In the view of art historian Zainab Bahrani, an Iraqi-born scholar at Columbia University, no serious assessment of the damage will be possible until the occupation ends. What has become clear to Bahrani, however, is that the looting of the Iraqi National Museum and of archaeological sites is only “the tip of the ice­berg”—just part of a large-scale historical and cultural destruction of archives, libraries and universities, as well as members of the scholarly community. “So many people have died and become homeless and been forced into exile,” she says, “that it becomes difficult for me to focus on cultural heritage alone.”

Note: This story was originally published with the title, "No Accounting in Iraq".

7 Comments

1. 1. brettwarnke 06:18 PM 11/29/08

   According to the BBC "Iraq News" update, 80% of materials looted have been returned.

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2. 2. arthurborges 07:07 AM 12/5/08

   80% has been returned?
   Which 80%? The rarest or the commonest?
   80% of what the BBC has investigatively inventoried?
   Merrily doth thou jest!
   
   Arthur Borges in Zhengzhou, China

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3. 3. arthurborges 07:12 AM 12/5/08

   In any case, building military bases at Ur and other archaeological sites of historic interest amounts to ethnicide: the destruction of an entire heritage -- in the present case, that of Western civilization as a whole.
   
   When you know how much you can learn from a single, apparently mudane artifact, the enormity of the crime is a true jawdropper.

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4. 4. EoRaptor013 03:30 PM 12/5/08

   The thing about Iraq is this: Stand almost anywhere in the country; if you see a hill, it is almost certainly of archaeological significance -- and there are a LOT of hills in Iraq.

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5. 5. arthurborges 04:02 AM 12/7/08

   Yeppers: That's exactly what the expeditiously inclined real estate developers say in Rome and Athens and I guess bases, ammo depots and USO clubs count as real estate development too.
   
   And why, given enough time, they too will become of archaeological significance!
   

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6. 6. Squish 06:00 AM 12/15/08

   I have the same sentiments. Ur is probably the oldest city and the Levant is generally the cradle of civilization and there is still much to be learned about where we came from. And for the religious-minded, Ur is the area where Abraham came from, Babylon/Baghdad is where the Israelites were exiled to, and Mesopotamia is the setting for the Gilgamesh flood story and other stories that still resonate in our collective consciousness.
   
   It just seems a shame shovelling fragments of civilization's beginnings into sandbags. And why? For the oil/power motive doubters, Bush has recently claimed that evolution is a fact and that the Bible is not literally true but still insisted that the war was a response to terrorism. My gut tells me it was spun as more of a Crusade at the time.
   
   I know a lot of artifacts still exist, just as a lot of animals still exist; but an abundance doesn't hurt. When you think of ancient wars where libraries were razed by marauding invaders and culture - myths, poems, religions, histories, laws - were obliterated forever you feel a strange and powerless regret. There is still a history: the real version is one of annihilation and waste born in the heat of a moment locked that does nothing to elevate the human spirit. The current war is not worth the regret that future eyes will look at the sandbag remnants with and beckons us to think of an alternative.

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7. 7. arthurborges in reply to Squish 07:13 AM 12/15/08

   Squish, add this to the non-protection of the National Library and National Museum in Baghdad, and we easily outclass the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
   
   

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