Learning from the Iraq Museum
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AJA OPEN ACCESS: MUSEUM REVIEW www.ajaonline.org Learning from the Iraq Museum Donny George Youkhanna* INTRODUCTION ning of its history. This entirely documented The Iraq Museum was founded in 1923 collection of finds from the cradle of civilization when Gertrude Bell, the British woman who encapsulates the most essential cornerstones of helped establish the nation of Iraq, stopped our modern life, including agriculture, writ- the archaeologist Leonard Woolley from tak- ing, laws, mathematics, astronomy, the arts, ing out of the country all of his extraordinary and warfare. third-millennium B.C.E. finds from the ancient Sumerian city of Ur (esp. the jewelry of the THE MUSEUM UNDER ATTACK royal cemetery)1 for division between the Brit- The protection of a museum’s holdings in ish Museum in London and the University of times of warfare or civil unrest is a multifaceted Pennsylvania’s Museum in Philadelphia. She and complicated issue. Because museums pres- believed that the Iraqi people should have a ent themselves as—and are routinely portrayed share of this archaeological discovery made in by the media as—storehouses and display ven- their homeland and, thereby, started a museum ues of treasure, they become targets of looting in central Baghdad, pressing into service two by organized gangs and by people from the rooms in an Ottoman barracks as its very first street. Because invading armies see all armed galleries. Material from ongoing excavations personnel as potential enemies, guards at mu- continued coming into this young museum, seums and other cultural institutions tend to and in 1936, it moved to another building be attacked or to slip away as fighting nears. If likewise on the eastern side of the Tigris River. the invading army does not take responsibility The museum continued enlarging its collec- for securing cultural institutions that have lost tion. Finally, the Iraqi government decided to their guards, looters quickly take advantage of construct a modern building for this national the vacuum in civil order. This scenario resulted museum. Completed in 1960, the new museum in the looting at the Iraq National Museum was built on the Tigris River’s west bank. Mov- on 10–12 April 2003 and also at dozens of ing the collection from the old building and other Iraqi cultural institutions, including the installing it in the new museum’s galleries took National Library, the National Academy of four years. The present Iraq Museum opened Arts, institutes of music, dance, and art, and in 1964, and in 1982, six large galleries were universities in Baghdad and elsewhere. Like- added to the building, for a total of 22 galleries, wise, organized looting of archaeological sites, plus an ample lobby and reception area at the which had begun during the mid 1990s in the main entrance. south of Iraq, resumed at a greatly increased The Iraq National Museum is one of the best rate while the invasion was taking place, and archaeological museums in the world, contain- it continues unabated.2 October 2010 (114.4) ing the material evidence for the development Since the Iraq National Museum was a of civilized human society from the very begin- prominent potential target of looting, before * I would like to thank McGuire Gibson, from the 1 Woolley and Moorey 1982. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and 2 Emberling and Hanson 2008; Myers 2010, 25 Museum Review Editor Beth Cohen for their help in June. American Journal of Archaeology American 10.3764/ajaonline1144.Youkhanna DOI: of America Institute © 2010 Archaeological Copyright the preparation of this review. the start of the operation in March 2003, several been impossible to undertake such a course of attempts were made in meetings with U.S. action in Baghdad. Pentagon and State Department officials to call attention to its importance and the threat to its THE MUSEUM’S DOCUMENTATION holdings. In particular, it was pointed out that One of the major problems with the Iraq in the uprisings that occurred in the aftermath National Museum, as with many museums, of the 1991 war, nine of the 13 regional muse- was the lack of a complete inventory, includ- ums in the south and north of the country had ing photographs of each item. Yet a very fine been damaged and looted, resulting in the master catalogue in large ledgers, recorded loss of about 5,000 artifacts, fewer than 10% in English and Arabic, has existed since the of which have been recovered. As a result of museum was founded in the early 1920s; this those losses, the Antiquities Service no longer master could be correlated with excavation find put any genuine objects on display in regional catalogues, and thus the present location of an museums (except for the Mosul Museum), item could be discovered from notations on the but instead installed casts and photographs. ledgers and also in museum display case and Some museums at prominent archaeological shelf logs. However, the maintenance of such sites, such as Babylon and Hatra, did still records was seriously compromised because display some real objects, but these sites were of the abovementioned layoffs of personnel well guarded and were thought not to be as during the sanctions regime in the 1990s. A vulnerable as small museums in the centers of massive influx of newly excavated objects provincial towns. derived from salvage digs carried out from the In the months leading to the 2003 war, me- late 1990s until 2003 by the State Board of An- dia attention was drawn to the Iraq Museum tiquities and Heritage (SBAH), the parent body in interviews with American and European of the museum, only added to the difficulty. academics and with Iraqi officials. The author These salvage operations had themselves been of this review, then Iraqi director general for mounted to stop the looting of major sites in research but not yet responsible for the mu- the south. Prior to 1991, for more than 40 years, seum, was quoted in one news report as say- antiquities looting had been almost nonexistent ing that the objects from Hatra and the Mosul in Iraq, but the lack of government control of Museum were being transferred to the Iraq the southern countryside under the sanctions National Museum, where it was thought that allowed industrial-scale pillaging of many they would be safer. He was aware that, as in sites. The salvage operations, carried out by the first Gulf War, the museum itself would the already overworked personnel of the SBAH be put on a no-target list. William K. Polk, a and the Iraq Museum, including the director Middle East expert, visited Baghdad before general of museums, did impede the looting the invasion and tried to convince the Iraqi somewhat. They also resulted in the exposure authorities to send the museum’s collections of important buildings and the recovery of out of the country for safekeeping. Given that thousands of artifacts, but these finds presented dismantling the museum’s public galleries a major problem to the museum’s staff, which and depositing most of the displayed items in had to try to process them. Some of the more a secret storeroom alone required more than significant objects were recorded fully, but two weeks of work, it is highly unlikely that others were set aside to be dealt with later. the museum’s staff could have emptied the Steel trunks holding these salvaged finds were galleries and the storerooms in time to send pilfered during the looting of the aboveground the collections abroad. How anyone could storerooms in April 2003. have kept these hundreds of thousands of The necessity of dismantling the public items intact and accounted for during such a galleries several times since 1980 exacerbated Online Museum Review move was not addressed. It is unlikely that any the problems. At the beginning of the Iran- museum anywhere is capable of dismantling Iraq War, when rockets often came down on its collections and shipping them off with any Baghdad (including a particularly deadly one hope of maintaining the integrity of the arti- that fell within 200 m of the museum in 1984), facts and their corresponding identifications. the public galleries were dismantled, except for Given the reduced staff size and the loss of very large, permanently fixed objects, such as trained museum professionals as a result of Assyrian reliefs, Islamic building facades, and 13 years of sanctions on Iraq because of the massive wooden doors. The movable objects American Journal of ArchaeologyAmerican Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, it would have were put into storage, both above- and below- 2 ground, resulting in some subsequent damage crete blocks, and the steel doors of storerooms from humidity. At the end of the Iran-Iraq War and doors meant to segregate specific areas in 1988, the galleries were reinstalled; but now were closed and locked. This reviewer wanted three of them were devoted to the astonishing to seal all the outer doors to the museum and finds from the Neo-Assyrian Queens’ Tombs the administrative offices of the SBAH but was of the eighth century B.C.E., which the Iraqis not allowed to do so, except for a partial barrier had found at Nimrud during 1988–1989.3 In placed behind the museum’s front entrance. late 1990, with the Gulf War about to begin, the displays were once again dismantled and THE MUSEUM’S GUARDS put into storage, with many of the iconic and The ultimate protection for any museum is valuable objects, such as the Ur Cemetery gold its guards; therefore, a special police unit was and most of the finds from the Neo-Assyrian placed in a small building in the back of the Queens’ Tombs, transferred to a deep vault of museum complex, but as the war came close the Central Bank.