2nd 1/2 of July 2004
Archive Thirty-One: 1st 1/2 of July 2004
Archive Thirty: 2nd 1/2 of June 2004
Archive Twenty-Nine: 1st 1/2 of June 2004
Archive Twenty-Eight: 2nd 1/2 of May 2004
Archive Twenty-Seven: 1st 1/2 of May 2004
Archive Twenty-Six: 2nd 1/2 of April 2004
Archive Twenty-Five: 1st 1/2 of April 2004
Archive Twenty-Four: 2nd 1/2 of March 2004
Archive Twenty-Three: 1st 1/2 of March 2004
Archive Twenty-Two: 2nd 1/2 of February 2004
Archive Twenty-One: 1st 1/2 of February 2004
Archive Twenty: 2nd 1/2 of January 2004
Archive Nineteen: 1st 1/2 of January 2004
Archive Eighteen: 2nd 1/2 of December 2003
Archive Seventeen: 1st 1/2 of December 2003
Archive Sixteen: 2nd 1/2 of November 2003
Archive Fifteen: 1st 1/2 of November 2003
Archive Fourteen: 2nd 1/2 of October 2003
Archive Thirteen: 1st 1/2 of October 2003
Archive Twelve: 2nd 1/2 of September 2003
Archive Eleven: 1st 1/2 of September 2003
Archive Ten: 2nd 1/2 of August 2003
Archive Nine: 1st 1/2 of August 2003
Archive Eight: 2nd 1/2 of July 2003
Archive Seven: 1st 1/2 of July 2003
Archive Six: 2nd 1/2 of June 2003
Archive Five: 1st 1/2 of June 2003
Archive Four: 2nd 1/2 of May 2003
Archive Three: 1st 1/2 of May 2003
Archive Two: 2nd 1/2 of April 2003
Archive One: 1st 1/2 of April 2003
Archive Zero: through the 2nd 1/2 of March 2003

Almost all are accessible for free (or after a free registration) on the internet. Each time, I try to draw attention to the most relevant tidbits of information, esp. things that were not mentioned before; occasionally, I provide some comment. The usual warning applies: many links become defective with time. Inclusion in the list does not in any way mean that I necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in an article. But for a few exceptions, the occasional photos and figures accompanying reviewed articles are just hotlinked images on other web sites, in other words: do not download them or request permission to publish them from me, for I do not own the copyright to them in any way! Please do contact the rightful owners if you would like to use them for publication purposes. Finally, for the sake of convenience, all articles and so on are assumed to have been published on US web sites unless indicated otherwise.

C. Mus, "Kunstroof Bagdad," in RTL 4 (the Netherlands), online video, April 15, 2003: interview with Dr. Donny George, scenes from the Museum after the looting but before the US military started protecting it; voice-over said that it was not yet known how many artifacts were looted; Saddam Hussein had ordered shortly before the war to put a part of the collection in safety and nobody knew where those were [interesting how this Dutch report got some important facts pretty much correct right away (2-24-04)]
A. Belida, "Rumsfeld Dismisses Criticism about Iraqi Museum Looting," in Voice of America News, with online audio and transcript, April 15, 2003: "'I would suspect that over time we'll find that a number of things were in fact hidden prior to the conflict,' he said. 'That's what most people <...> who run museums do prior to a conflict which was obviously well telegraphed in advance.'" [at least in this regard he may have been more correct than thought at the time]
O. Rothenborg, "What the Most Incisive War Correspondents and Critics of the Mainstream Media Fail to Mention. US Forces Deliberately Encouraged the Looting," in Centre for Research on Globalisation (Canada), April 15, 2003, translation from the Swedish by K. Rasmusson, originally published in Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), April 11, 2003: "Khaled Bayomi departed from Malmoe, Sweden to Baghdad, as a human shield, and arrived on the same day the fighting began." "... in a worn-down area just beyond the Haifa Avenue, on the west bank of the Tigris River. It was April 8 ... four American tanks pulled up in position on the outskirts of the slum area. From these tanks we heard anxious calls in Arabic, which told the population to come closer. ... US sold[i]ers shot two Sudanese guards, who were posted in front of a local administrative building, ... Then they shot the building entrance to pieces, and their Arabic translators in the tanks told people to run for grabs inside the building. ... I was standing in a big crowd of civilians that saw all this together with me. They did not take any part in the looting, but were to[o] afraid to take any action against it. Many of them had tears of shame in their eyes. The next morning looting spread to the Museum of Modern Art, which lies another 500 meters to the north. There was also two crowds in place, one that was looting and another one that disgracefully saw it happen. ... The lack of scenes of joy had the US forces in need of images on Iraqi's [sic] who in different ways demonstrated their disgust with Saddam's regime." [is this account believable? I don't know; anyway, it doesn't speak to the National Museum as such]
M. Bailey, "US Officer Warned That There Was a Risk the Museum Would Be Looted," in The Art Newspaper (UK), [mid April 2003]: "... no one seems to have foreseen the risk of urban rioting and looting." [not true: archaeologists had told anyone who would listen at the Pentagon and the State Department]; "Early this year, an agreement had been signed between Iraq and Italy to catalogue and computerise the collections, including all the material in store. This project was to be conducted by the Centre for Archaeological Research and Excavations in Turin which has been working in Iraq under Giorgio Gullini since 1964. Under the aegis of the Italian ministry of culture, there was a plan to expand the museum and create an advanced conservation centre." "The art trade worldwide should impose a voluntary moratorium on handling all Iraqi antiquities, and collectors should refuse to buy them. With a dwindling market and low prices, looters will find it more difficult to sell their booty." [the question then of course what will happen to those pieces that don't find a buyer: will they be dumped and/or destroyed?]; "Measures must be taken to prevent US and UK soldiers from returning home with antiquities [already, a Fox News employee has been caught stealing paintings]. Wherever possible, dealers and collectors should photograph and record Iraqi antiquities which are offered to them for sale." "Each object from the National Museum has an inventory number, prefixed by the letters 'IM' (Iraq Museum). The numbers, in black ink, run from 1 to 170,000, so most will be five or six digits. Many objects also have a separate excavation number, prefixed by a short code (for instance, 'ND' means Nimrud) and the year of the dig. Obviously these numbers may now be cleaned off or obscured." "[ACCP]'s treasurer, William Pearlstein, was later quoted in the US magazine Science as describing Iraq’s laws as 'retentionist', and he wanted to see 'some objects certified for export.'” "[ACCP] president Ashton Hawkins told The Art Newspaper that what Mr Pearlstein had done was to voice his personal opinion ..." "Changes to the present law of 1936 (amended in 1974-75) would in any case be impossible before the establishment of a new democratically elected government." "Nevertheless, the fact that Metropolitan Museum director Mr de Montebello is now suggesting that international museums should participate in new archaeological excavations and receive export licences suggest that Mr Pearlstein’s views would enjoy some support."
Ph. Kennicott, "Images of War. In Broken Baghdad, Photo Negatives," in Washington Post, April 15, 2003: "Hold two pictures in the balance: a 12-year-old boy whose arms have been blown off, and a museum official walking through the looted National Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad." "Both images, and the degree to which they are less present here [in the US] than elsewhere [e.g., in the UK], suggest a darker side of American pragmatism."; heart-breaking photo: "Nabhal Amin, deputy director of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities, discovers the losses and damage done by looters to its ancient holdings. (Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)"
G. Edgers, "Treasure Hunt. For Antiquities Experts, the Chase Is On to Recover the Relics Looted from Iraq's National Museum," in The Boston Globe, April 15, 2003: "Russell estimates that 80 to 95 percent of what is sold on the antiquities market is stolen."

"Tue Apr 15,12:57 PM ET - A [Baghdad] museum employee tries to salvage the pieces after looters ransacked the place. In northern Iraq ( news -web sites ), villagers take up arms against reportedly Kurdish looters.(AFP/File/Cris Bouroncle)" [Yahoo News Photos]

R. Brenneman, "Scholars Decry Iraqi Looting," in Berkeley Daily Planet, April 15, 2003: "In response, David Stronach, a UC Berkeley professor of Near Eastern studies, has called a public meeting for Wednesday to address the war’s impact on Iraq’s rich archaeological heritage." "Stronach will discuss Iraq’s archaeological heritage and the impact of recent events. Marian Feldman, professor of archaeology and art history, will discuss endangered sites in Southern Iraq and artifacts lost in the museum looting. Neik [sic] Veldhuis, professor of Assyriology, will talk about looted artifacts from the last Gulf War and the impact of the loss of written records from the Baghdad museum."
B. Arnoldy, "The History of Ur," in The Christian Science Monitor, April 15, 2003: "The Iraqi government once ran a fairly professional archaeological operation, says archeologist Francis Deblauwe. But any provisional government will have its hands full, he says. 'They're going to have so many problems with enforcement,' he says. 'The black market will grow.'" The paper called me on April 9 or 10 and we had an interesting talk. Naturally, the journalist compressed my opinions so I'd like to clarify a little. What I meant was that it remains to be seen whether the new government will budget much if any money/people for the continuation of the Dept. of Antiquities, the maintenance of major archaeological sites, the protection of archaeological sites in general, the interdiction of antiquities smuggling, etc. Our talk took place before the plunder of the National Museum in Baghdad which at the same time proved that the US was not really committed to do too much regarding antiquities and might shame the US into doing more from now on
J. Manier, "U. of C. Pleads for Iraq Artifacts. Efforts Under Way to Save Treasures," in Chicago Tribune, April 15, 2003: "Students at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute ... were scanning photographs from old Iraqi museum catalogs to alert border guards and art dealers to artifacts from the National Museum of Iraq." "Researchers fear that means some sophisticated looters already had wealthy buyers lined up for the most precious artifacts." "Gibson noted ruefully that the U.S. military assigned men to chip away the disrespectful mural of former President George Bush on the floor of the Al Rashid Hotel, yet failed to save the matchless legacy of the museum. Several archeologists said the U.S. failure to prevent looting violates at least the spirit of the 1956 Hague Convention, which calls for special measures in wartime to preserve places and artifacts of cultural significance."
D. Aaronovitch, "Is This Plundering Really So Bad?," in The Guardian (UK), April 15, 2003: "I've been doing this for the past couple of years, bringing a child or two to the sleepovers organised by the Young Friends of the British Museum. ... On my second visit a friend of my daughter's (a real London boy) celebrated our privileged access to the Greek gods by bringing along a metal tape measure, and ostentatiously measuring all the marble penises he could find. Different aspects of the past affect people in different ways." "There is a lot of sentimentality attached to archaeology by outsiders. I feel it myself. But not all artefacts are priceless, irreplaceable or beyond value, and not all sites have to be excavated." "What stops us learning more about the past is not so much the loss of sites to the scourges of progress and industrialisation, but a lack of money to invest in the people and techniques necessary to investigate them. It is nearly impossible to make a living as an archaeologist [all too true!], and harder still to fund the excavation of new sites [hear, hear!]."

Photo: "A shattered visage lies ... A broken sculpture lies on the floor of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad on April 15, after days of looting." [MSNBC]
Photo: "Painful loss. Iraqi National Museum Deputy Director Mushin Hasan holds his head in his hands as he sits on destroyed artifacts on April 13" [MSNBC]

Association of Art Museum Directors, "Statement on Baghdad Museum," online press release, April 15, 2003: "The AAMD will provide links to information about stolen works on its website, www.aamd.org."
J. Clancy, "On the Scene. Jim Clancy: Museum 'Shattered' by Looters," in CNN.com, April 15, 2003: "... some of the items were taken <by art and cultural> professionals. Among other things they found were glass cutters that they said are not sold in Iraq."; rumors that US marines were involved in the looting are absolutely false; Dr. Donny George, the Director of Antiquities: "Three days ago, me and <the> chairman of the State Board of Antiquities went to the headquarters of the Marines in the Palestine Hotel. We waited there for about four hours until we met a colonel . And that day, he promised that he will send armored cars to protect what's left of the museum. That was three days ago. But until now, nobody came." "... last night we heard that <Secretary of State Colin> Powell said that we will protect the museum. And I was expecting this morning to come and see some of the armored cars here. But nobody is here."; "One of the things that was taken was a bronze bust dating back about 7,000 years. It weighed hundreds of kilograms and was taken off the second floor. The curators say no normal looters did that."
L. Harris and J. Clancy, "CNN Live Today. Looting Destroys Prehistoric Iraqi Treasures," in CNN.com, April 15, 2003: "... at least some of those who broke in, or tried to break in here, knew exactly what they wanted to plunder ..." "the thieves passed over duplicates of Iraqi treasures now on display in other museums -- like the Louvre -- but hauled away priceless originals weighing, sometimes, hundreds of pounds." "... they had pleaded with [UNESCO] to come, to monitor the situation, to have observers at the museum during the conflict. And it was described as cowardess, by some of the museum officials, saying they simply did not respond"

Photo: "National Museum in Baghdad. An Iraqi guard holds a shredded carpet amid the mess left in the museum by the looters. AFP Photo" [mid-April, 2003][Boston Globe]
Photo: "National Museum in Baghdad. Iraqi guards walk over the mess of papers and furniture left in disarray by the looters. AFP Photo" [mid-April, 2003][Boston Globe]

L.E.V. Nevaer, "How Iraq Can Recover Its Plundered Treasures. The Thousands of Priceless Artifacts Looted from Iraq's National Museum Following Saddam Hussein's Fall Can Be Recovered, Writes PNS Contributor Louis E.V. Nevaer -- But Coalition Forces and Iraqis Must Act Now," in Pacific News Service, online, April 15, 2003: positive example: in 1985, 140 priceless Maya, Aztec, Zapotec and Mixtec artifacts were stolen from Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology and History; UNESCO, Interpol and US and Canadian customs cooperated with Mexican officials to make sure that they did not leave the country; the New York-based International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), a registry for stolen art, compiled and distributed a catalog of the Mexican treasures; almost 4 years later, they were all recovered from a drug trafficker; ¤ negative example: when the Shah of Iran went into exile, he exproprieated thousands of art objects from the museums; the new Iranian government didn't wish to cooperate with any Western police services, didn't provide any info and in the end most of the pieces were never recovered; ¤ "In Baghdad today, important questions remain about the extent of the museum's loss. Initial reports by Mohsen Hassan, the museum's deputy curator, put the number of objects stolen at 'more than 170,000.' This is a remarkable number, particularly given that so many artifacts were said to be plundered in 'less than 48 hours.' Furthermore, officials at Iraq's Department of Antiquities spent six weeks before the start of the war removing thousands of the more valuable and important pieces for safekeeping. One Western scholar familiar with the museum says 'no more than 40,000 to 50,000 objects' were left in the museum's 28 galleries." "... 'people from slums' in the eastern district of Baghdad, whose residents expressed their rage at Saddam Hussein by looting anything in sight. They stole for vengeance, and, as order is restored, can be convinced to return the artifacts."
J. Coleman, "UNESCO, British Museum Move to Salvage Iraqi Treasure Trove," in The Boston Globe, April 15, 2003: "[UNESCO] said its team would study the conditions of museums and historical sites, identify ways of restoring them and find potential donors. UNESCO said the team would travel 'when conditions permit.' About 30 experts were to meet Thursday for an initial assessment at UNESCO headquarters in Paris." "... the tablets with Hammurabi's Code ... [i]t could not be immediately determined whether the tablets were at the museum when the war broke out" "... Baghdad's National Library with one of the oldest surviving copies of the Quran was set afire Monday." "The British Museum, which holds the greatest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq, has been criticized for failing to return antiquities taken from their homelands in the 18th and 19th centuries [of course, if they had been returned, they could be lost or destroyed now, but that's a whole other ball game; maybe the BM could return some now to replenish the holdings of the Baghdad sister museum?]."
W. Sommerfeld, M. Roaf and R. Eichmann, "Irak-Museum. Nur die Mongolen waren schlimmer. In Bagdad wurde das Irak-Museum geplündert – von dem einzigartigen Kulturerbe bleiben womöglich nur noch Bilder," in Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 15, 2003: Sommerfeld: the Museum's director is from Saddam Hussein's clan; security and climate control systems were not allowed due to the embargo as they were considered to have possible military uses too; that's why the most valuable, movable antiquities in the Museum were copies, originals in the vaults of the Central Bank; ¤ Roaf: the scale of the looting seems to point at organized antiquities smugglers and Western art dealers somehow having being involved, "I cannot judge whether US archaeologists have also been taking advantage of these plunderings" [does he know something I don't?]; the Code of Hammurabi mentioned in reports is just cuneiform tablet fragments on loan from the Louvre; most worried about the 2nd-cent.-BC Parthian sculptures from Hatra and the 2500-BC jewelry from the Royal tombs of Ur; ¤ Eichmann: we have photos of all finds from the German excavations in Uruk so we can help identify what's lost; we'll be going to Iraq ASAP to help out
G. Edgers, "His Expertise Plays Critical Role," in The Boston Globe, April 15, 2003: "John Malcolm Russell never meant to become an authority on stolen art. His work in Iraq, during several trips in the 1980s, was meant for the history books, as he set about documenting the palace of the ancient Assyrian king Sennacherib in Nineveh. The Gulf War changed everything, as Russell, 49, discovered that many of the priceless artifacts he had documented were looted after the conflict."
O. Burkeman, "Ancient Archive Lost in Baghdad Library Blaze," in The Guardian (UK), April 15, 2003: "... Mounir Bouchenaki, a deputy director-general of the UN cultural body Unesco, announced an emergency summit of archaeologists in Paris on Thursday." "... Colin Powell, the secretary of state, said the US 'will be working with a number of individuals and organisations to not only secure the facility, but to recover that which has been taken, and also to participate in restoring that which has been broken ... the United States understands its obligations and will be taking a leading role with respect to antiquities in general, but [the museum] in particular.' A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no plans had been made to protect antiquities from looters, as opposed to ensuring that historical sites were not caught up in the fighting itself." "The American Council for Cultural Policy, a New York-based coalition of about 60 collectors, dealers and others who lobby to allow trading in treasures stolen in Afghanistan and Iraq, had received 'no special treatment,' the official insisted ..."

"US Vows to Protect Iraqi antiquities, Repair Looted Museum," in Yahoo News, online, April 14, 2003: "'The United States will be working with a number of individuals and organizations to not only secure the facility [now that there's hardly anything left worth stealing], but to recover that which has been taken [it's that simple, really!] and also to participate in restoring that which has been broken [bring on the glue, Colin has some spare time],' Powell said."

Photo: "An Iraqi guard shows broken jars in the ransacked and looted Iraq ( news -web sites )'s largest archeological museum in Baghdad(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)" [Yahoo News Photos]
Photo: "A broken sarcophage is seen after looters ransacked and looted Iraq ( news -web sites )'s largest archeological museum in Baghdad(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)" [Yahoo! News Photos]

A. Garrels, "Looting Decimates Iraq Museum Collection," in All Things Considered (NPR), with online audio, April 14, 2003: interview with Donny George, Director of Research and Studies with the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage; they still have to check whether some items were elsewhere; Warka Vase almost certainly stolen
K. Makiya, "Kanan Makiya's War Diary," in The New Republic, online, April 14, 2003: "I spoke by sat-phone with friends in Baghdad. ... One friend told me that the looting of the National Museum--something that cut deeply into me--was the work of newly deposed Baathist officials, who had been selling off our patrimony as they saw their days were numbered. As the regime fell, these (ex-)Baathists went back for one last swindle, and took with them treasures that dated back 9,000 years, to the Sumerians and the Babylonians. One final crime perpetrated by Saddam's thugs."
A.N. Wilson, "Looters need a history lesson," in This Is London (UK), online, April 14, 2003: "The wanton destruction and looting of antiquities in Baghdad's national museum is a hideous consequence of this bloody war." "Saddam deliberately planted his arsenals of weaponry near to sites of historic importance - or in the case of Babylon, overbuilt and embellished them. ... the Americans and the RAF showed every willingness, should this be strategically necessary, to destroy the great Iraqi antiquities. And now the povertystricken Shia mob grabs and wrecks Greek statues, Sumerian pots and other irreplaceable treasures in a grotesquely violent Antiques Roadshow. Some will say: 'Oh, but these are, in the last resort, only 'things''. We'd rather smash off the arms of 100 statues than that a single baby should lose its little toe. This is a false dichotomy, I believe. Indeed, it is precisely because such a sentimental argument might form itself in a decadent mind that we could even begin to countenance this absurd war. The urge to classify, preserve and cherish objects from the past is not an instinct of the human race. Only at peaks of human civilisation have people venerated the past: during the era of Cicero, for example, when the cultivated Romans did their best to preserve the great Greek statuary. The Enlightenment in European history, the period when human beings tried to escape the dark, irrational superstitions and warfares of kings and priests, was also the time when museums began. People with the patience and learning to accumulate the great collections that now form our major galleries and museums in the West, and who dug up and preserved the Mesopotamian antiquities, did so with a humanistic wonder at the achievements of different cultures and ages. Of course there was a great element of cultural imperialism about the idea of museums. But as the collections formed, there was forced upon scholars and museum visitors a deep humility, too. We are not the only people to have walked this planet. Our way of viewing life is not the only way. To devalue or ignore our past is to trivialise not merely our history but ourselves. The wreckers - Yank-tanks and Shia looters - heedlessly know no people but themselves, no times but their own."
B. Marx, "Iraq's National Museum Looted," in WBUR News, with online audio, April 14, 2003: interview with Dr. Paul Zimansky (Boston U.): the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years; now lost tablets with new copy of epic of Gilgamesh; "a terrific black eye for the United States"
P. McGeough, "Rich Past Stripped as Future in Tatters," in The Sydney Morning Herald, April 14, 2003: "Every public building has been raided by the mobs and most of them torched, sometimes accidentally because of the use of the oil-soaked rags for light [I guess we should consider ourselves lucky the Museum wasn't burnt down too]." "Abdul Rakhman, the museum's 57-year-old live-in guard, was a gibbering wreck as he told of the arrival at the museum of a shouting crowd armed with axes and iron bars to smash the doors and display cases. 'They said there was no government; that everything belonged to them. There were women and children. They stuffed the pieces into bags and I couldn't talk because there were too many of them. So I stayed in my room. They were yelling that there was no government and no state and that they would do whatever they liked.' Just like Saddam Hussein, the guard admitted that in 10 years on the job he had never bothered to look at the museum's displays. And now that there was no Saddam and no museum collection? 'I'm a guard. I don't bother myself with stuff like that.' It did not matter that the looters were given a hand - the Fort Knox-like doors to the vaults must have been opened for them because they were unmarked. None of the museum staff was going to admit this, and the chances are - in this atmosphere of violence and fear - that whoever held the keys would have been slaughtered on the spot."

Photo: "Das Nationalmuseum als Scherbenhaufen" [the National Museum as a heap of sherds] [Der Standard (Austria), April 14, 2003]

"9:11-9:20 Over 170,000 Ancient Artifacts Have Been Destroyed or Stolen from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. We Will Go to Baghdad and Oxford to Talk About What Was Lost," in Democracy Now! (Pacifica Network), with online audio and summary info, April 14, 2003: 11 mins. into the 2nd hour, interview with a journalist in Baghdad: doors in the roof used by looters; high-security building with air-conditioning vents [contradicts another article which said that the Museum lacked adequate, modern security and climate-control systems due to the post-Gulf War embargo]; some items were too big to drag out, were tipped over and shattered on the floor; dr. Eleanor Robson (U. of Oxford) also interviewed: antiquities starting from 100,000 BC
F. Leach, "Looting Iraq's Heritage," in The Deep End (Radio National, Australia), with online audio, April 14, 2003: interview with Prof. Dan Potts
P. Michalowski, "The Ransacking of the Baghdad Museum Is a Disgrace," in History News Network, online, April 14, 2003: "The pillaging of the Baghdad Museum is a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Ufficci, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington DC had been wiped out in one fell swoop. Some compare the event to the burning of the Alexandria Library." "The looting of the museum is all the more tragic because so many of the objects were still unpublished." "In the years following the first Gulf War, ... [t]he antiquities service worked with few resources and was very much understaffed, since the country was impoverished by government policies and external sanctions. Therefore conservation efforts were inadequate and almost none of the newly discovered materials, including countless written records, were ever published. Thus the full extent of the loss may never be known." "The public reaction of our government officials has been shameful, to say the least. Rather than express remorse and horror at the looting of hospitals and cultural treasures, our secretary of defense has made merry at the site of looters carrying pottery and excused the plunder as 'untidiness.'"

"Looters Ransack Museum's Treasure," in The Australian, April 14, 2003: "Gordon Newby, a historian and professor of Middle Eastern studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said the museum's most famous holding may have been tablets with Hammurabi's Code - one of mankind's earliest codes of law [certainly, he didn't mean the famous copy of the Code which is a stela in the Louvre?]."

Photo: "Part of a sculpture lies among rubble in Iraq's National Museum / AFP"

W. Madsen, "Was Saddam Right? Are Americans the New Mongols of the Mideast?," in CounterPunch, online, April 14, 2003: "In 1248, the forces of the Mongol chieftain Hulagu Khan invaded Baghdad and laid waste to [Baghdad]" "Just consider how far the United States has sunk since the end of World War II. America launched the Safehaven Program to recover European art looted by the Nazis. Today, the United States aids and abets the looting of art and treasures thousands of years older than the European art it helped salvage some 60 years ago. In days past, U.S. military and intelligence, including the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, helped recover and restitute historical treasures looted by the likes of Hermann Goering and Alfred Rosenberg. American generals like Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and George Patton, Jr., personally oversaw the recovery and return of artwork seized by the Nazis."
J.J. Johnson, "When Civilized Nations Conduct Uncivilized Behavior," in The Sierra Times (Nevada), online, April 14, 2003: "As Rumsfeld claimed he had 'no idea' [about the Museum being looted], he damn well should have." "Spare me the 'it was too dangerous' line. We had no problem moving right in to protect oil wells, including many that were 'bobby [sic] trapped' according to reports. Nor did we have problems moving tanks into positions to safely administer the toppling statues in downtown Baghdad. I guess that was a higher priority."

D. Blair, "Thieves of Baghdad Rob Museums of Priceless Treasure," in The Daily Telegraph (UK), April 14, 2003

Photo: "Debris at the looted museum as 2,000-year-old sculptures lie broken on the floor"

A. Gumbel and D. Keys, "US Blamed for Failure to Stop Sacking of Museum," in The Independent (UK), April 14, 2003: "... the only building US forces seemed genuinely interested in protecting was the Ministry of Oil." "In terms of pure volume of illicit traffic, the smaller, often unpublished items such as coins, cylinder seals, cuneiform tablets, pottery, figurines, flint tools and bronze weapons are likely to dominate sectors of the antiquities market. They will probably end up at the art markets of Paris, via Jordan, Israel, and Switzerland, New York, London and Tokyo. Their value, in total, could quite conceivably run to billions of pounds – with the profits lining the pockets of the more unscrupulous of the European and North American-based dealers. Somewhere between Switzerland and antique shops in Britain and elsewhere, all knowledge of an object's Iraqi provenance will be lost. The museum's computer system, with the inventory of its contents, is understood to have been smashed – but whether the hard disks have been damaged is not yet known."
I. Schelstraete, "Heropbouw Nationaal Museum van Irak wordt werk van lange adem. Zevenduizend jaar cultuur geplunderd," in De Standaard (Belgium), April 14, 2003: Prof. Ernie Haerinck says that after the Gulf War in 1991 a list was made of all that was stolen from the provincial museums, facilitating the recovery of some of them, e.g., in 1996, a truck with 1,000s of cuneiform tablets was intercepted on its way to Saudi Arabia; this time, there seems to be uncertainty about what exactly was stolen; famous pieces like the Ram in the Thicket from Ur (2600 BC) and the bronze head of a king of Akkad (2300 BC) could end up in the vault of a collector and never be seen again, but the thieves have to know the right middlemen or they couldn't get rid of them and then they might see the light of day again after all after a very long time; a lot of the objects are very fragile, some may be melted down for their precious metal

Photo: M. Wiltenburg and Ph. Smucker, "Looters Plunder in Minutes Iraq's Millennia-Old Legacy," in Christian Science Monitor, April 14, 2003: "EMPTY DISPLAY: A man in the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad peers into a smashed case that once held a 4,500-year-old marble plaque. ANDY NELSON/STAFF"

J. Steele, "Museum's Treasures Left to the Mercy of Looters. US Generals Reject Plea to Protect Priceless Artefacts from Vandals," in The Guardian (UK), April 14, 2003: "... these were not professional thieves with an eye on the auction markets of the world but people out for whatever they could get their hands on, and if it was too big to cart away, they smashed it to vent their frustration."
G. Gugliotta, "Pentagon Was Told Of Risk to Museums. U.S. Urged to Save Iraq's Historic Artifacts," in Washington Post, April 14, 2003: "The museum also contained a spectacular cache of gold artifacts from the burial tombs of Assyrian queens in Nimrud. 'They were sent away to the Central Bank, and I told the Pentagon about those, too,' Gibson said. 'But I hear they looted the Central Bank as well.'"

M. Rosenfield, "Baghdad Museums Hit by Looters. Historians Saddened by the Losses," in WJRT-TV (Flint, Michigan), April 14, 2003, with online video: interview with John Henry, the director of the Flint Institute of Arts; more scenes from the Museum albeit not of very good quality

E. Robson, "The Collection Lies in Ruins, Objects from a Long, Rich Past in Smithereens," in The Guardian (UK), April 14, 2003: "Most immediately, the museum should be treated as a crime scene, both forensically and legally. Every reporter, photographer and sightseer risks disturbing the destruction stratum (as archaeologists would describe it) which must remain intact if anything is to be pieced together again. If the debris is swept up into bin bags it will be impossible to reconstruct. Second, border security should be stepped up to prevent as much as possible from leaving the country. Iraqi antiquities, probably from the Mosul or Basra museums, also ransacked last week, have already been spotted on the Paris art market [talk about speedy delivery! I know: not funny]. Auction houses and dealers worldwide must look out for artefacts coming on to the market. Such objects will almost certainly have been illegally acquired and any documentation of ownership is likely to be fraudulent. Police must prosecute [we must indeed turn any dealer or museum or collector who is willing to touch Mesopotamian antiquities offered for sale now and in the near future into a total pariah; let's get some teeth into enforcement and international coordination!]

Photo: "An armed guard looks at empty shelves after a mob of looters ransacked and looted Iraq ( news -web sites )'s largest archeological museum in Baghdad(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)" [April 14, 2003] [Yahoo News Photos]

G. Lambrick, P. Hinton, R. Pellew, D. Thackray, G. Wainwright, Lord Redesdale, M. Hassall, Ch. Catling and T. Hassall, "Lost Treasures of Iraq," in The Guardian (UK), April 14, 2003: appeal from the major archaeological organizations in the UK "to maintain adequate guards (Iraqi or coalition) on monuments and museums; support and protect Iraqi archaeologists and curators in performing their duties; reject any proposals to remove antiquities from Iraq, and to prevent unofficial attempts to do this; explicitly recognise in reconstruction programmes the importance of Iraq's unparalleled cultural heritage; ensure the UK does not become a staging post in the trade of antiquities illicitly obtained from Iraq; ratify the Hague convention for the protection of cultural property in times of conflict as a matter of urgency; and in the meantime to respect its protocols and abide by the measures already enshrined in the 1977 Geneva convention and the world heritage convention."

"Plünderer stehlen Iraks Erbe," in Netzeitung (Germany), online, April 14, 2003

Photo: "Ein Mitarbeiter läuft durch die verwüsteten Flure, vorbei an aufgebrochenen Vitrinen - AFP" [an employee walks through ransacked floors, past smashed display cases]

L. Frillici, "Yale Professor Concerned about Treasures Destroyed in Iraq," in WTNH News (New Haven, Connecticut), April 13, 2003: with online video showing an interview with Prof. Frahn interview and scenes of the damage in the galleries of the National Museum of Baghdad

"Irakisches Nationalmuseum teilweise geplündert," in Pipeline (Germany), online, April 13, 2003:

Photo: "Retten, was zu retten ist: Ein Iraker zeigt die Zerstörungen nach der Plünderung des Nationalmuseums in Bagdad [To save that what can be saved: An iraqi shows the damage after the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad]" [DPA]

Photo: "An employee of the Iraqi National Museum holds an iron rod at the Museum in Baghdad April 13, 2003, to protect the museum's excavated Mesopotamian antiquities and holdings from looters. The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO ( news -web sites ) urged the United States and Britain on Saturday to take immediate steps to protect Iraq ( news -web sites )'s antiquities, after Baghdad looters grabbed museum treasures dating back to the dawn of civilization. REUTERS/Kyodo" [Yahoo! News Photos]

B. Glauber and F. McRoberts, "Artifacts Survive War--Not Chaos. Looters Seize Museum Treasures," in Chicago Tribune, April 13, 2003: "McGuire Gibson ... said he had given the U.S. Army lists of 5,000 sites in Iraq, including a prioritized list of 150 locations that they should try to spare. 'In all the lists, I stressed that the most important site of all, the No. 1, is this museum,' Gibson said. 'Because of this, I assumed that it would be secured as soon as they [soldiers] were in the neighborhood.'" "Gil Stein ... The Iraqi Department of Antiquities, which oversaw the museum, was never corrupted by Hussein's Baath Party ..." "The workers tried to secure the museum. They shooed away journalists, locked the doors and returned to tallying the losses."
Photos: "Inside the Remains of the Iraqi Museum of Archaeology," in The Guardian (UK), online, April 12-13, 2003

"Locking the front door
Although most of the museum has been destroyed and its holdings looted, it is now guarded at gunpoint.
Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty"

"Inside the looted museum
Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty"

"The hallway is littered with destroyed art
Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty"

R. Fisk, "A Civilisation Torn to Pieces. Baghdad, Reports Robert Fisk, Is a City at War with Itself, at the Mercy of Thieves and Gunmen. And, in the City's Most Important Museum, Something Truly Terrible Has Taken Place," in The Independent (UK), April 13, 2003: "Not since the Taliban embarked on their orgy of destruction against the Buddhas of Bamiyan and the statues in the museum of Kabul perhaps not since the Second World War or earlier have so many archaeological treasures been wantonly and systematically smashed to pieces." "For well over 200 years, Western and local archaeologists have gathered up the remnants of this centre of early civilisation from palaces, ziggurats and 3,000-year-old graves. Their tens of thousands of handwritten card index files often in English and in graceful 19th-century handwriting now lie strewn amid the broken statuary. I picked up a tiny shard. 'Late 2nd century, no. 1680' was written in pencil on the inside. To reach the storeroom, the mobs had broken through massive steel doors, entering from a back courtyard and heaving statues and treasures to cars and trucks." "A glass case that had once held 40,000-year-old stone and flint objects had been smashed open. It lay empty. No one knows what happened to the Assyrian reliefs from the royal palace of Khorsabad, nor the 5,000-year-old seals nor the 4,500-year-old gold leaf earrings once buried with Sumerian princesses. It will take decades to sort through what they have left, the broken stone torsos, the tomb treasures, the bits of jewellery glinting amid the piles of smashed pots. The mobs who came here Shia Muslims, for the most part, from the hovels of Saddam City probably had no idea of the value of the pots or statues. Their destruction appears to have been the result of ignorance as much as fury. In the vast museum library, only a few books mostly mid-19th-century archaeological works appeared to have been stolen or destroyed. Looters set little value in books." "... Saddam Hussein's soldiers showed almost the same contempt for its treasures as the looters. Their slit trenches and empty artillery positions are still clearly visible in the museum lawns, one of them dug beside a huge stone statue of a winged bull."
J.N. Wilford, "Art Experts Fear Worst in the Plunder of a Museum," in The New York Times, April 13, 2003: "Dr. John Malcolm Russell ... and other scholars ... feared the next cultural target could be the important museum in Mosul." "Dr. Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, said, 'We can't conquer and then shirk further responsibility by allowing anarchy in the cities and allowing Iraq's ancient heritage to be pillaged.'"
H. Gherab, "Pillards et bombes font des ravages. La dévastation menace musées et sites irakiens. Le musée de Baghdad et les 7 musées régionaux ne sont que les dépositaires d’une infime partie des richesses patrimoniales que recèle le sol irakien," in La Tribune (Algeria), April 13, 2003: Tikrit already mentioned in 19th-century-BC cuneiform texts, also birthplace of Saladdin; what if this important Islamic site gets bombed extensively too?

L. Hilsum, "Baghdad Museum Looted," in Channel 4 News (UK), April 12, 2003: this is disturbing: "The door to the vault bears no mark of being forced. It seems that someone who had a key must have let the mob in – not looting, but sabotage" [however, other reports say they were broken into?!?]; with online video of the damage to the vaults

Photos: screen captures of the looting of the National Museum as reported on Channel 4 News (UK), April 12, 2003, from The Situation in Iraq web page by the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre (IARC) at the University of Cambridge

Ph. Robertson, "Cry, the Despoiled City," in Salon.com, online, April 12, 2003: Mosul is liberated, the museum is looted: "... the side entrance. The space inside was black. There was no electricity, and we walked inside over a sheet of water, because someone had already taken the water fixtures. In the research and archiving part of the building, the library had been looted, and files were on the floor. Sion found a room full of artifacts smashed on the floor. Clay tablets covered with cuneiform writing were scattered around like refuse. The larger display artifacts were in another wing, ... Rows of shattered glass cases had been emptied of smaller artifacts. Some cases were not shattered, but they were empty as well. Either the curators had placed the artifacts in safekeeping, I thought, or officials had stolen them. ... the main exhibition hall. The room was sepulchral; the windows had been blacked out with sheets of felt. When our eyes adjusted, we saw the great stone lion that guarded the Ishtar temple at the Nimrud Ziggurat, three thousand years ago. The ghost of an ancient history teacher shouted in my mind, 'Look!' The large hall had been built to hold the lion and the graceful winged form on the massive slab next to it: another lion, this one with wings sprouting from its back. Cuneiform covered every inch of its body, and its mouth was open in speech. We stared at the walls of Nimrud, and we spoke quietly, because we were in a museum. At the lions' feet were large square beds of sandbags the curators had placed there, in case the bombs knocked the huge stone slabs over. They did it to keep them from shattering when they fell. I saw a plaque next to the slab with the winged lion. It read, 'These stone statues represent the power located at the entrance of cities. They are guards to ward off demons and spirits.' The lions must have been sleeping. On this day, they had failed."
M. Fogarty, "Baghdad Looting Continues," in Voice of America News, with online audio and transcript, April 12, 2003
H. Hendawi, "National Museum, Home to Artifacts Dating Back Thousands of Years, Plundered by Looters," in San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 2003: "Sensing its treasures could be in peril, museum curators secretly removed antiquities from their display cases before the war and placed them into storage vaults -- but to no avail. The doors of the vaults were opened or smashed, and everything was taken, museum workers said. That lead one museum employee to suspect that others familiar with the museum may have participated in the theft. 'The fact that the vaults were opened suggests that employees of the museum may have been involved,' said the employee, who declined to be identified." "The chances of recovery are slim; regional museums were looted after the 1991 Gulf War, and 4,000 pieces were lost. 'I understand three or four have been recovered,' he [Dr. John Russell] said." "The looters are 'people trying to feed themselves,' said [Dr. Samuel] Paley, who has spent years tracking Assyrian reliefs previously looted from Nimrud in Northern Iraq. 'When they find there's no market, they'll throw them away. If there is a market, they'll go into the market.'" "Early Saturday, five armed men showed up at the gate ... The man with the assault rifle walked into the museum, accused journalists there of stealing artifacts and ordered them to leave. He claimed to be there to protect the museum from plundering. One of the men said he was a member of the feared Fedayeen Saddam militia."; more scholars quoted

Photo: "An Iraqi man reads papers at the entrance of the vault of the National Museum in Baghdad Saturday April 12, 2003. Looters opened the museum vault, went on a rampage breaking ancient artifacts stored there by museum authorities before the war started. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)" [Yahoo! News Photos]

J.F. Burns, "Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure," in The New York Times, April 12, 2003: at least 50,000 artifacts stolen; "museum officials reached the hotels where foreign journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River. They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history." "It remains unclear whether some of the museum's priceless gold, silver and copper antiquities, some of its ancient stone and ceramics, and perhaps some of its fabled bronzes and gold-overlaid ivory, had been locked away for safekeeping elsewhere before the looting, or seized for private display in one of Mr. Hussein's ubiquitous palaces. What was beyond contest today was that the 28 galleries of the museum and vaults with huge steel doors guarding storage chambers that descend floor after floor into darkness had been completely ransacked." "As examples of what was gone, the officials cited a solid gold harp from the Sumerian era, which began about 3360 B.C. and started to crumble about 2000 B.C. Another item on their list of looted antiquities was a sculptured head of a woman from Uruk, one of the great Sumerian cities, dating to about the same era, and a collection of gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings, also from the Sumerian dynasties and also at least 4,000 years old." "... one museum official ... hurrying away through the piles of smashed ceramics and torn books and burned-out torches of rags soaked in gasoline that littered the museum's corridors to find the glossy catalog of an exhibition of "silk road civilization" that was held in Japan's ancient capital of Nara in 1988. Turning to 50 pages of items lent by the Iraqi museum for the exhibition, he said that none of the antiquities pictured remained after the looting. They included ancient stone carvings of bulls and kings and princesses; copper shoes and cuneiform tablets; tapestry fragments and ivory figurines of goddesses and women and Nubian porters; friezes of soldiers and ancient seals and tablets on geometry; and ceramic jars and urns and bowls, all dating back at least 2,000 years, some more than 5,000 years." "... Iraqi archaeologist ... Raid Abdul Ridhar Muhammad, said he had gone into the street of the Karkh district, a short distance from the eastern bank of the Tigris, at about 1 p.m. on Thursday to find American troops to quell the looting." "... five marines had followed him back into the museum and opened fire above the looters' heads. This drove several thousand of the marauders out of the museum complex in minutes, he said, but when the tank crewmen left about 30 minutes later, the looters returned. 'I asked them to bring their tank inside the museum grounds,' he said. 'But they refused and left. About half an hour later, the looters were back, and they threatened to kill me, or to tell the Americans that I am a spy for Saddam Hussein's intelligence, so that the Americans would kill me. So I was frightened, and I went home.'"; shorter, slightly modified version appeared in the India Times, April 14, 2003

Photo: "Civilians inspect Torah scrolls stored in the vault of the National Museum in Baghdad, Iraq ( news -web sites ) Saturday April 12, 2003. Looters opened the museum vault, went on a rampage breaking ancient artifacts stored there by museum authorities before the war started. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)" [Yahoo! News Photos]
Photo: "An Iraqi civilian walks through the vault of the National Museum in Baghdad, Iraq ( news -web sites ) Saturday April 12, 2003. Looters opened the museum vault, went on a rampage breaking ancient artifacts stored there by museum authorities before the war started. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)" [Yahoo! News Photos]

"Looters Ransack Baghdad Museum," in BBC News, online, April 12, 2003, April 12, 2003: "The museum's deputy director said looters had taken or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years." "'The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened.'" [this seems to contradict earlier reports about some objects having been removed on Wednesday by US soldiers for safekeeping]
"Looters Swarm Into New Areas of Baghdad," in The Guardian (UK), April 12, 2003: "U.S. forces reopened two strategic bridges Saturday in the heart of Baghdad and crowds of looters surged across - taking advantage of access to new territory that had not already been plundered. U.S. forces did nothing to stop them." "A [National M]useum employee arrived Saturday to find the administrative offices trashed by looters. The only thing she could salvage was a telephone book-sized volume." "'It is all the fault of the Americans. This is Iraq's civilization. And it's all gone now.' An elderly museum guard said hundreds of looters attacked Thursday and carried away artifacts on pushcarts and wheelbarrows. The two-story museum's marble staircase was chipped, suggesting looters might have dragged heavier items down on pushcarts or slabs of wood. " "Before the war, the museum closed its doors and secretly placed the most precious artifacts in storage, but the metal storeroom doors were smashed and everything was taken. 'This is the property of this nation and is the treasure of 7,000 years of civilization,' said museum employee Ali Mahmoud. 'What does this country think it is doing?'"
"U.S. Forces Say Stopping Looters Not Primary Role," in Japan Today, April 12, 2003: there is a report of archaeological sites in the Mosul area being looted
"Unesco vraagt coalitie musea te beschermen," in NOS Nieuws (Netherlands), online video, April 12, 2003: 39-second clip showing the damage to the galleries of the National Museum [source page]
L. Harding, "Mosul Descends into Chaos as Even Museum Is Looted," in The Guardian (UK), April 12, 2003: "The looters knew what they were looking for, and in less than 10 minutes had walked off with several million dollars worth of Parthian sculpture." Here too the Neo-Assyrian friezes were thankfully too heavy to be carted off; interview with curator
"Baghdad Archeological Museum Looted," in ABC News Online (Australia), April 12, 2003: "A dozen looters helped themselves in ground floor rooms at the National Museum of Iraq, where pottery artefacts and statues were seen broken or overturned..." "Two men were seen hauling an ancient portal [i.e., door frame] out of the building, and empty wooden crates were scattered over the floor. Upstairs rooms seemed to have been spared for the time being"
"Pillages dans le musée archéologique de Bagdad," in Le Figaro, April 11, 2003: halls with still-intact display cases (objects removed for safekeeping before the war started); the big orthostats and lamassus still there with their protective sandbags; some objects were taken to a safe haven under the supervision of US troops shortly after their arrival in Baghdad on Wednesday [unfortunately, this turned out to be just an unfounded rumor]
A. Davis and D. Brown, "Looters Grab Priceless Objects from Iraqi Museums," in The Mercury News (San Jose, California), April 11, 2003: "In Mosul ... gangs stormed a museum storeroom containing ancient Assyrian and Babylonian stone tablets. A curator held them off ..." "Late Friday, military officials said they could not determine whether U.S. forces were in control of the area around the national museum [in Baghdad] or whether the looting of it had been serious." "Before the ... [war] ... Iraqi officials moved nearly every artifact that could be safely carried from museums and storerooms around the country to the museum in Baghdad." "Thousands of the museum's artifacts were wrapped and placed in storage before the war, [Prof. McGuire] Gibson said. Some may have been placed in underground vaults. In 1991, Saddam used vaults of Baghdad's Central Bank for safekeeping the artifacts. The protection has proven porous, however. Even under Saddam's tight rule, many of Iraq's treasures turned up on the black market. 'I fully expect to see some of these looted items show up on eBay in coming weeks,' Gibson said."
H. Sezgin, "Wie der Schöpfer in der Mitte der Woche. Die erste Erfinderin Iraks: Aus mesopotamischem Ton knetete die Orientsekretärin Gertrude Bell (1868 - 1926) ein neues Babylon," in Frankfurter Rundschau, April 11, 2003: Bell as Faisal's kingmaker in 1921

K. Michel, "Art Antiquities," in Marketplace (NPR), with online audio, April 11, 2003: do the looters cause the market or does the market cause the looting? Ashton Hawkins (ACCP) calls profs. John Russell and Zainab Bahrani "the extreme right of the archaeological field"
M. Milford, "Q&A: Iraq the Site of Ancient Wonders," in The News Journal (Delaware), online, April 10, 2003: Richard Zettler (U. of Penn.) is among a group of archaeologists who have been invited by the British Museum and UNESCO for a roundtable discussion in London later this month to address dealing with the museums and archaeological sites once the war is over
UNESCO, "UN Agency to Undertake Emergency Plan to Safeguard Iraq’s Cultural Heritage," online press release, April 10, 2003: on April 17, a meeting in Paris of over 20 top international specialists in Iraqi cultural heritage will draw up a preliminary inventory of the country’s heritage and prepare an intersectoral fact-finding mission to be sent there at the earliest possible date

Photo: "Residents of Baghdad look at ancient Jewish ark, looted in an annexe of a museum in downtown of the Iraqi capital, Thursday, April 10, 2003. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours)" [Yahoo! News Photos]

D. Filkins, "Hunting Hussein, U.S. Attacks Mosque," in The New York Times, April 10, 2003: main dome of the al-Imam al-Adham mosque (Medieval through Ottoman) in Baghdad destroyed by a US bomb
Sh. Tubbs, "Artillery and Artifacts," in St. Petersburg Times (Florida), April 10, 2003: religious context and implications
A. Gray, "U.S. Troops Move into Babylon, Try to Tread Softly," in Reuters AlertNet, April 9, 2003: the archaeological site; museum closed to prevent looting
Both Het Parool (Dutch newspaper) and the Washington Post had a passing mention that a museum in Basra has been looted. However, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Czech Rep.) as well as the New York Times talk about the museum of natural history having been looted and burnt: the archaeological artefacts ought to be in another museum, aren't they? I hope so, and I hope they're still there. [April 9, 2003]
D. Harrison, "They Came, They Saw, They Went Sight-Seeing," in The Daily Telegraph, April 8, 2003: US Army's 82nd Airborne Division finds no Iraqi soldiers on the ziggurat at Ur which seems to be undamaged
J.M. Russell, "Iraq's Heritage Endangered. Iraq's Museums and Libraries Have Been Looted and Plundered. What Can Be Done to Return Iraq's Treasures Back to Its People?," in wbur.org (NPR), April 8, 2003: "In the aftermath of the 1991 war, the U.N. sanctions, widespread poverty, and eager Western buyers fueled unprecedented plundering of the archaeological sites in Iraq. The Assyrian palaces at Nineveh, Nimrud and Khorsabad, and the Parthian temples at Hatra were stripped of their sculptures, many of which were destroyed in the process. Huge unexcavated sites in the south such as Jokha and Umm al-Aqarib were plundered by thieves with bulldozers and dump trucks." "Emergency agricultural development was initiated to increase the domestic food supply, resulting in massive unsupervised destruction of countless sites. The most notable examples are the 'Third River,' which cut through the middle of the ancient Sumerian 'Heartland of Cities,' and the impending flooding of the ancient Assyrian core city of Assur in northern Iraq by an irrigation reservoir." "A UNESCO mission requested by the Iraqis to assess heritage damage after the 1991 Gulf War was vetoed twice by the U.S. and U.K."
D. Wharton, "U.S. Managing to Spare Cultural Sites, Officials Say. As War Shifts to Streets of Baghdad, Risk of Harm to Landmarks May Rise," in The Baltimore Sun, April 7, 2003: Lt. Col. John Kuttas says the National Museum in Baghdad is still unscathed

D. Josar, "Soldiers Work to Protect Iraq's Archaeological Sites," in Stars and Stripes. European Edition, April 7, 2003: a job for the US Army 352nd Civil Affairs Battalion

Photo: "David Josar / S&S. Army Maj. Christopher Varhola, a cultural and historical anthropologist, said Iraq has an 'unprecedented' number of important mosques, temples and other important archaeological sites."

W. Crawley, "Iraq - the Cradle of Civilisation," in Sunday Sequence (BBC Northern Ireland), online audio, April 6, 2003: nice interview with "Iraqi archeologist Dr Lamia al-Gailani, the grand-daughter of the first Prime Minister of Iraq" [Rashid Ali al-Gailani, the father of Iraqi nationalism]; Dr. Gailani has lived in the UK for the last 22 years; even tanks driving near sites can cause damage
S. Zekri, "Antiquitäten-Plünderung im Irak. Schnäppchen der Archäologie. Nach der militärischen Zerstörung droht dem Irak der Kulturraub durch die USA," in Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 4, 2003; according to Science, the American Council on Cultural Policy is lobbying to have the future Iraqi protectorate government subscribe to a very lenient, pro-export archaeological/cultural heritage policy
J. Thavis, "Biblical Battlefield: War Brings Suffering to Places of Old Testament," in Catholic News Service, online, April 4, 2003: fundamentalist vs. Catholic viewpoints
B. Zand, "Bomben auf die Schätze von Babylon," in Der Spiegel, April 4, 2003: interviews with Iraqi archaeologists al-Suf and Damarji; info on Iraqi Department of Antiquities
A. Marton, "Archaeological Treasures Could Become Casualties. Much of Early Civilization's History Yet Undocumented," in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 3, 2003: quotes many scholars; list of cultural casualties of war throughout history
"Call to Protect Iraqi Heritage," in BBC News, online, and A. Ahmad, "There Is Concern That the Sites, Which Offer an Insight into the Birth of Civilisation, Will Be Destroyed Forever," in BBC News, online video, April 2, 2003: Tony Blair asked in parliament about archaeological sites
F. Gibbons, "The End of Civilisation," in The Guardian (UK), April 2, 2003: the museum in Mosul has already been hit
D.D. Gray, "Troops Stationed Near Ancient City of Ur," in The Kansas City Star, April 1, 2003: "The fighting, which continues in the nearby southern Iraq city of Nasiriyah, has so far spared the remains of Ur and the two families guarding them, who have worked as guides there for generations." "Troops of the 141st Mechanized Infantry Battalion are spread out around the ruins, situated on a rise in the otherwise flat, rocky desert terrain that stretches to the horizon in every direction."

This site is edited by Belgian archaeologist Francis Deblauwe, Ph.D., living in Streamwood, Illinois (USA), who is affiliated with Archaeos, Inc., and a research associate of the University of Vienna (Austria).

	"Locking the front door Although most of the museum has been destroyed and its holdings looted, it is now guarded at gunpoint. Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty"
	"Inside the looted museum Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty"
	"The hallway is littered with destroyed art Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty"