Iraq Museum Plundered

[Darth Wong]

I'm really offended by the bent this thread is taking.
Is it because Ted posted this?
Or do people really find the potential loss of WORLD treasures this trivial?

Show me the outrage over thousands of estimated Iraqi civilian injuries and deaths (and "injury" is a pretty mild word for some of the disfigurements I've seen), and then I'll be suitably upset that people aren't more upset about hunks of rock and pottery.

This isn't simply a localised Iraqi-interest story, these are artefacts from the dawn of western civilisation.

Of cultural value, not objective value.

And I fail to see any relevance in the 5,000 people or Smithsonian scenario.

I've seen figures suggesting that 5,000 Iraqis (soldiers + civilians) died in this war. I haven't seen people getting all that broken up about it. Instead, the prevailing attitude is that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. So why should this museum warrant more outpouring of emotion?

Putting a couple marines in front of the damned place could have prevented a good deal of looting.

The marines are still fighting remnants of the Fedayeen, hiding among the civilians and taking shots at them. They have more important things to worry about than cultural trinkets.

[Ender]

I've seen figures suggesting that 5,000 Iraqis (soldiers + civilians) died

Ah, that would explain it. I was wondering why Iraq was claiming 420 dead saturday and 5000 dead Wednesday. One was pure civillians, one was total. Thanks.

[Frank Hipper]

Show me the outrage over thousands of estimated Iraqi civilian injuries and deaths (and "injury" is a pretty mild word for some of the disfigurements I've seen), and then I'll be suitably upset that people aren't more upset about hunks of rock and pottery.

The lack of outrage over the carnage of this war is NOT lost on me. Nor was I saying that the two should be compared. Or could be compared.

I've seen figures suggesting that 5,000 Iraqis (soldiers + civilians) died in this war. I haven't seen people getting all that broken up about it. Instead, the prevailing attitude is that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Taken in the context of the original post, where we are given the choice of saving 5,000 lives or the Smithsonian, this leaves me wondering what you're trying to say here. Except for taking it on face value as an indictment against prevailing popular attitudes.

So why should this museum warrant more outpouring of emotion?

Of course it shouldn't warrant more, but it's a fucking shame on top of a fucking nightmare, and writing it off as nothing of consequense doesn't change it.
Of course mauled babies are more tragic than looted antiquities, and I'm sorry if you got the idea that I don't care about them somehow. I do. But I can also be shocked at this.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm really offended by the bent this thread is taking.
Is it because Ted posted this?
Or do people really find the potential loss of WORLD treasures this trivial? This isn't simply a localised Iraqi-interest story, these are artefacts from the dawn of western civilisation.
And I fail to see any relevance in the 5,000 people or Smithsonian scenario.
Putting a couple marines in front of the damned place could have prevented a good deal of looting.

Frank, Saddam had radar installations on the walls of Ctesiphon and troops dug in at other ancient sites. He's done massive "restoration" projects which consist of adding layers of bricks to rebuild sites without preserving anything. And, moreover, once the sanctions started, people were breaking stuff at archaeological sites and selling pieces on the open markets - and have been for the past twelve years now - without any restraint.

Sure, this looting is severe, but most of the pieces will be recovered undamaged, and the long-term damage to Iraqi archaeological sites will stop as well. It isn't really a big deal; certainly not like the Taliban blowing up those statues of Buddha.

[Frank Hipper]

Yeah, I'm aware of his "reconstructions". And the thing that makes me hopeful for recovery is what happened to the National Museum hoard that was stolen in Mexico City way back when. Practically everything was found ten or so years later in an old man's shack just a few blocks away.

[Ted]

Sure, this looting is severe, but most of the pieces will be recovered undamaged, and the long-term damage to Iraqi archaeological sites will stop as well. It isn't really a big deal; certainly not like the Taliban blowing up those statues of Buddha.

Most Marina?

Did you READ the article?

After the first Gulf War, 4000 pieces were stolen from museums.

Of that 4000, only 3 or 4 pieces have been found.

Have you seen video footage of what the museum is like now?

All the exhibits are destroyed. There is NOTHING left intact at the museum. Vaults where the most expensive stuff was placed have been opened and looted.

The Smithsonian vs. 5000 is flawed.

The choice should rather be, torched Smithsonian, or a torched oil well.

All the oil wells under US control have armed guards and BARBED WIRE surrounding them. You would think that as under The Hague convention of 1954, Powers are required to protect cultural sites, that they would've put guards there. THE HAGUE CONVENTION, which the US was a SIGNATORY TO.

[Montcalm]

Sure, this looting is severe, but most of the pieces will be recovered undamaged, and the long-term damage to Iraqi archaeological sites will stop as well. It isn't really a big deal; certainly not like the Taliban blowing up those statues of Buddha.

Most Marina?

Did you READ the article?

After the first Gulf War, 4000 pieces were stolen from museums.

Of that 4000, only 3 or 4 pieces have been found.

Have you seen video footage of what the museum is like now?

All the exhibits are destroyed. There is NOTHING left intact at the museum. Vaults where the most expensive stuff was placed have been opened and looted.

The Smithsonian vs. 5000 is flawed.

The choice should rather be, torched Smithsonian, or a torched oil well.

All the oil wells under US control have armed guards and BARBED WIRE surrounding them. You would think that as under The Hague convention of 1954, Powers are required to protect cultural sites, that they would've put guards there. THE HAGUE CONVENTION, which the US was a SIGNATORY TO.

It proves that for rich assholes oil is more important than history.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Most Marina?

Did you READ the article?

After the first Gulf War, 4000 pieces were stolen from museums.

Of that 4000, only 3 or 4 pieces have been found.

Have you seen video footage of what the museum is like now?

All the exhibits are destroyed. There is NOTHING left intact at the museum. Vaults where the most expensive stuff was placed have been opened and looted.

The Smithsonian vs. 5000 is flawed.

The choice should rather be, torched Smithsonian, or a torched oil well.

All the oil wells under US control have armed guards and BARBED WIRE surrounding them. You would think that as under The Hague convention of 1954, Powers are required to protect cultural sites, that they would've put guards there. THE HAGUE CONVENTION, which the US was a SIGNATORY TO.

Video footage isn't an accurate inventory of a museum, Ted. It's selective imagery designed to provoke emotional response, which it obviously has in you. Furthermore, the Iraqi government never bothered to try and recover things after the Second Persian Gulf War (and some of the stuff "lost" then was in fact recovered by non-Iraqi museums - Which, of course, means it is still lost, but only to the Ba'athist regime); it's either possible we'll recover things lost during that conflict as well.

As for your analogy, it is flawed. The USA can guard oil wells without turning the populace against it, because the populace isn't mad at oil wells and can't loot them. The populace is mad at the regime, though, and does want to loot things associated with the regime in revenge for what the regime did to it. If we get in the way of their anger, we'd become the object of it. So we're wisely staying out of the way of their anger, and that only bodes well for the future of our administration in our Iraq.

[weemadando]

It disgusts me that people are saying that its no big loss.

This is probably the largest collection of pre-classical artifacts in the world that have gone missing.

The Iraqi museum housed so much amazing stuff. I mean we have reports early in the war of Americans being told not to bomb or shell near the ancient arch (I forget its name) but then when they reach Baghdad they don't even put a couple of blokes on the door of the museum?

This stuff is irreplacable. As one person put it, "even long after the war has been forgotten, the loss of the historical and cultrual artifacts would be remembered." Its like the Library of Alexandria all over again. So much lost for nothing.

[Knife]

It seems that alot of the anger has vented and looting is slowing down. As for the Museum, well it is a tragedy but not of epic proportions. When the actual fighting slows down and the city is more secure, then troops will switch from combat and move more towards police actions. It would have been folly to stations troops at this museum durring the main battle for Baghdad. While the battle was not as huge as some (including me) would have thought, it was still hot enough not to put a couple guards by a museum in good conscience. They would have been easy prey to snipers, let alone be a target for the angery mobs roaming the city and looting.

With the exception of a few large and/or very important pieces, what exactly are we missing here? Some couple thousand year old bowls? Pieces of a wall? Some guys pick axe from 1000BC? Yes, I don't want to lose any ancient manuscripts or important historical writtings. But if alot of this stuff is sample art/tools/pottery from some of the sites around Iraq, then alot of it is either recoverable or has the possibility of being replaced by other artifacts in future digs in the sites.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It disgusts me that people are saying that its no big loss.

This is probably the largest collection of pre-classical artifacts in the world that have gone missing.

The Iraqi museum housed so much amazing stuff. I mean we have reports early in the war of Americans being told not to bomb or shell near the ancient arch (I forget its name) but then when they reach Baghdad they don't even put a couple of blokes on the door of the museum?

This stuff is irreplacable. As one person put it, "even long after the war has been forgotten, the loss of the historical and cultrual artifacts would be remembered." Its like the Library of Alexandria all over again. So much lost for nothing.

The Arch of Ctesiphon. It's the remaining remnant of the palace of the Sassanid dynasts of pre-Islamic Persia.

We couldn't guard the museum, bluntly, because doing so might have resulted in our version of Amritsar. If we're going to make Iraq work we're going to have respond to and guide the needs of the populace, not stand in front of them with fixed bayonets.

[Graeme Dice]

We couldn't guard the museum, bluntly, because doing so might have resulted in our version of Amritsar. If we're going to make Iraq work we're going to have respond to and guide the needs of the populace, not stand in front of them with fixed bayonets.

So what you are saying is that the armed forces shouldn't have been used to stop looting during the L.A. riots as those were the will of the people also?

[Darth Wong]

This stuff is irreplacable. As one person put it, "even long after the war has been forgotten, the loss of the historical and cultrual artifacts would be remembered." Its like the Library of Alexandria all over again. So much lost for nothing.

What information has been lost?

[Edi]

This stuff is irreplacable. As one person put it, "even long after the war has been forgotten, the loss of the historical and cultrual artifacts would be remembered." Its like the Library of Alexandria all over again. So much lost for nothing.

What information has been lost?

You'd probably be quite surprised at how much information can be contained in just a few artefacts and what discoveries something as simple as a single shard of broken pottery can lead to. If the whole museum has been looted, as the reports suggest, there must of necessity have been a lot of stuff that has not been completely deciphered, and some things that are as yet unclear but might become every significant when future archeological discoveries are made. If the museum archives and files were also looted and/or destroyed, that's a huge amount of information right down the shitter, forever gone.

I'm not saying that saving lives isn't important, but what I will say is that this is being taken far too lightly. And when it comes to looting archaelogical sites (in general), when it's done professionally for the purposes of selling things as souvenirs to tourists (like what often happens in Egypt) and all the profits going to some gang boss's pockets, frankly I consider the looter's life worth less than that of the things he destroys. It'd actually be better in situations like that if they just shot the fuckers on sight and left the bodies to rot as a warning to others. Cold-hearted? Yes. An exception to what my usual position is? Yes. Do I have fucked up values in this regard? That's for whoever reads this post to decide, and depends on people's personal values and opinions. I'll save an innocent person in need over a collection of ancient pottery or other artefacts in a heartbeat, but when we talk about looters, especially professional ones, I won't shed a single tear for any who get killed. In case of the professional ones, the more of them are killed, the better.

Edi

[weemadando]

This stuff is irreplacable. As one person put it, "even long after the war has been forgotten, the loss of the historical and cultrual artifacts would be remembered." Its like the Library of Alexandria all over again. So much lost for nothing.

What information has been lost?

I can check up and try and find an inventory of what was lost.

Doubtless most of it had been studied previously, but there is no doubt that some of it had not been studied.

As for those who say that "it was just a bunch of pots etc". Do you know how that works? Pots, amphoras, bowls etc are one of the objective measures of age in a civilisation, they are used to date other objects. It mightn't sound like much but this was still an amazingly important and valuable collection that has been lost.

Sure it has no objective value, but neither do the works of Einstein, Newton or Hawkings, and what would happen if they were utterly destroyed (not just the originals, but the all the copies of them as well) and all you had left to reconstruct them were a few scattered photocopies of select pages from the original texts.

[Darth Wong]

As for those who say that "it was just a bunch of pots etc". Do you know how that works? Pots, amphoras, bowls etc are one of the objective measures of age in a civilisation, they are used to date other objects. It mightn't sound like much but this was still an amazingly important and valuable collection that has been lost.

Containing information that is not of objective value.

Sure it has no objective value, but neither do the works of Einstein, Newton or Hawkings, and what would happen if they were utterly destroyed (not just the originals, but the all the copies of them as well) and all you had left to reconstruct them were a few scattered photocopies of select pages from the original texts.

The works of Einstein, Newton, or Hawking has objective value (although Hawking, while brilliant, is overrated). It improves the accuracy of predictive models which can be used in order to design technologies and construct working weapons, spacecraft, particle accelerators, etc. Virtually all mechanical engineering concepts are dependent upon Newtonian physics in some way. To argue that Newtonian physics has no more objective value than a piece of ancient pottery is ludicrous.

[Knife]

I can check up and try and find an inventory of what was lost.

Doubtless most of it had been studied previously, but there is no doubt that some of it had not been studied.

As for those who say that "it was just a bunch of pots etc". Do you know how that works? Pots, amphoras, bowls etc are one of the objective measures of age in a civilisation, they are used to date other objects. It mightn't sound like much but this was still an amazingly important and valuable collection that has been lost.

Sure it has no objective value, but neither do the works of Einstein, Newton or Hawkings, and what would happen if they were utterly destroyed (not just the originals, but the all the copies of them as well) and all you had left to reconstruct them were a few scattered photocopies of select pages from the original texts.

I am not saying it is not a loss, but shouldn't there be more bowls and pots in the original site? Is a few years work by an archeologist to get another bowl or pot, worth more than that of a Marine or soldier (let alone civilians) who would be nothing but sniper bait standing infront of the museum attempting to stop looting?

[Graeme Dice]

I am not saying it is not a loss, but shouldn't there be more bowls and pots in the original site? Is a few years work by an archeologist to get another bowl or pot, worth more than that of a Marine or soldier (let alone civilians) who would be nothing but sniper bait standing infront of the museum attempting to stop looting?

What original site? Performing an archaeological excavation destroys the site itself. Without the artifacts, you have no basis for history, and without that, you might as well declare that it was Martians who taught us how to farm, because there would be just as much evidence.

[weemadando]

The works of Einstein, Newton, or Hawking has objective value (although Hawking, while brilliant, is overrated). It improves the accuracy of predictive models which can be used in order to design technologies and construct working weapons, spacecraft, particle accelerators, etc. Virtually all mechanical engineering concepts are dependent upon Newtonian physics in some way. To argue that Newtonian physics has no more objective value than a piece of ancient pottery is ludicrous.

A piece of ancient pottery or masonry that contains information as to the formation of human cultures, language and technology. These are the very works that you say have no objective value, yet you argue that modern equivalents of these do?

Look, I understand that some people might have trouble understanding this, but damn - can't you realise just how valuable all this is? Not monetarily, but culturally and intellectually.

These are artifacts from the birth of civilisation WHICH IS STILL UNDER STUDY! Losing them represents a blow to the entire world. I'm sorry, but thats the way it is, like it or not.

[weemadando]

I am not saying it is not a loss, but shouldn't there be more bowls and pots in the original site? Is a few years work by an archeologist to get another bowl or pot, worth more than that of a Marine or soldier (let alone civilians) who would be nothing but sniper bait standing infront of the museum attempting to stop looting?

Those sites are gone. Completely gone. An excavation destroys everything that it doesn't recover. There might be something deeper or around it. But these finds are the most significant. Hell, the Hammurabi code is still the basis of the majority of law in the world. Sure, there will always be more pots and ancient crockery, but the significant pieces cannot be replaced.

And having a soldier standing outside is stupid. Are you telling me that a few soldiers inside the museum wouldn't have discouraged looting?

[Knife]

I am not saying it is not a loss, but shouldn't there be more bowls and pots in the original site? Is a few years work by an archeologist to get another bowl or pot, worth more than that of a Marine or soldier (let alone civilians) who would be nothing but sniper bait standing infront of the museum attempting to stop looting?

What original site? Performing an archaeological excavation destroys the site itself. Without the artifacts, you have no basis for history, and without that, you might as well declare that it was Martians who taught us how to farm, because there would be just as much evidence.

I was not aware that modern day archaelolgical excavations used strip minning techniques. I guess if you dug up the entire site, and have taken everything at the site, then yes. But I was not aware that the archeologists have gotten everything in ancient Pershia and Babylon.

Everything they do dig up is important on one level or another, but lets face it, while the ancients only made so many stone tablets with the wisdom of the time, they also made a shit load of bowls and cups to eat and drink out of. If perhaps the looters have taken and/or destroyed an ancient text or irreplaceable tablet containing something that is not found any where else, you will have won me over and I will conceed to your points. But a bowl or pot or cup, while in itself important to determine the lifestyles and other social aspects of ancient life, is one of many that are possiblly under a given archaelolgical site.

[Knife]

And having a soldier standing outside is stupid. Are you telling me that a few soldiers inside the museum wouldn't have discouraged looting?

Yes. When you place soldiers into the museum to guard against looters, there is only one thing they can do to prevent it. Shoot them. The threat of shooting them is only viable if the looters know or think that the soldiers will shoot them. So once the troops start shooting the Iraqi's, then any goodwill we do have with them is void as well as fueling the already bad rep we have with other arabs in other countries (weather justified or not).

Then comes the problem of supporting the guards, in a time that we were fighting to control stategic portions of the city for military operations, are we going to divert troops, vehicles, and supplies to keep a post open at the museum so we can shoot looters? What happens when the changing of the guard occurs? The soldiers will leave the building and be easy marks for snipers. So what then, we take and hold the territory around the museum so as to nullify the sniper problem? So we dedicate more men and material to a position that holds no stategic importance?

It would be easier to wate until alot of the hysteria over there abaits a little and impose order. Then while rebuilding, interdict the artifacts using law enforcement techniques instead of military force which use of the military doesn't help us in any way.

[Graeme Dice]

I was not aware that modern day archaelolgical excavations used strip minning techniques. I guess if you dug up the entire site, and have taken everything at the site, then yes. But I was not aware that the archeologists have gotten everything in ancient Pershia and Babylon.

A hallmark of the history of archaeology is that the important sites are the ones that people went to first. Take a look at Troy. Schliemann cut a 50' wide trench through the entire city and through about three other cities at the same time. Even modern studies destroy at least 10% of the sites. Archaeology is strip mining. You take entire layers of the ground off one at a time and pull everything up.

Everything they do dig up is important on one level or another, but lets face it, while the ancients only made so many stone tablets with the wisdom of the time, they also made a shit load of bowls and cups to eat and drink out of. If perhaps the looters have taken and/or destroyed an ancient text or irreplaceable tablet containing something that is not found any where else, you will have won me over and I will conceed to your points. But a bowl or pot or cup, while in itself important to determine the lifestyles and other social aspects of ancient life, is one of many that are possiblly under a given archaelolgical site.

Sure they made a "shit load" of cups. But most don't survive in any great numbers because pottery has a habit of breaking and then being reused as temper in new pots. The items in Iraq's museum are worth billions of dollars on the open market. Some of the things that have been reported missing by the employees are listed at
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0414/p08s02-wome.html and include a 4,000 year old tablet with school exercises.

The U.S. let the looting go on for more than a day, and that makes them no better than any other of the barbarian invaders that ransacked cities in the past.

[Graeme Dice]

It would be easier to wate until alot of the hysteria over there abaits a little and impose order. Then while rebuilding, interdict the artifacts using law enforcement techniques instead of military force which use of the military doesn't help us in any way.

Do you think the U.S. should have posted guards at a bank that held a billion US dollars in currency? If so, then they should have been at the museum. Just one more reason to add on to the long list of why this war should have never happened.

[Edi]

I was not aware that modern day archaelolgical excavations used strip minning techniques. I guess if you dug up the entire site, and have taken everything at the site, then yes. But I was not aware that the archeologists have gotten everything in ancient Pershia and Babylon.

They haven't. Just the most important places, which means that the likelihood of discovering new very significant finds is substantially smaller now that the most important things are gone.

Everything they do dig up is important on one level or another, but lets face it, while the ancients only made so many stone tablets with the wisdom of the time, they also made a shit load of bowls and cups to eat and drink out of. If perhaps the looters have taken and/or destroyed an ancient text or irreplaceable tablet containing something that is not found any where else, you will have won me over and I will conceed to your points. But a bowl or pot or cup, while in itself important to determine the lifestyles and other social aspects of ancient life, is one of many that are possiblly under a given archaelolgical site.

I just today finished a book on how our alphabet evolved from Egyptian hieroglyphs and how it compared to other writing systems of the time, and it of necessity deals fairly extensively with archaelogy as a tool of tracing how that process occurred. Pottery shards have been one of the most important staples in that respect, since broken pots were good for nothing, relatively speaking, so shards were used to write messages on and then discarded when no longer necessary. If not for that, we'd have a lot less information on how it happened.

As for site looting, there is a good section in the book on how they discovered a completely untouched site in Egypt just outside a major city that contained the earliest known traces of non-hieroglyphical alphabetic writing as well as other important stuff. After reporting it and applying for the permits to dig it up, work began, but the site itself was destroyed by looters in just a couple of years. Most of what is preserved has been in photographs, luckily, so not everything is gone, but a lot is. A pot, in and of itself, is not necessarily worth much, it's what else can be gleaned from it (if it's painted, has writing, or whatever else).

If anybody is interested in that alphabet history book, it's Alpha Beta: How Our Writing Influenced the Western World by John Man, published in 2000 by Headline Book Publishing. It's not difficult or deep reading, but it has a shitload of info in it and gives a rather unique perspective into the history of Egypt, the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe, as well as to some parts of Korean and Chinese history.

Edi