Iraq Museum Looting
Described as one of the worst acts of cultural vandalism in modern times, the looting of artifacts from the National Museum of Iraq following the US invasion of the country in 2003 is a shocking event that is still not fully resolved today.
Let’s Get Into It
I think we all know the background (at least some of it) that led to the Iraq War so let’s just get right to it. Before the start of the war, in 2001, the US government created a post-war plan for Iraq called the Future of Iraq Project. Within this project many different facets of society and life were considered and different members of the US team had taken responsibility for different areas, however, no specific person stepped up to take responsibility for culture.
In the Spring of 2002 Arthur Houghton, who worked at the State Department as a Foreign Service Office, as an international policy analyst for the White House, and as an acting curator for the Getty Museum, was approached by Ashton Hawkins, counsel to the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum. Hawkins asked Houghton to find out what was being done by officials to secure and protect heritage sites in Iraq ahead of the upcoming war. Houghton wasn’t able to find anyone who had the task of the preservation of culture in Iraq.
Even archaeological organizations in the US didn’t notice this glaring oversight and issue until late 2002. Finally, when the US Agency for Cultural Development (USAID) met with around 150 NGOs and no one brought up the subject of cultural preservation.
In 2003, when the war began, Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld decided on a fast invasion with fewer troops meaning that cultural sites and buildings were left with inadequate protection. In the chaos following the invasion, specifically from April 9 - 13, staff vacated the Iraq Museum and there was rampant, devastating looting. The staff didn’t just abandon the museum, they bravely safely stored 8,366 artifacts before the invasion. During the looting period, before enough US troops arrived to restore some kind of order and protection, it’s estimated that 15,000 cultural items disappeared.
“The list of missing items reads like a who’s-who of Near Eastern archaeology, and the world reacted with shock and outrage” (Bogdanos, 2005). Once this came out in the international media the US responded by dispatching a highly specialized multiagency taskforce to determine what had happened at the museum and recover whatever artefacts they could. By the time they got there the museum grounds had been turned into a military fighting position.
Once this taskforce had finished their investigation they discovered that there had been not one but three distinct thefts at the museum. The first was by professional looters who stole several dozen of the most prized treasures, the second by random looters who stole more than 3,000 excavation-site pieces, and the third by insiders who took around 11,000 cylinder seals (items used to print images, usually into clay) and pieces of jewelry. Through their efforts they were able to recover more than 5,000 artefacts but many remain missing, even to this day.
One of the items that remains lost is a black stone weight shaped like a duck made around 2070 BC and excavated from the ancient city of Ur. Another is a beautiful gold and lapis bowl from a royal cemetery in the same city.
Some items, however, have been recovered through investigations such as a statue of Assyrian King Argon II, returned to the Iraq Museum in 2015, and a headless statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash, returned in 2006.
Both Interpol and the University of Chicago keep meticulous databases on objects looted from the museum and which have been repatriated/returned and which are still missing. A few of the very recognizable pieces from the museum are too famous to appear on the market so researchers think they were stolen with buyers already lined up and that they’ll likely never be returned.
All that we can do now is learn from this devastating event and place much (MUCH) more value on culture and archaeological artifacts core to a country’s history and heritage. The impact of them being removed from their home for a long period of time, and illegally, cannot be overstated.
Works Cited
Bogdanos, Matthew. “The Casualties of War: The Truth About the Iraq Museum”. American Journal of Archaeology. 2005. https://ajaonline.org/newsletter/110/
Prasad, Jocelyn. “Iraq Museum Looting: 15 Years On”. The University of Sydney. 2018. https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2018/04/10/iraq-museum-looting--15-years-on.html