Majority of antiquities feared lost found at Iraq museum
By Christine Spolar
Chicago Tribune
BAGHDAD — The vast majority of the Iraqi trove of antiquities feared stolen or broken has been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory of the ransacked galleries over the weekend.
Thirty-eight significant pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a single display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items.
The single most valuable missing piece is the Vase of Warka, a white limestone bowl dating from 3000 B.C.
The inventory, compiled by a military and civilian team headed by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, refutes reports that Iraq's renowned treasures of civilization — as many as 170,000 individual artifacts — had been looted or destroyed April 10-12 after museum officials fled during a gunfight between U.S. troops and fedayeen paramilitaries.
Investigators broke through hastily constructed cinder-block barricades Saturday to search five large storage rooms in the museum's basement. Only one of the rooms had been broken into, and even there hundreds of cardboard storage boxes were intact. About 90 plastic boxes, containing perhaps 5,000 less-valuable items, were missing.
Damage to the museum's administrative offices was extensive, with desks, wiring and water fixtures hauled out by looters. But artifacts, apparently obscured in some instances by the rubble, emerged largely unscathed.
"There is no comparison in the level of destruction seen in the museum and that seen in the administrative offices," Bogdanos said yesterday. "It's absolute wanton destruction in the offices.
"We didn't see anywhere near that destruction in the museum. (People) stole what they could use. They left the antiquities."
Investigators are concluding that little damage occurred to antiquities at the museum. They have counted 22 damaged items, including 11 clay pots on display in corridors. Most of those damaged artifacts are restored pieces and can be restored again, museum officials told investigators.
The most significant of the damaged pieces was the Golden Harp of Ur. But investigators determined that the golden head on the damaged antiquity, feared missing, was only a copy. Museum officials confirmed to investigators that the original head had been stored at the Iraqi Central Bank sometime before the war.
Heavy criticism has been directed at the United States because it failed to protect the three-story museum from looters. U.S. military officials said troops were too occupied by combat to intervene in the first few days after they arrived in Baghdad. |
