Another blow to Iraq's Mushrik Past... Iraq National Museum Looted of Thousands-years-old Artifacts worth Billions
Abdul-Khinzeer Kalb'ullaah al-Murtad Shabazz
greatest tragedies in human history. A book can at times be worth as
much as a human life, thus this sad event shares a spot in my heart
with the Holocaust. Nothing gives me a more lugubrious and visceral
reaction than the destruction of one of our bridges to the past."
[Brett Neichin, "Pantheist Prophet," (Adamus, 2000) p. 73]
The Iraq National Museum was plundered and looted, with some
stolen/destroyed artifacts being as much as 7,000 years old, and
billions of dollars worth of property being demolished or stolen. It
is truly sad (and in my conspiratorial mind, suspicious), that
military units secured oil fields, but couldn't protect a single
Museum in Baghdad. What was in that Museum was that area's true past,
particularly it's glorious pre-Islamic Mesopotamian/Babylonian past.
Statues that for decades were protected by Iraq's secular Ba'athist
regime from the types who think it is a holy thing to destroy
"tamaatheel" (as per Ibrahim in Soorat al-Anbiyaa 21:52, which only
paints half the picture of the Qur'anic attitude towards a timthal)
suddenly fell into the hands of theives and violent men who have no
respect for their cultural past. While it is not clear if zealous
iconoclasm (rather than just plain old anger) played some role in the
destruction of these artifacts, this nonetheless rates right up there
with the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan (and
various other attempts to erase the evidence that people of a
different world view contributed to the formation of the present
culture, such as the Hindu fanatic destruction of the Babri Masjid,
the Serb destruction of an old 16th century Turkish bridge, and
various attempts by certain Christians and Muslims to cover up or
eradicate signs of a polytheist/idolatrous past in a given region).
This is a sad day in history. Below are some articles covering the
topic...
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The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec), April 13, 2003 Sunday, p. A10,
"Millennia reduced to debris: Museum stripped of priceless objects,"
MARINA JIMENEZ
Nabhal Amin, deputy director of the Iraq National Museum, wept
yesterday as she walked through the debris of thousands of years of
antiquities from the great and ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia.
Headless statues, pottery shards, smashed busts, chipped stone
utensils and broken statues of gods and goddesses littered the ground
floor of the three-storey building.
Vandals had overturned treasures kept on shelves in storage rooms and
stolen artifacts dating back to 5000 BC.
"We lost large statues from all periods, we lost things we cannot
recover," said Amin, shaking her head. "It is such a tragedy."
The museum housed 5,000-year-old writing tablets with some of the
earliest known writing, gold and silver helmets and cups, Assyrian
reliefs and Sumerian statues.
A few Iraqis ventured out of their homes yesterday to walk through the
ruined museum.
On the floor near the entrance lay a booklet of pink slips, charging a
few cents for admission to the now-defunct facility.
Amin blamed the U.S. army for not guarding the building, which Iraqi
troops had used as a bunker, digging a large foxhole in the front
garden.
Added Salim Altamini, an architect: "The U.S. is supposed to be
civilized and they came and allowed our civilization to be destroyed.
Yet they were able to protect our oil wells."
The museum contained 170,000 items of antiquity from all the great and
ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers: the
Assyrians; the Babylonians; the Sumerians; the Kaldanis; the Akkadians
and Islamic peoples.
Looted during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the museum had reopened only
three years ago.
Muhsen Kadhim, a museum guard, said he managed to kick out the first
group of vandals who arrived Wednesday, but could not hold off the
many others. U.S. troops refused his request to intervene.
Kadhim speculated those responsible could be common criminals: Last
October, Saddam Hussein declared a general amnesty for 40,000
prisoners.
"It's like being stabbed with a knife," said Kadhim. "If the U.S. had
put just one tank here or even one soldier, this wouldn't have
happened."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2557042,00.html
Iraq National Museum Treasures Plundered
Saturday April 12, 2003 7:40 PM
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The famed Iraq National Museum, home of
extraordinary Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections and rare
Islamic texts, sat empty Saturday - except for shattered glass display
cases and cracked pottery bowls that littered the floor.
In an unchecked frenzy of cultural theft, looters who pillaged
government buildings and businesses after the collapse of Saddam
Hussein's regime also targeted the museum. Gone were irreplaceable
archaeological treasures from the Cradle of Civilization.
Everything that could be carried out has disappeared from the museum -
gold bowls and drinking cups, ritual masks worn in funerals,
elaborately wrought headdresses, lyres studded with jewels - priceless
craftsmanship from ancient Mesopotamia.
``This is the property of this nation and the treasure of 7,000 years
of civilization. What does this country think it is doing?'' asked Ali
Mahmoud, a museum employee, futility and frustration in his voice.
Much of the looting occurred Thursday, according to a security guard
who stood by helplessly as hoards broke into the museum with
wheelbarrows and carts and stole priceless jewelry, clay tablets and
manuscripts.
Left behind were row upon row of empty glass cases - some smashed up,
others left intact - heaps of crumbled pottery and hunks of broken
statues scattered across the exhibit floors.
Sensing its treasures could be in peril, museum curators secretly
removed antiquities from their display cases before the war and placed
them into storage vaults - but to no avail. The doors of the vaults
were opened or smashed, and everything was taken, museum workers said.
That lead one museum employee to suspect that others familiar with the
museum may have participated in the theft.
``The fact that the vaults were opened suggests that employees of the
museum may have been involved,'' said the employee, who declined to be
identified. ``To ordinarily people, these are just stones. Only the
educated know the value of these pieces.''
Gordon Newby, a historian and professor of Middle Eastern studies at
Emory University in Atlanta, said the museum's most famous holding may
have been tablets with Hammurabi's Code - one of mankind's earliest
codes of law. It could not be determined whether the tablets were at
the museum when the war broke out.
Other treasures believed to be housed at the museum - such as the Ram
in the Thicket from Ur, a statue representing a deity from 2600 B.C. -
are no doubt gone, perhaps forever, he said.
``This is just one of the most tragic things that could happen for our
being able to understand the past,'' Newby said. The looting, he said,
``is destroying the history of the very people that are there.''
John Russell, a professor of art history and archaeology at the
Massachusetts College of Art, feared for the safety of the staff of
Iraq's national antiquities department, also housed at the museum; for
irreplacable records of every archaeological expedition in Iraq since
the 1930s; for perhaps hundreds of thousands of artifacts from 10,000
years of civilization, both on display and in storage.
Among them, he said, was the copper head of an Akkadian king, at least
4,300 years old. Its eyes were gouged out, nose flattened, ears and
beard cut off, apparently by subjects who took their revenge on his
image - much the same way as Iraqis mutilated statues of Saddam.
``These are the foundational cornerstones of Western civilization,''
Russell said, and are literally priceless - which he said will not
prevent them from finding a price on the black market.
Some of the gold artifacts may be melted down, but most pieces will
find their way into the hands of private collectors, he said.
The chances of recovery are slim; regional museums were looted after
the 1991 Gulf War, and 4,000 pieces were lost.
``I understand three or four have been recovered,'' he said.
Koichiro Matsuura, head of the U.N.'s cultural agency, UNESCO, on
Saturday urged American officials to send troops to protect what was
left of the museum's collection, and said the military should step in
to stop looting and destruction at other key archaeological sites and
museums.
The governments of Russia, Jordan and Greece also voiced deep concern
about the looting. Jordan urged the United Nations to take steps to
protect Iraq's historic sites, a ``national treasure for the Iraqi
people and an invaluable heritage for the Arab and Islamic worlds.''
Some blamed the U.S. military, though coalition forces say they have
taken great pains to avoid damage to cultural and historical sites.
A museum employee, reduced to tears after coming to the museum
Saturday and finding her office and all administrative offices trashed
by looters, said: ``It is all the fault of the Americans. This is
Iraq's civilization. And it's all gone now.'' She refused to give her
name.
The Americans knew that the museum was at risk and could have
protected it, said Patty Gerstenblith, a professor at DePaul School of
Law in Chicago who helped circulate a petition before the war, urging
that care be taken to protect Iraqi antiquities.
``It was completely inexcusable and avoidable,'' she said.
The museum itself was battered. Its marble staircase was chipped,
likely by looters using pushcarts or heavy slabs of wood to carry
booty down from the second floor. The museum is in the Al-Salhiya
neighborhood of Baghdad, with its back to a poor neighborhood.
Early Saturday, five armed men showed up at the gate: One was armed
with a Kalashnikov, three carried pistols, one wielded an iron bar.
The man with the assault rifle walked into the museum, accused
journalists there of stealing artifacts and ordered them to leave.
He claimed to be there to protect the museum from plundering. One of
the men said he was a member of the feared Fedayeen Saddam militia.
``You think Saddam is now gone, so you can do what you like,'' he
raged.
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"STOPPING PILLAGE TOP PRIORITY; U.S. TROOPS AND IRAQI POLICE WILL WORK
TOGETHER TO RESTORE ORDER AND STOP LOOTING IN BAGHDAD," by Calvin
Woodward, London Free Press (Ontario, Canada), April 13, 2003 Sunday,
p. A9
Robbing history itself, thieves pillaged the Iraq National Museum,
stealing or destroying artifacts going back 7,000 years, predating
even Babylon. The loss resonated through Baghdad and around the world.
"This is Iraq's civilization," said a tearful museum employee. "It's
all gone now." At Emory University in Atlanta, historian Gordon Newby
said: "This is just one of the most tragic things that could happen,
for our being able to understand the past."
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BBC Monitoring International Reports, April 13, 2003, "OCCUPATION
FORCES" SHOULD PROTECT IRAQ'S CULTURAL HERITAGE" - RUSSIA
Presenter United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) Director General Koichiro Matsuura has called
for the US and British authorities to save Iraq's cultural heritage
from being looted.
The UNESCO communique insists that urgent measures be taken to protect
and safeguard the country's cultural and archaeological sites in
Baghdad and Basra, first and foremost. Russia fully shares the
concern, the Russian Foreign Ministry says.
Aleksandr Yakovenko, captioned as Russian Foreign Ministry official
representative Russia is watching the humanitarian situation in Iraq
with growing concern. In this connection we would like to say that
according to international law occupation forces bear full
responsibility for meeting the needs of the Iraqi people in the
humanitarian field. They are also responsible for protecting cultural,
historic and religious monuments which are part of the world's
heritage. Russia shares the concern, expressed by such an
authoritative organization as UNESCO.
Source: Channel One TV, Moscow, in Russian 0200 gmt 13 Apr 03
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