- [B. Mroue], "Marines
at Gates of Babylon Work to Restore Ancient Capital," in Arizona Daily Sun, July 28, 2003:
"The Americans are cleaning up after mobs of looters who ransacked the
city's two museums, but fortunately got away mainly with small display
copies of ancient artifacts. Museum managers, fearing looting as the
U.S.-led coalition threatened war, had bricked up the museum windows.
Most of the real artifacts were stored in vaults at the Iraq Museum in
Baghdad, which also was looted. It is not known what portion of the
stored Babylonian museum treasures were taken in looting of the Iraqi
capital. The holes also were too small for looters to escape with the
large pieces in the city's two museums, named after Hammurabi and
Nebuchadnezzar." [lucky as those would presumably have been some of the
real artifacts left]; "Nearly two weeks after Saddam Hussein's regime
fell on April 9, U.S. Marines entered Babylon ... U.S. authorities
'pushed everybody outside the gate so that we could preserve the city.'
Babylon has since been closed to the public, but the Marines hope to
reopen the site within two months, said [U.S. Navy Chaplain Cmdr.
Emilio] Marrero, ..." "Marrero said only three relics were displayed in
the Nebuchadnezzar museum. They disappeared with the display copies. He
said the Americans were trying to recover the pieces and had found
some." [on August 2, Cdr. Marrero
was
so kind to e-mail me from the field to make an important
correction: "What I said to the reporter and continue to state is that
the Museum of Babylon has had two original pieces and both are intact
within the museum. Neither was damaged nor handled. All of the other
articles in this museum, which in fact were destroyed or stolen, were
certified replicas. I have been informed by the Iraqi curators that all
other originals were evacuated as early as 1989 to the National Museum
in Baghdad."; he also added: "We are working to have the Iraqis resume
management of the museum in the very near future but are in need of
museum supplies limited here in Iraq (ie) display cases, labeling
materials, cataloguing equipment, etc."]; "... Mariam Omran, director
of Babylon's two museums, as she stood in one of Nebuchadnezzar
Museum's four large rooms as workers
painted the walls and fixed a miniature model of Babylon. The Coalition
Provisional Authority, ... has spent $60,000 to repair the damage, an
amount expected to double when the work is finished." "The Marines are
getting ready to leave the area soon and will hand security over to
Polish troops, Marrero said."
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Photo: "The ancient City of Babylon as viewed from the Palace of ousted
Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, 80 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq on
Wednesday July 16, 2003. This 4,300-year-old town -now mainly an
archaeological ruin with two important museums- knows political and
military upheaval well. The American military is just the latest to
pass through the Euphrates River city. And now U.S. soldiers and
civilian occupation officials struggle with mixed success to put the
city -with its deep resonance in so many important cultures - back
together yet again. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)"
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