Englishnat after a closure of about 10 years, the iraq museum has opened its doors to the public, with an exhibition displaying over 10thousand ancient artefacts. Restored baghdad museum reopens with most of its greatest. Create a virtual baghdad museum, a contentrich website free to the general public based on the baghdad museum. After the american invasion of 2003, looters took advantage of the iraqi governments collapse to steal priceless antiquities in the iraq museum. The gloomy state of baghdads national museum comes as no surprise if you know its recent history. Citing the 2003 looting of the iraq museum in baghdad that resulted in the destruction of countless antiquities, a lavishly illustrated volume seeks to reconstruct.
The antiquities service worked with few resources and was very much understaffed, since the country was impoverished by government policies and external sanctions. Establish a comprehensive online catalog of all cultural artifacts in the baghdad museum to help locate them, discourage illegal dealing in these antiquities, and encourage their safe return to the museums curators in baghdad. The items, which include clay cones with cuneiform inscriptions, were seized by the british police in 2003 from a nowdefunct london art dealer. Us armys indiana jones went after baghdads raiders of the antiquities. Marine what assigned other responsibilities but backed into the investigating of the crime. Following world war i, archaeologists from europe and the united states began several excavations throughout iraq. It is sometimes mistakenly called the national museum of iraq, a recent phenomena influenced by other nations naming of their national museums.
An awesome archeology collection despite the 2003 looting, the museum which reopened in 2015 is very interesting to visit. Priceless antiquities, spanning ten thousand years of human history, were smashed into pieces or stolen, and. The looting of the iraq museum, baghdad is a reconstruction in book form of one of the worlds largest and most important museums, which will never be the same again. Focusing on the objects housed at the museum and collected over decades of painstaking archaeological research and study, the book traces the rich tapestry of the history of. The baghdad museum was more than a place to display artifacts. Artifacts looted from a baghdad museum after the u. Thieves of baghdad safesaving antiquities for everyone. It has now been more than twentyfour hours since the first news of the looting of the baghdad museum started coming in. He was key to efforts to track down artifacts looted from from the national museum of iraq in baghdad, and wrote a book. These artifacts, some of them more than 10,000 years old, show the development of everything from hunting and writing implements to mathematics, art, law, religion, and industry and ultimately. The ransacking of the baghdad museum is a disgrace. The lost legacy of ancient mesopotamia, published by harry n.
I sit at my desk looking at a photo of a womans head made of marble, whose empty eyes have stared back at me for my whole adult life. Ancient archive lost in baghdad library blaze world news the. Recently recovered antiquities are displayed at the foreign ministry, in baghdad, iraq, monday, july. Colorful characters and doubledealing are the norm as bogdanos tries to sort out what really happened during the chaos of. The story of what really happened inside the iraq museum when thousands of valuable antiquities were stolen in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 us invasion has been revealed in a new book. The cache comprised an assortment of archaeological artifacts and fragments, historical objects, moderncontemporary items, and replica or faked antiquities. Baghdad, directorate general of antiquities, 1964 ocolc558419024.
He developed relationships with museum staff, and, drawing on his knowledge of ancient civilizations, as well as his knowledge of police work, having been a criminal prosecutor in new york for many years. The baghdad museum of antiquities that she founds the place so thoroughly despoiled in 2003 becomes a symbol of the tragedy the film tells. Something does not feel right about all of it, not the least of which are its disturbing parallels to the baghdad museum looting. All excavations carried out in iraq by international teams of archaeologists were reported to it. The iraq museums huge collection tells the epic story of human civilization, from the earliest settlements to the rise and fall of vast empires.
Fifty museum employees staged a protest in which they waved placards under the noses of american investigators proclaiming that jabir khalil, chairman of the iraqi state board of heritage and antiquities, was a dictator and a thief. Documentary film on aljazeera channel about stealing iraq antiquities during 1991 and 2003 wars. Looted iraqi museum in baghdad reopens 12 years on bbc news. Restored baghdad museum reopens with most of its greatest treasures. From 2008 to 2011, the iraq cultural heritage initiative focused on the restoration of the iraq museum, providing the financing and human resources needed to reinforce the museums infrastructure. A mixture of police procedural, treasure hunt, wartime thriller, and coldeyed assessment of the international black market in stolen art, thieves of baghdad. Rampant antiquities theft threatens cultural heritage. Diane siebrandt, the former cultural heritage liaison officer at the u. Unesco organized an emergency meeting of antiquities experts on april 17, 2003. All the looting at baghdads iraq museum had taken place by the time u.
For information on purchasing the book from bookstores or here onlineplease go to the webpage for the rape of mesopotamia. The artifacts paraded monday include archaeological and historical pieces. A times london article recounts an extraordinary protest by baghdad museum employees this past saturday. We all know about the looting of the baghdad museum at the time of the u. This book was recommended by a lecturer on a cruise. The looting and recovery of iraqi treasures the director of iraqs museum of antiquities talks about the looted treasures of babylon, and the few that have made their way home. Museum officials in baghdad have only incomplete records to help them decide exactly what is missing.
National museum of iraq museum, baghdad, iraq britannica. Donny george, director of the national antiquities museum of iraq, talked about the book the looting of the iraq museum, baghdad. Establish a comprehensive online catalog of all cultural artifacts in the baghdad museum to help locate them, discourage illegal dealing in these antiquities, and encourage their safe return to the museum s curators in baghdad. Charmed day it is history museum to know many things about mesopotamia and human culture from 7000bc to. On april 10, 2003, as the world watched a statue of saddam hussein come crashing down in the heart of baghdad, a mob of looters attacked the iraq national museum.
National museum of iraq, museum of antiquities located in baghdad, iraq, featuring iraqi art and artifacts dating from the stone age civilization of the fertile crescent to the middle ages. Looting of museums in baghdad, iraq a collection of. The marine turned prosecutor busting antiquities thieves. Iraqs national museum has officially reopened in baghdad, 12 years after it was closed in the aftermath of the usled invasion. A prosecuting attorney who holds a reserve commission as a u. Priceless antiquities, spanning ten thousand years of human history, were smashed into pieces or stolen, and one of the most important storehouses of ancient culture was forever compromised. A mixture of police procedural, treasure hunt, wartime thriller, and coldeyed assessment of the international black market in stolen art, thieves of baghdad also explores the soul of a truly remarkable man. Farrell ive long suspected that there was a hidden antiquities agenda to western intervention in the middle east, and have even voiced concerns on this website that syria may be the latest victim of having its priceless heritage.
Despite the presence of an american tank unit, the pillaging went unchecked, and more than 15,000 artifactssome of the oldest evidence of human culturedisappeared into the shadowy worldwide market in illicit antiquities. The national museum occupies one third of a building behind a tall iron fence in a typically decrepit central baghdad neighborhood. This fine book provides many illustrations of the collection of the iraq museum and with that, naturally, comes a timeline of civilization as we know it. The cambridge graduate returned to iraq in 1961 to work at the original antiquities museum established by gertrude bell before joining the team at the new national museum when it opened in 1966. Baghdad museum antiquities the first photo database of 296 objects is taken from treasures of the iraq museum by dr faraj basmachi, published in baghdad in 19756. Thieves of baghdad takes you from his familys flight to safety at ground zero on 911, to his mission to hunt down alqaeda terrorists in afghanistan, and into the wartorn streets of baghdad on the trail of antiquities. The iraq museum s huge collection tells the epic story of human civilization, from the earliest settlements to the rise and fall of vast empires. It joins a list that already includes the capitals national museum, one of the. Many of the rarest of antiquities housed there are now reduced to dust while others suffered irreparable damage. Thieves of baghdad is a riveting account of colonel matthew bogdanos and his teams extraordinary efforts to recover over 5,000 priceless antiquities stolen from the iraqi national museum after the fall of baghdad.
More objects were excavated by iraqi archeologists from the mounds of the country in an effort to save some of this cultural legacy, and most of this material was deposited in the central museum in baghdad. All the looting at baghdad s iraq museum had taken place by the time u. Many of the antiquities looted during the war have now been. In april of 2003, the world reacted in shock at the news of the looting of the iraq museum in baghdad. British museum to return looted antiquities to iraq. He developed relationships with museum staff, and, drawing on his knowledge of ancient civilizations, as well as his knowledge of police work, having been a criminal prosecutor in new york for many years, tells how he and the team were able to recover a huge amount of priceless antiquities which had been looted from the museum in the past days. It was originally known as the baghdad archaeological museum. The museum was closed for ten years after the persian gulf war in. One of the saddest tragedies of the iraq invasion was the decimation of the iraq museum of baghdad. Much of the book is an accounting of how his unit set up camp in the library of the iraq museum in april 2003 and tried to recover lost artifacts.