Robbing the Archaeological Cradle

Natural History, Feb, 2001 by John Malcolm Russell

In 587 B.C. Nebuchadrezzar II captured Jerusalem and herded its population east to Babylonia. Some biblical scholars believe that, after arriving in Babylon, the captives drew on the traditions of their conquerors to compose the story of a people that originated in Eden, survived the Flood, built the Tower of Babel, and then, in the person of a great patriarch, migrated westward to Israel. Abraham's journey became a source of inspiration for the exiled Judaeans.

The ancient city of Ashur, on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, gave its name to the god, the land, and the people of Assyria. Early in the second millennium B.C., Ashur grew wealthy through trade with Turkey, later becoming the center of an empire that encompassed all of what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt, as well as large parts of Turkey and Iran. At Ashur the German excavators uncovered monuments and documents from the entire span of Assyrian history.

Uruk, in southern Iraq, often considered the world's first true city, is the place where writing first appeared. Its legendary king, Gilgamesh, is the subject of the oldest-known epic story, in which he fails in his quest to elude death but achieves immortality by building Uruk's great city wall. So complete was the city's economic dominance of Mesopotamia from about 3500 to 3000 B.C. that mosaics made of baked clay cones, a feature considered evidence of an Uruk administrative or mercantile presence, are found from Turkey to Egypt. While the German archaeological work was permanently cut short at Babylon and Ashur by World War I, it was resumed at Uruk prior to World War II and again in 1953. Over the course of a century of excavations there, the German team has recovered more evidence for the rise of Mesopotamian civilization than is available from any other site. Discoveries there include early evidence of kingship and monumental architecture and clear representations of religious rituals.

Prior to World War I, the area that is now Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire. The excavations of Layard, Botta, and other foreign archaeologists in the nineteenth century were carried out under permits issued by the government of the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul. At first the sultan showed little interest in ancient remains, and excavators in the mid-nineteenth century were allowed to export whatever they wished. This is when the British Museum and the Louvre acquired the bulk of their renowned Mesopotamian collections, which aroused great scholarly and public excitement. Stung by the loss of irreplaceable treasures from the empire and anxious to establish Istanbul as a center for the study of ancient art, the Ottoman statesman Hamdi Bey founded the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul in 1881. Thereafter, foreign archaeologists were obliged to share their discoveries with the museum, which divided duplicate finds with the excavators and had the right to retain unique pieces.

After World War I, Iraq became a separate state administered by Britain. With the energetic guidance of a British official, Gertrude Bell, who advocated that antiquities be retained by the country of origin, the Iraq Museum was founded in 1923 in Baghdad. Upon the end of the British mandate in 1932, Iraq began to take charge of its own patrimony. An antiquities law enacted in 1936 decreed that all the country's antiquities more than 200 years old, whether movable or immovable, above ground or below, Were the property of the state and that none could be excavated, sold, or exported without government authorization. Initially, the Ottoman tradition of dividing duplicate finds with their excavators was still permitted, but amendments to the law in the 1970s eliminated this provision.