National Geographic : 2003 Jul
EPEOPLE, PLACES, CULTURAL PRESERVATION An Archaeologist's Lament Mourning the sack of the IraqMuseum, an expert assesses the toll MUSHINHASAN,DEPUTYDIRECTOROFTHEIRAQMUSEUM,THEDAYAFTERLOOTINGSUBSIDED. When bombs started falling on Iraq in March, I had the same first thought that every archaeologist who's ever done fieldwork there must have had: What will happen to the Iraqis who worked with us-people who welcomed us into their homes? Fortunately that question has been answered: My friends and colleagues survived the war. But I soon saw my second greatest fear become reality: Much of the unique record of the Mesopo tamian civilization that blossomed between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers 6,000 years ago was stolen or irreparably damaged. Tens of thousands of artifacts at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad were lost over the course of three chaotic days in early April. Not all of these treasures were claimed by frenzied mobs of looters. Some were probably stolen in an organized plot by art thieves, a scheme that might have been thwarted had coalition forces heeded pleas from the world's archaeologists to protect the museum. MAnVIU IAMA,Ut I IMACUtJ Among the museum's collections were not only the statues of gods and goddesses, the possessions of kings and queens, law codes and religious texts, but also the mundane items of daily life. There were the 60,000-year-old flint tools and fragmen tary skeletons of early humans from Shanidar Cave in the mountains of northern Iraq. There were sickle blades left by some of the world's first farmers 10,000 years ago. And there were tens of thou sands of pottery fragments, which not only tell us about everyday activities in the past eight millen nia, but also (because their styles change rapidly and these changes have been carefully studied) enable archaeologists to know the age of layers in which they're found. Perhaps the most valuable artifacts were thou sands of clay tablets covered with cuneiform signs, written between 3200 B.C . and A.D . 75. It's unclear how many of these tablets were lost, but each one is a treasure for scholars. All early civilizations kept NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC * JULY 2003 THE RAND :_:_: ?