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<< News >> Treasure hunter tells Ocalans of plunder

Submitted by coldrum on Saturday, 03 February 2007  Page Views: 2894

MuseumsCountry: Iraq Type: Museum

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He's a real-life Indiana Jones, a scholar in a Marine Corps uniform, and a treasure hunter for the people of Iraq. Matthew Bogdanos is all of those things, and an author, who brought his story to Ocala Friday night.

The colonel and author of "Thieves of Baghdad: The Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasure," addressed supporters of the Appleton Museum of Art at a fundraiser to kick off the museum's conservation efforts.

Bogdanos is on a mission to recover items stolen from the Iraq Museum during the fall of Baghdad in April of 2003. Key to his quest is "Lioness Attacking a Nubian," an 8th-century B.C. ivory plaque inlaid with lapis and carnelian and overlaid with gold.

Bogdanos' book recounts the efforts he led to recover the priceless antiquities taken from the museum. But the New York assistant district attorney/U.S. Marine/middleweight boxer/classics scholar doesn't consider himself accomplished, despite the fact that he has a bachelor's degree in the classics from Bucknell University and a master's degree in classical studies from Columbia University.

"It's not a book about me," he said of his nonfiction book. "If it were a book about me, it would only take about two days to write."

"Rather," he offered, "It's a book about courage, the courage of the Afghan people."

Bogdanos is currently working with Warner Brothers on a movie about his experience and the experience of the task force he assembled to take on the international antiquities black market.

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

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"Treasure hunter tells Ocalans of plunder" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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News of partial re-opening of Iraq National Museum by AngieLake on Monday, 23 February 2009
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See this link on Mail on Sunday website:

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1153365/Glimmer-hope-Iraq-national-museum-reopens-door-past-window-future.html
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Lost: The Looting of Iraq’s Antiquities by coldrum on Saturday, 03 February 2007
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The only real comparison is to the surface of the moon. Craters as deep as 16 feet cover multi-acre sites that are remnants of what is widely considered the cradle of civilization. The craggy, arid earth, all but barren of vegetation, lies in mounds alongside the deep pits where thousands of Iraqi antiquities—cuneiform tablets, ancient scrolls and kings commemorated in stone that might give clues to how civilization began—have been ripped from their resting places and sold to nefarious (or unsuspecting) dealers and collectors. Some sites have been so ravaged that the top 10 feet of earth and all of the irreplaceable artifacts buried there for centuries are gone.

Amid the catastrophe of the war in Iraq—the violence, bloodshed and loss of human life—is the loss of the world’s cultural heritage in the form of hoards of antiquities. It is an ongoing, silent tragedy for which there seems to be no viable solution.

Sources say this is not the work of renegades with shovels. It is planned and executed by organized bands—200 to 300 per site—with heavy machinery at many of the 12,000 sites. And the payout is big. The average Iraqi makes the equivalent of $1,000 per year, yet a cache of looted antiquities can sell for $20,000. And looters can sell two or three such caches every week.

Such looting is not new to Iraq. It has been happening for decades if not centuries, according to Matthew Bogdanos, a Marine Reserves colonel and assistant district attorney in Manhattan who investigated the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum (an article on his findings appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of Museum News). “The looting is a cottage industry. That is clear,” he says, adding that it is like a trade passed down from one generation to the next. “They say, ‘My father did it, my grandfather did it. What else do you want me to do?’”

What’s changed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003? The pace of looting and the penalties. “Under Saddam [Hussein] the penalty for looting was death—obviously that deterred looting,” said Bogdanos. “When they realized we [U.S. Armed Forces] wouldn’t shoot looters, instead of scattering they would wave to us in the helicopter.” Sources say it is unclear what the current penalty for looting is.

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