Casualty of War ... Iraq's Historic TreasuresRoundup: Talking About History
From the South China Morning Post (1-23-05):
The occupation of Iraq has compounded the looting of historically priceless
sites and artefacts, literally trampling the roots of western history. Peter
The longer the war in Iraq grinds on, the more worried historians are becoming. Western civilisation's roots are disappearing at an ever-increasing pace because of the conflict and they are powerless to do anything about it.
Beneath Iraq's sands lie more than 6,000 years of history - the ruins of what archaeologists have determined to be the oldest-known cities and towns. Few have been discovered and study of those that have been found is sporadic because of war and the stifling rule of dictator Saddam Hussein.
But the end of Hussein's rule, with United States-led military intervention in March 2003, only exacerbated the situation: with the ensuing chaos came destruction of the sites.
A British Museum report last week revealed the seriousness of the situation at one of the country's best-known historical sites, Babylon. A military camp set up by American troops and later taken over by Polish soldiers had caused irreparable damage and contamination.
It found that a 2,600-year-old pavement had been crushed by vehicles, bricks smashed, artefact-laden dirt packed into sandbags and gravel spread and compacted over ruins for a car park and helicopter landing pads.
The report's author, the head of the museum's ancient and Near East department, John Curtis, said: "This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain."
He explained that although the presence of the soldiers had prevented looting, which had been rampant since the start of the war, they had shown little regard for the history they were encamped upon. He recommended a full international investigation.
Babylon, 50 km south of Baghdad on the east bank of the Euphrates River, is the best-known ruin in what has become known as the "cradle of civilisation". The capital of Babylonia, it thrived between 1,800BC and 600BC and was the site of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens, and the tower of Babel, mentioned in Christian and Jewish scriptures.
Unknown numbers of other ruins pockmark Iraq, especially in the fertile crescent of ancient Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The rich soil deposited by the rivers during annual floods apparently led to farmers ending nomadic existences and settling down to create communities that evolved into towns and cities.
For American archaeologist Elizabeth Stone, Iraq's sites were crucial to understanding civilisation. In her estimation, their importance was greater than those of sites in China and Egypt.
"All our ideas of how we live in cities came from there," Professor Stone, of New York state's Stony Brook University, said. "They had the first law, they invented writing and even beer - all these things happened in the cities in the south, which are the ones being targeted by the looters and damaged. For these sites to be destroyed like this is tragic."
The first major excavations in Iraq began in the 1930s and continued sporadically until the first Gulf war in 1991. International sanctions against Hussein's regime kept foreign archaeologists out until 2000, but their work was again interrupted by the war in 2003.
Experts said that looting began in the 1930s, but accelerated dramatically after sanctions took effect and Iraqis sank deeper into poverty. Since March 2003, the scramble for riches in the ruins had reached unprecedented levels.
The chairwoman of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Harriet Crawford, contended last week that economics were behind the upsurge.
"Antiquities are almost as good as cash and are being sold in Iraqi markets
and smuggled out of the country and into the international market, where they
are sold to unscrupulous collectors," Dr Crawford said. "Sometimes,
papers are forged and they are sold on the open market."...
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