[CPProt.net] Assyrian treasures heading for 'hostile' territory

[Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton Cremers)]

Assyrian treasures heading for 'hostile' territory
Dalya Alberge
March 31, 2005
THE finest jewellery of the ancient world is to tour in an extraordinary
exhibition set to rival the popularity of Tutankhamen 23 years ago. The
Nimrud gold - the grave treasures of Assyrian queens and princes - has
barely been seen in Iraq, let alone anywhere else.

The treasure, which was found in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, south of
the modern Iraqi city of Mosul, in the late 1980s, dates from the 8th
century BC and was feared lost when Iraq fell victim to looters and anarchy
after the fall of Saddam Hussein. 

The unprecedented tour of Europe, North America and Asia has been organised
to raise more than $13 million for the National Museum in Baghdad, which
suffered most in the looting. 

The British Museum's director Neil MacGregor described the theft of
treasures from the Baghdad museum as the greatest catastrophe to befall any
great institution since World WarII. 

The Art Newspaper reveals this week that an exhibition of the jewellery will
open on October 23 at a venue in Europe to be announced next month, despite
concern over the artefacts going to countries that led the military action
in Iraq. 

  
The show will then tour for five years to 11 other cities. 

Preliminary discussions for the loan have been held with the British Museum,
which boasts the greatest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside
Iraq, and the Royal Academy has also been approached about the project. 

Ancient Mesopotamia - now Iraq - is considered the cradle of civilisation.
It was the birthplace of writing, cities, codified law, mathematics,
medicine and astronomy. 

The exhibition, titled Gold of Nimrud: Treasures of Ancient Iraq, will
include the winged, human-headed bulls and stone bas-reliefs found in the
palaces of the Assyrian kings at Nimrud and Nineveh. About 300 objects that
will be on display are at present in a highly secure store at the National
Museum. 

The treasures were thought to have been looted during the chaos that
followed the capture of the Iraqi capital by US forces, but were found
intact in a basement of the country's central bank. 

They had been placed there more than a decade ago, possibly to protect them
during the 1991 Gulf War. 

In 2003, the American authorities put them on show for several months in the
museum to demonstrate that life in the capital was returning to normal.
Apart from that spell, the gold has never been seen by Iraqis. 

The Times