Iraq 'bleeding antiquities' as instability continues

Submitted by coldrum on Wednesday, 01 September 2010 Page Views: 2022

As the US prepares to withdraw its last combat troops from Iraq, international cultural experts are warning that the country is "bleeding antiquities" and that artefacts representing the world's cradle of civilisation are still in peril.

Precise figures are hard to establish because much of Iraq's art and antiques remains undocumented. In 2003 an estimated 15,000 artefacts were stolen from the Iraqi National Museum and only about a third have been returned. But experts believe hundreds of thousands more have been looted from the country's archaeological sites that rank among the most important in the world.

"These are fuzzy numbers, but we just don't know. Looters go in privately and they dig. They don't document what they find," says Prof John Russell, a cultural adviser to the US State Department. "The first time anyone sees these artefacts is when they're seized by the police or turn up through dealers."
One such haul uncovered by customs officers in New York contained dozens of cuneiform tablets, the oldest known system of writing. Until they were found, nobody knew they existed. They are among 1,054 items discovered in the US alone. Earlier this year, a pair of 2,800-year-old Neo-Assyrian gold earrings from a mass of gold jewellery known as the "Treasures of Nimrud" were among items returned in a special ceremony to the Iraqi Embassy in Washington DC.

"This is an Iraqi problem. The Iraqi people and the Iraqi government should take the first steps and start protecting their cultural heritage," says Dr Donny George Youkhanna, the former director of the Iraqi National Museum. He fled Iraq during the 2005 insurgency and now teaches at Stony Brook University in New York.

"Iraq's heritage is the wealth of the Iraqi people. It's the memory of the Iraqi people, so they should make more effort to protect this. Every day these sites are bleeding antiquities," he said.

Prof Russell says the worst looting is in southern Iraq, where hundreds of sites have been raided. Large sites such as Isin and Umma now look like cratered moonscapes.

Part of the problem is the ongoing lack of security in Iraq - and once the last US combat troops withdraw at the end of August, the remaining 50,000 soldiers will take on an advisory role, helping to train Iraqi police. Experts say the future of Iraq's cultural heritage cannot be safeguarded until there is a strong and stable central government with a functioning antiquities department backed by law.

The US government has awarded $13m (£8.3m) to help fund the Iraqi Cultural Heritage Project. The two-year initiative, which ends in December, has established a Conservation and Preservation Institute in Erbil, a training programme for Iraqi archaeologists and renovated galleries and storage facilities at the Iraqi National Museum.

Although that was reopened briefly in 2009, it remains largely closed to the public because of security issues.

The Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage has also received more than $1m to help restore the ancient site of Babylon. That was damaged by US troops who established a military camp on the archaeological site, mistakenly believing they were outside the city walls.
It is not clear what will happen when funding for these and other projects ends.

For more, see www.bbc.co.uk.

Note: "This is an Iraqi problem. The Iraqi people and the Iraqi government should take the first steps and start protecting their cultural heritage," says Dr Donny George Youkhanna, the former director of the Iraqi National Museum.

Contributor Bio for coldrum: Based in Milkyway, contributing since 2002. Favourite site: Avebury.

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