Iraq looting overview progress report

The last week has been very busy, plus the pollen this season has left my eyeballs sore and swollen. I will be taking the next few days off, which should give me enough time to polish up some of the many things needing to be said about the reaction to the looting of the Iraqi museums.

It has been particularly disconcerting to see the lack of a sane middle ground between the academics' rush to judgement and the dismissive stance adopted by many war supporters, who see the academics' anguish as just more ivory-tower posturing. Though archeologists and art historians overwhelmingly opposed the war, and though much of their criticism since has been less than thoughtful and balanced (see more below), it is absurd to treat the damage done to museums and libraries by looting as anything less than a tragedy. Yet many pundits continue to lump all of the looting together, as if looting a national museum (or a public hospital) were equivalent to seizing the ill-gotten gains of a homicidal kleptocrat. And while "No blood for pottery" is a witty riposte, it is ultimately as shallow a sentiment as "No blood for oil" -- a facile reduction of a complex issue into a snappy slogan.

Nor am I impressed by those who claim the moral high ground by absolutist proclamations that one thing or another isn't worth the loss of a single human life. Seldom is one offered such a direct trade, after all: what is normally involved is a balancing of risks -- and we routinely put lives at risk (or set aside years of our lives) to accomplish all sorts of ends that are not directly life-saving. But more on that topic later.

This past Sunday's New York Times printed a long and disappointing piece by Frank Rich, which went over much of the material we've discussed here over the past few weeks, but spinning each bit of evidence to maximize American culpability. I have no doubt that the securing of Baghdad should have been done more swiftly, but I am also aware of difference between foresight and hindsight, and of the real-world need to balance ideal goals with limited and imperfect means. Self-appointed guardians of culture do themselves no favors by acting as if the Bush administration singled out museums and libraries for malign neglect. As we have pointed out before, the failure to secure important sites seems to have been widespread and followed no discernable pattern. And it is simply outrageous that Rich should conclude his piece by explicitly equating America's actions with those of Saddam Hussein, and falsely claiming that Saddam's palaces were protected when the Iraqi museums were not:

The tragedy for America is not just the loss itself but the naked revelation of our worst instincts at the very dawn of our grandiose project to bring democratic values to the Middle East. By protecting Iraq's oil but not its cultural motherlode, we echo the values of no one more than Saddam, who in 1995 cut off funds to the Baghdad museum, pleading the impact of sanctions, yet nonetheless found plenty of money to pour into his own palaces and their opulent hordes of kitsch. We may have been unable to protect tablets containing missing pieces of the Gilgamesh epic. But somehow we did manage to secure the lavish homes of Saddam's hierarchy, where the cultural gems ranged from videos of old James Bond movies to the collected novels of Danielle Steel.

British gun amnesty

Looks like a fair number of firearms have been turned in during the latest gun amnesty program in the UK; the BBC is reporting a total of some 17,000 weapons in all. Yet while the results are presented as a triumph against crime, I wonder how many of the guns collected are being turned in by violent criminals. In fact, it would seem from the total number of guns turned in over the years that Britain has hardly been gun-free, despite the arguments of those who condemn America as gun-ridden.

One thing that is reassuring is that there appears to be some organized effort to check that nothing of historical import gets destroyed. In the words of a Welsh constable, as reported by the BBC:

"We have a strict set of guidelines given to us from the National Museum Consortium about the weapons. After the amnesty, someone will come down to inspect them to see if there is anything of interest that could be considered national heritage". . .

Not a trivial concern; there is a fine pair of ivory-stocked flintlocks in the Metropolitan Museum that once belonged to Catherine the Great. They were stolen from a private collector in the 1960s and were recovered not long after by the NY police. Though the theft report was on file and the guns were obviously "different", they ended up stuck in an evidence locker for years. The only reason they weren't destroyed after the usual passage of time was sheer luck: one cop noticed they looked unusual, and mentioned them to a former cop he know who was working security at the Met.

"One of the most unusual things to come in was a box of antique guns," said Pc Brown. "Some of the handguns in the box were still wrapped in their original cloths and are very well looked after. One has even got the seal of King George on it."

Interesting, but it makes me uneasy to think that antigun hysteria should end up scaring ordinary citizens into giving to the government what are likely quite valuable items. It also raises the question of how many of the total collected are actually usable weapons, as opposed to antiques, dummy guns (which the Brits are also trying to get off the streets), or old rusty shotguns and .22 rifles so dilapidated as to be less than functional. Here in the USA I've known several antique dealer and gun collectors who took advantage of gun buyback programs to get rid of junk guns at far more than their market price, and I recall a buyback out in LA some years ago where the overly generous funds for loosely defined "assault weapons" were soon exhausted by those who bought new surplus SKS rifles and promptly turned them in for a healthy profit.

I also see that one of the big scores of the latest UK amnesty was an AK47. But once you look past the headlines, it turns out it was deactivated. The police made the best of it, though, stating:

"Although this weapon cannot be fired, it still resembles a real, live AK47. If this weapon got into the hands of criminals, it could cause a great deal of fear and alarm."

Then there's the home-made cannon turned in in Birmingham.

UPDATE: More now here.

Update on return of Iraqi museum loot

The bulk of the missing items remain missing, but it seems that some items are coming back -- and that the offer of reward money is helping:

More than 100 items looted from Iraqi museums have been handed in to US-led coalition forces, according to the American military. They are said to include priceless manuscripts, a 7,000-year-old vase and one of the oldest bronze bas-relief representations of a bull. . .

In a statement, US Central Command in the Gulf state of Qatar said: "Iraqis started to return the items after coalition forces began urging local residents to return any artefacts taken during the looting in Baghdad. One man returned a chest filled with priceless manuscripts and parchments to a nearby mosque, a local pianist returned 10 pieces including a broken statue of an Assyrian king dated to the 9th Century BC and one of the oldest recorded bronze bas-relief bulls [this also reported here]. And after some negotiation, a man arrived with 46 stolen antiquities, then with eight more pieces, and finally with a 7,000-year-old vase."

From the BBC.

Rijksmuseum closed indefinitely: asbestos

Unpleasant surprise news from Amsterdam:

Asbestos, the potentially lethal insulation material used in older buildings, was found during an inspection by the national buildings service, the museum said on Monday. The museum will have to be closed to public and staff for an indefinite period. . .

From the BBC.

Tomb of Gilgamesh found?

The BBC reports from Iraq:

The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name.

Now, a German-led expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King.

Moorish bronze cockerel leads London Islamic auctions

The gilt bronze bird, brought £901,250 today at Christie's, as reported in the Telegraph, which had profiled the piece yesterday as its Object of the Week:

The highlight of this week's Islamic art auctions in London is a gilt bronze cockerel that is believed to have been a fountainhead in one of the finest Moorish palaces in Spain more than 1,000 years ago. With its neck curving aggressively forwards and its tail feathers fanning out, the 16in-high cockerel is a magnificent example of Islamic craftsmanship. The surface is delicately engraved with feather motifs and the wing panels are decorated with an arabesque within a circle. . .

. . . little is known about its history. It is thought to have been one of 12 fountainheads around a marble basin at the palace of Madina al-Zahra, near Cordoba. The palace was built by Abd al Rahman, the Moorish ruler of Andalusia, in the 10th century, but fell into disrepair after 60 years. The fountain's existence was recorded centuries later by an Arab historian who had access to records that have since disappeared.

The Christie's catalog entry is here.

Tudor miniatures stolen from Hever Castle

The historic childhood home of Anne Boleyn, near Edenbridge in Kent, was open to the public when the theft happened on Monday. Thieves forced open a locked glass display case in the bedroom of Henry VIII's second wife.

The miniatures include two of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. The others depict Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Henry VIII's adviser who was executed for treason in 1540; Queen Mary; and Anne of Austria, the wife of Louis XIII.

From Ananova.

Autogoogling Cronaca

Just did a Google search for "cronaca". Guess what comes out on top?

NOT any more -- Google's formulas are constantly changing, after all.

My vacuum's bigger than yours

Eugene Volokh has been reporting on his new Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner (Glenn Reynolds ended up returning his), but if you really want to impress people, try this:

Very early yesterday morning while you were sleeping, a group of generally large men got up, got dressed and did some vacuuming for you.

Being generally large, they did not use a small vacuum cleaner: it was 225 feet long, weighed several tons, cost $15 million, sat atop four Detroit Diesel engines and was capable of moving 55 miles per hour. When cranked up, it did not sound much like a Hoover. It sounded more like the end of the world.

Despite the fact that this vacuum had no special hose attachments, it was quite effective in getting at those hard-to-reach places, like the subway tunnel between Jay Street and High Street on the A line.

Italian amnesty for illegally excavated antiquities?

Haven't found a more detailed report on this as yet, but the Antiques Trade Gazette is reporting:

Art collectors in Italy in possession of illegally acquired antiquities may now be able to come clean to the authorities and keep the works concerned. The concession is being introduced as part of an attempt to tighten the law and trace hundreds of thousands of missing works, many of them taken from public sites.

While those caught breaking the law in future face up to six years in jail, Government ministers are holding out an olive branch as an incentive for those with illegally held works to come forward.

Giving birth no excuse for missing exam

An Italian student took her final law exam in a hospital delivery room after authorities said giving birth was not an excuse to miss the test. Antonella Magnani, 28, from Arezzo was about to give birth when a team of eight examiners turned up to question her on public rights and marketing. . .

After 30 minutes of questioning, the examiners told her she had passed the exam with top marks. She gave birth to her daughter Giulia a few hours later.

From Ananova.

Woodman, spare that ant!

Another head-scratcher this morning from Ananova:

Germany has introduced new laws making it illegal to kill ants and appointed 85 ant protection officers to protect the insects. Homeowners and gardeners who attempt to destroy an anthill or underground nest will face hefty fines if caught. They must now apply for a permit from their local forestry office to have the ants carefully moved to local woods.

"People with an ant hill in their garden must under no circumstances resort to the use of poison," said senior ant protection officer Dieter Kraemer. . .
He added that ants were highly valued by German foresters for eating insects which attack trees.

Are the German zoos now going to evict all their anteaters? And what kind of uniform does a senior ant protection officer wear, anyway?

Welsh palace story

This story at the BBC seemed a bit familiar; the gist of it we reported back on 24 February!

Cyprus barriers come down

Meant to post something about this earlier, being such inspiring good news. Sounds as if the leaders of the two sides have gotten into a benign rivalry lately, to see who can open up the most. Let's hope it continues.

They kept pressing through the narrow checkpoints today, long lines of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, on foot, by car, on motorbikes, winding past the watchtowers and the barbed wire that had kept them apart for nearly 30 years. A trickle at first, now a flood, Greeks and Turks are crossing to see each other's side of this divided Mediterranean island, rushing as if uncertain the sudden opening will last.

The turnabout began on Wednesday, after Turkish Cypriot leaders abruptly lifted travel restrictions across the dividing line. They opened two checkpoints because, they said, they wanted to build confidence between the two groups of Cypriots. The move came as a shock to United Nations peacekeepers, the police, customs officials, diplomats and just about everyone else on this island of close to 800,000 people, all of them more accustomed to a heavy diet of mutual hostile propaganda and stubborn politics. . .

The menacing buffer zone, 120 miles long, that has carved up Cyprus since 1974 is still in place, sandbagged positions, watchtowers and all. But little by little, one family at a time, the island is already appearing less divided in people's minds. "We want to see our country, our whole country," said Mete Oguz, a Turkish teacher who had crossed with his wife and children and was boarding a free bus made available by the Greek government. "We are Europeans also," he said in fluent English, "even if we were kept isolated." The Greek and Turkish populations have been kept apart ever since Turkish troops invaded northern Cyprus to halt a coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece. . .

Greek Cypriot officials have been uncomfortable about what they call this week's "unilateral move" and "spectacular gesture" by Mr. Denktash. They said they had never prevented people from crossing over. One official said Mr. Denktash was trying to outmaneuver the Greek side, which had worked out a series of confidence-building steps with the European Union. The official said this "public relations move" was not a substitute for a proper legal and political settlement. But the excited Greek and Turkish islanders who keep converging on the buffer zone, eager to see the villages of their birth and the landscapes that have loomed so large in family tales, appear to care little about the political maneuvers for the moment. "This is people power," said Emina Oguc, a teacher at the University of Famagusta in Turkish Cyprus, who crossed the Nicosia checkpoint early today.

She said there had already been four enormous anti-Denktash demonstrations in the north because the majority of Turkish Cypriots wanted to join the European Union. Other demonstrations and protests were being planned. "The pressure on him was getting very strong," she said. Mrs. Oguc and the fellow teachers in her group said the reunification of the island was becoming unstoppable. "This is so amazing, we could not have imagined this one week ago," she said. "Everyone has been so helpful and kind, as opposed to what we were told by our leaders."

Read the rest here.

Manchester paintings recovered

The thieves who stole three paintings from a gallery as a protest at lax security have left police and curators baffled: how did they manage to bypass the alarm system and security cameras to escape unnoticed?

The Van Gogh, Picasso and Gauguin watercolours, found yesterday dumped at a public lavatory, were valued at £4 million. When stolen at the weekend, they were hanging together in a room at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, which houses the Modern Masters collection on the ground floor. They were unscrewed from the wall some time after the gallery closed at 9pm on Saturday.

Initially it was thought that the paintings, the largest of which is 15in by 20in (39cm by 53cm), had been stolen to order, and perhaps spirited out of the country. But the reality is far more intriguing. They were retrieved after an anonymous telephone caller directed police to the back of a disused public lavatory near the gallery.

The paintings were discovered in the undergrowth amid broken bottles and beer cans, rolled up inside a flimsy cardboard poster tube. The frames have not been recovered.

A handwritten note scrawled on the side of the tube suggested that the thieves had carried out the robbery to make a protest. The note is thought to say: “We did not intend to steal these paintings, just to highlight the woeful security.”

Read the rest in the Times of London.

Ye Newe Yorke Times

For your amusement, the front page of "Ye Newe York Times" from November 11, 1781, trumpeting (among other things) "Three Weeks after Yorktown, Still No Constitution Ready".

Short, dark, and frozen

Now this is truly peculiar:

Dozens of women have asked to be made pregnant by a prehistoric iceman who died 5,000 years ago.

The body of "Otzi the Iceman" was discovered by hikers in 1991 as ice melted in the Schnalstal glacier, high in the Italian Alps.

Cleaning the Parthenon with lasers

Here's an article on how a combination of infrared and ultraviolet light is being used to restore the Parthenon frieze:

Fundamental and frequency-tripled light from an Nd:YAG laser is being used to clean one of the world's best-known ancient monuments. Laser specialists on the Greek island of Crete developed the new method, which prevents the common "yellowing" effect seen when stonework is laser-cleaned.

Now, the two-wavelength method has been selected to restore the Pheidian frieze, which is regarded as one of the most precious and fragile parts of the ancient Acropolis in Athens.

Two out of sixteen marble blocks of the West part of the frieze have been cleaned using the two-wavelength combination so far. The remaining fourteen blocks will be treated by the end of 2004.

Paintings stolen from Manchester museum

Staff at Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester raised the alarm as they prepared to reopen at around 1200 BST on Sunday.

The pictures - Van Gogh's pen and watercolour work The Fortification of Paris with Houses (1878), Picasso's Poverty (1903) and Gaugin's oil painting Tahitian Landscape (1899) - could have been stolen at any time after 2100 BST on Saturday. Greater Manchester Police, who described the theft as "well-planned", have launched a major investigation. The city centre gallery's collection of 40,000 works of art is designated as of national significance by the government.

From the BBC.

UPDATE: Here's more from the Guardian.

AND NOW the paintings (all of them watercolors, it seems) have been recovered, though with some damage. A strange story. . . .

Imperial porcelain found in Japan

More than 300 dishes and bowls decorated with the Imperial chrysanthemum seal, believed to be made between the 17th and 19th centuries, have been unearthed at the Kyoto Imperial Palace in Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto. . .

They are reportedly Arita ware porcelain, made in Aritamachi, Saga Prefecture. They were believed to be made at the request of the Imperial family and given to aristocrats.

Read all about it at the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Looting of the Iraqi museums began in the 1990s

More questions about how much was stolen long before Baghdad fell:

The mystery of who looted Iraq's archeological treasures is rich with suspects and clues, such as the belly dancer who many believe became Saddam Hussein's mistress or the skeleton of a man who was thrown down a well almost 3,000 years ago.

Taken together, Iraqi archeologists say, the evidence convinces them that the very people entrusted with protecting some of history's most significant relics are responsible for some of the worst plundering of ancient artifacts. . .

"The gang started in the early 1990s, with the support of Saddam Hussein himself," said Junayd Fakhri, an archeologist who claims the 1990 discovery of a royal Assyrian treasure buried in a palace well, perhaps in the 8th century BC. . .

. . . Fakhri and several other Iraqi experts say Hussein's culture and information minister during the 1980s and early '90s, Latif Nusayyif Jasim, ordered about 160 pounds of Nimrud's golden treasures, including a queen's crown and jewelry, shipped to Baghdad. The treasure was stored in a vault at the national bank, which was looted along with the national museum in the early hours after Hussein's fall. "They can say the museum was looted and nobody knows the truth," Fakhri said. "The truth is they sold all the pieces."

And the allegations of official theft go on and on. From the LA Times (also reprinted here).