Robbing the Archaeological Cradle

Natural History, Feb, 2001 by John Malcolm Russell

Artifacts from archaeological sites were now housed in the Iraq Museum, in the heart of downtown Baghdad, which accumulated the most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities in the world: gold from Ur, ivories and gold from Kalhu, thousands of clay tablets, and major works of sculpture from all periods. The Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage created a nationwide program to educate the populace about their country's cultural history. The centerpiece was a network of regional museums, each of which displayed hundreds of objects chosen to provide a microcosm of Iraqi heritage. Largely as a result of the enthusiasm and cooperation engendered by this program, the plundering of archaeological sites was rare.

At the time of the Gulf War, archaeology was experiencing an extraordinary revival in Iraq, after a dry spell during the nation's 1980-88 war with Iran. Dozens of foreign and Iraqi teams were working at an unprecedented rate, often in response to threats posed by modern urban and agricultural development. At the ancient site of Sippar, just southwest of Baghdad, Iraqi archaeologists had discovered an extensive library from the late Babylonian empire. A wide variety of clay tablets (literary works, omens, incantations, astronomical records, mathematical exercises) were found, still arranged on the shelves. British and Polish teams in northern Iraq were excavating Nemrik, Qermez Dere, and M'lefaat, three of the oldest villages in the world. (These settlements, dating to about 8000 B.C., were contemporary with the first domestication of plants and animals for subsistence purposes.) And at least five American teams had recently renewed or initiated fieldwork at the sites of Nippur, Lagash, Mashkan-Shapir, Dilbat, and Nineveh. Knowledge of Iraq's past was increasing exponentially.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, virtually all archaeological activity ceased, and the war and subsequent imposition of UN sanctions have left Iraq's patrimony in peril. Not only is almost no money available for the preservation of antiquities, but in addition, some Iraqi citizens, squeezed between ruinous inflation and shortages of basic necessities, have turned to looting and selling artifacts from excavated and unexcavated sites and even from museums. In the past few years, for example, robbers have hacked up the sculptured stone slabs from the palace of Sennacherib, which had been reconstructed as a museum in the 1960s, and some of the best-preserved fragments have been smuggled abroad to satisfy collectors.

Another affected site is Dur Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad), where Botta discovered the palace of the Assyrian ruler Sargon II (reigned 721-705 B.C.). Before the Gulf War, little of the building itself remained standing, and its monumental sculptures were on display in Baghdad and Paris. Immediately prior to the war, however, Iraqi archaeologists had excavated a colossal human-headed winged bull from one of the city gates. A few years later, robbers chopped off its head and sawed it into eleven pieces in an unsuccessful attempt to smuggle it abroad. The mutilated remains are now on display in the Iraq Museum, and ten of the perpetrators are reported to have been executed.