OVER 170,000 ARTIFACTS ARE STOLEN FROM IRAQ NATIONAL MUSEUM

Since the outbrake of anarchy in Baghdad, thousands of archeological-historical treasues have been looted from museums throughout Iraq. Most notable of these thefts is the one that took place in the Iraq National Museum, where over 170,000 artifacts, worth billions of dollars in all, have been stolen since American soldiers entered the region. Museum curators, as well as leaders in the scholar community, have warned the Pentagon that the U.S military would be responsible for protecting Iraq's invaluable archeological sites and national museums after Saddam's government is toppled. So far, U.S troops have done little or nothing to stop this crisis. Here is the story in excerpts:

From enlish.aljazera.net:

When mobs in Baghdad entered the Iraqi national museum and destroyed the artifacts, little did they know that they were wiping out large traces of history.  Not just of Iraq, but that of the entire world.
 
So, when the museum deputy director Nabhal Amin openly wailed and cried in anguish it was perfectly understandable.  She picked up the broken pieces of the artifacts, her helplessness on display for the entire world to see. "They have looted or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years...They were worth billions of dollars," she said, sobbing.
 ...

Twenty eight galleries of the museum and vaults  with thick steel doors were ransacked through Thursday and Friday with almost no intervention by the US troops.  A 4000-year-old copper visage of an Akkadian king, golden bowls, colossal statues and ancient manuscripts were all looted and destroyed.  
 
The museum housed items from ancient Babylon and Nineveh, Sumerian statues, Assyrian reliefs and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known writing. There were also gold and silver helmets and cups from the Ur cemetery.
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More here.
 
From www.post-gazette.com: This is actually a report on how Iraq's museums and archeological sites have been plundered "nonstop" since Gulf War I.

...In 612 B.C., the Medes and Babylonians marched on Nineveh, site of modern-day Mosul. The city, including Sennacherib's glorious palace, was laid to waste.

Now, 2 1/2 millenniums later, the palace again is under attack -- not by foreign armies, but by looters desperate for cash.

"They are just destroying the heritage of mankind," says an exasperated Donny George, one of Iraq's foremost archaeologists. "They are crushing it, turning it into this stupid matter called dollars. For me, this has been the worst 10 years of my life."

When the United Nations hit Iraq with sweeping economic sanctions for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, no one imagined the ensuing destruction that would befall thousands of the country's archaeological treasures.

Almost overnight world-famous sites such as Babylon, Hatra, Umma, Ur and Nineveh became targets of looters. "Not only are things being destroyed," says Prof. John Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art, "but the accumulation of knowledge at a breathtaking speed has been replaced by destruction at the same sort of pace."
...

First, the irony: Saddam Hussein, the ruthless megalomaniac who's ruled this country since 1979, is actually a friend of archaeology.

Virtually no illegal trade in Iraqi antiquities existed when Saddam first came to power. He not only meant to keep it that way, he also set about ensuring the country's rich heritage would be accessible to all Iraqis. Rather than storing all of the nation's prized possessions in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, he ordered the establishment of more than a dozen regional museums that would house important local pieces and draw steady streams of school groups through their doors.

Archaeology flourished.

Then came the invasion of Kuwait, economic sanctions and the Gulf War. Archaeological work skid to a halt. The regional museums were closed. The destruction began.

Coalition forces caused some damage. At Ur of the Chaldees in the south, bombs from allied aircraft left large craters in the site reputed to be the birthplace of Abraham. A Babylonian temple was pelted with over 400 rounds of machine-gun fire. Trenching and bulldozing took place at Tell el-Lahm in the north.

Following the war, uprisings against Saddam sprouted -- primarily in the north and south of Iraq -- and during the chaos, most of the regional museums were looted, some burnt to the ground.

Looting continues nonstop....

More here.