SHORTLY after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the looting began of antiquities held in museums and personal collections throughout Iraq. Eventually, even archaeological sites were not safe and artifacts from these were plundered as well.
The ransacking of the National Museum in Baghdad, during which at least 15,500 items were stolen, is well documented. See scenes of the aftermath at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmdv7aEfN_4. The museum's collections and chronicles of Mesopotamian heritage and civilization have been destroyed and up to 7,000 pieces are still unrecovered. Some sources state that the total number of artifacts removed represents “only” about three percent of the total holdings of the museum — however how does one determine which portions of a nation’s cultural heritage it is acceptable to lose?
At various Iraq reconstruction conferences, representatives of the Baghdad Museum Project have given presentations to the reconstruction community advocating preservation of Iraq’s cultural heritage in rebuilding projects. A catalog of the items missing from the National Museum and those recovered is at www.baghdadmuseum.org/index2.htm. After receiving numerous death threats in Iraq, since last year, Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, former director general of the National Museum, has been in the US. He is a visiting professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York. Youkhanna continues to lecture on the plunder of the museum after the US invasion in an effort to bring attention to the issue of recovering the stolen artifacts. The National Museum in Baghdad remains closed with many of the remaining artifacts beyond the reach of looters in rooms sealed by concrete.
In September, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry received more than 1,000 artifacts stolen from the country’s museums and ancient sites. The pieces were delivered to the Embassy of Iraq in Washington and will be shipped to the National Museum in Baghdad for assessment and repair. In the report of the return of the items it was mentioned that they were all removed from Iraq during the past two years. This would indicate that the plunder of Iraq’s heritage sites continues. There is some concern that as all the items were in the possession of US authorities, this could mean that US troops or military contractors had some role in the smuggling of the artifacts. The US is not alone in recovering stolen Iraqi antiquities. View a news report on Italy’s efforts to return plundered archeological items to Iraq at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9rG7hND29s.
Read scholarly articles on the continuing destruction of Iraqi heritage sites from the organization Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE). The reports “Patterns of looting in southern Iraq” and “Heritage Lost” under the Features section of the website, www.savingantiquities.org, provide insight to the ongoing problem. Iraq has more than 10,000 archaeologically significant sites, some of which US occupation troops are using as military camps, including the internationally renowned site of Babylon. Don’t know much about Babylon? Learn more about its civilization through http://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/babylon.html.