Museum Pillage Described as Devastating but Not Total
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 16 � Curators surveyed the damage at the National Museum of Iraq today, and expressed both worry at how much might have been stolen in the looting last week and tentative hope that thousands of years of Iraq's cultural heritage might not have vanished completely.
"It's not a total loss," Donny George, the director of research for the Iraqi Board of Antiquities, said in an interview today. "But some of the major masterpieces are gone."
>>
Two other repositories of artifacts, the National Library and a collection of old handwritten Korans, were also burned and stripped clean in what many experts believe may be an irrecoverable disaster for Islamic cultural heritage.
With the museum at last under the protection of American troops and tanks, Dr. George said today that part of the collection had been stored in vaults in the basement just before the war, though some of the heavier and more fragile items remained in the galleries. Some items were also taken elsewhere for storage.
He said looters did manage to break into the basement, but said his team of experts had only begun assessing the extent of the damage. "We have to check all the boxes to see what is lost," he said, "and that will take time, a lot of time."
>>
In one possibly encouraging sign, several people in the Al Awi neighborhood that surrounds the museum said they did not see looters leave with any antiquities, even amid gun battles and looting that lasted two days.
An imam who lives behind the museum said he stood outside the museum for several hours on the first day of the looting, begging them to stop. "I kept reminding them that this is their country and it was against Islam to steal," said the imam, who asked not to be identified.
But he said the only items from the collection he saw stolen were several old rifles. Mostly, he said, he saw looters take chairs, typewriters, ceiling lamp fixtures and other items from the museum's offices, as happened at nearly every other government office in the capital.
Abed El Rahman, a museum security guard who lives on the premises, also said that rifles were the only items he saw stolen from the collections. "But many people were carrying boxes," he said. "I don't know what was in the boxes."
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 16 � Curators surveyed the damage at the National Museum of Iraq today, and expressed both worry at how much might have been stolen in the looting last week and tentative hope that thousands of years of Iraq's cultural heritage might not have vanished completely.
"It's not a total loss," Donny George, the director of research for the Iraqi Board of Antiquities, said in an interview today. "But some of the major masterpieces are gone."
>>
Two other repositories of artifacts, the National Library and a collection of old handwritten Korans, were also burned and stripped clean in what many experts believe may be an irrecoverable disaster for Islamic cultural heritage.
With the museum at last under the protection of American troops and tanks, Dr. George said today that part of the collection had been stored in vaults in the basement just before the war, though some of the heavier and more fragile items remained in the galleries. Some items were also taken elsewhere for storage.
He said looters did manage to break into the basement, but said his team of experts had only begun assessing the extent of the damage. "We have to check all the boxes to see what is lost," he said, "and that will take time, a lot of time."
>>
In one possibly encouraging sign, several people in the Al Awi neighborhood that surrounds the museum said they did not see looters leave with any antiquities, even amid gun battles and looting that lasted two days.
An imam who lives behind the museum said he stood outside the museum for several hours on the first day of the looting, begging them to stop. "I kept reminding them that this is their country and it was against Islam to steal," said the imam, who asked not to be identified.
But he said the only items from the collection he saw stolen were several old rifles. Mostly, he said, he saw looters take chairs, typewriters, ceiling lamp fixtures and other items from the museum's offices, as happened at nearly every other government office in the capital.
Abed El Rahman, a museum security guard who lives on the premises, also said that rifles were the only items he saw stolen from the collections. "But many people were carrying boxes," he said. "I don't know what was in the boxes."
Comments