...While we so ardently scream about WMDs, about the wickedness of the Baath party, about the presence of terrorists, and toss around phrases like "liberty" and "military operation," while we struggle with the rebuilding of Iraq, it would behoove us to give a thought to what was lost as well...
It's not something that's talked about in the media, probably due to the "doesn't bleed doesn't lead" mantra of journalism. And amid all of today's "discussions" on Iraq (which primarily consist of liberal and conservative cult members bashing heads against each other like the rage-zombies from 28 Weeks Later) it's hardly whispered about. But the 2003 looting of the National Museum of Iraq, done in the wake of the U.S. invasion, matters.
Mesopotamia may be the backdrop for the latest wars to grip America, and it appears certain that the war of the early years of 21st century will be looked upon as the most astonishing blunder (not to say deception) of recent history. The region itself is host to a medieval philosophy pumped full of fanaticism and grotesquely swollen with 8th century moral codes. Fractured ideologically and religiously and filled with oil, Iraq will be a hot-zone for violence far into the future.
But this wasn't always the case. Mesopotamia was once the backdrop of the greatest story ever - the coalescing of human civilization from nomadic hunter-gatherers. It was here that literature was born - those curious wedge-marks we call cuneiform. Tax records, legal proceedings, business contracts, and historical notations. The first legal system was here. The first religions structured beyond the animism of nomads grew under the fledgling priests of Marduk and Ea and Ishtar.
None of this is to be taken lightly. Established in 1926, the National Museum of Iraq housed galleries of the earliest civilized artifacts. Precisely what was there isn't widely known, though workers have cited a host of artifacts from this essential area. the land of Hammurabi, of Cyrus, of Darius the Great, of Sargon, even of Gilgamesh.
In April of 2003, U.S. forces engaged Iraqi soldiers who had taken positions in and around the museum. Shortly after this battle, looters descended on the museum and made off with thousands of artifacts, statues, vases, and irreplaceable valuables. The legacy of history doesn't concern itself with whatever wars today are fashionable. Vases formed on the first potter's wheels, painted in earthy dyes, displayed on some noblewoman's shelf, buried with her at her death, only to later be unearthed by archaeologists, displayed in the museum for people to marvel at and learn from, and then ignobly stolen. even shattered, as was the case for many artifacts recovered over the next two years.
Iraq, of course, has been the site of battles and wars prior to the most recent invasion. And then, like now, lootings occurred. In 1991, nearly a dozen of Iraq's regional museums were attacked by looters (though the national museum escaped such violence back then, probably owing to the control Baghdad still maintained over the local populace.
Nonetheless, several thousand artifacts were pilfered, destroyed, stolen. Some were recovered at auctions, or on display tables in London and elsewhere.
The fault behind the plundering of the National Museum of Iraq isn't something easily assigned. A dubiously-justified invasion made the opportunity - a local population with no respect for their history enacted that opportunity. It is a loss for all of us. And it matters.
For a long time the modern world knew nothing about Mesopotamian civilization, indeed having forgotten it ever existed. Archaeologists and historians referenced instead Egyptian pyramids and India's Mohenjo-Daro and China's ancient kingdoms as the chief wellsprings for history. Then in the mid 1800s, treasure-seekers began uncovering a grandiose forgotten chapter of our legacy. We rediscovered the glory of the land between the rivers, the Fertile Crescent, the vista for warlords and lapis lazuli and Ishtar Gates and ziggurats.
While we so ardently scream about WMDs, about the wickedness of the Baath party, about the presence of terrorists, and toss around phrases like "liberty" and "military operation," while we struggle with the rebuilding of Iraq, it would behoove us to give a thought to what was lost as well. Many of the artifacts will never be found again, and we don't have the luxury of a cosmic reset button to try and do things better next time. At least, not with Iraq. Poor planning on America's part, greed on the locals' part, and ignorance on the part of both, except perhaps for those scientists who did have a chance to study and marvel and learn from the clay tablets of Uruk and Babylon and Ninevah. the precious first chapter to our story.
It matters.
by Brian Trent [click here for more articles], who is a professional essayist, screenwriter, and novelist; he is the author of "Remembering Hypatia" and the just-released "Never Grow Old: the Novel of Gilgamesh."