The Iraq War & Archaeology Archive 55

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.

M. Abu Nasr, "Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 10 July 2005," in Uruknet.info (Italy), online, July 11, 2005: "Iraqi Resistance fighters shot and killed the puppet so-called 'general director of tourism in Iraq,' Dr. Ahmad Husayn al-Jabburi in an attack on his motorcade as he headed from his hope [sic] in the center of Baghdad to his office in the high-security headquarters of the US occupation in the Republican Palace area known to the invaders as the 'green zone.' A source in the Iraqi puppet police told the Baghdad correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam that Resistance fighters armed with light and medium weapons attacked the puppet director’s motorcade, killing him along with a number of his companions. The correspondent noted that the Resistance eliminated Dr. al-Jabburi after having sent threats to him several days ago, informing him that it was necessary for him to leave his post and stop contracting with foreign companies – including 'Israeli' ones – that were coming to Iraq to gather and steal antiquities." [the same tired old anti-Semitic nonsense...; remember, archaeology and tourism are now combined under one minister; this version of el-Jabburi's death is contradicted by Jones July 17, 2005]
F. Griffiths, "Iranian-American Filmmaker Freed in Iraq," in San Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 2005: "An Iranian-American aspiring filmmaker who has been detained by the U.S. military for nearly two months without being charged was released Sunday, officials said." [see also Weinstein July 6, 2005]
"Parlamentari della Commissione Difesa a Nassiriya," in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Italy), July 7, 2005: 17 members of the Defense Committee of the Italian Parliament visited the Italian troops in Camp Mittica in Nasiriyyah; they also were shown historical artifacts from the region in the archaeological museum in town
M. Jansen, "More looting of Iraq's riches," in The Jordan Times (Jordan), July 7, 2005: "On the sidelines of celebrations marking the reconstruction of a 16th century palace and mosque at Rada, in Yemen, this correspondent was briefed on what is happening in Iraq on the archaeological front by Dr Macguire Gibson of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago." "[Gibson: ']We have reports that Muqtada Sadr <the powerful Shiite cleric based in Kufa> is getting a cut. There was a fatwa <clerical ruling from Najaf> condemning looting but there was a counter-fatwa from Iran saying that looting pre-Islamic items is acceptable. Looting has become such an industry that in towns like Samawa and Nasiriya, truck drivers take groups of people to sites in the morning and take them back in the afternoon. US and other foreign troops could stop the looting if they confiscated or destroyed the trucks carrying looters to and from sites.' Gibson said there has been 'little improvement' in recent months due to the deployment of guards at key sides by the Department of Antiquities. There is one influential Iraqi personality in Nassiriya who has been very active along with Italian art squad teams based in that area. They raided homes and shops and seized material stolen from both major and distant desert sites. But the Italians have departed so it is not clear whether the Iraqis will carry on. His life has been threatened but he belongs to a powerful family so he has been spared so far." "One of the major figures in the looting is Saddam's brother-in-law, who emerged in the 90s as a major antiquities trader. He was caught and dismissed from all his posts for involvement in the trade, but was not executed as some persons were. Gibson said the US is not interested in him although it is rumoured he could be funding insurgents with the proceeds of looting." "The [1990s] looting coincided with a boom in the antiquities trade after the stock market dip in the late 80s. Interest in Iraqi antiquities was sparked by the sale of the Erlenmeyer collection <which was accumulated legally in the 20s and 30s> in four separate auctions. Universities and museums could buy this stuff, because it was clean.' But the downside of this sale was that there was a 'huge spike in the prices of Mesopotamian antiquities. A cylinder seal which sold for $500 before brought $15,000. Dealers <in Iraq> had the catalogues and knew the prices'." "He continued: 'By September 2003, over half the sites [in the South] were destroyed. Since then, we have lost most of the major Sumerian sites. Only Ur and Uruk are OK. The others are very badly dug up. Sites are riddled with holes. No site south of Baghdad is safe and the looters are heading north. We don't know what is happening in the provinces because <the antiquities> people are not going out.' The authorities, he revealed, 'say things are improving but they must put the best face on <the situation> that they can'. The situation of the [National M]useum remains precarious. ... The department is trying to safeguard <the treasures> as much as possible while computerising the records. It still does not have a final count of what is missing. One storeroom has not been catalogued.' He explained that it was raided during the looting [in April 2003] ... Items, stored in this room had been arranged on shelves set aside for specific excavations. They were identified by dig documents. When looters entered this room, objects were swept from the shelves. Many items were broken and crushed, most lay in confusion on the floor. This room will take much longer than the rest to catalogue. It is not air-conditioned and the women who do the work often do not show up because of the lack of security."
H. Weinstein, "U.S. Holds Filmmaker in Iraq. Family drafts suit to free L.A. man working on a Cyrus the Great project. Pentagon plans hearing to determine if director is a security threat," in Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2005: "On May 17, [Cyrus] Kar was stopped at a Baghdad checkpoint in a taxi allegedly packed with a common component for improvised explosive devices, according to a Defense Department spokesman. Since then, he has been in U.S. military detention outside Baghdad. Kar's family says the detention is a mistake. Kar, 44, a U.S. citizen and Navy veteran who was born in Iran and came here during his childhood, is a patriotic American who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, they said Tuesday. He has not been charged with a crime, the Defense Department spokesman confirmed." "About three years ago, Kar became interested in the history of ancient Persia, particularly the story of King Cyrus the Great, founder of Persia. He went to Iraq, over his family's objections, to film near Baghdad. He also filmed in Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Afghanistan and consulted with scholars. David Stronach, professor of Near Eastern archeology at UC Berkeley, has signed a sworn declaration to be filed with the lawsuit, stating that he has known Kar for more than two years and has 'assisted him in making his documentary' about Cyrus the Great, ... 'It is impossible to tell the story of Cyrus without bringing in the subject of Babylon, his latest and greatest conquest, and one which had quite exceptional consequences. It is therefore unsurprising to me that Cyrus Kar thought it essential to go to Babylon — in present-day Iraq — to finish filming his documentary.'" [see also Griffiths July 10, 2005 and Weinstein July 24, 2005]
T. Golden, "From Filmmaker in Los Angeles to Iraq Detainee," in The New York Times, July 6, 2005: "But Mr. Kar, 44, a naturalized American born in Iran, followed his dream where few others might have gone. In mid-May, he traveled to Iraq with an Iranian cameraman to film archaeological sites around Babylon. After a taxi they were in was stopped in Baghdad, the two men were arrested by Iraqi security forces, who found what they suspected might be bomb parts in the vehicle. Since then, Mr. Kar has been held in what his relatives and their lawyers describe as a frightening netherworld of American military detention in Iraq - charged with no crime but nonetheless unable to gain his freedom or even tell his family where he is being held." "They said that after analyzing his personal files, computer drives and other materials, the agent, John D. Wilson, returned the seized items on June 14 and assured them that that the F.B.I. had found no reason to suspect Mr. Kar." "'Saddam Hussein has had more due process than Cyrus Kar,' said Mark Rosenbaum, the lead lawyer in the case. 'This is a detention policy that was drafted by Kafka.'" "He enlisted in the Navy in 1983, partly to earn money for college, and served on the aircraft carrier Ranger, relatives said. Completing his obligation in 1986, relatives said, he became an American citizen and graduated from San Jose State University in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in marketing. He spent a decade working for technology companies in Silicon Valley and moved to Los Angeles after the technology bubble burst in 2000."
B.J. Weiner, "150 New Health Care Clinics Planned for Iraq. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region South District will help build three different types of primary health care facilities," in Defend America, online, July 6, 2005: "Construction on the first clinic began in December and incrementally we have started all of them.' 'I want to stress that we have been working with the communities,' said [Dr. Shah] Alam [GRS program manager]. 'They have been supporting us because they want to see health care clinics being built. That is why, when we face problems, we have always found that the neighbors of the site in the area are very helpful. In one case, one of the religious leaders solved the problem and, in another case, we found archeological remains.' ... Construction has been temporarily halted on the archeological site until the Ministry of Antiquities has finished its work.'"
"Nassiriya: Parlamentari in visita contingente italiano," in AGI (Italy), online, July 5, 2005: 27 Italian MPs, members of the Defense Committees of the House and the Senate, visited the Italian Joint Task Force in Nasiriyyah; they also paid a visit to the Archaeological Museum in town
"The Approval Matrix. Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies," in New York Magazine, July 4, 2005: I'm grateful that the plight of the cultural heritage of Iraq registers as both extremely despicable and very highbrow on this illustrious matrix... ;-) but unfortunately something must have gone wrong in the editing process: "As architectural [sic] sites are plundered, experts say Iraqi cultural looting is worse than ever."; the accompanying photo shows a looter carrying off a fancy chair from a palace in 2003...
F. Deblauwe, "'Tigris dam damns Assur' not?," in Iraqcrisis, online, July 3, 2005: "An Art Newspaper article by Martin Bailey, 'Tigris dam damns Assur' ..., is making the rounds regarding the Makhul dam which would threaten to inundate the site of Assur. This is an old article. Notice how there is no real date: there never is with Art Newspaper articles, very annoying. However, toward the end you can spot it by anachronistic facts ..." "News search engines occasionally spit out an old article as 'newly found'... The dam project has been on halt since the 2003 invasion, see G.G. March 4, 2004 ... but has not yet been officially cancelled that I know of."
Ch. Plate, "Sumerischer Terracotta-Löwenkopf im Angebot. Interpol und die irakischen Behörden arbeiten gegen den Handel mit Artefakten im Internet. Wer eine irakische Antiquität sucht, wird im Internet fündig. Bei Auktionen werden Tausende Artefakte angeboten - zu sehr kommoden Preisen. Nur sind viele entweder gefälscht oder gestohlen," in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), July 3, 2005: Mesopotamian artifacts for sale on eBay or BaghdadMarketplace.com at reasonable prices: only $99 for a 5,000-year-old Sumerian necklace, $1,500 for a 14-cm-high Sumerian terracotta sculpture of a lion's head, not including $11.50 shipping costs from Eindhoven, the Netherlands; Plate isn't the first journalist to confuse the web site of the Iraq Museum International project, which is a private US initiative, with the official Iraqi National Museum web site (still only a placeholder); needless to say, Karl-Heinz Kind, being one of only 2 art theft experts at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, can't really police eBay much; Kind says prices are low due to an oversupply from looting in Iraq; Dr. Peter A. Miglus (Heidelberg university) who excavated at Assur gets frequent requests to assess artifacts but always refuses so as to not encourage looting and theft of Mesopotamian artifacts; some colleagues aren't so principled though
I. Rogg, "Sie buddeln wie die Maulwürfe. Einen Teil des kulturellen Erbes im Irak - Statuen, Rollsiegel und Schmuck - haben Plünderer aus Museen und Ausgrabungsstätten fortgeschafft. Manchmal verschläft aber auch die Polizei einen Raub," in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), July 3, 2005: "They dig like moles" (title); a few months ago, at night while the 2 guards were asleep, a thief broke into the small Museum of Civilization in Arbil and stole some of the finest artifacts; fortunately, he was caught a couple of days later and most of the pieces were recovered: painted ceramics and other everyday artifacts from prehistoric times, Sumerian cuneiform tablets and female ceramic figurines from the Assyrian period; on Kurdish TV, the thief, presented as a "criminal from a neighboring country" but betrayed by his accent as an Iranian Kurd, was shown re-enacting his heist [see also Iraqi Media Monitoring December 29, 2004]; Kanaan Mufti, the director of the museum in Arbil, says there are ca. 12,000 registered archaeological sites in Iraq; in Kurdistan alone more than another 3,100 archaeological sites have not yet been studied; sites are being looted everywhere, from Nineveh in the north to Ur in the south; Mufti says looting is under control though in the Kurdish part of Iraq

"Live8 at the Eden Project. 'Africa Calling'. 2nd July 2005," in Lyre of Ur (UK), online with online audio, [July 2, 2005]: the Kenian musician and singer Ayub Ogada played the replica of the Sumerian Bull's Head Lyre in concert; you can listen to an MP3 [I think it's "Kronkrohinko"]: worth the download! not a Mesopotamian song, of course, but the instrument is played to great effect by an accomplished musician

Photo 1: "Ayub Ogada playing the Bull's Head Lyre"

Photo 2: "Ayub playing the Bull's Head Lyre"

S. Farrell and R. Sabbagh-Gargour, "For sale: a nation's treasures. Iraqi officials fear that looters are funding the rebels," in The Times (UK), July 2, 2005: "The battered box labelled 'Rothmans Cigarettes' stands in a Jordanian customs warehouse surrounded by tonnes of contraband tobacco. The mundane exterior hides extraordinary contents — 346 Mesopotamian clay stamps thought to date from Iraq’s Sumerian civilisation, ... They were seized on April 9, ..." "Philippe Delanghe, Programme Specialist for Culture at Unesco’s Iraq office in Amman, said that US satellite pictures studied at a meeting of concerned countries and agencies in Paris last week confirmed that organised gangs were behind some of the looting. The pictures showed holes in the ground dug by bulldozers, with vehicles waiting alongside to receive artefacts." "But the intercepted artefacts are probably a fraction of what is being plundered. Chiara Dezzi-Bardeschi, the head of Unesco’s International Committee for the Safeguard of Iraq’s Cultural Heritage, said that nobody knew the extent of the thefts. ... Lawlessness and poor communications also hinder a full assessment of the damage. Dr Abdul Aziz Hameed, the chairman of Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, ... said that of 15,000 artefacts looted from the National Museum after the US invasion 3,627 pieces had been recovered inside the country, ... A further 3,156 items from the museum and other looted sites were being kept safe in Jordan, America, Italy, Syria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Dr Hameed said. 'We hope the Iranians will give more assistance to us to stop smuggling Iraqi antiquities through the Iranian border.'"

Figure: "Heritage sites in Iraq"

F. Deblauwe, "Der Golfkrieg und das kulturelle Erbe des Irak. Der Kampf der Wissenschaft gegen die Antike-Kunsthandel-Lobby in den USA und wie das IWA-Projekt nach Wien kam. Ein Bericht über das Projekt: »The 2003- Iraq War & Archaeology« (IWA) am Institut für Orientalistik der Universität Wien," in GÖAB-Bulletin, 3/05 ([July] 2005): overview article about: archaeology in Iraq since 2003, polemics against US Mesopotamian scholars, US academic initiatives and legislative success, crisis and move of 2003- IW&A to Vienna; thanks to F. Schipper and G. Selz for translating and editing the original English text! [see Deblauwe "Online-Dokumentations-Projekt ..." September 12, 2005, and Deblauwe September 2005 for abridged versions, and Deblauwe August 15, 2005 for the English-language predecessor article]

M. Bogdanos, "The Casualities [sic] of War: The Truth about the Iraq Museum," in American Journal of Archaeology, 109, 3 (July 2005): the long-awaited article by Col. Bogdanos; it's 50 pages long, with some interesting, never-before-published photos; I may come back to it later; I'll just quote the abstract for the time being: "As Baghdad was falling to coalition forces in April 2003, the international media reported that the Iraq Museum had been ransacked and more than 170,000 of the finest antiquities from the very cradle of civilization had been stolen while U.S. forces stood idle. The list of missing objects read like a 'who’s who' of Near Eastern archaeology, and the world reacted with shock and outrage. In response, the United States dispatched to the museum a highly specialized multiagency task force that had been conducting counterterrorism operations in southern Iraq at the time of the looting. Their mission was to determine what had happened at the museum and to recover whatever antiquities they could. Among several startling discoveries were that the museum compound had been turned into a military fighting position and that the initial reports that over 170,000 priceless antiquities had been stolen were wrong. Although final inventories will take years to complete, the best current estimate is that approximately 14,000-15,000 pieces were initially stolen. The investigation determined that there had been not one but three thefts at the museum by three distinct groups: professionals who stole several dozen of the most prized treasures, random looters who stole more than 3,000 excavation-site pieces, and insiders who stole almost 11,000 cylinder seals and pieces of jewelry. The investigation also determined that the international black market in Iraqi antiquities continues to flourish. Working closely with Iraqis and using a complex methodology that includes community outreach, international cooperation, raids, seizures, and amnesty, the task force and others around the world have recovered more than 5,000 of the missing antiquities. This is a comprehensive report of those thefts and recoveries, as well as an attempt to correct some of the inaccuracies and misunderstandings that have been commonly reported in the media." [see also Vergano November 2, 2005]

"Looting Patterns in Northern Dhi Qar. Part 1: Curious Proximities," in Iraq Museum International, online, July 2005

Photo 1: "Aerial photos recently published in the media make looted sites look like 'lunar landscapes' in the middle of nowhere. We looked at satellite imagery for this sample 190-square-mile area midway between An Nasiriyah and Al Kut, and found 64 sites that showed evidence of illegal archaeological probing and digging. The bigger picture, viewed screen-by-screen from a virtual altitude of 1500 feet, shows that these sites are most certainly not in the middle of nowhere, and suggests that to stop the looting will require more than any number of armed patrols. Image ©2005 DigitalGlobe, Google and Iraq Museum International."

Photo 2: "Site 1 (View 1), 31°55'22.39" N 45°55'31.62" E - Cropped tightly, this view of a site further north has the same isolated look of the landscapes published by CNN and the BBC."

Photo 3: "Site 1 (View 2) - However, a wider view of the same location shows that the edge of the pitted 5.5-acre site is actually only about 50 feet from a group of houses."

Photo 4: "Site 1 (View 3) - In fact, over a dozen buildings are within a quarter-mile radius from the center of the site. Also note the faint outlines, possibly of ancient structures, in the lower right portion of the image."

Photo 5: "Within a half-mile radius from the center of Site 1 are 2 more sites, and a 4th is located only a mile away."

Photo 6: "Most of these 8 sites are within a 2-mile radius from the center of the largest town in our sample area. Site 4, one of the largest, is only a half-mile from the edge of town." [el-Fajr is indeed a notorious looters nest]

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).