The Iraq War & Archaeology Archive 63

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. Sherman, "Cezanne, Da Vinci on FBI's Wanted List," in Yahoo! News, online, November 15, 2005: "Heading the list are 7,000 to 10,000 Iraqi antiquities that were stolen from the Iraq National Museum and archaeological sites after the U.S. invasion in 2003. A handful of cylindrical seals believed to be more than 4,500 years old have been recovered, but 5,000 remain missing."
D. Goodyear, "War Poet," in The New Yorker, November 14, 2005: "... Brian Turner, a thirty-eight-year-old former Army sergeant from Fresno, California, and the author of a book of poems about a year he spent deployed in Iraq[:] ... 'Here, Bullet,' ..." "Turner—also known as Sergeant T. or 'the professor'—was a team leader in the first Stryker brigade to be sent into the combat zone, and was stationed, for much of 2004, near Mosul. He wrote his poems secretly. People in the Army knew that he had a master’s degree, but no one ever asked him what it was for—it was an M.F.A. in poetry, from the University of Oregon—and he saw no reason to advertise it." "He already knew and loved the epic of Gilgamesh—the story of the warrior-king of Uruk, who terrorizes his people, battles monsters, and seeks immortality. It was thrilling, he said, 'to know that Gilgamesh was the land where I was at.' Tablets on which the legend was recorded in cuneiform, by a Babylonian scribe named Sin-leqi-unninni, were found in the ancient city of Nineveh, near Mosul. 'We were out in the ruins of Nineveh, it was January or early February, and it was snowing six inches to a foot deep,' Turner said. 'I don’t know if any of the other soldiers knew about the history of Gilgamesh and the tablets and where we really were. To me it was amazing, a beautiful place. But at the same time to know that we were walking in formation and we were doing our job—the dichotomy was odd. It’s sort of like San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It’s big like that, but there are no trees, just this barren, hilly place, and we were just going down in the hollows between the hilltops and then we found a little place where we could overwatch. We just sat there in the snow and watched for mortar rounds being launched in the city.' Later, when Turner wrote a poem about the tablets, he dedicated it to Sin-leqi-unninni."

"Babylon soll UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe werden," in Lausitzer Rundschau (Germany), November 14, 2005: at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its Baghdad branch the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut expresses its support for world heritage status for the archaeological site of Babylon

Photo: "Foto: dpa. Ruinen von König Nebukadnezar II. in Babylon." [ruins from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon]

C. Hartman, "Help sought recovering Iraq artifacts," in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 11, 2005: "More help is needed from Iraq's neighbors, particularly Iran and Turkey, to recover thousands of antiquities looted from Baghdad's National Museum during the battle for the city in 2003, says the U.S. investigator leading the search." [meant is Matthew Bogdanos but he is no longer in charge; actually, for the longest time there has not been any person who has had the recovery of National Museum artifacts as his/her primary responsibility within the US military/diplomatic/government apparatus...; 11-15-05: actually, this article was reposted as "Investigator stalls in antiquities hunt" the same day with "... U.S. investigator leading the search." changed into "... U.S. investigator leading the initial search." (my italics)]; "While Jordan has recovered 2,000 objects, no Iraqi antiquities have been reported in Iran or Turkey, which have long, porous borders with Iraq. 'I find that incomprehensible,' [no kidding!] said Col. Matthew Bogdanos, ... Based on the lack of reports from Iran and Turkey, Bogdanos said either the loot was going through their frontiers to the international black market or finds have not been reported. He said he did not know if the U.S. government had made any official request for information."

Photo: "President George W. Bush and Laura Bush stand with 2005 National Humanities Medal recipient U.S. Marine Matthew Bogdanos, also an Assistant District Attorney in New York, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2005 in the Oval Office at the White House. White House photo by Eric Draper" (The White House) [see also National Endowment for the Humanities November 8, 2005]

K. Sengupta, "Pillaging the Gardens of Babylon. More than two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, 10,000 artefacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq are still missing. Archaeological sites across the country have been plundered. Kim Sengupta reports from Baghdad on the desperate struggle to protect a priceless heritage," in The Independent (UK), November 9, 2005: "Meanwhile, widespread and systematic looting of Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian architectural [sic] sites across the country has resulted in the heritage of Mesopotamia, the cradle of human civilisation, continuing to disappear." ["architectural sites": possibly another case of overzealous spellchecking software? see this entry at Language Log for some amusing examples]; "[Bogdanos] said he found that many Western governments were slow to help and Interpol, the ideal candidate to facilitate a global investigation, was 'unwilling or unable' to do so. 'I couldn't seem to convince them that this was a worldwide problem that needs immediate resolution.' Col Bogdanos also stressed that architectural [sic] heritage is being stripped away even now." "An American officer in Baghdad remarked: '[Finding stolen artifacts] does not even come into the equation at the moment. When we have the time off from suicide bombings, from rockets and mortars then we will start playing Indiana Jones." "Professor Zainab Bahrani, ... He [sic] said: ..." "Asked when the museum would reopen, Mr [Mudhar] al-Zuhairi [one of the senior managers of the National Museum] burst into laughter. 'Do you not see what is going on outside? We don't want to lose the pieces we have gathered in the past two years. ... We also don't feel that even if we open up we are going to get that many visitors. People are too worried about their day-to-day safety to think about coming to the museum." "Rashid Ibrahim Abbas, who worked in a team created to recover the treasures, said: 'The situation has now changed dramatically. One simply cannot go out and about meeting people who can lead you to the stolen items. There is no incentive in people taking up offers of amnesty because there is little the Americans and the Iraqi government can do to you if you ignore it, and just keep these very valuable things. Nowadays, you are very much more likely to get paid rewards for handing in weapons than handing in things stolen from the museums.'" "The archaeologist Elizabeth Stone, of Stony Brook University in New York, said: 'Somewhere there must be warehouses that are bulging at the seams because this stuff isn't showing up in the market. The people who are storing it are perhaps long-term family firms of antiquities dealers. They may be assuming that if it's not this generation then it's the next generation that's going to reap the profits.' In the meantime, she says, they are also flooding into the unregulated markets of the Gulf states where Mesopotamian antiquities are fetching very high prices."

G. Gugliotta, "Looted Iraqi Relics Slow To Surface. Some Famous Pieces Unlikely to Reappear," in The Washington Post, November 8, 2005: "U.S. military sources say forces in Iraq have no systematic way of investigating the missing [National Museum] objects, and in the ongoing insurgency neither U.S. nor Iraqi forces can justify using scarce manpower to guard sites in the countryside, where widespread looting has continued unchecked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion. Law enforcement organizations worldwide are chasing the lost items, but their representatives said there is no systematic coordination, and they are relying on a shifting set of ad hoc partnerships to bring the thieves to account." "Yet paradoxically, although lower-end artifacts occasionally are placed for auction on the Internet, there has been no serious upsurge in public sales of Iraqi antiquities, either in the United States or Europe. Experts attribute the absence of a market to a combination of factors, none of them verifiable. Tough laws in Britain and the United States may have scared off known dealers, some say, or smugglers may simply have stashed their prizes in warehouses until they think it is safe. Others suggest that it takes a few years for stolen goods to migrate from the Middle East to shops in London, Tokyo or New York. Still others suspect the loot has gone to collectors in nearby states along the Persian Gulf, where Mesopotamian artifacts enjoy a stature they never attained in the West. Most sources agree, however, that the most famous pieces are too hot ever to be handled again in public. ... , the only people who will ever see them are the millionaires who buy them on the black market and lock them away." "... [only] a relatively small number of specialists in academia, the art world and law enforcement ... continue to track the fortunes of Iraq's stolen patrimony." [oh so true!]
"Since Bogdanos departed Iraq, U.S. forces no longer have a systematic way to search for artifacts, and the effort has devolved upon an assortment of organizations, including, among many others, the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, Interpol, the FBI and cylinder-seal experts at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. 'There is no coordination,' Bogdanos said. 'It's based on personal relationships, and when it works, it's a surprise.'" [sad but true]; "But there is little evidence that anyone in the United States or Europe is taking advantage. In fact, whatever market there was for Iraqi antiquities appears to be drying up. 'The items that are coming to auction are much better provenanced <authenticated>,' said William Weber of the London-based Art Loss Register. ... Britain's draconian 2003 Iraq Sanctions Order has put the burden of proof on a dealer to show that an artifact is not stolen. The United States has lifted general trade sanctions on Iraq imposed after the Gulf War but left them in place for cultural property." "Stony Brook University archaeologist Elizabeth Stone, however, has been leading an effort to compare 'before and after' satellite photographs of well-known sites in southern Iraq, and has found holes 'denser than Swiss cheese.'" "DePaul University's Patty Gerstenblith, an expert on cultural property law, believes the sanctions may have forced thieves to make a cost-benefit calculation. 'It will be too dangerous for collectors to buy the well-known items,' she said, and not worth the risk for smugglers to sell the cheap stuff." [I'm not sure I understand what Gerstenblith actually thinks is happening to the artifacts then...; 11-10-05: Gugliotta attributes to Dr. Zainab Bahrani a reference to "the missing Sumerian black statue of Eannatum," which she wishes to point out he did erroneously, it is of Entemena instead]

Photo: "These looted artifacts were displayed in May 2003 at Iraq's National Museum, two months after they had disappeared. Photo Credit: By Murad Sezer -- Associated Press"

"President Bush to Award the 2005 National Humanities Medals," in National Endowment for the Humanities, online, November 8, 2005: "Matthew Bogdanos (New York, N.Y.), a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, has been an assistant district attorney in Manhattan since 1988. ... holds a law degree and a master's in classics from Columbia University, as well as a master's in strategic studies from the Army War College. ... Bogdanos received a Bronze Star for counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan and served several tours in Iraq. While in Iraq, Bogdanos led the investigation into the theft and destruction at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Under his supervision, more than 5,000 artifacts have been recovered in six countries, and this became the topic of his book, Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures (Bloomsbury), published in October 2005. Bogdanos is donating the book's royalties to the Iraq Museum for additional recoveries and has returned to the D.A.'s office, where he continues to perform recovery work for Iraq and Afghanistan." [after this prestigious lifetime-achievement honor, what's left to accomplish...?; see also The White House November 10, 2005]
K. Clarke, "Iraq's looted treasures. Iraq's Minister for Culture tells More4 News of her fight to reclaim Iraq's stolen treasures," in More4 News (More4; UK), with online video, [November 7, 2005]: "We have the remarkable story of an Iraqi woman, Maysoon al-Damluji , who as a [deputy] minister for culture is fighting to reclaim her country's history."; interview: she's visiting London, went to talk to Scotland Yard about efforts to recover stolen and looted artifacts; footage of the National Museum in 2003 and Mesopotamian pieces in the British Museum
"Iraqi-Jordanian security MoU takes effect today," in Kuwait News Agency (Kuwait), online, November 7, 2005: "The MoU also stipulates other means of cooperation to put an end to smuggling and reselling of historical and archeological artifacts, ..."
J. Rogers, "Looting of Iraq's Antiquities Still Common," in CBS 5 (San Francisco, California), November 5, 2005: interview: "But Baghdad is his home, and [Donny] George said no amount of violence can keep him away from his family. 'Whatever happens I have to go back,' George said, adding that in Iraq's history, blood shed is not unprecedented. 'As an archeologist, we know in the history, there were times like this,' he said, 'but they never last forever.'"

D. Marchioro, "L'Eccellenza del Restauro Italiano nel Mondo," in RomaOne.it (Italy), online, November 4, 2005: picture and documentation exhibition in the Gipsoteca of the Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome about the activities of the art and antiquities restorers of the state Istituto Centrale per il Restauro (ICR) throughout the world, also in Iraq (National Museum and Nineveh)

Photo: [no caption; presumably the exhibition catalogue with a Neo-Assyrian sculpture in Iraq on the cover]

W. Harms, "Museum director briefs soldiers, makes military mindful of Iraq’s history," in The University of Chicago Chronicle, 25, 4 (November 3, 2005): "To better understand their mission in Iraq, military forces need to know more about the country’s history, according to Geoff Emberling, Director of the Museum of the Oriental Institute, who briefs officers in U.S. military units before they are deployed to Iraq. Emberling, who lectured recently to officers in Bosnia and Germany, and who also has delivered briefings around the country, will talk about his experiences at a special Veterans Day program at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11 ... as part of the Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace program,' ..." "'I started doing the briefings in December of 2003, ... 'In our society, history often doesn’t seem to matter very much because we are so focused on change. In the Middle East, history more clearly defines the present. The society has durable structures that go back thousands of years,' he said. ... One of the durable structures is a dual political system, in which there is an urban-based power as well as a tribal government that operates as a parallel. Each system has its rules and laws. 'This system goes back to at least 2000 B.C., and we read about it in letters written in cuneiform,' ..."
D. Vergano, "On the trail of stolen Iraqi art," in USA Today, November 2, 2005: "Matthew Bogdanos, a Marine Reserve colonel and the U.S. military's lead investigator into the thefts, details the assault on the museum and its aftermath in his new book, Thieves of Baghdad ... , written with thriller author William Patrick."; Vergano also utilizes Bogdanos' AJA article substantially for this article [see Bogdanos July 2005]; "There was evidence, however, that forces loyal to Saddam Hussein had long been preparing to use the museum, located across the street from an Iraqi Special Republican Guard compound and commanding a view of a Tigris bridge, as a stronghold." "In the public galleries, 40 prominent objects were stolen by organized thieves. Only 15 have been recovered, ... Crowds looted two storage rooms, which were open with no signs of forced entry. The staff estimates 3,138 jars, pottery and other pieces were stolen. Many were returned by repentant looters; 101 items are still missing." "Still, 5,144 cylinder seals, more than one-third of the museum's collection, and 5,542 decorative pins, beads, pendants and necklaces were stolen [from the basement]. About 2,300 of these objects have been recovered, 1,395 of which were in customs seizures outside Iraq. In all, more than 13,864 objects were stolen, and at least 5,359 were recovered, say investigators." "... Columbia University archaeologist Zainab Bahrani, who believes a final analysis will find that more than 20,000 items were stolen. 'The report is the perspective of Col. Bogdanos, who is a representative of the U.S. military, and that's important to consider,' ..." "'Frankly, those who have argued that U.S. forces should have done more to protect the museum present a compelling argument,' [Bogdanos] acknowledges. 'The more pointed question, however, is why no unit before the battle had been given the specific mission of protecting the museum,' Bogdanos says in the [AJA article]. The answer in part is that the military did not expect that Iraqis would see the museum as part of the Saddam regime, he says. 'Thus, despite the prior warnings, planners simply did not believe that the museum ... would be looted.'" [never mind they were alerted in no uncertain terms by Mesopotamian archaeologists that in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War the regional museums had been looted!]; "Experts led by Bahrani and colleagues claimed a victory this month when the Iraqi constitution was amended to include protections for antiquities." [more like the continuation of the national/federal mandate for the care of antiquities instead of devolving it to regions and provinces with many uncertainties]; "Bogdanos plans to start a task force to explore blocking trade in stolen Iraqi antiquities when he returns to the Manhattan District Attorney's office in December." [interesting; I hope he really will be pursuing this and, most of all, will get the time and manpower to be effective]

M. Alawsy, "Destruction of beloved Baghdad statue emblematic of violence's toll," in Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, online, November 2, 2005: "The bronze bust of Jaafar al Mansour, who founded Baghdad in the eighth century, stood in the center of a traffic circle in northwestern Baghdad and was used by nearly everyone as a reference point: 'near the statue,' 'a kilometer past the statue.' It was a symbol of the city, without politics or sectarianism. Until Oct. 19, when terrorists reduced it to rubble with a roadside bomb ..." "... especially troubling to residents, ... because it celebrated Baghdad's storied past, not its recent troubles. 'They are destroying Iraqi civilization,' said Ahmed Mustafa, 36, who owns a supermarket near the statue." "Why it was destroyed is a mystery. Several Iraqi newspapers compared the act to the Taliban's destruction of graven images, including Buddhas, in Afghanistan. Others note that any artwork, even one by famous Iraqi sculptor Khaled al Rahal, done during Saddam's reign is a target for Shiite extremists. Some suggest an Iranian hand in the attack. Mustafa blamed 'outsiders,' ..." "Nori Abbas, 20, who works near the statue, said he thinks it was destroyed because some believed it symbolized the old Iraq. He bemoaned what he saw as an assault on the heritage of an ancient city. 'Everywhere you go in town, statues are removed or destroyed by explosions,' ..." [see also The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The Johns Hopkins University October 17, 2005]

Photo: "A boy climbs over the bronze rubble of a bronze statue of Jaafar al Mansour, who built Baghdad and died in 775. Ali Jassim, KRT"

M. Bogdanos, "Tracking Down the Looted Treasures of Iraq," in Biblical Archaeology Review, November-December 2005: only the first 2 paragraphs are available online but it looks pretty much like a simplified version of Bogdanos July 2005; I wonder if the AIA was aware of the colonel's publication plans?

Photo: "ON THE COVER: The Mask of Warka, a life-sized marble head dating to approximately 3100 B.C. and one of the most historically significant of thousands of objects discovered missing from the Iraq Museum, was recovered in a backyard in Baghdad by the U.S. Army’s 812th Military Police Company and returned to the museum in September 2003. The sculpture is thought to be one of the earliest naturalistic depictions of a human face. In 'Tracking the Looted Treasures of Iraq,' Matthew Bogdanos, the Marine colonel who until recently headed the U.S. military’s counter-terrorism task force, tells of his team’s efforts to recover the artifacts looted from the Iraq Museum in the spring of 2003. Photo by Associated Press."

J. Cheng, "All Eyes on Iraq," in Archaeology, 58, 6 (November-December 2005): multiple-book review: M. Polk and A.M.H. Schuster (eds.), The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad; B. and K.P. Foster, Iraq Beyond the Headlines; M. Bernhardsson, Reclaiming a Plundered Past, to be published by University of Texas Press in [January] 2006: "... lively political history of Iraqi archaeology, ... both colonial ambition and national identities from the nineteenth century to Saddam's reign were explicitly tied to the region's pre-Islamic heritage. While the book duly notes the significance of archaeologists' finds, the archaeologists themselves are the subject. For instance, Gertrude Bell, founder of the National Museum and Iraq's first director of antiquities, created a common history for a number of autonomous groups cobbled together into one nation by foreign powers. This is an insightful and amusing volume." [I'd also recommend, e.g., M.T. Larsen, The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land, 1840-1860, London, 1996, for more detail on the earliest period of archaeological exploration]; M. Garen and M.-H. Carleton, American Hostage

Photo: [no caption; cover of Reclaiming a Plundered Past]

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).