[CPProt.net] (Fwd) FURTHER NEWS RE IRAQI MUSEUMS

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Date sent:      	Mon, 14 Apr 2003 09:01:34 +0100 (BST)
From:           	P Boylan <P.Boylan at city.ac.uk>
Subject:        	FURTHER NEWS RE IRAQI MUSEUMS


Saturday, Sunday and Monday additions to the press reporting, for 
further
information.


Patrick Boylan

===========================

WASHINGTON POST, 12th April

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14331-2003Apr12.html


By HAMZA HENDAWI
The Associated Press
Saturday, April 12, 2003; 6:04 PM


BAGHDAD, Iraq - The famed Iraq National Museum, home of extraordinary
Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections and rare Islamic texts, 
sat
empty Saturday - except for shattered glass display cases and cracked
pottery bowls that littered the floor.

In an unchecked frenzy of cultural theft, looters who pillaged 
government
buildings and businesses after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's 
regime also
targeted the museum. Gone were irreplaceable archaeological treasures 
from
the Cradle of Civilization.

Everything that could be carried out has disappeared from the museum -
 gold
bowls and drinking cups, ritual masks worn in funerals, elaborately 
wrought
headdresses, lyres studded with jewels - priceless craftsmanship from
ancient Mesopotamia.

"This is the property of this nation and the treasure of 7,000 years 
of
civilization. What does this country think it is doing?" asked Ali 
Mahmoud,
a museum employee, futility and frustration in his voice.

Much of the looting occurred Thursday, according to a security guard 
who
stood by helplessly as hoards broke into the museum with wheelbarrows 
and
carts and stole priceless jewelry, clay tablets and manuscripts.

Left behind were row upon row of empty glass cases - some smashed up,
others left intact - heaps of crumbled pottery and hunks of broken 
statues
scattered across the exhibit floors.

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.
"To ordinarily people, these are just stones. Only the educated know 
the
value of these pieces."

Gordon Newby, a historian and professor of Middle Eastern studies at 
Emory
University in Atlanta, said the museum's most famous holding may have 
been
tablets with Hammurabi's Code - one of mankind's earliest codes of 
law. It
could not be determined whether the tablets were at the museum when 
the war
broke out.

Other treasures believed to be housed at the museum - such as the Ram 
in
the Thicket from Ur, a statue representing a deity from 2600 BC - are 
no
doubt gone, perhaps forever, he said.

"This is just one of the most tragic things that could happen for our 
being
able to understand the past," Newby said. The looting, he said, "is
destroying the history of the very people that are there."

John Russell, a professor of art history and archaeology at the
Massachusetts College of Art, feared for the safety of the staff of 
Iraq's
national antiquities department, also housed at the museum; for
irreplaceable records of every archaeological expedition in Iraq 
since the
1930s; for perhaps hundreds of thousands of artifacts from 10,000 
years of
civilization, both on display and in storage.

Among them, he said, was the copper head of an Akkadian king, at 
least
4,300 years old. Its eyes were gouged out, nose flattened, ears and 
beard
cut off, apparently by subjects who took their revenge on his image - 
much
the same way as Iraqis mutilated statues of Saddam.

"These are the foundational cornerstones of Western civilization," 
Russell
said, and are literally priceless - which he said will not prevent 
them
from finding a price on the black market.

Some of the gold artifacts may be melted down, but most pieces will 
find
their way into the hands of private collectors, he said.

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 said.

Samuel Paley, a professor of classics at the State University of New 
York,
Buffalo, predicted whatever treasures aren't sold will be trashed.

The looters are "people trying to feed themselves," said 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."

Koichiro Matsuura, head of the U.N.'s cultural agency, UNESCO, on 
Saturday
urged American officials to send troops to protect what was left of 
the
museum's collection, and said the military should step in to stop 
looting
and destruction at other key archaeological sites and museums.

The governments of Russia, Jordan and Greece also voiced deep concern 
about
the looting. Jordan urged the United Nations to take steps to protect
Iraq's historic sites, a "national treasure for the Iraqi people and 
an
invaluable heritage for the Arab and Islamic worlds."

Some blamed the U.S. military, though coalition forces say they have 
taken
great pains to avoid damage to cultural and historical sites.

A museum employee, reduced to tears after coming to the museum 
Saturday and
finding her office and all administrative offices trashed by looters, 
said:
"It is all the fault of the Americans. This is Iraq's civilization. 
And
it's all gone now." She refused to give her name.

McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of 
the
American Association for Research in Baghdad, was infuriated. He said 
he
had been in frequent and frantic touch with U.S. military officials 
since
Wednesday, imploring them to send troops "in there and protect that
building."

The Americans could have prevented the looting, agreed Patty 
Gerstenblith,
a professor at DePaul School of Law in Chicago who helped circulate a
petition before the war, urging that care be taken to protect Iraqi
antiquities.

"It was completely inexcusable and avoidable," she said.

The museum itself was battered. Its marble staircase was chipped, 
likely by
looters using pushcarts or heavy slabs of wood to carry booty down 
from the
second floor. The museum is in the Al-Salhiya neighborhood of 
Baghdad, with
its back to a poor neighborhood.

Early Saturday, five armed men showed up at the gate: One was armed 
with a
Kalashnikov, three carried pistols, one wielded an iron bar. 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.

"You think Saddam is now gone, so you can do what you like," he 
raged.

============

UNESCO PRESS NOTICE, 12-04-2003 1:00 pm

The Director-General of UNESCO calls for all measures to be taken to 
ensure
the protection and surveillance of Iraqi cultural heritage and 
effectively
fight against illicit trafficking - Updated: 12-04-2003 12:56 pm

Following the acts of looting committed yesterday in the National
Archaeological Museum of Baghdad, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro 
Matsuura
has contacted the American and British authorities and asked them to 
take
immediate measures of protection and surveillance of Iraqi 
archaeological
sites and cultural institutions. In a letter of 11 April 2003 
addressed to
the American authorities, the Director-General emphasized the urgent 
need
to preserve collections and a heritage considered to be one of the 
richest
in the world. He particularly insisted on the necessity of assuring
military protection for the Archaeological Museum of Baghdad and the 
Mosul
Museum. The same request was formulated to the British authorities
concerning in particular the Basra region.

In order to prevent the illicit export of Iraqi cultural goods, the
Director-General also undertook contacts with the authorities of the
countries bordering Iraq and international police and customs 
officials to
ensure respect of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of 
Prohibiting
and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership 
of
Cultural Property. He again requested INTERPOL, the World Customs
Organization, the International Confederation of Art and Antiquities 
Dealer
Associations (CINOA), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), 
the
International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the 
principal
actors of the art market to join forces with UNESCO in a 
"comprehensive
mobilization so that stolen objects should not find their way to
acquirers".

==================================

THE GUARDIAN, London, Monday 14th April

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,936330,00.html

Museum's treasures left to the mercy of looters

US generals reject plea to protect priceless artefacts from vandals

Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Monday April 14, 2003
The Guardian

US army commanders have rejected a new plea by desperate officials of 
the
Iraq Museum to protect the country's archeological treasures from 
looters.
Despite worldwide media coverage at the weekend of the waves of 
vandalism
and plunder last week, no tanks or troops were visible there 
yesterday.

A further plea for them to act comes from eminent British 
archaeologists in
a letter to the Guardian today.

With Iraqi police still absent from their posts - those at the museum 
fled
as the looters arrived - the US remains the only potential policing
presence in the city.

Abdul Rehman Mugeer, a senior guard, was shaking with anger yesterday 
at
the destruction. He praised the US for at least parking four tanks in 
front
of the museum when they took control of Baghdad last Wednesday. But 
they
were later removed, leaving the museum to the mercy of rampaging 
Iraqis.

"Gangs of several dozen came," he said. "Some had guns. They 
threatened to
kill us if we did not open up. The looting went on for two days."

The Americans returned with tanks at one point on Friday and sent the
looters fleeing, but as soon as the tanks rumbled away, the gangs 
came back
to finish the job.

"I asked them to leave one tank here all the time but they have 
refused,"
said Raeed Abdul Reda, an archeologist.

For months before the war began the archaeologist curators crated and
stored some of the most valuable items in the building's basements.

The museum escaped the bombing, but it has been stripped almost bare.
"Eighty per cent of what we had was stolen," Mr Reda said, standing 
in the
glass-littered compound.

"They prised open the special chambers which are protected behind 
thick
doors like safes. They came with crowbars and prised them open."

At more or less the time the world was watching Saddam Hussein's 
statue
being torn from its plinth, looters were vandalising statues from the 
great
civilisations of Nineveh and Babylon with equal energy.

Heads of ancient stone now lie on the museum floor. The bodies from 
which
they came have been pockmarked by powerful blows.

"They were too heavy to move to the basement, and stood there until 
the
vandals came and laid into them with iron bars," Mr Reda said.

It was clear from his description of the frenzy of destruction that 
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.
Display cases are empty, pottery shards litter the floor. In the 
vault for
archeological fragments drawers that once held evidence of Sumerian,
Assyrian and Babylonian culture have been pulled out and stripped.

"There were hundreds of looters, including women, children and old 
people.
They were uneducated. We know who they are," Mr Reda said, in a way 
that
left little doubt they were from the poor slums of the Shia quarter.

Books seemed to have escaped, and in a remote corner a few Islamic
manuscripts and even some Hebrew texts remained unscathed. So too do 
the
items in basements the looters failed to penetrate.

This is the only item of good news, though the museum staff were 
unwilling
to say exactly what was saved, perhaps for fear of prompting more 
looting.

Iraq had the world's first known civilisations. The cities of Ur, 
Nimrud,
Babylon and Nineveh were known to every ancient historian. Their 
remains
have been plundered for centuries, and some of the best pieces are in 
the
British Museum and other European capitals.

In recent decades local looters have picked away at tiles and 
brickwork in
unguarded ancient sites. In the turbulence and popular uprisings 
after the
previous Gulf war about 4,000 objects went missing from local 
museums.

But until last week the museum in the capital was untouched: a rare 
place
where Iraqis could celebrate a past that preceded Saddam, although a 
small
slab outside the entrance to the department of antiquities lauds "our
wonderful president".

Now in the chaos of the post-Saddam era these priceless artefacts 
have been
stolen, while the paean to Saddam remains strangely unscathed.


==================

THE GUARDIAN MONDAY 14TH APRIL

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,936264,00.html

'The collection lies in ruins, objects from a long, rich past in
smithereens'

Eleanor Robson
Monday April 14, 2003
The Guardian

This is a tragedy with echoes of past catastrophes: the Mongol sack 
of
Baghdad in 1258, and the fifth-century destruction of the library of
Alexandria. For the loss is not just Iraq's but ours, too. Iraq has 
not
been called the cradle of civilisation for nothing: 5,000 years ago 
it was
the birthplace of writing, cities, codified law, mathematics, 
medicine, and
astronomy. The House of Wisdom in ninth-century Baghdad kept 
classical
scholarship alive and promoted a vigorous intellectual reaction to it 
while
Europe was stumbling through the dark ages.

In 1976 - 10 years after its opening - the Iraq Museum published a
catalogue with a mission statement. It read: "The relics of the past 
serve
as reminders of what has been before, and as links in the chain of
communication between past, present and future. The society which 
possesses
many and fine museums has a correspondingly stronger historical 
memory than
the society without them."

The catalogue described in loving detail many of the thousands of 
objects
displayed in the 20 galleries, from 100,000-year-old stone tools from 
the
Kirkuk area to Sumerian jewellery and gold from the third millennium 
BC,
from Babylonian cuneiform tablets and Assyrian ivories to Parthian
sculpture, glassware and manuscripts from medieval Baghdad.

Ten years after the 1991 Gulf war the museum opened its doors again 
despite
sanctions, which meant staff went unpaid, conservation materials were
unobtainable, and contact with foreign colleagues was restricted. The
launch party was attended by more than 60 scholars representing the 
global
academic community.

The museum's galleries are laid out in a quadrangle on two floors 
around
the central courtyard, very like the British Museum. They are cool 
and
dark, with natural light filtering through the skylights at the top 
of the
rooms. The first galleries one enters contain sculptures from the 
Assyrian
palaces in northern Iraq: magnificent life-size carvings showing the 
rulers
of the Middle Eastern world in the ninth to seventh centuries BC. A
sequence of smaller rooms houses innumerable fragments of exquisitely
carved ivory furniture from the same palaces.

Further on are the Hatra galleries, devoted to the desert city which 
is
Iraq's only Unesco world heritage site. Here are displayed the 
funerary
statues of the men and women of Hatra: inhabitants of the border 
between
the Roman and the Iranian worlds 2,000 years ago, who chose a 
glorious
hybrid of eastern and western styles to commemorate their dead.

The Islamic galleries house tilework from medieval mosques, priceless
Korans, fittings and furniture from ninth-century palaces, and 
jewellery,
textiles and coins.

There was not enough time to see everything when I visited the museum 
two
years ago, and now I never will. Most of the collection lies in 
ruins,
trampled and smashed by looters if not stolen. Many objects from 
Iraq's
long rich past are in smithereens.

After the previous Gulf war there was a project to document what had 
been
lost to looting. It took five years to catalogue 4,000 objects, few 
of
which have been recovered. This time the stakes are far higher and 
the
problem immeasurably more difficult. 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.

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.

Unesco is holding an emergency meeting on Iraq next week. The US
authorities must allow it into the country as soon as possible to 
begin
working with Iraqi archaeologists and curators to reconstruct the 
shattered
remnants of Iraq's heritage and rebuild links in the chain between 
past,
present and future.

-- Eleanor Robson is a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and a council 
member of
the British School of Archaeology in Iraq


===========================

THE GUARDIAN LETTERS, 14TH APRIL

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,936216,00.html

Lost treasures of Iraq

Monday April 14, 2003
The Guardian

Iraq, home to the ancient civilisations of the Sumerians, Babylonians 
and
Assyrians, whose achievements include the first written language and 
the
earliest cities and irrigation systems, contains countless 
archaeological
sites and treasures. Iraqi archaeologists have an excellent 
reputation for
doing all that is in their power to care for sites and artefacts in
terrible circumstances, but archaeologists throughout Britain are 
deeply
disturbed by the effects that war has already had on these 
antiquities and
are appalled at the unchecked looting now reported (Mosul descends 
into
chaos as even the museum is looted of treasures, April 12). Letters 
of
warning and offers of help from conservation organisations to Tony 
Blair
and the MoD before the war even started have largely gone unanswered, 
and
there is still no appreciation of what is at stake.

It is now clear that the most dangerous stage of the conflict will be
looting of monuments and museums on a massive scale. At an official 
level
the American Council for Cultural Policy is already persuading the 
Pentagon
to relax legislation that protects Iraq's heritage by prevention of 
sales
abroad, arguing that antiquities will be safer in American museums 
and
private collections than in Iraq.

More responsible conservation bodies in America, such as the 
Archaeological
Institute of America, are already arguing strongly against this, and
Professor Lord Renfrew has efficiently exposed the origins of these
proposals. At an unofficial level we are seeing exactly what happens 
even
to unguarded hospitals and museums when law and order collapse: it 
needs
little imagination to see the inevitable effects on heritage sites,
especially when heavy machinery and vehicles are readily available 
and
lucrative markets are already in place.

In recent days we have heard that Basra's Museum of Natural History 
has
been thoroughly emptied, Baghdad and Mosul Museums are being looted, 
and
Mosul's collection of ancient manuscripts has been dispersed. We have 
no
idea what is happening to vulnerable sites in the countryside. Apart 
from
effects on antiquities in their own right these depredations will 
have a
long-term effect on the pride, sense of identity, and tourist economy 
of
the whole country.

We therefore call on the American and British governments 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.

George Lambrick
Council for British Archaeology

Peter Hinton
Institute of Field Archaeologists

Robin Pellew
National Trust for Scotland

David Thackray
National Trust

Geoffrey Wainwright
Cambrian Archaeological Society

Lord Redesdale
All Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group

Mark Hassall
Royal Archaeological Institute

Christopher Catling
Heritage Link

Tom Hassall
ICOMOS UK

============================




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