004
Soon after the National Museum in Baghdad was looted, I wrote op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal (April 16) and the Chicago Tribune (April 26) arguing that the only way to recover a substantial number of stolen artifacts, at that time said to be 170,000 items, was to buy them back.
For the archaeological establishment—the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Schools of Oriental Research—this idea is anathema. In their view, buying looted objects only encourages looting (presumably in the next Iraq-type war). Thus there was no support whatever from the archaeological establishment for what I was proposing. The legal counsel to Chicago’s Field Museum wrote a piece in the Tribune in opposition to the buy-back idea, saying that the only people who supported it were Donald Rumsfeld, Philippe de Montebello and Hershel Shanks. I was flattered to be put in such company. Rumsfeld, of course, as Secretary of Defense, is not principally concerned with archaeological matters. Philippe de Montebello is the distinguished director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Montebello’s name came up in a recent conversation with my friend and adversary, Lord Colin Renfrew, with whom I have had a heated debate in the pages of this magazine regarding looting and the antiquities market. Renfrew is an extremely powerful figure in Great Britain. He is an active member of the House of Lords and was instrumental in the passage of recent legislation in Britain outlawing any contact with looted antiquities from Iraq. He is also a professor of archaeology at Cambridge University and a trustee of the British Museum. So despite the fact that the vitrines of the British Museum are stuffed with unprovenanced objects, the museum will not acquire any such object today. That is not the policy of New York’s Metropolitan Museum—meaning that Philippe de Montebello, in Renfrew’s view, is Public Enemy No. 1.
In London last July, I spoke with Donny George Youkhana, director of research with the Iraqi Department of Antiquities. (He is rightfully called “Donny,” for George is really his father’s name, and Youkhana—the equivalent of the Hebrew Yochanan and English John—is his grandfather’s name.) Some say anyone connected with the Iraqi government during the time of Saddam Hussein is simply an apparatchik. Certainly, Donny knows how to survive. He must—or he would not have survived. He also has a special burden: He is an Assyrian Christian.
I asked Donny about the figure of 170,000 looted objects. Yes, he told me, in fluent, nearly unaccented English, the figure of 170,000 came from his mouth, but it is the number of items in the museum, not the number that have been looted. (In fact, it is the number of inventory numbers used by the museum; the actual number is more than 500,000, for many inventory numbers refer to groups of objects [see Francis Deblauwe, “Iraq Update.”]) The press simply misunderstood him. I asked him why he didn’t immediately issue a correction once the press incorrectly reported the figure as the number of looted objects. He replied that he did issue a correction, but that it was some time before he learned of the mistake. During this period, he explained, like so many Iraqis, he was cut off from the rest of the world—no newspapers, no telephone, no email. Even as we spoke in London, he was unable to contact colleagues in Iraq. His only connection to the outside world, he said, is through the email of a staff member of the British Museum who is temporarily working at the National Museum.
062
It now appears that about 40 pieces are missing from the principal exhibits. Seven pieces, including the Warka Vase, have been returned. Approximately 13,000 pieces were looted from the storerooms, including seals, glassware, pottery and jewelry. However, very few of the museum’s cuneiform tablets and coins are missing. Donny said the museum has records that enable museum staff to identify the missing items from the storerooms.
I asked Donny how he traveled from Baghdad to London. He replied that he was able to get a ride from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, and from there he took a plane to London. Traveling with him was Muayyad Said Damerji, senior adviser to the Ministry of Culture
I asked them both about the rumors that museum staff were among the looters. Very unlikely, they said. Most of the staff were women. More important, the looting occurred while the fighting was still raging outside. The museum staff had been sent home long before, and lived far from the museum; there was no transportation for them to get back.
Then I asked about the possibility of buying back the objects that had been looted from the museum. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, they were all for it. They had long discussed purchasing looted objects from what Damerji referred to as Alibaba (of Forty Thieves fame). The only problem was they didn’t have the money. Donny said they had been promised some money by Secretary of State Colin Powell himself, a fund from private donors for this purpose. But the money had not yet been made available. (The State Department declined to comment on the statement attributed to Colin Powell. The press officer did say, however, that the department was considering many options, including the buy-back option.)
Damerji told me of one case in which a local hotelier had seen looted objects being offered to someone in the lobby of his hotel. He purchased the objects himself and then returned them to the museum. “We wish we had more money to do this,” he said.
The Americans, Donny told me, are ineffective at the border in preventing the export of looted antiquities. But the Jordanian border authorities did confiscate and return a cache of looted antiquities. This is rare, however, both Donny and Damerji recognized. The looted material is flowing out through Syria, Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere, probably never to be seen again.
Could a significant number of stolen items be recovered with a buy-back fund? Would it be unethical to do this? The worldwide archaeological establishment apparently thinks it would.
And what of the continued looting of archaeological sites? Damerji told me that Iraqi cultural officials chose ten endangered sites and turned them over to the local communities—for guarding and eventual excavation under professional archaeological supervision. Looting stopped at nine of the ten sites. “Why?” Damerji asked. “Because they had jobs.”
Damerji also made a special point of inviting foreign archaeologists back to Iraq to excavate. Sounds like some common sense is being employed.
Soon after the National Museum in Baghdad was looted, I wrote op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal (April 16) and the Chicago Tribune (April 26) arguing that the only way to recover a substantial number of stolen artifacts, at that time said to be 170,000 items, was to buy them back. For the archaeological establishment—the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Schools of Oriental Research—this idea is anathema. In their view, buying looted objects only encourages looting (presumably in the next Iraq-type war). Thus there was no support whatever from the archaeological establishment for what I was […]
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.