Ancient History Encyclopedia Limited is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. “What they didn’t loot they destroyed,” said Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Amir al-Mohammedawi, of Iraq’s elite Rapid Response units, who captured the museum building from Islamic State just days ago. Staff had vacated two days earlier, ahead of the advance of US forces on Baghdad. Today’s antiquities black market is using social media platforms and messenger apps to reach buyers in a way that would have been inconceivable to looters in 2003. The efforts to avoid damaging some antiquities contrast with the destruction of ancient sites across Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq, from the desert city of Palmyra to the Assyrian capital of Nimrud, south of Mosul. Some high value items looted from the museum were so recognisable that they could not possibly appear on the open market, suggesting they were taken with buyers already lined up. Mark has lived in Greece and Germany and traveled through Egypt. They are harsh lessons but, even so, necessary to hopefully prevent anything like the looting of the Iraq Museum from ever happening again. While 7,000 items have been recovered, more than 8,000 remain unaccounted for, including artefacts thousands of years old from some of the earliest sites in the Middle East. A U.S.-backed Iraqi campaign dislodged Islamic State from most Iraqi cities captured in 2014 and 2015. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. Likewise the heaviest item stolen, a headless statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash was recovered in New York in 2006 with the help of an art dealer. A freelance writer and former part-time Professor of Philosophy at Marist College, New York, Joshua J. Sadly, it appears we have not learnt the lessons of April 2003. In contrast to this was the opportunistic looting undertaken by locals: in some galleries copies were stolen but genuine pieces ignored. The museum also owned thousands of Islamic, Christian, and Jewish manuscripts. Particularly frustrating were the neglected warnings that such an incident could happen, and the immediate response from the Bush administration that “stuff happens”. Anonymous. Part of the problem with halting the illegal global trade of stolen antiquities is the scale of the market. Virtual reality technology has paired up with 20 years of excavation by University of Sydney archaeologists to recreate the centrepiece of Cyprus’ ancient capital. Professor Ben Eggleton appointed director of Sydney Nano, headless statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash, ISIS selling antiquities to finance weapons, estimated by Neil Brodie of the University of Oxford to have a turnover of US$10 million a day. A block engraved with Arabic Islamic calligraphy lies close by, and some Islamic manuscripts have been left undamaged. Another is a fluted gold and lapis bowl from a royal cemetery in the same city. Its destruction affects people throughout the world and its loss will remain a hole as we go forward into the future. The ransacking of the National Museum of Iraq is one of the worst acts of cultural vandalism in modern times. The museum was effectively ransacked for the next 36 hours until employees returned. https://www.ancient.eu/review/45/. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 04 Feb 2014. Please help us create teaching materials on Mesopotamia (including several complete lessons with worksheets, activities, answers, essay questions, and more), which will be free to download for teachers all over the world. Interpol and the University of Chicago have fastidiously maintained databases for objects looted from museum. Sumer, 2007. One of the museum objects that remains lost is a black stone weight shaped like a duck made around 2070 BC and excavated from the ancient city of Ur. In order to halt looting, it is essential that private collectors and institutions only purchase antiquities with a legal provenance to dry up the demand. The Ancient History Encyclopedia logo is a registered EU trademark. Sadly, this has not been the case. Coronavirus (COVID-19) research and expertise, Australia struggles to plan for affordable homes, University and ABC seek next generation research talent. Initial returns were largely local. One of the most successful programs was an amnesty granted by authorities that saw almost 2,000 items returned by January 2004, and a further thousand items seized by Iraqi and US investigators. Iraqi Col. Ali Sabah, displays ancient artefacts Iraqi Security Forces discovered in 2008, during two raids in northern Basra. There has been a surge in antiquities originating in Syria available online since the outbreak of the civil war. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2020) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - After two and a half years under Islamic State control, all that is left in Mosul’s museum are the traces of looting and destruction. A history of the museum, from its inception to the looting, is given and there are many pictures featured (such as the Akkadian Head of a King, possibly Sargon the Great, and figurines from the Ubaid Period) of the treasures the museum held. Mark, J. J. The museum reopened in 2014, somewhat a shadow of its former self. 1 and 2) The global reaction to the images was an The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia, edited by Milbry Polk and Angela M.H. The photos which complement the narrative are stunning and the prose is well written and goes directly to the point of each piece, or epoch, addressed. For whom have I journeyed? The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia. The editors and contributors go far in making sure a reader understands the lessons which should be learned. (2014, February 04). But they have also used the antiquities as a source of income. The body of an Islamic State fighter lay just outside the church on Saturday, days after the fighting had moved further forward. Iraqi troops dusted off some of the historical stone slabs lying on the floor in the museum, which lies just outside Mosul’s old city -- one of the final Islamic State strongholds in Mosul. Image: Mohammad Huzam/Wikimedia. Ironically, centuries after many of the remains of these ancient cultural entities were looted by European colonial forces in order to fill grand national museums, we are seeing a 21st century version of cultural colonialism. As the editors write in the Preface, "The Iraq Museum was everyman's museum. A highly recommended book. Source: Wikimedia. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University and Michigan State University and University of Missouri. “Some were smuggled out of Iraq,” Mohammedawi said. Search for courses, people, events and everything else ... Fifteen years later thousands of artefacts are still missing. Indeed the illegal trade in looted antiquities is growing. The United States has said the looting and smuggling of artifacts has been a significant source of income for the militants. Dozens of Assyrian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Persian and Roman artifacts that the ransacked museum held have all been stolen or damaged. The television company NBC televised a report about the devastating invasion of the National Museum of Antiquities of Iraq in Baghdad by looters. An excavation of a little-investigated Egyptian coffin from the Nicholson Museum's mummy collection has revealed what is likely the mummified remains of a 26th Dynasty (6th century BC) woman. The looters were native to the region, not an invading force, and this made the meaningless destruction of irreplaceable artifacts, not to mention the theft of national treasures, all the more disturbing to the citizens of Iraq and the international community. For whom have I labored? Official sources have the following to say about the looting of the Iraqi museum’s cultural valuables. Famous pieces like The Warka Vase (also known as The Uruk Vase) are featured along with lesser known, but equally important, artifacts such as Cylinder Seals. Ancient History Encyclopedia. While destruction and looting of cultural heritage has been a by-product of war for thousands of years, the scale of the looting of the Iraq Museum was staggering. The outside of the building, which features Roman-style columns, is blackened from shell or rocket blasts and peppered with bullet holes. Schuster, tells the story of the loss of these treasures but, more importantly, details why they were so valuable and gives a history - with pictures - of the items stolen which have been retrieved, those still missing, and those which were destroyed, seemingly, for no reason.
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