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Home > Magazines > Archaeology Odyssey > July/August 2003

Plundering the Past

The rape of Iraq’s national museum

By Francis Deblauwe

During the second week of April, something terrible happened in Baghdad: Looters broke into the National Museum, smashing display vitrines full of ancient objects and making off with some of the museum’s prized holdings. The damage didn’t stop there; frenzied mobs also set fire to the National Library and then continued on to the Awqaf (Religious Endowments) Library and the Saddam House of Manuscripts. Whether these acts were motivated by revenge, greed or temporary insanity, the loss to knowledge—especially knowledge about the roots of Western civilization and the world’s three great monotheistic religions—is incalculable. The National Museum in Baghdad […]

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Footnotes

1.

For instance, the British Museum in London has about seven million objects, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has about two million.

2.

See the following columns by Denise Schmandt-Besserat in Archaeology Odyssey on the origins of writing and counting: “Signs of Life,” Origins, AO 05:01; and “One, Two … Three,” Origins, AO 05:05.

3.

See Tzvi Abusch, “Gilgamesh: Hero, King, God and Striving Man,” AO 03:04.

4.

See Samuel Kurinsky, “First Glass,” Origins, AO 04:05.