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LOOTING OF ANCIENT TREASURES AFTER THE FIRST PERSIAN GULF WAR
Looting activity in Iraq
Looting of antiquities had been a problem in Iraq ever since the Iran-Iraq War, when attention was focused on war not archeology, and accelerated after first Persian Gulf War ended in 1991 and sanctions were imposed and money to protect archeological sites dried up. Looting was one of the ways a person could make money and get rich quick. Many famous archeological sites were looted; pieces that went missing from Iraq’s museums as ancient treasures from Iraqi’s great Mesopotamian cities flooded international markets.
Most of the pieces were small things like seals, cuneiform tablets and figures. They were sold for a few hundred dollars by looters, and often fetched thousands of dollars or more from buyers on the international market. Looters typically sold artifacts to middlemen and they sold them to dealers who in turn sold them to private collectors. Gold objects were sometimes melted own for their gold.
Items from Iraq that were rarely seen on the international art market before the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-91 became plentiful afterwards. In some cases cuneiform tablets could be purchased on E-bay for a little as $100. Art shops in London were filled with similar cuneiform tablets. American and British archeologists complied a list of more than 2,000 stolen objects stolen after the First Persian Gulf War. A decade later no more than half a dozen had been recovered.
Looted Archeological Sites and Museums after the First Persian Gulf War in 1990-91
Most of the looting in Iraq after the First Persian Gulf War in 1990-91 took place in the south. In the mid 1990s, looters dug up and removed a cuneiform archive from the ancient southern city of Umma. Some unexcavated sites in the south were worked over with bulldozers and dump trucks. The ancient cities of Isin, Larsa, Mashkan Shair and Nippur were also hit.
Sites in the north were not immune from looting. Statues and reliefs were taken from Hatra and Nimrud. In Khorsabad, a magnificent head of an Assyrian winged bull was cut off and sawed into 11 pieces so it could be moved. These thieves who took the head were caught and executed. Looters who looted and sawed into pieced the reliefs in the 30-meter-long throne room in Sennacherib’s palace in Nimrud were not caught and their reliefs ended up for sale on the world market.
Nine of Iraq’s 13 regional museums were ransacked and around 3,000 objects were taken, Looters emptied the regional museums in Dohuk, Arbil,, Sulaimaniya in Kurdistan, Amara, and Kufa. Museums in Basra, Mosul and Karbala were badly looted. At a museum in Babylon, thieves broke into glass cases and took tablets with fine examples of cuneiform writing and signature seals.
In the mid 1990s in Babylon, thieves used sledgehammers to knock down the wooden doors of the small museum next to Ishtar Gate in broad daylight. Knowing exactly what they were after, the seized five large seals and 37 seal rings dating to the time of Nebuchadnezzar. After that all the museum in Iraq were ordered closed and all artifacts were ordered to be taken to Baghdad for safekeeping..
Archaeological sites and museums in Iraq were understaffed, In many cases the documents of the objects lost was less than ideal. In some cases taken objects were not even catalogued.
Looters After the First Persian Gulf War
Some of the looting was done by poor local people, desperate to earn some money due to the sanctions. Some of them were farmers or Bedouin herders who used to earn extra money working at archeological digs. Most the looting however it is believed to have been organized by organized criminals or professional international operators.
The teams of looters were equipped with guns, knockout drugs, cars with false license plates, heavy machinery, and legions of laborers who are paid a small daily wage. In many cases they pretended they were with the government and used the knockout drugs to subdue guards. The looted materials wete often taken by smugglers to Jordan or through Kurdish areas into Turkey and then made their way to auction houses and dealers in the United States, Britain and Switzerland.
In the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein took up the cause of saving Iraq’s archeological treasures. He had his name inscribed on a plaque in Babylon next to Nebuchadnezzar’s. In 2000, ten Iraqi businessmen caught illegally selling Assyrian artifacts were executed live on television. But the at the same time Baath party members and Saddam relatives in the Antiquities department were selling objects abroad. Among those involved was Ali Majed—better known as Chemical Ali. He built a huge palace right on the second millennium B.C. site of Tell Al-Ward. There were also allegations that Saddam turned a blind eye to looting from some tribesmen to win the loyalty of their chiefs. Local leaders and chiefs were often paid by middlemen to allow looters to work unmolested in their territories.
Many of the worst looters are believed to have been people appointed by the Saddam regime to protect treasures and archeology sites. Looting at Hatra was done under the direction of a belly dancer who stole the heart of Saddam Hussein and was appointed director of an archeological site and museum. Saddam’s son Uday was also said to had a role in trafficking. An archeologist who complained to the government about the looting was imprisoned tortured and suffered permanent damage to his arms.
Looting After the Second Persian Gulf War Started in 2003
Looting was such a problem after the American invasion or Iraq in 2003 that the World Monuments Fund listed Iraq as one of the world’s most endangered sites—the first time an entire country was listed. Looters were very active in southern Iraq, sometimes working day and night. Satellite images revealed bulldozers digging holes and vehicles standing by to haul away any items that were found. Looting on this scale seems to been organized by organized crime gangs.
Umma continued to be mined by looters as it had been before the war. Immediately after the American invasion the site was ravaged, Hundreds of trench were dug, in some cases with heavy bulldozers. A number of groups, armed with shovels and picks and sometimes automatic weapons, worked openly unearthing vases, statues, urns and cuneiform tables at Isin (Isan Bakhriat), a 4,000-year-old Sumerian city in southern Iraq. Larsa, Fara and Uruk were seen as prime targets.
Looted objects were smuggled out of Iraq through Jordan, Iran and Turkey. The main route is believed to have been through the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq into Turkey, where they could easily make their way to Europe. Another route was through Jordan or Saudi Arabia to the Gulf states like Qatar or the United Arab Emirates. Travelers said that a gift of cigarettes or alcohol to a border guard was all that was required to have a bag overlooked.
Item were sold in the towns outside the archeological sites where they were looted. Cuneiform tablets, cylindrical seals and small figures were sold openly and were available on dozens of Internet sites.
Looting of the Iraqi National Museum After the American Invasion in 2003
The Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad—with one of the finest collections of Mesopotamian artifacts in the world and objects more than 50,000 years old—was looted in April 2003 soon after Baghdad fell after the American invasion of Iraq. Over two days, more than 15,000 items were taken. The museum was trashed. Glass cases were smashed and steel cages were torn open to get at the items inside. Ancient vases and ceramics were shattered. Statues were split open or had their heads knocked off. Vaults were pried open. [Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, National Geographic]
At one point thousands of men, women and children—some of them armed with rifles, pistols, metal bars and clubs—ran amok on the museum grounds and carried away stuff by the box-load and cart-full. Items that had been carefully removed from their display cases and placed in storage vaults were also taken after the vaults were broken into. This activity led to speculation that low-level employees of the museum or people familiar with the museum’s layout must have been involved. One British archeologist said, “You’d have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258" to find looting “on this scale.”
It was originally thought that the looting was mostly done by ordinary Iraqis to earn some money to take care of their families. Later it was realized that much of it was done by professionals, who took priceless items while leaving behind flawless copies and destroying records so the objects would be hard to trace. It is believed that particular items were stolen to sell to private collectors for millions of dollars.
Initially it was reported that 170,000 items were taken, including some of the museum’s greatest treasure, and there were comparisons to the destruction if Library of Alexandria. It turned out that was not the case. The museum’s most valuable pieces has been stored in a secret vault before the American invasion had begun. Most of the artifacts that were taken were items such as shards of pottery and individual beads of lapis lazuli that were taken from storehouses and mostly of interest to archeologists. Only 33 items from the museum itself were lost.
See Separate Article: LOOTING OF THE IRAQI NATIONAL MUSEUM AFTER THE AMERICAN INVASION IN 2003 africame.factsanddetails.com
Looters After the Second Persian Gulf War
There are basically three different kinds of looters in Iraq; 1) professionals who have taken some of the rarest and most valuable stuff; 2) indiscriminate thieves who have taken whatever they could get their hands on; and 2) insiders, who took advantage of the chaos and breakdown of law to steal themselves or get associates to do it for them.
Much of the looting is believed to be organized by organized gangs. Many seem to be working aor outside interests. Money earned from stolen treasures is believed to have been used to fund insurgent groups. Some of the looters are armed with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers and have attacked archeologists surveying sites and even ambushed them. Guards and looters have been killed. According to Los Angeles Times, “The antiquities trade has also been a source of funding for insurgent groups. Most famously, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta attempted to sell antiquities looted from Afghanistan to raise money for the terrorist attacks.”
Low-level looters are often poor people who dig with shovels picks. In some cases they have sold pieces to middlemen for $10 or $15 with the same objects selling for tens of thousands of dollars in Europe and the United States. These same kind of looters are sometimes paid wages by organized looting operations.
Jason Felch wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Objects looted from sites are smuggled out of Iraq and find their way to the international art market. Along the way, dealers rely on experts to authenticate the objects and describe their significance, facts that can determine their market value. "You buy tablets and you're feeding the antiquities market," said Elizabeth Stone, a professor at New York's Stony Brook University who has directed archaeological digs in Iraq since 1975. "That feeds an enormous amount of destruction."” [Source:Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times, November 3, 2013]
Efforts to Get Looted Items Back After the Second Persian Gulf War
The Jordanians have been the most successful getting looted item back. Customs officials in Jordan routinely seized treasures coming out of Iraq and Israel such as hundreds of 5000-year-old cylinder seals. In the first two years after the American invasion recovered more than 2,000 objects, enough to fill a warehouse room. By contrast, Iran and Turkey seized virtually nothing.
After the American invasion there were simply too many other problems that required security forces that no manpower was left over to protect archeological sites. In Umma in May 2003, U.S. marines arrived in the area and hundreds of looters were detained. That brought an end to large scale looting there but small scale looting continued. A single guard patrolled the site. He worked only in the day. The looters worked predominately at night. Italian national police conducted random patrols of the area.
In 2004, scholars adopted a policy that required the permission of Iraqi authorities before publishing studies of objects that may have been looted,. Associated Press reported in 2015: “The American Schools of Oriental Research, an academic research association, bans scholars from publishing articles on artifacts illegally excavated or exported from their country of origin after 1970, when the U.N. adopted its policy against antiquities trafficking. But in 2004, the association made an exception, allowing publications about cuneiform artifacts that have no record of how they were unearthed — under the condition that Iraqi antiquities authorities give their consent and that the artifacts are eventually returned to Iraq. The exception was made because the esoteric wedge script writings are so valuable to historical study, said Eric Meyers of the association. The policy is now again a point of contention in the field. Over the past year, scholars at the association have debated changing the policy again, with most experts leaning against publishing articles on cuneiform artifacts as these objects continue to hit the markets, Meyers said.”
Loss to Scholars and Archaeologist from the Looting in Iraq
The loss of objects and damage to sites were in themselves tragic but archeologists were also robbed of the chance to understand the object and sites and people who use them by being deprived fo the opportunity to study the objects in situ where they were found. Elizabeth Stone, a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York in Stony Brook wrote in National Geographic: “The aim of history is to humanize the past, but each object ripped from its context loses its voice, and becomes mute, a mere pretty thing. And in this part of the world, many of the objects indeed speak, Mesopotamia’s written tradition survived the vagaries of time because it was inscribed in sturdy clay tablets. Private letters, contracts, works of literature, and records of institutions can be found in the building where they were created.
“But the tablets in the antiquities market? They can’t tell a story. Often the less saleable bits and pieced are ignored or destroyed...Today’s looting means we will never know what was lost. For instance, we’ll never know anything about the cemetery at Dahalia,. We were stunned when we reached thus important area where tens of thousands of people lived 3,700 years ago and that now lies de in the desert. Looters clearly found the place productive—there were holes everywhere, I’d always wanted to excavate here, Since this was a short-lived city, its tablets and artifacts could have provided insights into the old Babylonian period...What fueled this destruction are those in the West who buy illegally exported antiquities—it’s just like the drug trade.”
Cornell Returns 10,000 Ancient Tablets to Iraq
In 2013, Cornell University agreed to return the 10,000 ancient cuneiform tablets, dating back to the 4th millenium B.C. to Iraq. The tablets were donated to the university by the family of antiquities collector Jonathan Rosen. It was one of the largest returns of antiquities by an American university. Jason Felch wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “New York antiquities collector Jonathan Rosen and his family began donating and lending the tablets to Cornell in 2000. Many scholars have objected to the arrangement, suspecting the tablets were looted in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. [Source: Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times, November 3, 2013 |:|]
“The source of the Garsana tablets was the subject of a 2001 investigation by the Department of Homeland Security, according to records obtained by Harvard researcher Benjamin Studevent-Hickman under the Freedom of Information Act. Buying and possessing antiquities illegally removed from countries such as Iraq, which claim them as government property, can be a violation of U.S. law. Investigators also looked into potential violations of the Trading With the Enemy Act, which at the time barred doing business with Iraq, and tax fraud, the records said. The 1,679 tablets were valued at less than $50,000 when they were imported, but the donor received a $900,000 tax deduction when they were given to Cornell in 2000, the records said. |:|
“Ultimately, there were no findings of wrongdoing because investigators could not determine precisely when or where the objects were found, the records show. Harold Grunfeld, attorney for Jonathan Rosen, said all of the tablets "were legally acquired" and that the federal investigation found "no evidence of wrongdoing." He said the tablets at issue were donated by Rosen's late mother, Miriam. "It has always been the Rosen family's intent that these tablets reside permanently in a public institution for scholarly research and for the benefit of the public as a vast informational tool in explaining life in the ancient world," Grunfeld said. The Iraqi government requested the return of the tablets in 2012, and the U.S. attorney's office in Binghamton, N.Y., brokered the transfer. "We're not accusing anyone of a crime, but we believe they should be returned," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Miro Lovric. |:|
“Cornell's acceptance of the cuneiform tablets from Rosen has stirred controversy among scholars who contend that publishing studies of antiquities that were possibly looted increases their value on the art market and fuels the illegal digging seen across the region in recent years. On the other side of the debate are scholars such as David Owen, the Cornell Assyriologist who has led the research of the Rosen tablets. Owen has argued that ancient texts should be studied regardless of how they were excavated. To do otherwise, he said, would be to forsake valuable information about the ancient world. |:|
“Thanks to funding provided by Rosen, Owen and a team of international scholars have worked with experts at UCLA to carefully conserve, photograph and study the tablets, publishing their work in more than 16 volumes over six years. "Study of these cuneiform tablets is providing much new data on the history, literature, religion, language and culture of ancient Iraq that is filling major gaps in our knowledge of Mesopotamian civilization," Owen said in a statement released by Cornell. Some have questioned whether Iraq is stable enough to care for the delicate tablets once they are returned. About 600 antiquities that the U.S. returned to Iraq in 2009 later disappeared. "We know there are problems there, but the Iraq museum seems to be secure at this point," said Richard Zettler, a curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, which will soon return tablets borrowed from Iraq decades ago. "The real thing is, they belong to Iraq.": |:|
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated June 2024