Area scholars assess damage to Iraqi treasures

Concern over looting espressed by university professor, Institute expert.

By: Jeff Milgram
   While much attention is being given to the looting of Iraq’s National Museum in Baghdad, with its trove of antiquities that stretch back thousands of years, two scholars in the area are equally concerned about the loss of cultural treasures in Iraq’s National Library and the country’s religious shrines.
   Thousands of records show that the holdings of Iraq’s religious shrines were also lost in the wave of looting and burning that followed the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s regime, said Professor Thomas Leisten of the Art and Archeology Department at Princeton University.
   Professor Leisten, who worked in the Iraqi National Museum — the most extensive in the Muslim world — while on an archeological dig in Iraq in 1986, called the looting on the museum’s collection a national disaster for the Iraqi people.
   "For the scholarly community it’s a major blow," Professor Leisten said. "It’s not just the scholarly community who should feel the pain."
   Professor Leisten said religious records in shrines are also significant because they show how much income the shrines bring in. He said the destruction of the records seemed to be deliberate and will make it much more difficult to rebuild Iraq. Also lost amid the looting and destruction might be records from Iraq’s Ottoman Empire and British mandate periods, Professor Leisten said.
   A renowned expert on Islamic art at the Institute for Advanced Study is more horrified by the manuscripts destroyed in the burning of the National Library.
   Oleg Grabar of the Institute for Advanced Study said that, while many of the museum pieces were photographed, that is not the case of the manuscripts from the library.
   Baghdad was a center of Muslim literary life from the 9th to the 13th centuries and the National Library contained an extensive collection of medieval poems, much of which is lost, he said.
   Dr. Grabar has a slide of an item from the National Museum, a small plaque that shows the first representation of Mecca, and he offered to make it available if the plaque has been stolen.
   Professor Leisten isn’t so sure that scholars will be able to use photographs. For instance, cuneiform writing cannot be read from photographs, he said.
   The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, headquartered in Paris, will send teams of archeologists and museum directors to the National Museum to assess the damage. Both men said there are reports that some National Museum pieces already have been placed on sale on the gray markets of Paris and Tehran.
   Professor Leisten was last at the National Museum in 1999 and he believes "major pieces are missing," including the contents of an exhibit hall that featured a heavy Assyrian relief and jewelry, coins and vases that date back more than 4,000 years.
   "They seem to be all gone," Professor Leisten said.
   He said the museum contained items and documents that showed the mundane life in early Mesopotamia, including the earliest known commercial transactions and sacred texts.
   "It allows you a wonderful insight into what was going on," Professor Leisten said.
   Dr. Grabar, who last visited the Iraqi National Museum about 10 years ago, said he has been following the story about the looting of the museum from newspapers.
   "I gather that some of the looting was clearly organized," he said.
   While there is a market for stolen antiquities, a "certain number of items are easily recognizable," Dr. Grabar said, adding that the looting and destruction of cultural institutions should come as no surprise — the museums of Afghanistan were systemically looted during the Taliban era.
   Professor Leisten said American scholars advised the U.S. military on what cultural institutions should be avoided on bombing runs. He thinks the United States should have done more to protect the museum once the Iraqi regime had fallen.
   "It should have been immediately on the list of places that should be protected, along with hospitals," he said.