THE LOOTING OF THE IRAQ MUSEUM, BAGHDAD: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia
edited by Milbry Polk and Angela M H SchusterHarry N Abrams £20 pp242
This is a gripping, inspiring yet most perplexing book. It details the rich cultural history of Iraq and sets out to reveal the fate that befell the Iraq Museum in April 2003 when Baghdad was engulfed by chaos as US forces stormed and took the city. At the time, the world was told that the museum had been savagely looted in the greatest cultural tragedy since the second world war. This book explains the importance of its collection and places its fate in 2003 in the context of the looting currently devastating Iraq’s 10,000 archeologically important sites.
William Polk, an American academic and the father of one of the book’s co-editors, has written the introduction, in which he describes himself as one of the “last people to see the [museum’s] collection in its breathtaking entirety”. Polk offers a description of what happened in April 2003. He states that some of the commercially most valuable “or at least most movable” pieces were stored in the vaults but that “even massive steel doors gave way or were blasted apart”. He describes events with admirable conviction. We are told that “gangs of looters swarmed into the building. Some appear to have been professional, acting in concert with international dealers and even with resident diplomats . . . Others, probably amateurs, took sledgehammers and chain saws to giant statues” while “an ‘antiquities mafia’ quickly sprang into existence”.
This all sounds plausibly reassuring: a terrible cultural crime committed by cunning criminals, cynical foreign “diplomats” cashing in on the chaos, the poor driven to looting through “desperation” — as the world and its greatest military power, the US army, stood by. But how is Polk so certain about the nature of the looting? I can only assume that he is describing events as told to him by others, for he does not claim to have been in Baghdad in April 2003. Well, I was, and the story I discovered was far more complex, mysterious and political than Polk’s account suggests.
As well as housing one of the world’s great collections of ancient artefacts, the museum was also part of the Ba’ath party apparatus — as were all important public institutions in Saddam’s Iraq — and its cultural and political roles were intricately entwined. What soon became clear to me was that the attack could also be read as a popular act of vengeance against the party and its members, an interpretation supported by the fact that the museum’s offices not its galleries were the prime targets. I
went to Baghdad with a BBC team at the end of April to discover the truth of what had really happened during those few key days from April 9-16. According to all accounts, fighting raged around the museum until April 9, and it was not until April 16 that the Americans placed it under full-time protection. From April 10-12 the building was open to all, and it was during these three days that the looting took place.
Like many journalists, I was drawn to Baghdad by alarming stories, circulated around the world by museum staff within hours of the US troops’ arrival. These suggested that 170,000 items had been stolen or destroyed, and implied that America was to blame for not immediately guarding the place.
During a previous visit to Iraq, in November 2002 — to make a film for BBC2 showing exactly what was at risk if the unthinkable and insane happened and Iraq became a battlefield — I had visited the museum, met its director of research Dr Donny George, and seen its wonders. Iraq is rightly known as the cradle of civilisation — the land where, 7,000 years or so ago, most things we consider to be the hallmarks of civilisation had their origin: writing, mathematics, urban living, arts, crafts, agriculture. And the Iraq Museum displayed the treasures of the land — quite simply it was one of the most important repositories of culture, history and beauty on earth. My conversation with George was fascinating. He told me that adequate precautions had been — and were being — taken to protect the collection. It also became clear, as I walked around, that many items had been removed. Why, when and where these had gone no-one would reveal. Unlike Polk, who appears to have surveyed the place after me, I did not see the collection “in its breathtaking entirety”. I suppose it is possible that the removed items were returned between November 2002 and Polk’s undated “last-minute” trip, but I doubt it.
What rapidly became clear on my second visit was that the pillaging was a most complex event, with no obvious villains and with truth, as ever, being the first victim in conflict. Stung by the accusation of responsibility, US forces had launched an inquiry, and were initiating attempts to discover and retrieve missing items. I spoke to these investigators and to US forces guarding the building — the same troops that had seized it on April 9.
Some very tricky issues soon arose, all of which are ignored by this book. The troops claimed that the museum had been turned into a fighting position. George insisted this was not true, and that bunkers in the grounds were merely air-raid shelters. And then there was the role of the staff. Some had been members of the Ba’ath party while others, US investigators surmised, must surely have been involved in the looting: a number of thefts from storerooms seemed very much like inside jobs.
So what really happened and, more important, what is now to be done? By the time I left, in early May, it had been admitted that the claim of 170,000 items lost or destroyed was an exaggeration. Quite why such a sensational claim was ever made has never been satisfactorily explained. I accompanied Mathew Bogdanos, the US marine colonel and lawyer heading the investigation, and a team of US soldiers and Iraqi museum staff to the vaults of the Central Bank of Iraq in al-Rashid Street. Although the bank had been bombed, its vault was intact and sealed and many valuable items — including 616 pieces forming the famed collection called the “Nimrud Gold” — were found there safe and sound. Members of the BBC team also joined the inspection of the secure storage rooms at the museum. Although some had been entered and items stolen — and weapons left behind seemingly confirmed that parts of the building had been used as a fighting position — the other storage rooms were intact, with doors locked and stacks of crates containing treasures apparently still sealed and untouched. Contrary to what Polk says, the doors of none of these rooms had been “blasted apart”: they were either still locked or had been entered with a key.
By June the number of important items missing had been scaled down to just 32, although tens of thousands of relatively minor pieces were still missing. In the following weeks other significant items were returned or discovered during swoops, including the hugely important 5,000-year-old Warka Vase. This was the one large and valuable item stolen by a well-prepared and mysterious team during April 10-12.
George’s account of events is most interesting. He is now museum director, and has written the foreword to this book. When I met him that April he was clearly exhausted, in a state of great distress and unsure about what exactly had been stolen. Now he states that although “the looters broke through the main galleries and the store rooms, stealing and destroying everything they could get their hands on”, the toll was around 15,000 items. George also states that, as a result of international efforts, around 6,000 objects have been returned, including many from abroad with “over 600 in the United States”. Material is, he says, being recovered “almost every day” although more than 50% of what was lost is still missing. (The British Museum’s more gloomy assessment is that the toll of missing items remains at 15,000.)
I for one remain confused by what really happened. Back in April 2003 the one missing item that confounded all attempts to quantify the loss was an up-to-date museum inventory. One did not seem to exist. Has one since been unearthed, and if not how on earth have figures been arrived at? Were the crates, discovered apparently intact in late April, in fact unlooted and if so, where are their contents now? This book does not tell us. After reading it I am still unsure about what has survived. It describes many of the museum’s greatest treasures without always explaining if they have survived, were stolen, have been recovered or were damaged. For example, the 4,500-year-old lyre from Ur is described and illustrated in all its glory, yet I saw it in shattered bits in a workshop. An exception is the stupendous 8th-century female bust, known as the Mona Lisa of Nimrud. In April this was regarded as one of the greatest losses. Yet it must have been stored in the flooded vaults of the Central Bank because the book says it is safe but “severely” damaged by water.
This book is a fine academic study of the wonders of ancient Mesopotamian culture as represented in the museum, and also a plea from the heart: as the authors explain, “those who choose the devastating path of war [must] understand not only its human cost but its cultural cost as well”. But it is not the last word on the region’s tragic recent history. Certainly its simplified account of what happened in April 2003 does not tally with what I myself saw or with what I was told by those intimately involved with the investigation. The full story — the means and motives behind the attacks on the museum — has yet to be told, and it’s vital that it should be told — for only the truth can help heal the wounds and soothe the anger that now torment this tragically fragmented nation.
Available at the Books First price of £16 plus £2.25 p&p on 0870 165 8585
READ ON...
websites:
www.baghdadmuseum.org
US soldier’s superb site about museum
books:
Under Fire by Dan Cruickshank and David Vincent
(BBC Books £16.99)
Threatened heritage in Iraq, Israel and Aghanistan
