- F. Deblauwe, "Attending RAI 51.
Observations on the 51e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in
Chicago, July 17-23, 2005" (IW&A Documents, 4), in The Iraq War & Archaeology
(Austria), online, August 5, 2005, updated August 20,
2005: "Monday July 18 ... Robert McC. Adams ... drew
attention to the horrible situation in Iraq and expressed his opinion
that the pending civil war (which may even have started already) can
probably only be avoided by a US withdrawal." "[MacGuire Gibson] showed
many photos of the looting of the archaeological sites of Iraq.
The
photos of the Ur III temple palace in Umma from 2001 (before) and 2003
(after), for example, spoke eloquently of the huge damage. Nippur
looted for 2 months in the summer of 2003 but now safe. Abu
Salabikh
safe as far as 6 months ago. Finally, Robert McC. Adams made some
concluding remarks. Perhaps the destruction of the big, important
sites may force us to pay more systematic attention to the many smaller
sites out there which after all were an important aspect of ancient
society too. Better availability of satellite photography may be
of
great use here. ... The big discussion on how to deal with looted
artifacts, how to prevent, curtail looting, etc. started. No easy
solutions, I'm afraid." "Over Wednesday [July 20] breakfast, Michael
Müller-Karpe briefed me on his October 2004 trip to Baghdad." "The
general meeting of the International Association for Assyriology (IAA)
took place today in the late afternoon. ... A discussion was then
started about the last point on the agenda: 'Policy on unprovenanced
inscriptions.' Let's just say there was no perfect
agreement.
MacGuire Gibson: it all started when 5,000 artifacts were stolen from
museums in Iraq after the 1991 War, of which only 45 were
recovered.
He met a Ms. Osthoff two weeks ago in Amman: she said looting has now
reached the Diyala region. Irene Winter: the AIA has already instituted
programs to educate military personnel on Mesopotamian antiquities at
their deployment centres in Georgia, etc." [9-20-05: see now Archaeological
Institute of America September 19, 2005]; "There are two
purist
positions on the issue: one that says no to any dealings with looted
artifacts of any type as that only encourages more looting, and one
that says that looted cuneiform tablets contain precious textual
information and should therefore be studied anyway. A committee
will
be formed to formulate a policy by the next RAI. I personally am
disappointed: this is the year 2005, more than 2 years after the start
of the Iraq War and we as a scholarly organization still haven't
figured out a sensible policy in this matter we can all more or less
agree with? Sad!"
I'd like to quote an idea I expressed even if it's not directly related
to the plight of Iraqi archaeology: "During lunch [on Thursday July
21], I chatted with Frauke Weiershäuser about the evolving
standards of
academic publishing in our field. Digital formats are gaining ground
but the problem of what counts for academic promotion and the like
remains unsolved. Still, funding of the institutes and
researchers
doing the publishing as well as the academic libraries doing the
purchasing is only decreasing. I feel that the established
academic
series, esp. the ones published by university departments, should be
edited and prepared for print with the same quality standards as usual
but then, just before the usual step of sending a manuscript to a
printer, it should instead be converted into a high-quality pdf
file.
This then should be placed on the web to be downloaded for free by
anyone interested so as to encourage research in our small field.
Academic libraries could download it, print it out and bind it into a
book to place in the stacks. If there are fine photographs or plans,
they should have it printed out by their university copying/printing
service on a high-quality printer. This approach would save the
money
for a limited and expensive print run which is almost always totally
subsidized anyway. Any academic library could also acquire a lot
more
of the literature without having to make the painful choices that are
all too common today. And because it would go through the same
process
as before, it would still count fully for academic achievement."
[comments, anyone?]
"Saturday July 23, 10:45 am ... And then the big day arrived: ... the
Workshop 'The Threat to Iraq's Cultural Heritage - Current Status and
Future Prospects.' After an introduction by organizer Clemens
Reichel,
MacGuire Gibson [spoke:] ... Basetki statue has lost another toe while
it was stolen. Ur harp was taken apart by looters to try get the
gold
out of it. ... Every little tell around Nippur has been
badly damaged
by looting, according to information from a Spanish army officer.
The
next paper was 'Legal or
Illegal - Can We Afford a Market for (Un-)Excavated Objects?'
by Michael Müller-Karpe. He explained the proposed German
legislation
that would finally enact the UNESCO convention of 1970; it has so many
loopholes that it would not be good at all, it would also not abide by
the UNESCO convention of 1995. A major defect is that protection
is
limited to a finite number of important artifacts explicitly listed by
a country, ignoring for instance all archaeological objects looted from
sites. ... MacGuire Gibson then read Joanne Farchakh-Bajjali's (who was
unable to come) richly-illustrated paper 'Cultural Heritage Condemned
to Destruction--the Looting of Archaeological Sites in Southern
Mesopotamia.' It was actually retitled 'Heritage on Death Row' by
Farchakh. Looters dig trenches and then dig tunnels to stay out
of the
sun. Parthian site of Farwa also extensively looted.
Smugglers were
initially overpaying to recruit farmers to loot. Arshad Yasin,
Saddam
Hussein's brother-in-law who had been involved in [looting and]
smuggling operations in the past, is active again since 2003 in looting
and smuggling of artifacts. Farchakh is working on a film about
all
this." "... Paola Negri Scafa and Salvatore Viaggio
[ENEA/Università di
Pisa] ... They have an incipient 3-D image and text database
project
of the cuneiform tablets of the National Museum in Baghdad."
<August 4 addition: but using solely already published tablets, I
think; also, as was
remarked from the audience, why re-invent the wheel already invented by
the CDLI project at
UCLA/Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte that has
already
processed more than 125,000 texts?>" [see also Daubree
July 25, 2005]; "[David] Myers started with
explaining how the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments
Fund joined in 2004 for their Iraq
Cultural Heritage Conservation Initiative.
They already have run a training session in November-December 2004 in
Amman with 16 SBAH participants, a session in April 2005 at the British
Museum in London with 3 SBAH staff, and in June 2005 a session for 6
SBAH staff; still to come: August-September 2005 for 18 SBAH staff,
November 2005, April 2006, May 2006, June 2006, October-November 2006;
to continue for several years. Savage continued with more detail
on
the Iraq Cultural Heritage GIS database which will be bilingual
Arabic/English (see [Photo 2]). It's a significantly
enhanced version of the JADIS one of the Department of Antiquities of
Jordan. They plan on making it web based eventually. Roberto
Parapetti
[Iraqi-Italian Centre for the Restoration of Monuments] and Carlo
Lippolis [Università di Torino] were then scheduled with 'The
Contribution of the Centro
Ricerche
Archeologiche e Scavi di Torino to the Reconstruction
of Iraq's Cultural Heritage.' They have been studying about 1400
artifacts seized by the Jordanian authorities, though not all are from
Iraq. Some still have the 'IM' number on them. He showed an
interesting overview of the type of objects confiscated. The
workshop
concluded with 'The New FBI Art Crime Team and Iraq' by Bonnie
Magness-Gardiner. The new rapid-deployment Art Crime Team
was created in response to the crisis in Iraq. Legally, no Iraqi
artifacts have been allowed to be imported into the US after 1990."
"... there appeared an
article about the RAI on the front page of the Chicago Tribune of
July 23: "Babylon's dirty secrets: No tablet left unturned. Experts in
a 4,000-year-old language find Mesopotamians faced rising home prices,
booming harems and doctors who laid it on thick" by W. Mullen. ... Too
bad this journalist didn't speak to any
archaeologists... He seems to have left with the impression that
cuneiform texts was the thing the RAI was solely about. ... It's also
odd that there wasn't a mention of the events in Iraq. Looting of
sites, anyone? Which brings us to the impromptu
but vehemently requested addition to the program of the Saturday
workshop discussed in my 2 previous postings: a discussion on how to
deal with unprovenanced, i.e., most-likely looted artifacts, esp.
cuneiform tablets. Unfortunately, I had to leave early in order
to catch my plane back home. It [the discussion, of course, not
my leaving early ;-) ] was partially instigated by the petition
that Michael Müller-Karpe had circulated." "I'd
like to attend the International Congress on the Archaeology of the
Ancient Near East (ICAANE) sometime and compare. The next
one is in April 2006 in Madrid. ... I see the organizing
committee has already proposed a 'The State of Iraqi Archaeological
Heritage (1990-2006). Looting, Restoration Projects, Current Situation'
workshop!"
"Regarding the discussion about what to do with artifacts looted from
Iraq, esp. cuneiform tablets, that appear on the market in the West,
let me tell a 'what if?' story I used as an example a couple of times
while in Chicago. As looters in Iraq are plundering rather
systematically, on an unprecedented scale, at a fast rate of tell
destruction and without much meaningful opposition, it would be quite
possible that they hit upon the city of Agade. This capital of
the later-3rd-mill.-BC Akkadian empire has long eluded us scholars and
presumably would contain many remains that would elucidate this pivotal
episode in Mesopotamian history and culture. Now say some tablets
from this site reach an Assyriologist who's willing to ignore the
telltale signs of recent looting. He examines the texts and comes
to the conclusion that they must have come from an archive in
Agade! He is ecstatic, tells the dealer. The latter at once
tracks down what tell the tablets came from and puts in an order for
more. Word gets around in the antiquities trade and among the
smugglers and looters. After all, a find like this is impossible
to keep a secret. A treasure hunting frenzy ensues. A
couple of weeks later, there is nothing left of the tell of Agade worth
excavating. At about that time, some Iraqi FPS archaeological
guards finally arrive to check out what's going on but it's too
late. Lots of artifacts (sculptures, tablets, seals, etc.) pop up
on the antiquities market, all claimed to have been dug up at the now
(in)famous Tell X. None of them have any archaeological context,
stories about some having been found together may be true or may be
just a ruse to drive up the price, even whether artifacts for sale are
truly from Tell X is hardly certain. This confused, hopeless mess
is all that's left of Agade. Some scholars wish the darn Tell X
would never have been identified as Agade in the first place, instead
left to be discovered at a later time when Iraq would have been at
peace."
"A statement was prepared by Michael Müller-Karpe for the
RAI. It condemns the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq and
specifically urges scholars worldwide '... to refrain from providing
expertise to the antiquities market and to private collectors, unless
the artifacts in question can be proven to be neither excavated
illegally nor exported without permission.' It was presented at
the Workshop [on Saturday] ... and was subsequently signed by 46
of its attendees. It has now been posted at
the Workshop's web site. Scholars in the field of Assyriology and
Mesopotamian archaeology/art history are encouraged to add their names
to the list of signatures (see the web page on how to contact Clemens
Reichel to do this). ... And yes, as you can see in the list of signed
names, the
Universität Wien now has a satellite program in the US, viz. in
Kansas City, Missouri! Just kidding. As most people
probably know by now, [IW&A] and assorted academic web stuff
of my hand have been kindly 'adopted' by the Institut
für Orientalistik of the University
of Vienna in Austria, and, as an added bonus, they threw in a nice
title to put on my business card. However, I still don't have a
permanent or full-time job, hence the PayPal buttons I've added just in
case anyone has some spare change they'd like to donate."
"Furthermore, a paper I didn't attend but should have... is now
fortunately available online, both the text
and the slides—thank
you!—, 'New
digital tools for Mesopotamian cultural heritage preservation at CDLI'
by Cale Johnson." "... slide
12 is esp. interesting: '... a couple years ago, ... Bob Englund
noticed several proto-cuneiform tablets that were being auctioned by
Bonham’s in London. ... Englund and staff at CDLI do regularly monitor
not only the traditional markets, but also new media of circulation
such as eBay. Given the images of the tablets published in the auction
book, Englund did a search, located the tablets in our database and
also noticed that the same tablets had been offered for sale in Amman
in September of 2000. It is thus likely that these were a few of the
growing number of Late Uruk, Early Dynastic and Old Akkadian tablets,
presumably from Umma and its vicinity, that have been flooding the
markets since the 1990-91 Kuwait War. The important thing in this case
is that only because of such basic tools as catalogs, archival images
and transliterational corpora now in place was it even possible to know
which tablets these were, and where they had been until recently.'"
"Finally, as of August 18, there were 78
signatures under the Chicago
Statement. If you haven't signed yet, please do, and if you
have, find a colleague who hasn't and make sure he/she does...
;-) "
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Photo 1: "I include a photo of the looted site of Zabalam
from the Four Corners Media
web site"

Photo 2: [no caption; screen shot of the Iraq Cultural Heritage GIS
database being set up in co-operation with the Iraq Cultural Heritage
Conservation Initiative]

Photo 3: [no caption; poster for the 5th International Congress on the
Archaeology of the
Ancient Near East (ICAANE), April 2006, Madrid; showing what looks like
a 19th-cent. drawing of ruins of an Achaemenid palace in Iran]
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