Nicholas,
Speaking of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad, Robert Fisk's account in
The Independent is illustrative of your point. With a heavy heart, I recall
the assurances of protection given by our government at early meetings with
Baghdad curators, ICCOM, and the press. (Baghdad Museum Project:
http://www.baghdadmuseum.org/index2.htm)
Rebecca Trussell
The Independent
Special investigation by Robert Fisk
Published: 17 September 2007
2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and plundered by robbers. The
very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking under the strain of
massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as landlords buy up
the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of their artefacts
and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq's historic past the very
cradle of human civilisation has emerged as one of the most shameful
symbols of our disastrous occupation.
Evidence amassed by archaeologists shows that even those Iraqis who trained
as archaeological workers in Saddam Hussein's regime are now using their
knowledge to join the looters in digging through the ancient cities,
destroying thousands of priceless jars, bottles and other artefacts in
their search for gold and other treasures.
In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, armies of looters moved in on the
desert cities of southern Iraq and at least 13 Iraqi museums were
plundered. Today, almost every archaeological site in southern Iraq is
under the control of looters.
In a long and devastating appraisal to be published in December, Lebanese
archaeologist Joanne Farchakh says that armies of looters have not spared
"one metre of these Sumerian capitals that have been buried under the sand
for thousands of years.
"They systematically destroyed the remains of this civilisation in their
tireless search for sellable artefacts: ancient cities, covering an
estimated surface area of 20 square kilometres, which if properly
excavated could have provided extensive new information concerning the
development of the human race.
"Humankind is losing its past for a cuneiform tablet or a sculpture or
piece of jewellery that the dealer buys and pays for in cash in a country
devastated by war. Humankind is losing its history for the pleasure of
private collectors living safely in their luxurious houses and ordering
specific objects for their collection."
Ms Farchakh, who helped with the original investigation into stolen
treasures from the Baghdad Archaeological Museum in the immediate aftermath
of the invasion of Iraq, says Iraq may soon end up with no history.
"There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the Nassariyah
area alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they have all been
systematically looted. Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he
would always build another. But now the robbers are destroying everything
because they are going down to bedrock. What's new is that the looters are
becoming more and more organised with, apparently, lots of money.
"Quite apart from this, military operations are damaging these sites
forever. There's been a US base in Ur for five years and the walls are
cracking because of the weight of military vehicles. It's like putting an
archaeological site under a continuous earthquake."
Of all the ancient cities of present-day Iraq, Ur is regarded as the most
important in the history of mankind. Mentioned in the Old Testament and
believed by many to be the home of the Prophet Abraham it also features
in the works of Arab historians and geographers where its name is Qamirnah,
The City of the Moon.
Founded in about 4,000 BC, its Sumerian people established the principles
of irrigation, developed agriculture and metal-working. Fifteen hundred
years later in what has become known as "the age of the deluge" Ur
produced some of the first examples of writing, seal inscriptions and
construction. In neighbouring Larsa, baked clay bricks were used as money
orders the world's first cheques the depth of finger indentations in
the clay marking the amount of money to be transferred. The royal tombs of
Ur contained jewellery, daggers, gold, azurite cylindrical seals and
sometimes the remains of slaves.
US officers have repeatedly said a large American base built at Babylon was
to protect the site but Iraqi archaeologist Zainab Bah-rani, a professor of
art history and archaeology at Columbia University, says this "beggars
belief". In an analysis of the city, she says: "The damage done to Babylon
is both extensive and irreparable, and even if US forces had wanted to
protect it, placing guards round the site would have been far more sensible
than bulldozing it and setting up the largest coalition military
headquarters in the region."
Air strikes in 2003 left historical monuments undamaged, but Professor
Bahrani, says: "The occupation has resulted in a tremendous destruction of
history well beyond the museums and libraries looted and destroyed at the
fall of Baghdad. At least seven historical sites have been used in this way
by US and coalition forces since April 2003, one of them being the
historical heart of Samarra, where the Askari shrine built by Nasr al Din
Shah was bombed in 2006."
The use of heritage sites as military bases is a breach of the Hague
Convention and Protocol of 1954 (chapter 1, article 5) which covers periods
of occupation; although the US did not ratify the Convention, Italy,
Poland, Australia and Holland, all of whom sent forces to Iraq, are
contracting parties.
Ms Farchakh notes that as religious parties gain influence in all the Iraqi
pro-vinces, archaeological sites are also falling under their control. She
tells of Abdulamir Hamdani, the director of antiquities for Di Qar province
in the south who desperately but vainly tried to prevent the
destruction of the buried cities during the occupation. Dr Hamdani himself
wrote that he can do little to prevent "the disaster we are all witnessing
and observing".
In 2006, he says: "We recruited 200 police officers because we were trying
to stop the looting by patrolling the sites as often as possible. Our
equipment was not enough for this mission because we only had eight cars,
some guns and other weapons and a few radio transmitters for the entire
province where 800 archaeological sites have been inventoried.
"Of course, this is not enough but we were trying to establish some order
until money restrictions within the government meant that we could no
longer pay for the fuel to patrol the sites. So we ended up in our offices
trying to fight the looting, but that was also before the religious parties
took over southern Iraq."
Last year, Dr Hamdani's antiquities department received notice from the
local authorities, approving the creation of mud-brick factories in areas
surrounding Sumerian archaeological sites. But it quickly became apparent
that the factory owners intended to buy the land from the Iraqi government
because it covered several Sumerian capitals and other archaeological
sites. The new landlord would "dig" the archaeological site, dissolve the
"old mud brick" to form the new one for the market and sell the unearthed
finds to antiquity traders.
Dr Hamdani bravely refused to sign the dossier. Ms Farchakh says: "His
rejection had rapid consequences. The religious parties controlling
Nassariyah sent the police to see him with orders to jail him on corruption
charges. He was imprisoned for three months, awaiting trial. The State
Board of Antiquities and Heritage defended him during his trial, as did his
powerful tribe. He was released and regained his position. The mud-brick
factories are 'frozen projects', but reports have surfaced of a similar
strategy being employed in other cities and in nearby archaeological sites
such as the Aqarakouf Ziggarat near Baghdad. For how long can Iraqi
archaeologists maintain order? This is a question only Iraqi politicians
affiliated to the different religious parties can answer, since they
approve these projects."
Police efforts to break the power of the looters, now with a well-organised
support structure helped by tribal leaders, have proved lethal. In 2005,
the Iraqi customs arrested with the help of Western troops several
antiquities dealers in the town of Al Fajr, near Nasseriyah. They seized
hundreds of artefacts and decided to take them to the museum in Baghdad. It
was a fatal mistake.
The convoy was stopped a few miles from Baghdad, eight of the customs
agents were murdered, and their bodies burnt and left to rot in the desert.
The artefacts disappeared. "It was a clear message from the antiquities
dealers to the world," Ms Farchakh says.
The legions of antiquities looters work within a smooth mass-smuggling
organisation. Trucks, cars, planes and boats take Iraq's historical plunder
to Europe, the US, to the United Arab Emirates and to Japan. The
archaeologists say an ever-growing number of internet websites offer
Mesopotamian artefacts, objects anywhere up to 7,000 years old.
The farmers of southern Iraq are now professional looters, knowing how to
outline the walls of buried buildings and able to break directly into rooms
and tombs. The archaeologists' report says: "They have been trained in how
to rob the world of its past and they have been making significant profit
from it. They know the value of each object and it is difficult to see why
they would stop looting."
After the 1991 Gulf War, archaeologists hired the previous looters as
workers and promised them government salaries. This system worked as long
as the archaeologists remained on the sites, but it was one of the main
reasons for the later destruction; people now knew how to excavate and what
they could find.
Ms Farchakh adds: "The longer Iraq finds itself in a state of war, the more
the cradle of civilisation is threatened. It may not even last for our
grandchildren to learn from."
A land with fields of ancient pottery
By Joanne Farchakh, archaeologist
Iraq's rural societies are very different to our own. Their concept of
ancient civilisations and heritage does not match the standards set by our
own scholars. History is limited to the stories and glories of your direct
ancestors and your tribe. So for them, the "cradle of civilisation" is
nothing more than desert land with "fields" of pottery that they have the
right to take advantage of because, after all, they are the lords of the
land and, as a result, the owners of its possessions. In the same way, if
they had been able, these people would not have hesitated to take control
of the oil fields, because this is "their land". Because life in the desert
is hard and because they have been "forgotten" by all the governments,
their "revenge" for this reality is to monitor, and take, every single
money-making opportunity. A cylinder seal, a sculpture or a cuneiform
tablet earns $50 (£25) and that's half the monthly salary of an average
government employee in Iraq. The looters have been told by the traders that
if an object is worth anything at all, it must have an inscription on it.
In Iraq, the farmers consider their "looting" activities to be part of a
normal working day.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2970762.ece
> [Original Message]
> From: nicholas burlakoff <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 9/18/2007 7:39:49 PM
> Subject: Re: The Rape of Europa: A Continuing Saga
>
> While it is fashionable to attribute all evil to Nazi Germany the British
have had quite a run on art pillage and cultural destruction. Just think of
Elgin Marbles, the Benin Mask, etc. The point.... no culture, nation, or
government that is bent on imperialism is immune from committing evil.
Remember the Baghdad Museum that was left to the mercies of street thugs by
our "Christian" President? Peace, Nick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Cindy Ho <[log in to unmask]>
> >Sent: Sep 17, 2007 12:59 PM
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: [MUSEUM-L] The Rape of Europa: A Continuing Saga
> >
> >Pillage and destruction of cultural property has always been a by-
> >product of armed conflict. Yet no military power in history has
> >equaled the Third Reich in its ability to use culture not merely as a
> >trophy of war, but as a weapon of war: a means to dominate,
> >demoralize and control the nations that it sought to conquer by
> >stripping them of their cultural and spiritual identity.
> >
> >Only through the systematic confiscation, theft, concealment, forced
> >sale and destruction of millions of artistic, religious and
> >historical works and monuments would Europe, in Hitlerβs mind, become
> >a suitable home for a tausend jahre reich with Berlin as its capital.
> >Pulling the plug on this diabolical plan is one of the great stories
> >of modern time, brilliantly recounted by Lynn Nicholas in her 1994
> >book The Rape of Europa, which has been updated and adapted for the
> >screen with remarkable never-before-seen footage by the writer-
> >director-producer team of Bonny Cohen, Richard Berge and Nicolle
> >Newnham.
> >
> >Truly a βmust seeβ documentary, The Rape of Europa reveals the
> >heroism and tenacity of those who risked their lives to save what
> >others could only covet, control or destroy, and continue to undo the
> >damage caused by the German war machine more than 50 years later.
> >
> >Read the full review on the new SAFE blog SAFECORNER: http://
> >safecorner.savingantiquities.org as well as other posts, such as:
> >
> >Can Cultural Property Legislation Kill an Academic Discipline?
> >
> >Repatriation and loss of context
> >
> >Terminology: is provenience a redundant term?
> >
> >America's Commitment to Safeguarding Heritage
> >
> >Cyprus, coins and the American interest
> >
> >Looking beyond 2007
> >
> >SAFECORNER is the online community of the non-profit organization
> >SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone, where dialogs begin, ideas
> >exchange, and concrete solutions emerge concerning looting and the
> >illicit antiquities trade. Contributors to SAFECORNER are members of
> >the SAFE community and other experts and opinion leaders in the field
> >of cultural heritage protection. If you would like to add a relevant
> >discussion, report, observation or opinion, please send it to
> >[log in to unmask] We welcome your comments and
> >responses.
> >
> >=========================================================
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> >
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