IRAQ: Italy last week seized 94 ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets smuggled from Iraq in the chaotic aftermath of the US-led war.
Dr Donny George, recently appointed head of Iraq's 15 museums, said the tablets, including letters and contracts imprinted with seals, could come from a site in the south known as "Abu Antiq," or "Father of Antiquities." Dr George proudly displayed pictures of each of the tablets on his computer in his office.
Iraq's National Museum, the fifth most important in the world, was looted and trashed following the fall of Baghdad to US forces on April 9th. Thousands of pieces were either stolen or smashed when professional art thieves and crowds of rampaging Iraqis stormed the museum while US troops in tanks watched.
Museum staff and archaeologists the world over, furious over the pillage, raised their voices in protest over Washington's failure to prepare for the expected assault on the museum, forcing the US to join forces with UNESCO and interested European governments to find and return Iraq's stolen treasures. "There is a big effort to get [stolen items] back," Dr George stated. "The looting gave the museum a high profile. The US is trying to make amends."
For the past six months the Carabinieri's Art Squad has been sorting out missing items and putting them into a data base in Rome which provides information on the pieces to Interpol, museums and antiquities dealers. US military police have also been making an effort to recover articles.
As a result, Dr George said that a number of the key pieces have been restored to the Museum - including a 3,500-year-old Sumerian vase and a bust of a woman from the same period, and a unique Assyrian brazier. Some "4,000 pieces have been returned, 820 by Italy, and about 14,000 items" have not yet been retrieved.
But of these 1,000 have been confiscated in the US, 500 in Paris, 250 in Switzerland and a few hundred in Jordan. "Once all these come back 7-8,000 will be missing. We have very good connections and everybody is working hard," Dr George asserted.
The Carabinieri has joined with Iraqis to provide protections for sites in the Nasiriya Province in the south. The system of site protection will gradually be expanded to take in hundreds of sites all over the country which fell prey to looters.
Dr George is "very optimistic." The museum now has money to enlarge its premises, install new lighting and environmental control equipment, buy showcases, renovate and extend its store rooms, and purchase books to keep up with world developments in the field.
Dr Lamia Ghailani, an advisor to the museum, said: "When the museum opened in 1967-68 the Antiquities Department had 17 PhD's from European universities on its staff. Since then there has been serious deterioration. The museum has not bought any books since 1990. How do people expect Iraqis to know what is happening in the world of archaeology and museum work?" Iraq is now running to catch up.