![]() |
|
Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 7 March 16 - 22, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
Archaeologists
warn of Iraq war’s devastating consequences By
Sandy English Back
to Alternative Reader Index
The
Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), the leading professional association
for archaeologists in North America, has issued a statement expressing its
“profound concern about the potential for damage to monuments, sites,
antiquities, and cultural institutions as a result of war.” The statement
calls on “all countries” to respect the terms of the 1954 Hague Convention
for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which
the United States signed, but did not ratify. Similar pleas have been issued by
the American Association of Museum Art Directors and the American Schools of
Oriental Research. The
AIA is not only concerned with the destruction that may be caused during
military conflict itself, but also the aftermath of war, when “Iraqi cultural
objects may be removed from museums and archaeological sites and placed on the
international art market.” According
to a recent report in the New York Times, archaeological research in Iraq
has come to a standstill. European teams have already left the area with no
plans to resume excavation and survey in the near future. Researchers in much of
the rest of the Middle East have also stopped work, even in Israel. The
1991 Gulf War saw the destruction of ancient sites and building by bombs, and
the threat of the Pentagon’s new strategy of “Shock and Awe” bombing
promises an even more careless and random destruction of fragile artifacts in
the nearly 100,000 sites and potential sites in Iraq, many of which are in and
near Baghdad. Just
as destructive, however, was the widespread looting of museums and sites after
the Gulf War. Archaeology Magazine has estimated that some 3,000 objects
had been stolen from Iraqi museums and sites by 1996. Most of these ended up on
the art market in Europe and America. Specialists in stolen artifacts have
blamed the onerous sanctions imposed by the UN in the aftermath of the war for
creating poverty that forced large numbers of Iraqis to look for new sources of
income. Many private collectors in rich countries welcomed these antiquities
with open arms. There have also been reports of looting by American soldiers. Removing
artifacts from archaeological sites is especially damaging since this erases the
context in which the artifacts were discovered. Vital information about the date
and use of these objects is destroyed forever in such cases. Moreover, when
these artifacts become commodities on the international market, they are often
broken up or altered in ways that might facilitate sale. And, of course, when
important artifacts, especially illegal ones, fall into the hands of wealthy
private collectors, archaeologists are unable to study them at all, and the
public is robbed of an opportunity to appreciate them as well. Iraq
is home to the oldest city-cultures in the world. Farming began there about
9,000 years ago and several early societies—the first experiments by human
beings in sophisticated, class-organized economies—rose and fell in Iraq. The
Sumerians (c. 3500-1900 BC) , whose leading centers such as Ur and Urik lie in
southern Iraq, have provided us with the first examples of writing. The
literature that originated in Sumeria had a decisive influence on the ancient
Greek myths that come down to us though the poets Homer and Hesiod. By 1700 BC
the region was dominated by Babylon, whose King Hammurabi introduced his famous
code of laws, best known for the interdiction of “an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth.” The
Babylonians were followed by the Assyrian Empire (c. 1110-700 BC), the most
fearsome conquerors of the region. Assyrian art reached a pinnacle of aesthetic
accomplishment. The neo-Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II in about 600 BC
conquered Jerusalem and took much of the Jewish ruling class into captivity. For
centuries Iraq was a center of Jewish learning and culture. The Biblical figures
of Daniel and Esther lived there. The Persians, Greeks, Romans and the Arabs
have all left valuable imprints of their history in Iraq. It is a longstanding function of imperialism to loot and destroy precious art and historical objects. During the Chinese Boxer Uprising of 1900, to cite only one example, imperialist intervention by Britain, Germany, France, Russia and the United States resulted not only in the massacre of thousands of innocent people in Beijing, but caused a fire in an important library that destroyed many early Chinese documents and paintings. Much of the Squires Collection of Chinese art, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, was stolen from Beijing in the aftermath of the revolt. March
8, 2003 Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
|