Roger Matthews and Michael Seymour: Iraq ... must the loss of heritage continue?
[Roger Matthews was the last resident director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, living in Baghdad until 1990, and is currently professor of Near Eastern archaeology at ucl Institute of Archaeology. Michael Seymour is a specialist in the history and politics of archaeology in the Middle East. He recently completed a doctorate at UCL Institute of Archaeology, and is now Raymond and Beverley Sackler scholar in ancient Iranian studies at the British Museum for 2006–7.]
In April 2003, as American tanks entered the streets of Baghdad, local resentment against the regime of Saddam Hussein manifested itself in a wave of looting, asset-stripping and burning of government and official buildings across Iraq's capital city. Cultural facilities such as universities, libraries, art galleries and museums were not excluded from the destruction and uncontrolled appropriation that affected government ministries, official residences and elite palaces. The looting of the globally significant Iraq Museum, above all, briefly commanded the full attention of the international media and was widely recognised as a disaster. Concern became mired in confusion over the nature and quantity of the losses, however, before the subject steadily sank from public view.
There had been a precedent for this ransacking of the Iraq Museum. In spring 1991, as Republican Guards retreated from Kuwait to their bases in Iraq and as George Bush Sr encouraged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein, nine of Iraq's regional museums, in cities such as Basra, Diwaniyah and Kut, were looted. Some 4,000 objects were taken, of which only a handful has since been recovered. By the time of the invasion of Iraq in spring 2003, then, it was clear that museums and other public facilities of Iraq's rich cultural heritage would be highly vulnerable to attack from a disaffected populace as the regime collapsed. Despite awareness of this fact, reinforced by more recent communications from British and American archaeologists, the occupying forces took little or no suitable measures to protect the Iraq Museum and other cultural facilities of the Iraqi state, with the noted catastrophic results.
The basic problem seems to have been the US decision to keep occupying troop numbers to an absolute minimum. Commanders on the ground were obliged to make tactical decisions about where to deploy guards around the city as the social apparatus came tumbling down. One cannot blame commanders for ranking sites such as museums, art galleries and libraries as low-level priorities. One can, however, most severely blame the architects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq for not taking seriously enough a threat that had been clearly articulated before the invasion.
Since 2003 occasional reports on the status of Iraq's cultural heritage have provided some limited information, including important reviews of the impact of a large military base at Babylon. Nonetheless, the most archaeologically destructive aspect of Iraq's recent history – the intensive looting of sites mainly in parts of southern Iraq – has received far less attention than it deserves. In this article we present some aspects of the background to that destruction, of the problems currently being faced in the protection of sites, and of attempts to improve the situation.
It is worth stressing the unique significance of the archaeology and history of Iraq – ancient Mesopotamia, the land between and around the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Numerous major developments in the human story took place in the region, including the growth of some of the earliest sedentary and agricultural communities anywhere on the planet. By 3200BC the world's first truly urban civilisation had arisen. Immortalised in such city names as Uruk, Ur, Babylon, Nimrud, and Nineveh, it was characterised by the use of writing (in cuneiform script on clay tablets), extensive trade networks, sophisticated scientific and mathematical capabilities, and a tautly structured social hierarchy that gave birth to the first kingdoms and empires. More recently Iraq hosted the great Abbasid state, with its spectacular capital cities at Baghdad and Samarra. One could reasonably make a case for Iraq as the single most important arena for archaeology anywhere in the world....
Read entire article at British Archaeology
In April 2003, as American tanks entered the streets of Baghdad, local resentment against the regime of Saddam Hussein manifested itself in a wave of looting, asset-stripping and burning of government and official buildings across Iraq's capital city. Cultural facilities such as universities, libraries, art galleries and museums were not excluded from the destruction and uncontrolled appropriation that affected government ministries, official residences and elite palaces. The looting of the globally significant Iraq Museum, above all, briefly commanded the full attention of the international media and was widely recognised as a disaster. Concern became mired in confusion over the nature and quantity of the losses, however, before the subject steadily sank from public view.
There had been a precedent for this ransacking of the Iraq Museum. In spring 1991, as Republican Guards retreated from Kuwait to their bases in Iraq and as George Bush Sr encouraged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein, nine of Iraq's regional museums, in cities such as Basra, Diwaniyah and Kut, were looted. Some 4,000 objects were taken, of which only a handful has since been recovered. By the time of the invasion of Iraq in spring 2003, then, it was clear that museums and other public facilities of Iraq's rich cultural heritage would be highly vulnerable to attack from a disaffected populace as the regime collapsed. Despite awareness of this fact, reinforced by more recent communications from British and American archaeologists, the occupying forces took little or no suitable measures to protect the Iraq Museum and other cultural facilities of the Iraqi state, with the noted catastrophic results.
The basic problem seems to have been the US decision to keep occupying troop numbers to an absolute minimum. Commanders on the ground were obliged to make tactical decisions about where to deploy guards around the city as the social apparatus came tumbling down. One cannot blame commanders for ranking sites such as museums, art galleries and libraries as low-level priorities. One can, however, most severely blame the architects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq for not taking seriously enough a threat that had been clearly articulated before the invasion.
Since 2003 occasional reports on the status of Iraq's cultural heritage have provided some limited information, including important reviews of the impact of a large military base at Babylon. Nonetheless, the most archaeologically destructive aspect of Iraq's recent history – the intensive looting of sites mainly in parts of southern Iraq – has received far less attention than it deserves. In this article we present some aspects of the background to that destruction, of the problems currently being faced in the protection of sites, and of attempts to improve the situation.
It is worth stressing the unique significance of the archaeology and history of Iraq – ancient Mesopotamia, the land between and around the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Numerous major developments in the human story took place in the region, including the growth of some of the earliest sedentary and agricultural communities anywhere on the planet. By 3200BC the world's first truly urban civilisation had arisen. Immortalised in such city names as Uruk, Ur, Babylon, Nimrud, and Nineveh, it was characterised by the use of writing (in cuneiform script on clay tablets), extensive trade networks, sophisticated scientific and mathematical capabilities, and a tautly structured social hierarchy that gave birth to the first kingdoms and empires. More recently Iraq hosted the great Abbasid state, with its spectacular capital cities at Baghdad and Samarra. One could reasonably make a case for Iraq as the single most important arena for archaeology anywhere in the world....