Replies

"That's something you would do to cover up the fact the artifacts had already been sold off. Which is probably why the museum was closed for many years. "
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I think you are right. Ordinary Iraqis wouldn't dare steal and sell the artifacts, but I bet Saddam could and did.

Also I just did a search, and found general information about the Baghdad Museum, as part of description of Baghdad, on arab.net, and they mention that a number of pieces are reproductions -- obviously sufficient in number, that it was worth mentioning.

"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

In addition to the fact that some of the big pieces were reproductions and that the regime had been involved in illegal antiquities trafficking for years anyway, I also read this morning in the Wall Street Journal that some of the most important pieces were believed to have been taken away by Saddam for display in his palaces. Their fate is unclear, and the convenient destruction of the catalogs makes tracking some of these things problematic.

The real reason for all the international "concern" appears in these sentences, and it's as true now as it was in 1996:

Sympathy for these Iraqis seems widespread among collectors and archaeologists in the United States, who are critical of continued sanctions against President Saddam Hussein's government.

In other words, the leftist pro-Saddam intellectual and academic world is simply staying true to form, even after we have moved from sanctions to war. For some reason, odious left-wing dictatorships attract "intellectuals" the way horse manure draws flies.