Posted on 05/27/2003 4:51:54 AM PDT by Cincinatus
If you only read The New York Times, you might think the only truly important recent event in Iraq was the looting of the Iraqi National Museum. For art lovers, this branded the U.S. occupation with the worst of all possible labels, worse than "imperialist," worse than "illegal" -- "Philistine."
Robert Deutsch, an archeologist at Haifa University and a licensed antiquities dealer, shakes his head at all the coverage of the museum sacking. The Times originally reported that 170,000 pieces had been stolen. "Nonsense," says Deutsch. He points out that there would have to be "miles and miles" of display area for such a massive amount of material to be readily available for the snatching.
Subsequent reporting has cited roughly 30 items stolen from the museum's exhibition area, although hundreds more were taken from well-secured storage areas in an inside job (Saddam Hussein's cousin was the museum's director). But the most valuable pieces appear to have been kept safe, in what is shaping up as the "Great Civilization-Rattling Heist That Wasn't."
"They just had to have something to complain about," Deutsch says of the museum hype from skeptics of the war. "The war was fast. It was clean. They found a small place where they can complain."
Even the actual theft is unlikely to prove particularly damaging. And while robbery is always wrong, the brouhaha should prompt discussion of a point that dealers like Deutsch are willing to make, even if it drives archeologists and academics into a frothing rage: Antiquities sometimes are better off in private hands than in museums.
"I don't see any big or significant damage from this looting," says Deutsch. "It was very small-scale. And the historical value of an antiquity is in its publication. Once it's published, it's part of our knowledge." Thereafter, its value is mostly as an object of art.
Any major, well-known pieces stolen from the Iraqi museum -- perhaps a half-dozen -- will have great difficulty making it out of Iraq. "Everybody knows the important items," says Deutsch. Because of the chill of the Iraq looting, people are afraid even to buy Mesopotamian items that owners secured before 2003.
The more fundamental point about antiquities is that the world is awash in them. Only the truly extraordinary and well-preserved items get displayed in museums.
"There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pieces which will never see the light of day," says Deutsch. "There are always more finds, and the great majority of the new pieces are not good enough to display."
Deutsch recalls that roughly 40,000 ancient coins were discovered in Jerusalem in the 1960s and 1970s. The vast majority will never be displayed, because no one wants to look at the same coin over and over. (Imagine the billing of a museum show based on them: "Coins. Lots of Coins. Lots and Lots of Coins.") The same principle applies to oil lamps, pottery and statute fragments -- and much else.
Therefore, many items sit in museum storage areas to rot -- sometimes literally. The University of Arizona Museum has 20,000 pieces of pottery that have languished in buildings with improper environmental controls. "About a third of our collection has been damaged, and there are collections elsewhere that have been completely destroyed by the same process," a museum official has told the Arizona Daily Star.
"Items that are in private hands are much more secure than what's in the basement of the museum," says Deutsch.
Erdal Dere, an owner of Fortuna Fine Arts in Manhattan, gives an example. Thousands of ushabtis -- ancient ceramic figurines -- are packed on top of each other in the basements of Egyptian museums. Once they are cataloged, why shouldn't they be sold, to be displayed and enjoyed? "What's the point," asks Dere, "in having thousands of these figurines in boxes and storage facilities?"
That is considered heresy by most archeologists, and by the same sophisticates who gave us the premature reports of the death of the Iraqi National Museum.
I am curious to your inside information. Other than this one article (by an antiquities dealer even).
On the other hand, sometimes it takes years for Archeologists to catalog and piece all the facts together for complete collections of objects (including where they were found and in what order etc.)
Did you know that some digs are not complete due to the possibility of future generations being able to do a better job? You spend most of your young adult life to get a PhD and then purposely stop a dig for future generations. This is the dedication of many real life Archeologists.
Did you know that some digs are not complete due to the possibility of future generations being able to do a better job? You spend most of your young adult life to get a PhD and then purposely stop a dig for future generations. This is the dedication of many real life Archeologists.
Does that mean that nothing should ever be allowed out for public sale? Ever? I understand your points. How do they distinguish between an 'important' ushtabi and one that could be sold? Is it really better to hoard them all?
Sticky question. I hear arguments from both sides. I really don't have a good answer to this question. Indeed, it is pretty cool holding something in your hands that was made over 3000 years ago. Should we allow for the more common items to be sold? IMHO, that answer is yes. However, for the pieces that can tell a story, such as a tablet, my answer would be no.
Then we are in complete agreement! ;-)
There were articles prior to the attack on Iraq which clearly stated that the majority of valuable artifacts had been removed to safety (at least from casual looters).
I think mizsterious already pinged one of the "catfish" that swallowed the bait. Their faith in all things bad about USA has let them down again.
ROFLMAO. Perfect description.
Actually the argument was not if the museum was looted (either before the war or after it), but the worth to the human race of the preservation of antiquities. I kept reading no blood for rocks, or the like. Some of us DO value, not only the heritage of the world itself (remember this is the cradle of civilization), but also knowledge passed down thru history. If we do not preserve knowledge, we will be no more than savages.
This is the real crux of the argument we had here on FR.
Exactly right. For every person who expressed the slightest doubt about the story of the museum looting, there were at least four here on FR who seemed well pleased at the prospect of such a thing happening. Such gormless fools bring an awfully bad name to conservatism in general and FR in particular.
In Atlas Shrugged there's a scene where a company runs into some sort of production trouble, or suchlike. The managers all scramble, not to address the problem, but to make sure that they couldn't be blamed for it. So goes much of the reaction here: when certain people on this thread bellow, "I TOLD YOU SO!", they don't mean to say, "I told you no looting took place," because they simply didn't. What they mean is, "I told you the U.S. couldn't be blamed," because they're tone-deaf to any more important issue.
For weeks there was no electricity in the museum, the vaults were dark they could not tell what was taken for a while. Plus the fog of war and taking reports from all kinds of upset people with various motives made it difficult to establish the facts. In my experience it was one of the most confused and confusing news events I have ever followed. But for the most part I do not think it was a media conspiracy to make the Administration look bad. That's just conservative paranoia. After all the event was reported on during a major war, the aftermath was and is still very very chaotic.
I was very upset about the initial news of the looting of the museum (And all the other looting too, Iraq is a mess. It is a tar baby but that's another subject.) When it's all said and done, we DID NOT guard that museum and no intention to guard it till we got good and ready. That STILL bugs me. They just did not do their best in that area. I don't think the military are the "bad" guys. But I don't think they are "perfect" guys either. I hope that that in the future the military will get the message that they should try to come up with more and better strategies to assure the protection of historical sites in war zones. It's just one of those things modern people want the military to be able to do. I am sure the military are up to the challange.
I especially objected to those precious antiquties and ancient works of art being referred to as "just pots" and "relics of a dead past." I am glad not everyone feels that way.
Right.
Oh you want to pat yourself on the back because you think you saw through yet another media plot. Please. You guessed and got lucky.
Anyway where you are going wrong is that you think those of us here who were upset about the looting "have faith in all things bad about America." That is just totally untrue. I am a conservative. I am not a blame America firster. I do think that at first, the media really did believe that the museum looting was very extensive and serious. That is what the media was told by the affected parties. And that being the case they had an obligation to report on it. People who were already against the war were very angry that the military seemed not to care about the looting. People who were always FOR the war, like me, were also angry that the military seemed not to care about the looting. Actually the military didn't care about the looting UNITL a worldwide outcry went up. Then they got on the stick and sent an investigator.
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