Lawless in Mesopotamia: Iraq's antiquities were looted mostly by professional thieves, not by random hooligans. Archaeological sites are still imperiled by looters, as well as by hastily planned reconstruction

Natural History, March, 2004 by Zainab Bahrani

Part of the problem is that much of Iraq's cultural heritage is still undiscovered, and thus not yet excavated. Many ancient heritage sites are often not clearly visible to the nonspecialist. A construction company tearing into unsurveyed land may even destroy unrecognized ancient cities with their bulldozers. A good example of the potential for damage is the area around the Great Mosque of Samarra. To the untrained eye, there are no historical remains to prevent usage of the area. Yet it is widely known among scholars that the mosque was an integral part of a medieval royal city.

The most sensible thing to do would be to include archaeologists from the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), the centralized governmental organization in charge of all antiquities projects and museums in the country, in the planning stages of any construction projects. Those archaeologists have long been responsible for preconstruction archaeological surveys throughout the country, and so they are the most familiar with the ancient Mesopotamian and medieval sites and monuments. Such surveys are standard in countries with a substantial archaeological heritage, such as Greece and Egypt, and they have long been routine in Iraq.

The legal standards that prevail in antiquities-rich countries everywhere hold that if a construction project might damage a site, the project must be relocated. When a project cannot be moved, salvage excavations must be done first. A good precedent in the Arab world was set in the 1960s, during the construction of the Aswan High Dam and Lake Nasser in Egypt: before the construction, ancient Egyptian temples such as the ones on Philae Island and at Abu Simbel were moved to new sites.

International laws also require that all excavations, whether for salvage or research, be conducted by specialists in the archaeology of the region (in this case, therefore, by Mesopotamian archaeologists), and in accordance with professional archaeological standards. Any excavated objects must be recorded, documented in published materials, and moved to new locations if necessary. The objects legally remain the property of the country in which they are excavated.

The antiquities laws in prewar Iraq were in accord with international standards, and they remain the guiding principles for addressing issues of cultural heritage. Indeed, the Archaeological institute of America, the largest organization of professional archaeologists in North America, and the international community of Mesopotamian specialists have urged all authorities in power in postwar Iraq to uphold the validity of the prewar antiquities laws. It is only right that the cultural heritage of Iraq be given the same protection as any other country with an archaeological heritage.

Yet the signs that such standard procedures will be followed in the near term are not good. No professionals who work on the conservation of cultural heritage have yet participated in any conferences on the reconstruction of Iraq. The Rebuilding Iraq Conference, held in Washington in early December of last year, was a case in point. Furthermore, two military-airport construction projects that fall under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the civilian provisional governing body set up by the U.S. military, have already damaged archaeological sites at the important ancient cities of Ur in the south and Nineveh in the north. Expanding military installations at Babylon, Samarra, and Tell 'Afar, have damaged archaeological remains at those sites as well.