Genocide of History
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http://www.amida.com.au/features/genohistory.html
Can the US can take steps to stop the heritage destruction it is now
causing in Iraq?
Genocide of History
by Ronan Head
Iraq's ancient past gradually disappearing.
"History", said historian Samuel Kramer, "begins at Sumer". Ever since
the first Sumerian cities appeared 6000 years ago, Iraq has popularly
been considered the Cradle of Civilisation. It was in Iraq that man
first built a bureaucratised society. In Iraq, the religious spark of
the Old Testament was lit. In Iraq, man first wrote. This is the land of
Abraham, of Babylon the Great, of the Assyrian Empire. And
archaeologists have shown that it is also our land, where the West
enjoyed its religious, cultural and scientific birth.
As we seek the ancestry of our own society, all roads seem to lead back
to Iraq. And yet, this ancient land threatens to yield no more secrets.
Sanctions are erasing history. The ancient civilisations of Iraq have
come and gone, their imprint left under the sands of Mesopotamia - the
land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Since the early days of
modern archaeology, Iraq has provided a fertile and exotic world for
historians to discover.
Adventurers such as Austin Henry Layard and Lawrence of Arabia dug here;
Agatha Christie's novel "Murder in Mesopotamia" was inspired by a trip
to Iraq with her archaeologist husband Sir Max Mallowan. Those days are
gone. Unfortunately for today's scholars, archaeological research in
Iraq has declined considerably since the Gulf War in 1991. It is not
that archaeologists are not welcome - many are beginning to return - it
is that in search of a way out of their poverty, many Iraqis have turned
to their heritage for financial profit. Looting is rife.
Because of this, archaeology in Iraq has become a difficult proposition.
Archaeologists in the south not only need to keep an eye on the
US/British warplanes circling overhead, they also need armed guards for
protection from robbers. The case of Dr. Donny George Youkhama, an
archaeologist with the Iraqi Department of Antiquities, is indicative of
the problem. In 1999 he was brutally attacked outside his home in
Baghdad. Iraq's tells have Become easy and rich pickings for looters,
and Dr. Donny's efforts threaten the livelihood of this post-sanctions
trade.
Professor John Russel of the Massachusetts College of Art has catalogued
much of the archaeological looting which has occurred since 1991.
"History is being erased", he says, "with no possibility of being
recovered. In a sense, it is a total war against the past." It is a war
born of poverty. "Iraqis are so poor that they are pickpocketing their
own history to survive", laments one Iraqi official. And as a nation,
Iraq is too poor to stop it.
The fruits of this widespread pilfering of Iraq's heritage are great but
they are also risky. Several years ago nine men were executed for trying
to steal the head of an Assyrian statue from the northern town of
Khorsabad. Saddam Hussein himself is said to be greatly interested in
archaeology - the ancient city of Babylon near Baghdad has been
extensively restored as a monument to Iraq's glorious past. But
resources are scarce elsewhere.
What was once a model Antiquities Department has been stripped bare, and
the war against looting is being lost, not only in Iraq but also in the
West. Says archaeologist McGuire Gibson, "you don't get the same
response from [customs authorities] for stolen Iraqi antiquities as you
do for European paintings. Iraqis are seen as the bad guys."
Gibson, of Chicago's Oriental Institute, notes the growing trade in
illegal antiquities: "On a visit to Portobello Road [London] a few years
ago, I saw Mesopotamian tablets and cylinder seals in several shops.
Having been a visitor to Portobello Road for many years, I can testify
that I had never before been aware of Mesopotamian objects there".
How much do such objects fetch? An anonymous source involved in this
trade suggested to me that inscribed clay tablets - the paper documents
of their day - can fetch many thousands of dollars to collectors. The
problems inherent with this trade are two-fold: firstly, they appear
without archaeological context - lacking knowledge as to where the
tablet is from, the value of the historical information they contain is
greaty diminished. Secondly, as the source went on to say, "for
scholarship in general, these tablets may be considered lost; they
become paperweights."
What are we losing? In 1996, three wall reliefs from the Assyrian palace
at Nineveh appeared on the antiquities market. These, and thousands of
other objects have all been stolen from Iraqi museum collections in
recent years, representing a hefty chunk of Iraq's art-historical
heritage. The looting of clay tablets already mentioned
may have even more depressing consequences. From these tablets have come
such priceless documents as the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's
oldest stories and provider of an alternative account of the great
Flood.
Such a legacy has been invaluable in our understanding of the background
to the Bible and thus the West's entire religious heritage. With
thousands of tablets disappearing into invisible collections, it is
impossible to guage the extent of the loss to history. Russel laments
angrily: "to the age old question 'where do I come from?' we will at
last be able to provide a final answer - 'I don't know - we burned the
library'".
What is to be done? The post-Gulf War suffering in Iraq has produced an
intricate political argument with blame cast on either Saddam, the West
or both. Whatever concerns may exist on the international stage, nobody
can justifiably condone the systematic and permanent loss of
Iraq's history. Andrew George, an Assyriologist at London's School of
Oriental and African Studies, encourages all scholars to raise a
collective voice.
"Keep supporting UNESCO's campaign for permission to assist Iraq's
antiquities service in protecting the country's archaeological and
cultural heritage", he says. Currently, UNESCO is thwarted in its
efforts by the UN Security Council, a situation which seems unfathomable
to most. Maybe one day, when all of this is over, will the
West realise the damage it has done.
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