Home | Category: Early Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent and Archaeology / Assyrians
LOOTING OF THE IRAQI NATIONAL MUSEUM AFTER THE AMERICAN INVASION IN 2003
Adad Nirari stela
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.
Criticism of the United States Over Looting of the Iraqi National Museum
The American government was sharply criticized for not doing more to protect the Iraqi National Museum: placing a tank in front of it, for instance, to deter looters. The U.S. Defense Department said that American forces in Baghdad were still engaged in combat missions, which were their primary concerns. The bottom line was the American forces simply had too few troops and protecting the museum was not one of their highest priorities.
This didn’t sit well with scholars who, on numerous occasions, had alerted the Pentagon that measures needed to be taken to ensure such a tragedy wouldn’t take place. In many cases military officials told scholars the Iraqi National Museum would be safeguarded.. These same scholars asked why measures had been taken to protect the oil ministry and not the museum.
The Iraqi National Museum was located near the Communications Ministry and the state television and radio stations, likely targets for attacks. As American forces entered Baghdad there was two days of heavy fighting around the museum. Fearing for their lives staff members fled. When they returned two days later after Baghdad was in American hands the museum was in the process of being plundered. The plundering continued unchallenged for a couple of days. It was only after media attention was focused on the plight of the museum that American troops were sent to protect it.
Iraqi National Museum Pieces Stolen or Damaged
Among the items that were stolen from the Iraqi National Museum were the Sacred Vase of Warka; the Warka head; the Harp of Ur; the Bassetki Statue; a black, headless statue of the Sumerian King Entemena, dated at 2430 B.C.; a large ivory relief depicting the Assyrian god Ashur; the head of a marble statue of Apollo, a Roman copy of a 4th century Greek original and a A.D. 12th century mosque door.
Some items were also damaged in the fighting and looting. The heads of the Lions of Tell Harmal were smashed. The body of the Apollo of statue from which the head was removed was found in pieces on the floor. A tank shell exploded right underneath an Assyrian relief at the facade of the museum. Fortunately just the bottom part of the frame was damaged.
The status of the 50,000-year-old Shanidar skull, the lizard-faced figurines, the Ubaid boat model, Little King, Statue of Sumerian Worshiper, the Stone Statue of the a Sumerian Scribe, the Cuneiform Calender from Nimrud and the Lioness Killing a Nubian Shepherd are initially unknown but later found to have been stashed out of harms way.
Certain galleries were severely hit while others were spared. The largest room with Assyrian sculpture was largely untouched while the gallery with artifacts from Hatra was badly looted and damaged. Greco-Roman statues of Apollo, Eros, Nike and Trajan were decapitated. Access to some vaults and storerooms by looters indicated some of the looters most have had some inside help.
Items Returned to the Iraqi National Museum
Items were recovered by U.S. Customs and at the borders of Iraq and Syria and Jordan, As of October 2004, 5,200 of the 13,000 items taken form the National Museum had been recovered in six countries, with 3,000 objects seized in Iraq, over 1,00 in Jordan, 300 in Italy and 200 in Syria. Kuwait and Iran were perhaps the least cooperative of all nation perhaps based on the wrongs committed against them by Iraq. The 600 objects retrieved in the United States were seized mostly in airports. Different sources gave different figures. One said as of July 2005, 3,627 of the 15,000 item taken form the National Museum had been recovered..
The treasures from Nimrud and Ur it turned out were not looted. They were found in a flooded vault of the Central Bank of Baghdad, where they had been stored since the first Persian Gulf war. Most of the other museum treasures initially reported as plundered—including many of those on display in the public gallery— were hidden safely in a secret storage facility before the start of the war. The only items that had not been placed on storage were either too large or too fragile to be moved or were attached to their displays.
Over time items were returned. One man who returned a statue of the Assyrian King Shalmanezzar III dated to the 9th century B.C. said he taken it to save it from looters. He wept as he told the New York Times, “This is our heritage. How could we do this to ourselves. It is our heritage, our heritage.”
The Warka vase was returned but in pieces. The breaks were mostly old and the pieces were large so it cold be restored. In September 2003, the Warka Mask was recovered outside Baghdad. It had been buried in an orchard by a looter who had been unable to sell it because the object was so well known. It was retrieved by American troops after receiving a tip off. In November 2003, two priceless looted pieces—the Akkadian Bassetki, and an Assyrian brazier carved in wood and bronze, dated to 850 B.C.—were found in a Baghdad cesspool.
Jordanian custom officials seized an Assyrian ivory carving dated to 2000 B.C. that is believed to have adorned the bed of a king. The carving had been broken into pieces to make smuggling easier. In June 2003, the National Museum reopened in order show off the treasures of Nimrud, which has not been on display since 1991.
Efforts to Recover Items Taken from the Iraqi National Museum
As of June 2003, 33 very important pieces were still missing. Of the 14 objects highlighted by National Geographic, eight were still unaccounted for in November 2003. Several dozen high-profile sculptures and heads of statues removed from the museum’s galleries are believed to be gone forever. Thousands of pieces remain missing. including nearly 5,000 cylindrical seals, which have provided much information about religion in Mesopotamia.
To get items looted from the National Museum and other places back archeologist suggested offering an amnesty to looters who returned items, giving the looter some money for returned items, and establishing a moratorium on Iraqi antiquity sales. There were radio broadcasts encouraging people to return stolen item or provide tips leading to their recovery.
Other efforts to retrieve stolen items have included tightening border controls, circulating photographs of specific pieces, training police how to recognize suspected pieces and figuring out where they might be hidden. International efforts focused on stemming trade and sale of looted items was weak and half-hearted. The political will was not there,
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