Posted on 06/06/2003 9:38:04 AM PDT by presidio9
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:49:05 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The treasure of Nimrud survived 2,800 years buried near a dusty town in northern Iraq. It then spent 12 years tucked away in a vault. Until Thursday, it was uncertain whether it had survived Saddam Hussein's son, a U.S. missile strike, looters, a flood and a grenade attack. But it has been found intact in the dark, damp basement of a bombed out central bank building.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
But in my defense, I have never read a single article from 'The Old Grey Whore'
No, the lack of real capitalism. Otherwise, he would have been exposed to Quake, or Doom, or...
Nope, no bias here. Move on...
Nope, no bias here. Move on...
BIG FAT BUMP!
- p9
The cultural loss experienced with looting in Iraq is nowhere near the magnitude of the loss associated with the destruction of that ancient library that held many one-of-a-kind scrolls. Sorry but the name escapes me.
Compared to that, the cultural loss in Iraq seems like the cultural damage inflicted when it was proven that Milli-Vanilli were just lip-synchers.
Hmmmm...What was the name of that library and who looted it?
Exactly what I was thinking... The library at Alexandria
Hold muh pita alert!
I had heard this story before and it sounds plausible, but a recent book I read about Alexandria claims that the date and cause of the library's destruction are still uncertain.
"The date of the library's destruction has long been a matter of debate. Caesar (100-44 B.C.) has been a suspect, because in his De bello alexandrino he describes how his troops set fire to a warehouse filled with papyrus scrolls near the port; but in fact the place he describes is clearly too far away to have been the Library. Another suspect is the Muslim general Amr ibn al-As, who conquered Alexandria in AD 642; but the stories about him are related by a Christian writer and cannot be trusted. Strabo was in Alexandria in 25 BC, and although he refers only to the Mouseion [research institute next to the library], it is likely that much of the information he supplies about Egypt comes from the Library; equally, if it had already been destroyed, he would surely have mentioned the fact. Once again we should probably think in terms of the violence and destruction that accompanied the wars between Zenobia of Palmyra and the Emperor Aurelian in the second half of the 3rd century. or the disturbances at the end of the centrury during the reign of Diocletian." - Alexandria, Jewel of Egypt - Jean-Yves Empereur
It seems strange that they can't narrow it down more than this. I suppose if the remains of the Library could be found, it might be possible to date the destruction of the physical building.
Hoist with his own petard, as they say. An *own goal.*
Sounds like an untrained user not real familiar with the effects of either end of an RPG-7. I'm reminded of the story of some North Koreans who captured a US M18 57mm recoilless rifle in the early days of that war, decided to try it [the weapon vents the fearsome blast of it's launch to the rear] and a bunch gathered around to see how it worked....
Figuring he had it turned backwards, the intrepid shooter turned it around for the next shot, and that was the end of that. A variation of the story was used for a scene in the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Commando. The moral of the story is to be careful about telling your best war stories to aspiring Hollyweood script writers.
-archy-/-
Stay Safe !
"Another suspect is the Muslim general Amr ibn al-As, who conquered Alexandria in AD 642; but the stories about him are related by a Christian writer and cannot be trusted." Alexandria, Jewel of Egypt - Jean-Yves EmpereurThe French ...
Hmmmmmmmmm.
Looks like even the Wall Street Journal has succumbed to the mindless political invention of the American "Progressives": that armies are tasked to "prevent looters" in the midst of the shooting phase of a war; any war!
Americans are still dying daily in Iraq.
The war is not yet over dammit!
Can we expect a correction any time soon?
I knew that would be the first comment someone would make.
The fact is this guy is a recognized authority on the history and archaeology of Alexandria. Despite their other faults the French do have over 200 years of credibility in Egyptian archaeology.
Before Iran fell to islamic pondscum as the Shah died, I walked the same stones as Esther in the ancient capital of Persepolis (phonetic spelling). Got lotsa pictures. After the islamic pondscum took over the country, they destroyed the area, razed the archeological restoration and undid all the work of the historians who were trying to piece it all together.
Iran, Iraq, it's all the same; pondscum! If the museum in Bagdad simply ceased to exist, with all contents, it might be sad but, certainly, no cultural atrocity. Islam is the cultural atrocity (which they prove by their own actions, on a daily basis)!
Stay vigilent, stay armed, and never trust a muslim or a liberal, both terrorists wanting to kill or control you, differing only in weaponry and technique!
From: http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm:
"In the thirteenth century the great Jacobite Christian Bishop Gregory Bar Hebræus (died 1286), called Abû 'l Faraj in Arabic, fleshes the story out and includes the famous epigram about the Koran. Again there is no clue as to where he found the story but it seems to have been one doing the rounds among Christians living under the dominion of the Moslems. Gregory is happy to record plenty of far fetched tales about omens and monstrosities so we must treat this story with the greatest suspicion. As it is not even included in the original version of his history but only in the Arabic version that he translated and abridged himself very late in life, he may not have known the story when he first put pen to parchment. In The Vanished Library, Canfora mentions a Syriac manuscript published in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century by François Nau. It was written by a Christian monk in the ninth century and details the conversation between John and Caliph Omar. After help from email correspondents, I have finally been able to find this elusive document in its French translation and ascertained that it makes no mention of any library and appears to be an example of a theological dialogue between two representative individuals. In other words it is not historical and has no pretensions to be.
The verdict on Omar
The errors in the sources are obvious and the story itself is almost wholly incredible. In the first place, Gregory Bar Hebræus represents the Christian in his story as being one John of Byzantium and that John was certainly dead by the time of the Moslem invasion of Egypt. Also, the prospect of the library talking six months to burn is simply fantastic and just the sort of exaggeration one might expect to find in Arab legends such as the Arabian Nights. However Alfred Butler's famous observation that the books of the library were made of vellum which does not burn is not true. The very late dates of the source material are also suspect as there is no hint of this atrocity in any early literature - even in the Coptic Christian chronicle of John of Nikiou (died after 640AD) who detailed the Arab invasion. Finally, the story comes from the hand of a Christian intellectual who would have been more than happy to show the religion of his rulers in a bad light. Agreeing with Gibbon this time, we can dismiss it as a legend."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3517
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