Some Baghdad loot trickling back?

According to the NY Times, some items are making their way back to the National Museum in Baghdad. But all too few, it seems, since most of those who took artifacts from the museum probably weren't like pianist Namir Ibrahim Jamil:

As Mr. Jamil stepped out of [his] van carrying a priceless and broken statue of an Assyrian king from the ninth century B.C., he broke down and wept and fell into the arms of Donny George, the curator of the museum, who also began weeping. . .

Mr. Jamil's pieces — which included a bronze temple relief from the fourth century B.C. and other artifacts, in addition to the statue of the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III — are part of a slow trickle of objects being returned voluntarily. Mr. Jamil said he was fleeing Baghdad in his car during the final days of the war when he was blocked by American troops who were entering the city. As he drove back home, Mr. Jamil said, he passed the museum and saw a scene of chaos and plundering as Iraqis carried off artwork, statues, pottery, artifacts and just about anything else.

"They were breaking and smashing everything," said Mr. Jamil, who said he ran in with some relatives, looked for what seemed to be important items and carried them off in order to save them. The other day Mr. Jamil contacted museum authorities and said he felt safe enough to return the antiquities, accompanied by his brother, Mortadha, and brother-in-law, Nabil Fadhil.

The same story is also recounted in this Washington Post piece, which also notes:

Just minutes after Jamil arrived with his second van load, a U.S. Army truck pulled up at the museum carrying about 80 Iraqi paintings, the oldest of them dating to the 19th century. Officers with the 308th Civil Affairs Brigade said they recovered the paintings from a sewage-flooded vault in a heavily damaged building about a quarter-mile from the museum.

Some of the paintings had frames still dripping with water, some had jagged rips in the canvas. "They had these paintings just sitting in the water," said Col. Vincent Foulk, of Urbana, Ohio. "In some cases, you could see paint literally dripping off."

Museum officials said they expect to recover other items that had been locked away at locations outside the museum, including gold objects moved for safekeeping before the war. Finding people with keys to the safes, however, has been vexing, according to U.S. civil affairs officers.

Unfortunately, the organized robbers seemed to have an easier time find the keys than the good guys. There's also this reminder:

Some of the museum's collection was carried off in the 1990s by members of Hussein's government, according to Iraqi antiquities officials. Archaeologists who work for the Culture Ministry said today that Baath Party officials periodically confiscated gold and other valuables from the museum, possibly to be sold on international underground markets. The officials said they don't expect to see those valuables again.

Posted by David on April 23, 2003 11:51 PM