Baghdad Museum looting update

This article in today's Washington Post covers much material widely published elsewhere, mostly deriving from last week's press conference by lead investigator Col. Matthew Bogdanos. But it also reports, for what appears to be the first time, the nations from which stolen museum artifacts have been recovered:

Last week Bogdanos, a reservist who works as a Manhattan prosecutor in civilian life, briefed reporters on his recently concluded stay in Baghdad as head of the U.S. Central Command's investigation into the looting and theft of artifacts from the National Museum, the central repository for the heritage of Mesopotamia since the dawn of human civilization.

He said more than 10,000 items are still missing, but 3,411 have been recovered -- seized in raids or searches or received, no questions asked, under an amnesty program that yielded 1,731 items, including the Warka Vase, one of the most famous artifacts in the world.

In a telephone interview, Bogdanos cautioned that loss estimates change daily as staffers plod through reams of printed records that were ruined, damaged or strewn about the museum's corridors: "The reality is that we still do not have a complete inventory of precisely what is missing," he told reporters at the briefing. . .

Besides the looters, Bogdanos said, thieves with inside knowledge of the museum broke into a basement storeroom and stole more than 10,000 pieces of jewelry and cylinder seals, carved cylindrical bits of stone that imprint a scene or symbol when rolled across a flat surface.

"The majority of the work remaining, that of tracking down the missing pieces, will likely take years," Bogdanos said. "It will require the cooperative efforts of all nations." Already, he said, 750 stolen objects have been recovered in Great Britain, Italy, Jordan and the United States.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to Judith Weiss of Kesher Talk, here is a link to the official press conference transcript. Anyone seriously interested in this story should read it in its entirely. Some of the key points (not all of which came out clearly in the newspaper reports):

-- Recovery of looted items has been hampered by the ongoing public hostility towards museum staff as agents of the former regime; repeatedly, items were returned to US forces that would not have been returned directly to museum authorities

-- Raids and seizures have led to the recovery of 911 items within Iraq, and over 768 in other countries.

-- Bogdanos seems to have slipped on several occasions, and revealed information he was not intending to, including the identity of the four countries outside Iraq where seizures have been made (Jordan, Italy, UK, USA).

-- A looted Akkadian tablet was turned in by a man in Manhattan.

-- The museum's manuscripts collection remains under community guard, offsite. The locals don't want to return the material to the museum, due to its identification with the Ba'ath party.

-- Occupation authorities have now checked all the secret storage spaces, on-site and off. Nothing in off-site storage appears to have been lost.

-- The administrative areas of the museum were thoroughly ransacked and vandalized, but the damage in the public display areas was far less.

-- The Warka Vase is in the same condition in which it was found in 1940: it will have to be pieced together once again, but it has sustained no additional damage.

-- The evidence that the museum complex was used as a fighting position by Iraqi forces now seems incontrovertible. Bogdanos stated, however, that there was no evidence of museum staff assisting in the use of the museum as a defensive position.

-- The looting of the basement storage area where the cylinder seals were lost clearly depended on inside information, and access to hidden keys (not the ones in the director's safe). Luckily, the thieves dropped the keys in the dark and were unable to gain access to the most valuable items.

-- The 40 pieces from the public galleries were taken selectively. The 3,138 pieces taken from the above-ground storage areas were grabbed randomly. The 10,000+ pieces taken from the basement storage room were chosen for value, portability, and difficulty of identification. Nearly all the items returned under amnesty have come from the above-ground storage areas.

Posted by David on September 15, 2003 2:39 PM