The current Babylon show is big, but what does it say about ancient Mesopotamia? One wonders about the motives behind...
A rather grim picture of the situation in Baghdad:Donny George has resigned as President of the State Board of Antiquities...
One of the most important treasures looted in the ransacking of Iraq’s national museum three years ago has been recovered...
Brief but encouraging notice here: The Antiquities Inspectorate in the southern city of Najaf has retrieved more than 200 archaeological...
Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, is to establish the city’s first task force “dedicated to investigating and prosecuting...
Thanks to Greg Soble, who has pointed out that the Baghdad Museum website has a long and fascinating series of...
An interview, of a sort, in today's Guardian: All the acclaim notwithstanding, Bogdanos gives the impression of boiling with anger...
An Air Force officer made an "honest mistake" in shipping home from Iraq enough foreign-made automatic weapons for an Army...
The massive spiral of the 9th-century minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra is one of the great icons of...
PRIVATE photographs taken by classic children's author Roald Dahl have fetched more than £84,000 at a charity auction. Proceeds have...
An expert on Iraq's postwar reconstruction was sentenced Monday to six months house arrest and two years probation for trying...
Just noted: a lengthy article on blogs, journalism, and public policy, which mentions (among much else) Cronaca's coverage of the...
This article in Lebanon's Daily Star seemed at first glance to contain little new -- though it does describe several...
The continuing exclusion of Jews by the archeological gatekeepers of Iraq (and other Arab nations) was noted in the article...
I've long intended to put together some sort of summary of the Baghdad museum looting story, but now it seems...
Fires at the Iraq National Library set as U.S. forces took over Baghdad did not destroy large numbers of rare...
Few outsiders appreciate what a task it is to keep track of even a small museum's holdings -- and how...
Remember Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, appointed to investigate and recover the losses at Baghdad's archeological museum? I don't recall anyone having...
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about ivory that the ancient ivories of the Nimrud...
Interesting profile in yesterday's Boston Globe of John Russell -- an archeologist whose name was much in the news during...
Archaeologists in York believe a hoard of treasure recently found by metal detectorists could lead to the first discovery of...
A harp enthusiast is hoping to recreate the first working copy of the famous Harp of Ur, which was vandalised...
In the new manuscript museum in the library at Alexandria, no less, recently opened with UNESCO money. MEMRI cites the...
The Art Newspaper is reporting a series of new appointments at the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage: The...
A plan to send the Nimrud gold on a world tour is being considered in Baghdad. The Warka Vase, which...
Some of the recently recovered looted artifacts have been put on display. Meanwhile, the Italians have been busy buying back...
Two priceless pieces of Iraq's ancient heritage, looted from Baghdad's main museum in the chaotic days after Saddam Hussein's fall,...
Here's a followup on earlier reports of stolen Iraqi artifacts seized in London, confirming that at least some of the...
Time has an article on the looting of artifacts in Asia that's worth reading. An excerpt: The dramatic ransacking of...
Here's an article from the Art Newspaper on the situation in Baghdad in the wake of the looting. Not surprisingly,...
Good news from Baghdad: Investigators have recovered the Lady of Warka, one of the most valuable exhibits stolen from the...
This article in today's Washington Post covers much material widely published elsewhere, mostly deriving from last week's press conference by...
We've posted before on the hideous "reconstruction" of Babylon atop the ancient ruins (here and here). To this piece from...
From Newsweek, an article with pictures of the 30 objects on the museum's "most wanted" list. Also some further info...
The Baghdad museum is lending some of its greatest treasures to the US, just months after fearing much of it...
La Repubblica reports that the Warka Vase, which was returned to the Baghdad archeological museum in pieces, will be restored...
Where was I last week? Somehow I missed this article on cylinder seals in the NY Times (thanks to author...
As was pointed out during discussions of the Baghdad museums' losses, museum inventories often are less than accurate records of...
I've been a bit remiss in keeping up with the news from Iraq over the past few weeks -- so...
The situation on the ground in Iraq is still plenty hot, even if the looting is over: In another attack...
There's been a lot of rash talk about how coalition forces violated the Hague Convention's provisions regarding protection of cultural...
In recent letters to the Guardian, David Aaronovitch's harsh judgement of the Baghdad museum administration was taken to task. The...
From today's Guardian: More than 130 of the 185 staff of Iraq's state board of antiquities office in Baghdad, which...
The Art Newspaper has just published a new summary of recent developments. It appears that the Warka vase will indeed...
In today's Washington Post, Prof. John Russell tries to come to terms with how he was misled about the scale...
From tomorrow's Sunday Times, some further details on recent recoveries: Three feet high and weighing 600lb intact, this was the...
Good news from Iraq: The sacred Vase of Warka - one of the most valuable artifacts of the Iraqi National...
This report is being widely reprinted in condensed form, but the full article is here: A National Geographic Society archaeological...
Much of what is reported in this article in the Guardian will not be news to Cronaca readers; nonetheless, it...
Much in this Washington Post article has already appeared elsewhere. Here are some excerpts of particular interest: On Saturday, a...
This Boston Globe article's main focus is on the supposed gulf between historically-conscious Iraqis and their less enlightened occupiers (not...
From the Washington Post: Almost all of the priceless items feared stolen from the Baghdad Museum when it was ransacked...
The University of California at Berkeley is trying to raise $5m (£3m) for a project which would chronicle the war-torn...
Good news via National Geographic: Gold jewelry and other precious items recovered from royal tombs excavated at the ancient Assyrian...
Good grief -- just Googled Baghdad museum looting and the very first listing pointed right back here. We've certainly given...
From today's NY Times: Though Iraqi officials say the scale of current archaeological looting is unprecedented, the buying and smuggling...
The Art Newspaper has published a report based on an interview with British Museum director Neil McGregor, who visited Baghdad...
The Museum Security Network, which maintains a news log about art and artifact theft and related museum issues, has maintained...
An article of merit in today's Financial Times: For dealers trading in stolen antiquities, the orgy of looting at Baghdad's...
More information, not all of it consistent with other recent reports, via the French edition of the International Herald Tribune:...
"The great majority of Iraqi sites are in great danger,'' warned McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago archaeologist who has...
Just in from Boston.com: U.S. authorities said Friday they are scaling back the estimates of how much treasure was looted...
I have not posted much lately on the looting of Baghdad's museums and libraries, though a summary of what is...
In the wake of the Baghdad museum brouhaha, many journalists showed their lack of any real knowledge of the antiquities...
Amid the firestorm over the museum looting in Baghdad, the situation in remote archeological sites has not received much attention...
Will be expanding on this shortly, but here is a big (if not entirely unexpected, at least for our readers)...
This sounds like good news: Except for the apparent withdrawal by Saddam and son, the business end of Iraq's central...
When reports conflict, whom is one to believe? To date, the statements of Baghdad museum officials and employees have been...
Reports continue to be incomplete and contradictory, but recent news suggests that the losses to looting at the Iraqi National...
Just got back home late last night, so catching up on the news will take some time. A number of...
The last week has been very busy, plus the pollen this season has left my eyeballs sore and swollen. I...
The bulk of the missing items remain missing, but it seems that some items are coming back -- and that...
More questions about how much was stolen long before Baghdad fell:The mystery of who looted Iraq's archeological treasures is rich...
According to the NY Times, some items are making their way back to the National Museum in Baghdad. But all...
"Where's the loot?" asks this article in the Washington Post: Despite scattered rumors of artifacts turning up from Tehran to...
The looting of Iraqi cultural assets was an outrage and a tragedy, but it seems that the charge that military...
Customs agents at a US airport believe they have seized at least one item taken from the Baghdad museum, which...
A good summary of the situation in today's Telegraph: It's fast, easy and encouragingly cheap to enter the booming market...
This from today's Sunday Times: Bearing white sacks that had once been used to carry rice, two furtive-looking men arrived...
Just spotted this account by Baghdad archeologist Muhssein Kazum, published in Le Figaro (in French) a couple of days ago....
Jordanian customs officials have seized 42 paintings believed to have been looted from Iraq's national museum, government officials said Saturday....
This article gives some insight into the difficulty of keeping the most determined looters at bay: U.S. Marines with machine...
Iraqi museum officials and U.S. military authorities now think that the much-publicized looting of antiquities from the world-renowned Iraq Museum...
Over the past months, many worried about the destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage by bomb and shell. Informed opinion, however,...
Not clear yet how bad the situation is in Baghdad, but in Mosul it looks like the museum has been...
A Baghdad mob looted Iraq's largest archeological museum amid a breakdown in civil authority following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's...
From the BBC: It was in 1938, while working in Khujut Rabu, just outside Baghdad in modern day Iraq, that...
Chemical analysis of 6000-year-old pottery shards shows ancient Britons also had a taste for cow's milk and goat's cheese. "This...
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