Lost Treasures of Humanity

Casualties of the U.S. War on Iraq

Revolutionary Worker #1198, May 11, 2003, posted at http://rwor.org/

Within 24 hours after U.S. tanks entered the city of Baghdad, their arrival triggered a heist of the National Archeological Museum in Baghdad. While the U.S. media raved over the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, a team of plunderers were ripping off irreplaceable statues from humanity's past.

On April 10, the thieves came to the museum--armed, the evidence suggests, with tools, glass cutters and even forklifts for moving massive stone artifacts. They knew what they wanted--bypassing a replica of Hamurabi's Code and going straight for authentic treasures. They did their work quickly--and when they left, the museum stood wide open.

Over the next two days, as the U.S. army consolidated its hold on Baghdad, hundreds of looters passed through the museum, taking and breaking almost everything not protected in vaults.

Within days, the heavy haul of rare historical objects were on their way toward multi-millionaire collectors in the world's richest countries.

The U.S. war machine shattered Iraq's army and government. The destruction of institutions and the desperation of people in this conquered country threw everything up for grabs. Suddenly everything was being sized up anew for its market value.

*****

"If the museum doesn't recover the looted treasures, I will feel like a part of my own soul has been stolen."

-Mazen Ahmad, selling eggs on Baghdad's streets

"It may be weeks, months, before we know what's there and what isn't."

-Donny George, research director, Iraqi Board of Antiquities

Some of humanity's most breathtakingly beautiful and rare treasures are now being secretly auctioned off in the world's antiquities market. These objects include outstanding achievements of artisans who worked and innovated over 4,000 years ago--a life-sized statue of the Sumerian King Entemena, a large ivory relief of the Assyrian god Ashur, the detailed copper-cast head of an Akkadian ruler, and an ornate gold-and-ivory harp from Ur.

It is estimated that some of these objects will sell for tens of millions of dollars each.

Also missing are unique artifacts from the development of human civilization and learning: including 5,000-year-old clay tablets containing the world's first known written words, a 10,000-year-old pebble with 12 notches that is believed to be the oldest known calendar and 2,500-year-old cuneiform clay tablets that form the world's oldest intact library.

The museum's deputy director, Nabhal Amin, said that 170,000 objects may have been lost-- including 100,000-year-old stone tools and sculptures and carvings, ivory furniture, tilework, textiles and coins. Countless tablets are missing--where the earliest records were pressed in clay. These include market records, early poems, court records and mathematical theories--and it includes many tablets that have not yet been studied.

Many of these historic artifacts had survived the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in 1258 but could not be protected against the U.S. invasion of 2003. Some collections were successfully protected by the staff who hid them in special vaults within the building. But many objects were ripped from their identifying storage, and many were trampled in the rush to find and steal the most rare and beautiful.

*****

The heartland of modern Iraq is the "Fertile Crescent"--the rich agricultural lands that surround the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Known as Mesopotamia, it is one of the regions in the world where human beings first developed agriculture and formed settlements. It is one of the places where the first kingdoms and states arose on the basis of agricultural surplus--and where early innovations in art, mathematics, writing, accounting, and organized warfare took place.

All over Iraq are mounds where the remains of thousands of years of habitation, from almost a dozen distinct cultures, lie piled on top of each other. Scholars have come here to Iraq for over 200 years to uncover how human society developed. At first they came looking for evidence of the mythic garden of Adam and Eve, but instead they found the record from 13,000 years of real human history--containing villages, temples, markets, forts and the earliest cities of Ur, Nimrud, Babylon and Nineveh. The gathering of that evidence has led to new understandings of the emergence of human society, classes and states from hunting-and-gathering life--and these continuing investigations have continually led to new discoveries, right up until the present.

Over the years, the museum in Baghdad had become a central gathering place for a huge part of early humanity's legacy. All excavations carried out in Iraq by international teams of archaeologists were reported to it.

Now many of the card catalogues and computer records for generations of scholarly work have been destroyed--perhaps deliberately to make less-well-known objects harder to trace and easier to sell.

It is not only the loss of the artifacts themselves. To develop scientific insights, investigators need to bring collections of artifacts together--including pottery shards or accounting records pressed in clay tablets, or fragments of mud sealer that reveal how straw roofs were woven. Each piece provides a context for all the others. As they are studied together, they reveal a more and more detailed picture of the peoples and societies that produced them.

The simultaneous theft and destruction of records means much of the museum's collection is stripped of context and torn out of the social process of systematic investigation. Even if the objects later "turn up," we may have lost much of their meaning. An irreplaceable human legacy is being "privatized" in every sense--turned into baubles and investments on secret display in the home galleries of the super rich.

*****

"You tell me what their priorities are."

-Salma El Radi, Iraqi archaeologist

While the battle for Baghdad was still going on, Secretary Rumsfeld criticized the media for reporting that there was widespread looting. "It's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase," Rumsfeld joked, "and you see it 20 times and you think, my goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?" Rumsfeld pooh-poohed it all, saying: "Bad things do happen in life, and people do loot."

Then, as awful details emerged from the Baghdad museum, the U.S. and British media started to suggest that perhaps the museum's own staff had carried out the heist, and 25 FBI agents were sent to Iraq to follow such "leads."

The Pentagon argued they had done everything reasonable to protect Iraqi historic sites--and treated the loss of this museum as regrettable, collateral damage of war.

When UN General Secretary Kofi Annan urged the U.S. to abide by the international laws governing "occupying powers" (including the conventions for protecting historical and art objects)--the Pentagon angrily replied that they were not occupiers and these treaties did not apply to them.

More recently, news stories quote an Army colonel-in-charge who claims the loss "might not have been as bad" as reported.

Clearly, the U.S. government and media are using classic "spin control" to deflect any blame.

Meanwhile, however, angry scholars around the world point out that long before the war started, they gave the U.S. government repeated and detailed warnings that the museum was in great danger.

Archeologists were very concerned about Baghdad's museum because during the previous 1991 Gulf War a dozen of Iraq's regional museums and historic sites were systematically looted. Paul Zimansky, an archaeologist at Boston University, said, "A whole industry developed after the Gulf War of people going out and digging up things at night. We're talking about organized, armed teams." Thousands of objects were smuggled out of Iraq over the last decade--largely to Switzerland, and from there to antiquities markets in London, Paris, and New York.

Zainab Bahrani, professor of ancient Near Eastern art and archaeology at Columbia University, said that over the last year "We gave [the Pentagon] a list of things to protect; we gave them maps and the coordinates of sites and museums; we gave them a list of cultural-heritage priorities to protect the minute they got into the country; and at the top of the list we said, ` Place guards at the museums .'"

When the U.S. army moved into Baghdad, they were totally indifferent to the ancient culture and history of this region--all while they arrogantly insisted they were in Iraq to teach the people the basics of "civilized" life. The high command carefully sent hundreds of troops and tanks to protect two sites they considered vital to their interests: they protected the Iraqi Oil Ministry and the Interior Ministry (where secret police records are kept). The rest was left open for theft and destruction.

The staff of the Archeological Museum told reporters they sought out American soldiers as the looting was going on and begged them to protect the museum. One Marine tank crew actually came to the museum, saw what was happening and left after 30 minutes --allowing the facility to be completely gutted.

Outraged at the U.S. military allowing the Museum to be looted, three members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee resigned in protest. Its chairman, Martin Sullivan, wrote in his letter of resignation that "the tragedy was not averted due to our nation's inaction."

In these same days, three historic libraries in Baghdad were also looted and burned--destroying thousands of rare and irreplaceable manuscripts and books, including unique early copies of the Koran. And the same happened to the rare collections at the ancient University of Mosul, at the University of Bara and the museum in Kirkuk.

The National Library's director Ra'ad Bandar said: "People used to come to Baghdad from all over the world to read these works. For religious scholars across the Muslim world, this is time of mourning."

*****

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand...has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous `cash payment.'... It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in the place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom--Free Trade. In one word: for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct brutal exploitation."

-Karl Marx and Frederick EngelsThe Manifesto of the Communist Party

"They may have known just what they were looking for because dealers ordered the most important pieces well in advance."

-Headline in BusinessWeek magazine, April 17

On January 24, 2003, representatives of the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP) arrived at the Pentagon to meet with high-level officials of the Defense Department, and then, reportedly, also met with President Bush.

The ACCP is a group of 60 well-connected ruling class lawyers, lobbyists, wealthy collectors and art dealers, who include leading figures in the U.S. museum world and also some of the biggest dealers in illegal artifacts. The group was formed in 2001 around a simple program: to lobby against any barriers to the global sale and transport of humanity's most rare and precious archeological treasures.

All their work is done, of course, in the name of freedom and ending government tyranny. Their work is in keeping with the climate of "triumphant capitalism"--where protection of third world resources is ridiculed as outmoded "government regulation," where any expression of "national sovereignty" of other countries is considered hostile, and where everything in the world is up for sale.

The plundering philosophy of "acquisitors" was described by ACCP member and Stanford law professor John Merryman: "In an open, legitimate trade cultural objects can move to the people and institutions that value them most and are therefore most likely to care for them."

For centuries, colonial powers have robbed the art of conquered countries. The Baghdad museum only had a replica of Hamurabi's Code--because the original column with the earliest known set of laws was seized by the French colonialists a century ago and deposited in their Louvre Museum. After intense struggles against colonialism in the last century, a few post-colonial countries opposed the capitalist sale of their historical objects--and sought to keep and study their heritage at home. And international treaties were signed to prevent the wholesale robbery of such artifacts.

Now the ACCP wants to reverse such protections. ACCP's chairman, William Pearlstein, publicly attacks the "retentionist" policies of third world governments like Mexico that forbid the international sale of archeological objects. He denounced a 1930s Iraqi law that made the export of archeological objects illegal. His committee has called for reversing the U.S. laws controlling the import of artifacts.

And as this war on Iraq approached, Pearlstein argued that any post-war government in Iraq must allow much more of Iraq's heritage to be "certified for export" and "dispersed" through the capitalist world market.

Given all this, although the exact content of the discussions is not known, ACCP's meeting at the Pentagon set off alarm bells among scholars.

Capitalism has created an ugly, parasitic market in the historic treasures of the people--up to $3 billion a year. And now, the modern American political climate had handed the most aggressive of these vultures a hearing at the highest levels, just months before the invasion of Iraq. The implication was that the U.S. government would shortly be in control of Iraq--and would be in charge of setting policy for future Iraq governments on how the history of humanity collected there would be commodified.

*****

The loss of human history in the robbery at the Archaeological Museum in Baghdad spans many civilizations including the Sumerians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Akkadians, and Persians.

Taken together, this robbery was not just a case of "collateral damage" in the chaos of war. Many factors came together to produce the destruction of the Archeological Museum and the "dispersal" of its precious collections. Iraq's Archeological Museum was caught in a "perfect storm." It was set up by modern imperialism, from many sides, for destruction, plunder and sale.



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"It is very common for the first information following a crisis to be wrong, and when I say wrong, I mean wrong."

So spoke Ronald Noble, the Secretary General of Interpol, at a conference yesterday in Lyon, France, devoted to the recovery of stolen Iraqi artifacts. The context for Mr. Noble's remarks is the incredible reduction in the estimate of the number of artworks lost in the ransacking of Baghdad's National Museum.

The claims have gone from 170,000 items first reported to the 30 to 40 that British Museum curator John Curtis confirmed missing at a press conference Monday in New York. Mr. Curtis's figure roughly tallies with that given by the Marine colonel investigating the looting.

And therein lies a story that always had another agenda attached to it. The initial reports coming out of Baghdad quoted the weeping deputy director of the museum, who blamed the Americans for allowing the destruction of "170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years." A segment of the press corps eager to snatch defeat from the jaws of George W. Bush's victory quickly took up the theme.

It wasn't long before the American liberation of Iraq was likened to the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. How typical, they sneered, for a Texas Republican to protect the oil fields (which will help feed Iraqis) while leaving the heritage of Western civilization naked.

But the latest news now appears to confirm what the Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov reported from Baghdad three weeks ago: Most of these works had been secreted away in anticipation of an attack. Moreover, as Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Lyon conference, the theft of Iraq's treasures was carried out by organized criminals who knew what they were looking for. Surely one key question is who at the museum might have helped. (Hint: It wasn't Donald Rumsfeld.)

Perhaps the biggest problem here is that the Iraqis didn't keep very good records, something Western museums, with the help of Unesco, are now trying to correct. None of this is to deny the terrible damage that did occur, the priceless bits of Iraq's heritage that have been stolen or destroyed -- or the many thousands more works that might be confirmed missing when curators finally go through the storehouses.

It is to say, however, with Mr. Noble that the key to restoring Iraq's museum will be to start dealing in information and facts, not "rumors and anecdotal stories."

Thanks for posting this propaganda. I believe every word of it. Bush is an angel. The Wall Street Journal does not have an agenda.

You're welcome, 'Eric'.

Or would you prefer to be called "the Leftist bedwetter presently masquerading as Eric"?

I'm a conservative, you nincompoop. Go buy yourself a brain.

All conservatives believe that Bush is an angel and the Wall Street Journal doesn't have an agenda.

I am....

false stereotypeman

Bush is god and Muslims are the scum of the Earth. Please visit my site, false stereotypeman. We need more oblivious morons like you to join our little cyberterrorist club.

www.kobehq.com

Hi. I’m false stereotypeman.

There are so many leftists at this site who have formed false preconceptions regarding what conservatives believe. Like Don Quixote, they take this false foundation and build their own strawman whom they valiantly fight against in their imaginary battle. Well, no more. I’m the embodiment of everything they wrongly believe and am here to lend credence and to confirm all their preconceived and unfounded presumptions. I am…….

false stereotypeman

I don't speak for conservatives. I speak for KOBE members.

Sorry, I'm much too stupid to understand.

Inside Job

The New York Times is acknowledging today something that has been obvious from day one of the Baghdad museum heist story: the thefts at the museum were pretty obviously committed by the museum’s own staff. The scenes of disorder at the museum recorded by the television cameras on the first day were a screen for the real story – the objects were stolen by people with access to the museum’s vaults, with keys and codes to let themselves in, with knowledge of which objects were most valuable, and with the international connections to sell them. The museum leadership’s subsequent weeping and keening over the losses was a scene familiar to any reader of Agatha Christie: the prime suspect seeking to deflect suspicion.

Golly, does the New York Times have the same agenda as the Wall Street Journal?

...was probably an inside job. That does not however, account for all of the eyewitness reports of apparently organized external teams there to take advantage of the chaos of the War to make a few bucks stealing antiquities.

Further the fundamental question would be would it have occurred if the Co-Axis of Evil had not invaded?

The answer of course is a resounding NO!

As well unexplained is why the U.S. Invasion Force was able to but guards almost immediately on the Oil Ministry but declined to do anything about the Looting of the Museum or the burning of the Library.

Or course to the childishly credulous Bush Supporters, and anti-Constitution by definition, it wasn't about the OIL. Really, really, really, it wasn't about the Oil?

And the Brinks Armored Car Job wasn't about the money.

So....

You think it would have been better if the Coalition hadn't ousted Hussein, so the museum (closed to the public for years, by the way) wouldn't have been looted by criminal elements held in check by a remarkably brutal police state.

Wow.

Saddam was my best puppet up until 1990. I didn't care about the Iraqi people until it was convenient for me.

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Customs agents, working with military and museum experts at the National Museum in Baghdad, have recovered nearly 40,000 manuscripts and about 700 artifacts, government officials announced in Washington Wednesday, leaving perhaps only a few dozen key pieces missing."

"The Justice Department officials said their best information continues to be that whatever the scope, the thefts were organized, not the result of random crime."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/07/sprj.nilaw.iraqi.artifacts/index.html

Not that you guys will believe it...

Well, I still won't believe it until I hear it from Fox News.

so there's still something that seems odd here

...many of the missing artifacts in private collectors' basements.

I see YOU!!!

I'd like to see his penis.