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IRAQ NATIONAL MUSEUM TREASURES PLUNDERED
HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press, 4/12/03

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The famed Iraq National Museum, home of extraordinary 
Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections and rare Islamic texts, sat 
empty Saturday - except for shattered glass display cases and cracked 
pottery bowls that littered the floor.

In an unchecked frenzy of cultural theft, looters who pillaged government 
buildings and businesses after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime also 
targeted the museum. Gone were irreplaceable archaeological treasures from 
the Cradle of Civilization.

Everything that could be carried out has disappeared from the museum - gold 
bowls and drinking cups, ritual masks worn in funerals, elaborately wrought 
headdresses, lyres studded with jewels - priceless craftsmanship from 
ancient Mesopotamia…

Gordon Newby, a historian and professor of Middle Eastern studies at Emory 
University in Atlanta, said the museum's most famous holding may have been 
tablets with Hammurabi's Code - one of mankind's earliest codes of law. It 
could not be determined whether the tablets were at the museum when the war 
broke out.

Other treasures believed to be housed at the museum - such as the Ram in 
the Thicket from Ur, a statue representing a deity from 2600 BC - are no 
doubt gone, perhaps forever, he said…

Koichiro Matsuura, head of the U.N.'s cultural agency, UNESCO, on Saturday 
urged American officials to send troops to protect what was left of the 
museum's collection, and said the military should step in to stop looting 
and destruction at other key archaeological sites and museums.

The governments of Russia, Jordan and Greece also voiced deep concern about 
the looting. Jordan urged the United Nations to take steps to protect 
Iraq's historic sites, a "national treasure for the Iraqi people and an 
invaluable heritage for the Arab and Islamic worlds."

Some blamed the U.S. military, though coalition forces say they have taken 
great pains to avoid damage to cultural and historical sites.

A museum employee, reduced to tears after coming to the museum Saturday and 
finding her office and all administrative offices trashed by looters, said: 
"It is all the fault of the Americans. This is Iraq's civilization. And 
it's all gone now." She refused to give her name.

McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the 
American Association for Research in Baghdad, was infuriated. He said he 
had been in frequent and frantic touch with U.S. military officials since 
Wednesday, imploring them to send troops "in there and protect that 
building."

The Americans could have prevented the looting, agreed Patty Gerstenblith, 
a professor at DePaul School of Law in Chicago who helped circulate a 
petition before the war, urging that care be taken to protect Iraqi 
antiquities.

"It was completely inexcusable and avoidable," she said...

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