You may wish to note that CBC said last night that the doors to the Antiquities Museum had not been forced leading one to the possibility that this was an "inside" job. We may have to wait for the answer.
This story smells of the BS of an inside job.
170,000 items destroyed or looted is 1 item per second over a two day period. I say, it would be physically impossible for this to be done by the crowds described, especially seeing as they would have to get inside the locked bank vaults, and spend inordinate amounts of time reducing rocks to dust (why spend you time doing that???).
I suspect most of the items stolen can be found at the homes of the museum staff and friends.
It is totally unbelievable to think poor Shiites from Sadam City came and spent their time smashing small stone figurines and clay tablets.
Second, how much of this stuff exists in copies overseas? The museums of Europe and America are full of Mesopatamian antiquities and copies thereof. I suspect not much of any real value has actually been lost. I'm not overly concerned about a few trinkets and baubles being stolen if that did occur. I'd be more concerned if only copies of clay tablets or massive statuary were destroyed (which is unlikely).
not impossible. they were pushing entire glass cases to the ground. Picture barroom brawl and you'll get the picture. vandals are so creative.
I suspect the following happened. Brigades of Sii'te poor were given some small reward or incited othwerwise to come to create chaos. At the same time, professionals, from Museum or somebody else (those on ACCP retainer) picked up the most valuable pieces.
I've heard of practice of Roman artifacts being destroyed to prevent market saturation.
This vandal act will for sure keep the price of Messopotamian artifacts up.
After just one hour of research here's what I found on the "looting" :
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The main entrance to Baghdad's antiquities museum is firmly shut, sandbags are stacked up near the gates, and priceless treasures have been spirited away for safe keeping.
Every moveable piece was packed up in crates a week ago and removed from the museum, he added.
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:d9AfWlwiYW4C:asia.news.yahoo.com/030312/3/tjtf.html+%22donny+george%22+baghdad&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 “The experts, which included Iraqi art officials, said some of the most valuable pieces had been placed in the vault of the national bank after the 1991 Gulf War, but they had no information on whether the items were still there.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2575224,00.html "Most of the things were removed. We knew a war was coming, so it was our duty to protect everything," Mr. George said. "We thought there would be some sort of bombing at the museum. We never thought it could be looted."
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105053292455773900,00.html “Officials at the UNESCO meeting at its headquarters in Paris said the information was still too sketchy to determine exactly what was missing and how many items were unaccounted for.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2575224,00.html Some believe that individuals, including government employees, are taking the best pieces out overland through Jordan
Hamdoon said that many pieces had disappeared from provincial Iraqi museums after the war.
http://www.usfca.edu/~trembath/www-class/iraq-antiquities.html Some of the objects on display here are reproductions, with their originals removed by conquering nations to be displayed in foreign museums. The Louvre in Paris, London's British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum in the US all contain antiquities from ancient Mesopotamia. Some pieces have been returned, but the effective closure of the country seems to preclude any further returns for the foreseeable future.
http://www.arab.net/iraq/iq_baghdadsights.htm Sensing the treasures could be in peril, museum curators secretly removed antiquities from their display cases before the war and placed them in storage vaults - but to no avail. The doors of the vaults were opened or smashed, and everything inside was taken, museum workers said.
That led one museum employee to suspect that people familiar with the museum may have participated in the theft.
``The fact that the vaults were opened suggests employees of the museum may have been involved,'' said the staffer, who declined to be identified. ``To ordinary people, these are just stones. Only the educated know the value of these pieces.''
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6281650%255E25777,00.html 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.
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6281650%255E25777,00.html In one possibly encouraging sign, several people in the Al Awi neighborhood that surrounds the museum said they did not see looters leave with any antiquities, even amid gun battles and looting that lasted two days.
But he said the only items from the collection he saw stolen were several old rifles. Mostly, he said, he saw looters take chairs, typewriters, ceiling lamp fixtures and other items from the museum's offices, as happened at nearly every other government office in the capital.
Abed El Rahman, a museum security guard who lives on the premises, also said that rifles were the only items he saw stolen from the collections. "But many people were carrying boxes," he said. "I don't know what was in the boxes."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/17/international/worldspecial/17MUSE.html
