Updated April 16, 2003
At the end of World War II, the Russian occupying forces looted the great museums of Germany. Among the treasures stolen was Heinrich Schliemann's cache of gold excavated from Hisarlik, the ancient city of Troy. For another fifty years those treasures lay hidden in Russian museums before reappearing in the mid-1990s. In a ghastly reliving of the old days, only this time in front of television cameras and live satellite feeds, the wholesale looting of the National Museum of Iraq took place over this past weekend. Unlike Schliemann's collection, it is unknown if the priceless cultural heritage of Iraq will ever see the light of day again. It is hard to know who is at fault; or rather, it is hard to find an innocent person in the escapade. The coalition forces who had no orders concerning the looting; their commanders who gave them no instructions. The blackmarket smugglers of artifacts; the art collectors who place such a high demand on the material goods of the country. The poverty of the people of Iraq resulting from the war, or from the long excesses of Saddam Hussein's administration. It might even partly be the emphasis placed by archaeologists around the world on the value of the artifacts and cultural materials of the soon-to-be-sacked country.
There is no doubt that the rebuilding of Iraq will be a long slow process; and there will certainly be a rebirth of the Iraqi culture. In ten thousand years of human occupation, what is now Iraq has seen devastating attacks, loss of civilian lives, destruction of infrastructure and political economy many many times. Human kind is resilient; we have recovered from such things on a regular basis. Ironically, it is only in our modern times that all of us can watch, in excruciating detail, what the true costs of war are.
