Antiquities from Iraq continue to surface on the market
July 18, 2009
"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
Ron Moore
Tags Blogalaxia Iraq Rumsfeld archaeological collections museums
David+Gill
"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on looting in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, adding "stuff happens,"
April 11, 2003
Stuffs still happening as antiquities from Iraq presumably looted during the early days of the U.S. invasion continue to surface.
David Gill, archaeologist, on his Looting Matters blog considers how antiquities derived from Iraq continue to appear on the antiquities market.
The2003 invasion of Iraq led to the loss of some 15,000 items from the archaeological collections in Baghdad. This alerted the international community to the scale of the problem and as a result some 6000 objects have been handed over to Iraqi authorities. These have been seized in a range of countries across the Middle East as well as in Europe.
The Iraq Museum re-opened in February 2009. Brian Rose, president of The Archaeological Institute of America, was able to visit the collection April and saw some of the reclaimed objects. He took encouragement from the use of the museum by school parties.
There have also been reports of systematic looting of archaeological sites in Iraq. John Curtis of the British Museum was part of a team that surveyed a small selection of sites in the south of the country. It now seems that unrestrained pillage of ancient sites has been curtailed.
Thesepositive developments are counter-balanced by the continuing appearance of antiquities on the market. These items have possibly been derived from recent looting.
Gillcites one recent study showed that over 300 cuneiform tablets were for sale on the internet on a single day in September 2008. A major New York auction house had to withdraw a piece of gold jewelry from itsDecember 2008 sale after Iraqi authorities had raised concerns.
Within the last month a gold vessel seized from a Munich dealer in southern Germany has become the centre of attention. The item was handed over to archaeologist Michael Muller-Karpe, an expert on the metalwork ofancient Iraq. He identified the piece as likely to have been derived from a royal cemetery at Ur. Muller-Karpe has now retained the piece atthe prompting of the Iraqi embassy in Berlin; there were fears that German courts could allow the vessel to be sold.
Gill says that the international community needs to monitor the sale of antiquities that could have been pillaged from archaeological museums or sites in Iraq. There are likely to be stashes of material waiting to be released on the market once the initialconcerns have calmed.
David Gill is a member of the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales. He was a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome and a Sir James Knott Fellow at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was subsequently part of the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
Ron Moore
Comments