Eight Thousand Years of Civilization ...gone

[rah]

Farfetched but isn't it suspicious that the entire card catalog was destroyed. That's not the work of spur of the moment looters, that's definately pros at work.

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by rah
Farfetched but isn't it suspicious that the entire card catalog was destroyed. That's not the work of spur of the moment looters, that's definately pros at work.

Yep, a normal Iraqi looter will only grab golden objects or artifacts that look really valuable anyway, the real important pieces, that are sold so specialists and private collectors and that a normal jack doesn't see as important, is stolen by professionals, there's no doubt about it, these guys know how to get those items sold, Mohammed from down the block wouldn't have those nice connections to the international black market I would think?

[chequita guevara]

According to the currator, a lot of stuff was just destroyed, but I do agree, this is looking curiouser and curioser.

[Spiffor]

From Le Monde, 13 April 2003

Les trente-deux galeries du Musée archéologique ont été mises à sac
LE MONDE | 14.04.03 | 14h00

Le musée de Bagdad a-t-il subi le même sort que le Musée de Kaboul ? Plus de 80 % des pièces de l'établissement afghan avaient été pillées après le départ des troupes soviétiques. L'essentiel de ce qui restait a été détruit plus tard par les talibans. D'après le New York Times, il aura fallu moins de 48 heures pour que les trente-deux galeries du Musée archéologique national d'Irak soient "nettoyées", sous le nez des troupes américaines. Plusieurs archéologues irakiens auraient fait des démarches auprès du commandement américain pour que le musée soit "sanctuarisé". En vain.

Le quotidien britannique The Independent insiste, dimanche, sur les destructions : statues mutilées, vitrines éventrées, objets fracassés. Les autorités irakiennes avaient pourtant prévu le pire. Dans le numéro de février 2003 de la revue Archéologia, la directrice des musées d'Irak, le Dr Nawala Mettwali, indiquait que "le personnel a suivi des sessions de formation pour évacuer les 32 salles du musée en un jour. Les objets seront mis à l'abri dans des lieux secrets." La responsable des musées, qui pleure aujourd'hui ses collections disparues, n'avait pas prévu que le personnel serait le premier à se volatiliser.

L'actuel musée de Bagdad a été inauguré en 1976. Ses collections comptaient environ 150 000 pièces, de menues tablettes d'argile gravées d'écritures cunéiformes aux puissants taureaux ailés de Khorsabad ou aux bas-reliefs des palais de Nimroud qui pèsent chacun plusieurs tonnes, l'ensemble constituant une anthologie assez complète de toutes les civilisations qui se sont succédé, depuis plus de 7000 ans, entre le Tigre et l'Euphrate : témoignages préhistoriques, vestiges sumériens, akkadiens, babyloniens, assyriens néobabyloniens, perses, grecs, parthes, sassanides, et un très riche fond islamique.

LONGUE RESTAURATION

Lors de la première guerre du Golfe, une grande partie de ces pièces avait été mise à l'abri et le musée fermé. Il avait été rouvert pour l'an 2000. De nombreux objets, qui avaient souffert de leur réclusion dans des caisses métalliques, demandaient une longue restauration qui n'était pas achevée. Les trésors les plus précieux, comme ceux qui avaient été trouvés dans les tombes royales d'Our, étaient restés dans leurs cachettes : seules leurs photos étaient exposées dans le musée de Bagdad. Ces pièces sont-elles pour autant sauvées ? A la suite de la première guerre du Golfe, neuf des treize musées régionaux avaient été plus ou moins pillés. D'après le professeur McGuire Gibson (Science, mars 2003) qui enseigne l'archéologie mésopotamienne à Chicago, 3000 pièces avaient été dérobées. De son côté, le professeur japonais Ishi avait été chargé par l'Unesco de rassembler une documentation sur les objets volés dans les musées irakiens, mais aussi sur les 10 000 sites archéologiques. Il en avait dénombré 5000. Il est à craindre que cette fois-ci, le chiffre des objets volés – ou pire, détruits – ne soit beaucoup plus élevé.

Après le pillage du Musée de Bagdad, le directeur général de l'Unesco, Koïchiro Matsuura, a fait savoir, dans un communiqué, qu'il avait "aussitôt saisi les autorités américaines et britanniques et demandé de prendre immédiatement les mesures de surveillance et de protection des sites archéologiques et institutions culturelles irakiens". A la veille de l'intervention armée, Mounir Bouchenaki, directeur adjoint de la culture à l'Unesco, avait déclaré au Monde : "Les Américains connaissent la valeur et la diversité du patrimoine irakien. Nous leur avons remis la liste des sites importants. J'espère qu'ils en feront bon usage."

I've copied the entire article for further notice (Le Monde takes it articles down after a while), so I'll just translate one short excerpt here, in answer to Ned :

"In the Feb 2003 issue of the Archéologia magazine, The director of Iraqi museums, Dr Nawala Mettwali, pointed that "the staff has followed a formation to empty the museum's 32 rooms in one day. The artifacts will be sheltered at secret locations." The director, who today mourns the lost collections, didn't foresee that the first to disappear would be the staff"

[chequita guevara]

ENGLISH!

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by gunkulator


Neither do you. Thanks for making my point. It is the Iraqi's museum, not ours. Let's ask THEM what they think.



It is a tragedy, no question. However, had Saddam spent 1/10 as much on his people instead of museums, palaces and statues, maybe we wouldn't be where we are today.



My my, the f word twice. You don't need to wage war to destroy life. Saddam is proof positive of that. Call it "handling internal problems" or something. As a denizen of a country that has been liberated by war, I wouldn't be so quick to claim "war = always bad".



and the Kurds and the Shiites and the political dissenters and the free press.



I'm not sure who you're arguing with since nobody disagrees. The question I have asked is: How many human lives is it worth expending to save them?

-No I don't live in Iraq, so what Saddam does to his own people to keep order in his country doesn't concern me, but this museum does concern me in fact. Anyway the thing is that you are missing the point, you are making an "either" question. Well let me put it this way: it's your business that you're invading Iraq, but you DO have to prevent the looting, and especially this museum, because you COULD have prevented it from being looted. It is not a question of either removing Saddam and losing the museum, or keeping the museum but keeping Saddam as well... You are asking the wrong questions here mate. You could have removed Saddam, and still have saved the museum, that's what I am so angry about.

-On you second point, we clearly disagree on the motives of this war, and I won't argue on this because it's pointless and it doesn't cencern this topic

-aha, War = Peace ey... yeah right... I never said war is always bad, ah well actually war is ALWAYS bad, but alas war cannot always be avoided, and in this case, a war was clearly not necessary at this particular time, as the US actually provoked the war, and actually invaded! Also, the Iraqi dont see their country that liberated.. It might seem strange to some of you, but what these ppl want in the first place is safety, food and a roof above their heads... at this time their life standard is worse than it was under Saddam as there is no law, clean water anymore, and a lot of homes and buildings have been destroyed

-You are waging a war to save their lives, but at the same time their market places are being bombed.. that's real fun. the shiites and Kurds have nothing to do with this. Besides the Kurds have been oppressed in Turkey as well, and nobody who gives a ****

-Your last point: none, as the library could be saved by simply posting men there to protect is, no Iraqi fool would get it in his head to loot a building guarded with troops carrying an m60 or something

[Spiffor]

Che : I am too lazy to translate in all right now. I've copied the whole article for further notice in case Le Monde puts it down. Right now, I have only translated the relevant excerpt, at the end of my previous post

[Ned]

Originally posted by Spiffor
From Le Monde, 13 April 2003



"In the Feb 2003 issue of the Archéologia magazine, The director of Iraqi museums, Dr Nawala Mettwali, pointed that "the staff has followed a formation to empty the museum's 32 rooms in one day. The artifacts will be sheltered at secret locations." The director, who today mourns the lost collections, didn't foresee that the first to disappear would be the staff"

So, they had planned to evacuate the artifacts, but couldn't because the staff fled.

But did they?

I think we really out to put the FBI on this one.

[Spiffor]

That would indeed be a smart move. This looks fishy altogether.

[Lung]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

However, kicking Saddam out of power DEFINETLY justifies the destruction of some ancient artifacts.

By accident, sure, but by blatant neglect?

If the nearby forces were busy fighting, then it would have been by accident. But seeing as they were just sitting around, neglect is flashing is big neon lights.

Kicking Saddam out of power justifies the destruction of ancient artifacts only if they were unable to stop it. After all, it's only collateral damage if it's lost inadvertently.

Of course, it's silly to blame the US when they weren't the ones doing the looting, but to not lift a finger to stop it when they easily could have, is to condone it.

This is not only a great loss for Iraq, but all of humanity. The artifacts will end up in private collections, never to see the light of day again

Imran, stop being so paranoid and let your country take responsibility for its actions Dismissing the artifacts as bunch of old plates just shows your contempt for anything not American.

[Lung]

Originally posted by Ned


So, they had planned to evacuate the artifacts, but couldn't because the staff fled.

But did they?

I think we really out to put the FBI on this one.

Well Ned, the museum's rooms were all emptied in one day and their whereabouts are definitely secret

[Drake Tungsten]

I heard something on the news a bit ago about British scholars who believed that many of the antiquities in the National Museum were actually fakes. The museum closed for several years and some believe that it was filled with replicas when it was reopened. I hope this turns out to be true.

[Lung]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I heard something on the news a bit ago about British scholars who believed that many of the antiquities in the National Museum were actually fakes. The museum closed for several years and some believe that it was filled with replicas when it was reopened. I hope this turns out to be true.

That would be poetic justice

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I heard something on the news a bit ago about British scholars who believed that many of the antiquities in the National Museum were actually fakes. The museum closed for several years and some believe that it was filled with replicas when it was reopened. I hope this turns out to be true.

all over the world muea are filled with fake items... In some cases such as old Greek figurines for example it is sometimes hard to see whether this is an authentic piece or a fake, even for experts... Also, "some believe" isn't very convincing to me

[Proteus_MST]

[cyn]
Come on, there had to be priororities.
The few US Forces which were in Bagdhad after its conquest had to guard important buildings,
such as the Ministry of Oil (which was de facto guarded by US-Troops right from the start).
Not such unimportant Buildings like Hospitals or Museums
[/cyn]

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Che : I am too lazy to translate in all right now. I've copied the whole article for further notice in case Le Monde puts it down. Right now, I have only translated the relevant excerpt, at the end of my previous post

Here's the Babelfishied Franglish (tm) version:

The thirty-two galleries of the archaeological Museum were put at bag the WORLD | 14.04.03 | 14h00 Did the museum of Baghdad undergo the same fate as the Museum of Kabul? More than 80 % of the parts of the Afghan establishment had been plundered after the departure of the Soviet troops. The essence of what remained was destroyed later by the talibans.

According to the New York Times, it will have been necessary less than 48 hours so that the thirty-two galleries of the national archaeological Museum of Iraq "are cleaned", under the nose of the American troops. Several Iraqi archaeologists would have made steps near the American command so that the museum "is sanctuarisé". In vain. The British daily newspaper The Independent insists, Sunday, on the destruction: mutilated statues, broken windows, crashed to pieces objects.

The Iraqi authorities had however envisaged the worst. In the February 2003 issue of of the Archéologia review, the director of the museums of Iraq, Dr. Nawala Mettwali, indicated that "the personnel followed training courses to evacuate the 32 rooms of the museum in one day. The objects will be put at the shelter in secret places." The person in charge for the museums, who cries today his disappeared collections, had not provided that the personnel would be the first to be volitilized.

The current museum of Baghdad was inaugurated in 1976. Its collections had counted approximately 150 000 parts, of small shelves of clay engraved of wedge-shaped writings to the powerful winged bulls of Khorsabad or the low-reliefs of the palates of Nimroud which weigh each one several tons, the unit constituting a rather complete anthology of all civilizations which followed one another, for more than 7000 years, between the Tiger and Euphrate: prehistoric testimonys, vestiges sumériens, akkadiens, babyloniens, assyriens néobabyloniens, perses, Greeks, parthes, sassanides, and a very rich Islamic bottom.

LONG RESTORATION At the time of the first war of the Gulf, most of these parts had been put at the shelter and the closed museum. It had been reopened for the year 2000. Many objects, which had suffered from their reclusion in metal cases, required a long restoration which was not completed.

The most invaluable treasures, as those which had been found in the royal tombs of Our, had remained in their hiding-places: only their photographs were exposed in the museum of Baghdad. Are these parts for saved as much? Following the first war of the Gulf, nine of the thirteen regional museums had been more or less plundered.

According to professor McGuire Gibson (Science, March 2003) which teaches archaeology mésopotamienne in Chicago, 3000 parts had been catch. On his side, Japanese professor Ishi had been charged by UNESCO with gathering a documentation on the objects stolen in the Iraqi museums, but also on the 10 000 archeological sites. He had counted 5000 of them.

It is to be feared that this time, the figure of the stolen objects? or worse, destroyed? is not much high any more. After the plundering of the Museum of Baghdad, the general manager of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, let know, in an official statement, which it "at once had seized the authorities American and British and asked to immediately take measurements of monitoring and protection of the archeological sites and institutions cultural Iraqi".

With the armed intervention day before, Mounir Bouchenaki, deputy manager of the culture with UNESCO, had declared in the World: "the Americans know the value and the diversity of the Iraqi inheritance. We gave the list of the significant sites to them. I hope that they will make good use of it."

edit: created paragraphs, to make it a little more bearable.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Uncle Sparky


The Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad has been looted over the last few days. According to CBC reports, the curators of the museum had asked for American assistance in protecting the treasures even before American troops entered the city. None was forthcoming.

Artifacts from the early Mesopotamian & Babylonian civilizations were taken. Larger pieces of statuary were vandalized - several statues had heads & limbs hacked off and stolen.

The damage is irreplaceable, of course.

Long after George W Bush becomes a footnote, this incident will be remembered and mourned.

I guess we should look to EBay for bargains soon.

Should America pay for this tragedy ?

I think America should pay for every single bad thing that has ever happened in the last 50 years.




dork thread

[Ned]

News:

"It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action," said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes."

"I have a suspicion it was organized outside the country, in fact I'm pretty sure it was," Gibson said. He added that if a good police team was put together, "I think it could be cracked in no time."

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200...D7QFCN080.html

[Ned]

The FBI is on the way to Iraq. The Museum looting is now being treated as a crime.

[DRoseDARs]

Ned:
NOW being treated as a crime? *Sigh...* At least now the investigation is starting in ernst. *Crosses fingers...*

Ted Striker:
D*ck post. :thefingersmiley: Eff you.



Yes, I've been quiet in this thread the past day or two, but I've been reading posts the whole time:

1) So far, I've heard nothing that would explain the total failure to protect the museum, the library that was burned, the hopitals, or the universities. I'm not gonna waste my time further on those points because there hasn't been any acceptable reason that this was allowed to happen. Maybe in 50 or so years someone will uncover the reason...

2) Anyone who passes off the acts against cultural collections (museums/libraries) as meerly "unfortunate" might never consider themself Human above any nationalistic identity. This was an unconshinable (sp?) act against us all, not just the Iraqis.

Man, if I'd been on that stage with Rumy I'd've b*tch-slapped him hard enough to send him spinning to the floor...

3) If this were a professional hit, then there's the hope that most of the artifacts survived. If Saddam had removed the artifacts and replaced them with fakes, then again there's the hope their still intact...but considering the number of places the coalition forces bombed the sh*t out of...might they have still been destroyed?

[Berzerker]

Farfetched but isn't it suspicious that the entire card catalog was destroyed. That's not the work of spur of the moment looters, that's definately pros at work.

Yup, and the vandalism helped cover up what was taken. Kind of hard to tell if a pile of dust was a plate, a cuneiform tablet, or something else.

This tragedy could have been prevented and the Bush administration and Tommy Franks were warned this would happen and were asked to provide protection. Now I hear 3 of Bush's cultural board members have resigned in disgust...

God only knows what was lost when the Conquistadors destroyed the stelae and codices found in the New World, so I consider this one of a very few black marks on the war.

[Berzerker]

Btw, thank God the west has been looting Mesopotamian artifacts for more than a century.

[Urban Ranger]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two cultural advisers to the Bush administration have resigned in protest over the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the wholesale looting of priceless treasures from Baghdad's antiquities museum.

Reuters

[Traianvs]

So far, I've heard nothing that would explain the total failure to protect the museum, the library that was burned, the hopitals, or the universities. I'm not gonna waste my time further on those points because there hasn't been any acceptable reason that this was allowed to happen.

Indeed DRoseDARs, they haven't put forward any convincing argument...


The oh so great argument of: We didn't know it was going to be looted.. Oh c'mon after the first gulf war it was just the same, just not on this scale, about 9 of the 13 museums there were looted, and 3000 artifacts were never found again...

Oh no, there wass not going to be any looting this time, oh no really we didn't know!!

Or another golden oldie: We don't have enough troops to prevent the looters, there's too many of them...

Yeah right, you got 300000 troops in Iraq, and that's not enough to keep order... right. Furthermore, a short while ago I heard Rummy or Bushy or some other geek on the news saying they were searching for WMD at thousands of places at this moment... Well if that's true, they surely must have some spare troops right, or was it too much to ask to kindly spare a few soldiers to protect hospitals, and especially this frikkuing museum!

could go on like this for a long time...

[yavoon]

isnt it now a robbery and not a looting?

[SpencerH]

Its so amusing to me that a bunch of archeology fanatics know more about the security situation in Baghdad than the commanders and troops on the ground. Personally, I wouldnt have given one more American or Iraqi life to protect those museums and I'm willing to bet more than one life would have been lost in the chaos.

[Spiffor]

Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, called Thursday for a U.N. resolution imposing a temporary embargo on trade in Iraqi antiquities.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...r_iraq_museums

(Thanks Ned for the news)

I'm not fan of embargoes, but this one is completely justified IMHO. By imposing an embargo, the robbers will have more trouble selling their items, and they'll retain them longer while looking for a good smuggling route. It gives a better chance to catch them.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Reports now are than it was an organized gang of professionals thieves with connection inside the Iraqui regime. For one thing, they had the keys to the museeum and its valts. Some of the items have already appeared in the same channels of sale as have those which have been stolen inside the Iraqui goverment over the past 12 years (There have been a significant balck market trade in them going on since 1992).

[gunkulator]

Amen brother SpencerH. I also have been hearing reports that this was more of a planned robbery rather than simple looting - timed to occur just before Baghdad fell to maximize confusion.

Still, if the reports about soldiers encouraging looting are true, then that truly is despicable.

[edit: delete duplicate report]

[Sloth]

Originally posted by SpencerH
a bunch of archeology fanatics