Baghdad archeological museum looted

ABC.com ^ | 4/12/03 | None

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Baghdad archeological museum looted

A Baghdad mob looted Iraq's largest archeological museum amid a breakdown in civil authority following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, an AFP reporter said.

A dozen looters helped themselves in ground floor rooms at the National Museum of Iraq, where pottery artefacts and statues were seen broken or overturned, while administrative offices were wrecked.

Two men were seen hauling an ancient portal out of the building, and empty wooden crates were scattered over the floor.

Upstairs rooms seemed to have been spared for the time being.

Iraq, among the earliest cradles of civilisation and home to the remains of such ancient Mesopotamian cities as Babylon, Ur and Nineveh, has one of the richest archaeological heritages in the world.

The museum housed a major collection of antiquities, including a 4,000-year-old silver harp from Ur.

International cultural organisations had urged that the archeological heritage of Iraq, one of the cradles of civilisation, be spared ahead of the US-led war launched on March 20.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

This article makes it sound obvious that stories of all 170,000 items being looted or smashed are total BS. Should have been obvious from the get go.

I still think the Museum Directors are probably guilty.

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[Brad’s Gramma]

History of Free Republic

[rageaholic]

Watch for a retaliation suicide bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Last time I was there, there was minimal security, which is geared mostly towards theft prevention and telling children to be quiet.

[APBaer]

"minimal security"

Not any more.
I go there once a week and after 9/11 things got tighter, and more recently much tighter with all bags now being inspected, and you must spread wide your coat.

[Conservative4Ever]

With a war on in one's country and troops marching to one's city...ya think someone would have the brains to lock the stuff up. Geez.

Red

[lizma]

Interesting but I prefer Registered's version. Could you run it again? The computer in which I had bookmarked it has since then bit the dust. I think our new people would reeeally enjoy it.

[Brad’s Gramma]

I'd be HAPPY to!

REGISTERED! Do you see this?????

[Reeses]

[linton59]

Absolutely!!!

[mass55th]

I would like to think that the looters were Kuwaitis trying to get back the antiquities stolen by Iraq during the Gulf War.

[rmlew]

The Met being hit would be a great loss.
Hitting the Jackson Pollack exhibit in MoMA might be an improvement.

[willyboyishere]

I think I just saw a "crawl" on FOX which suggested that Saddam had closed this museum some time ago for quite a long time, and UK antiquities experts who toured the museum when it re-opened collectively noted that everything in the museum looked bogus, like reproductions had been made in the hiatus, and then substituted for the originals. This of course implies that Saddam & Co. had looted their own museum
pre-emptively. This is a scenario that makes sense to me.
So what the looters got were knock-offs, basically stuff you would buy in the museum gift shop.

[willyboyishere]

BTT

[willyboyishere]

BTT

[willyboyishere]

BTT

[algol]

I caught some video footage on the news tonight. What was very interesting in one scene were a lot of glass display cases, empty, with the glass undamaged and relatively undisturbed dust on top. They did show a couple of smashed cases too -- although from the position of the broken glass fragments in the case they might have been empty when broken also.

No doubt some stuff was grabbed, but I think a lot of it was moved out a while ago.

[MHGinTN]

Saddam's thieves raped and pillaged, emptying a museum in Kuwait that held some of the most precious artifacts of Middle Eastern heritage. The harp from Ur was once housed in Kuwait. I would suspect Saddam's thugs before I would blame poverty stricken Iraqis ... the henchimps of Saddam have ways to sell the booty, poor Iraqis don't.

[rmlew]

I am well aware that the Ba'athists were selling the archeological heritage of Mespoatmia for cash for a decade. I just comment on art.

[JIM O]

I was not able to report it earlier,as I feared for my translators life that my sources tell me the human sheilds looted the museum.