An international operation has been launched to recover the priceless archaeological artefacts looted from the National Archaeological Museum of Baghdad on Friday.
The true extent of damage remains unclear, but officials say many thousands of items were stolen or smashed when armed looters forced their way past curators guarding the building.
The oldest recorded civilisations were founded in what is now Iraq and neighbouring countries. The museum stored relics dating back 5000 years, including tablets from the royal tombs at Ur, among the world鈥檚 first written texts, tablets inscribed with the Hammurabi鈥檚 Code, one of the world鈥檚 earliest legal documents, and some of the first mathematical texts.
Advertisement
Also kept at the museum were 5000 year-old jewellery, sculptures and ivories from ancient Sumeria and Assyria, as well as prehistoric items such as 100,000 year-old stone tools from the Kirkuk area.
鈥淭hey have looted or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity,鈥� said Nabhal Amin, deputy director of the museum. 鈥淭hey were worth billions of dollars.鈥� The only good news is that a small proportion of the artefacts may have survived in underground vaults, or already have been moved elsewhere.
Interpol and art dealers
The head of the UN鈥檚 cultural organisation, UNESCO, has now called for international co-operation to track down stolen items. Ko茂chiro Matsuura asked Interpol, the World Customs Organization, the International Confederation of Art and Antiquities Dealer Associations, the International Council of Museums, the International Council on Monuments and Sites and prominent art dealers to help prevent relics being sold on the black market.
Neil Brodie, of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre in Cambridge, UK, told 快猫短视频 that the task of tracking artifacts will be almost impossible unless the museum鈥檚 catalogue is recovered. 鈥淭he worrying thing is they were saying the documentation was destroyed,鈥� he says.
Brodie says further useful steps would be tougher enforcement of international sanctions against the trade in stolen antiquities and the establishment of a safe repository where items could be donated.
The museum鈥檚 curators have criticised US troops for failing to protect the museum, despite repeated requests for help. Tanks were posted outside the museum only briefly on Friday. The US has been accused of violating the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
Archaeologists had warned of such destruction. In an article published in the journal Science on 21 March, experts from six nations said Iraq鈥檚 heritage was so great that war threatened 鈥渋rreparable losses both to local communities and to all humanity鈥�.