NEARLY five years after it was ransacked by hordes of looters in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, the Iraq museum in Baghdad is about to open its doors again.

The museum, famous for priceless antiquities representing the world’s earliest civilisation, is scheduled to open next month, according to its acting director, Amira Emiran.

Visits will be confined to just two galleries on the ground floor containing Assyrian and Islamic treasures that are too large and heavy to be easily removed. The remaining 16 galleries will remain empty and closed and security will be tight.

Nevertheless, Iraqi and American officials are keen to portray the opening as a sign that security in Baghdad has improved after the chaos of the past few years.

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Emiran announced the opening at a gathering of experts at the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation (Unesco) in Paris to discuss measures to save Iraq’s antiquities from looting and destruction, according to The Art Newspaper.

A Unesco official said: “Dr Emiran announced that the museum would be opening in December. But even if she says it is going to open, this has to be treated with some circumspection. The situation is so volatile.”

The Assyrian Hall has monumental sculptures, including stone panels from the royal palace at Khorsabad and two winged bulls. The other large gallery that is opening, the Islamic Hall, has the eighth century mihrab from the Al-Mansur mosque in Baghdad. It is also hoped to display 10 monumental Parthian sculptures from Hatra in the courtyard which links the two galleries and through which visitors will pass.

The decision was welcomed by Matthew Bogdanos, a colonel in the US Marine Corps reserves, who investigated the theft and destruction of thousands of artefacts from the museum and from thousands of Iraq’s poorly protected historic sites where looting has been conducted “on an industrial scale” since the war.

Bogdanos, a New York prosecutor, said: “I don’t know if there is any such thing as a right or wrong moment to open the museum. But great things are won by great risk and the museum should open and it should stay open. If it means doubling security, then double security.”

The ransacking of the museum in April 2003 in the aftermath of the US invasion provoked worldwide outrage. American soldiers were criticised for watching as looters, taking advantage of the Iraqi government’s collapse, plundered the building.

“It was as if a hurricane had hit,” said Donny George, the museum director at the time, describing his return to the museum after it had been plundered. “What the looters could not take, they smashed.”

Some 15,000 items vanished. In time, some priceless objects were recovered, including the 5,200-year-old sacred vase of Warka, the world’s oldest-known carved-stone ritual vessel, which was returned in the back of a car.

Bogdanos believes the smuggling of antiquities from Iraq helped to fund the insurgency. He recalled that in one raid in 2005 in Anbar province, northwest of Baghdad, marines captured a group of insurgents in an underground bunker and found arms and a chest of more than 30 stolen museum items.

About 10,000 pieces remain missing despite a worldwide hunt; they include the 8BC ivory plaque of a lioness attacking a Nubian, which is inlaid with lapis and carnelian and overlaid with gold.

The museum was founded by Gertrude Bell, the legendary British archaeologist and explorer, in 1923. It was considered one of the finest in the Middle East but was rarely open to the public during most of the last 20 years of Saddam Hussein’s rule.

George, the renowned director, who is a Christian, fled Iraq following death threats in August last year. Before he left he sealed the museum entrance with a 3ft-thick wall of bricks and concrete to keep out thieves.

George yesterday questioned whether it was the right time to reopen the museum. “If it was me I would not open it,” he said. “The priceless artefacts inside are safe from theft or destruction so long as the museum remains sealed.”

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