[Fwd: Archaelogical treasures plundered from Iraq National Museum]
c...@exchangenet.net
museum merchants.
-------- Original Message --------
From: "Mark Graffis" <mgra...@vitelcom.net>
Subject: Archaelogical treasures plundered from Iraq National Museum
Archaelogical treasures plundered from Iraq National Museum
By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq (April 12, 2003 3:25 p.m. EDT) - 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.
c...@exchangenet.net
Steve Schultz wrote:
>
> c...@exchangenet.net wrote:
>
> >And the treasures will flow to the British museums and enrich the jewish
> >museum merchants.
>
> Nice little hint of anti-semitism there!
>
> And how delightful that you seem not to care that the THIEVES are
> Iraqis, and not British or Jews.
>
> (Nice job with the irrational cross-posting!:
> soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.latin-america,soc.culture.colombia,or.politics)
and anti british too!?
They are not thieves?
Then why is statue of Nefertiti and the Zodiac of Dendera and the Rosetta
Stone outside of their country or origin?
Frederick Schultz, probably a jewish brother of yours, a leading Manhattan
gallery owner and antiquities dealer, was sentenced to 33 months in prison for
conspiring to receive stolen Egyptian antiquities, including a stone head
of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that sold for $1.2 million. Schultz, the former
president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and
Primitive Art, was also fined $50,000 and ordered to return pieces to Egypt.
He's currently free pending appeal.
What an act of antisemitism! We jews are the most prosecuted people
of the world, cry, cry, cry.
British national Jonathan Tokeley-Parry has already served a three-year
sentence in the UK for his role in the affair, which presented newly
discovered Egyptian artifacts for sale under the guise of having been
in a private British collection since the 1920s.
What? British! No, That can not be!
There are no thieves in the streets of London!
Well, not to say that there are not European, USAn, Egiptian or Syrian illegal
merchants, and not to say that many of those are jews too.
Bob Tiernan
Steve Schultz wrote:
> c...@exchangenet.net wrote:
> > And the treasures will flow to the British museums
> > and enrich the jewish museum merchants.
> Nice little hint of anti-semitism there!
Yup. "Cor" is just another one of those
people wants to go back in time to help
Hitler "finish the job".
Bob T
c...@exchangenet.net
No, I am one of those that has asked from the jewish
community to get involved in favor of justice and
peace of other semite peoples, because if they do not
their actions and inactions will be the excuse for the
next holocaust.
Baxter
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"Bob Tiernan" <zulu.pac...@shell1.pacifier.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.53MAILDIR...@shell1.pacifier.net...
Boy! That slope was so slippery you done fell off! Godwins Law, Bob T -
you lose.
c...@exchangenet.net
Steve Schultz wrote:
>
> "Baxter" <baxter.s...@baxcode.com> wrote:
>
> >Boy! That slope was so slippery you done fell off! Godwins Law, Bob T -
> >you lose.
>
> Anti-semites undoubtedly love Godwin's Law, since invoking it protects
> them from scrutiny!
For those that like me would have to consult about the GOdwin law:
Godwin's Law is a natural law of Usenet named after Mike Godwin
concerning Usenet "discussions". It reads:
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
___
The corollary would be, not matter how short of a usenet discussion tread,
if you mention the jews as a group for any of their political or economic
power or activities, you will be called an anti-Semite.
So if you say, the emerald and diamond trade is controlled by the jews,
BAM! anti-Semite!
If you say, hollywood producers are a bunch of jews,
BAM anti-Semite!
if you say, the star of David was something that the Rothchild family
invented like an emblem.
KABOOOM! anti-Semite.
If you mention that Israeli-jews and probably their government trained
or currently trains right-wing paramilitary terrorists,
Shhhh they will go ballistic!
If you might even suggest that jews participated in the control of other
jews in their concentration camps...
KABOOM, your ISP might get a flood of complaints.
If you notice that the jews in Israel behave like racist assholes with
Palestinian employee servants,
Oh boy, you will get hate mail by the dozens.
Does not matter that you might even be quoting israely-jew reporters!
Dare to say that certain jews have large economic interests in the
US and in the international banking system.
HA! you are a lunatic!
And if you mention Richard Perle or Wolfowitz as some of the jews instigating
the war?
That would be considered not only anti-Semite but anti patriotic!
Dare not say that many people have noticed the special treatment that
jews receive at the State or Justice Departments. Dare not to say that
you can kill and chop your girlfriend and go visit Israel and you will
avoid prosecution, or that if you are a suspect after events like 9-11,
you will be freed in a matter of hours.
anti-Semite, anti-Semite, anti-Semite.
This happens no matter how many times you quote Chomsky. No matter
how many times you mention the Refuseniks, no matter how many quotes
of "My Enemy, My Self" you put forward. No matter how many times you
post about the antiwar demonstrations by jews in Israel. It does not
matter. You are an anti-Semite. Even if you have been asking for
justice and peace for those other semites, the palestinians.
And dare to say that they better get their act together before the
rednecks and rightwing christians that now support them turn against
them, but not just against those being real assholes, but against all
the jews as a group. Just like is happening with Saudis, Pakistanis,
Yemenites, Syrians, Afghanis, Mexicans, Colombians, French, German,
Canadian etc. etc.
Naaa. That will never happen,
Like they thought the Holocaust would never happen.
William Elliot
> No, I am one of those that has asked from the jewish
> community to get involved in favor of justice and
> peace of other semite peoples, because if they do not
> their actions and inactions will be the excuse for the
> next holocaust.
>
A holocaust memorial or museum in every state? Not so far off.
A national holocaust museum in D.C. and now Portland's Jewish mayor
gives a choice portion of public park to become a holocaust memorial.
How many other states have such?
I've head so much about _the_ holocaust^tm, I'm fed up with it.
Baxter
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"Steve Schultz" <ss...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3e9a382c...@news.sf.sbcglobal.net...
> "Baxter" <baxter.s...@baxcode.com> wrote:
>
> >Boy! That slope was so slippery you done fell off! Godwins Law, Bob T -
> >you lose.
>
> Anti-semites undoubtedly love Godwin's Law, since invoking it protects
> them from scrutiny!
Yep, BT will continue his spew.