Glenn Reynolds speculates on whether the looting of Iraq's national museum might have been an inside job.
This is something that's been niggling relentlessly at the back of my mind since I first heard about it. It really doesn't smell right, and Glenn quotes a Kanan Makiya report in TNR to the effect that it could have been the local Baathists:
One friend told me that the looting of the National Museum--something that cut deeply into me--was the work of newly deposed Baathist officials, who had been selling off our patrimony as they saw their days were numbered. As the regime fell, these (ex-)Baathists went back for one last swindle, and took with them treasures that dated back 9,000 years, to the Sumerians and the Babylonians. One final crime perpetrated by Saddam's thugs.
This is entirely likely â more likely than the hoi-polloi of Saddamtown swarming in and breaking things out of pure spite or carrying of 7000 year old antiquities to go on Grandmaw's mantle. For one thing,
Looters apparently burned or otherwise destroyed most of those records last week, but Gibson suggested that scholars worldwide could duplicate the archive by copying their own files and reports and resubmitting them to Iraqi authorities.
If I was an ignorant looter, carrying off antique baubles, why would I bother burning any records I found? But most significant is this:
Gone with this wind are more than 170,000 items. Gone is the solid gold 5,000-year-old harp from ancient Sumeria and the comparably old sculpted head of a woman from Uruk. Gone are gold necklaces and bracelets, cuneiform tablets, pieces of tapestry from Old Testament times, carved stone bulls and delicate ceramics, a silver harp, ivory figurines of long-forgotten goddesses. Gone is the gold and lapis lazuli ram, its horns caught during five millenniums in the thicket masterfully crafted by one of historyâs greatest artists.
Think about that for a moment. Then perform this simple experiment: go to the kitchen and pick up a drinking glass. Clock yourself. How long did that take? Now repeat the action, 170,000 times. You might want to get your husband or wife, maybe a few neighbors. Maybe you can round up, say, 30 people, enough for a good looting party. Get all your glasses out, and you only have to repeat the same motion 5666 times for each person. Clock how long it takes you. That tells me it wasn't random looters from Saddamtown, and it wasn't done in a night. Keep an eye out for 5000-year-old gold harps with Sir Leonard Wooley's initials scratched on them on the antiquities markets.
The Village Idiot (who's smarter than the average dolt) has more on this, too.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/15/2003 08:06 pm ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
A state of war is immenent. A resposible curator would probably arrange to have highly valuble artifacts stored away for safekeeping and protection? A Baathist curator might pack everything away for easy safe shipping/looting?
Just Asking.
Can anyone remember anything about the state of the museum after the bombing of Baghdad in the first Gulf War?
Posted by: john ||
04/15/2003 20:27 Comments ||
Top||
#2
I remember hearing that the museum has been closed to the public for years, possibly since Gulf War I. That would be plenty of time to get stuff out of there before anyone would notice it's gone.
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/15/2003 20:42 Comments ||
Top||
#3
It was on the "no hit" list. Though the door did get dented by shrapnel when the comms center across the street was boomed.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/15/2003 20:45 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
