Pony Party, Lost Treasures

A new show opens today at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago.  It’s called “Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past”.  Not coincidentally, today is the 5th anniversary of the looting of Baghdad’s Iraq National Museum.

From the Museum’s website:

The looting of the Iraq Museum was widely publicized in the international press. However, it is less well known that ongoing looting of archaeological sites poses an even greater threat to the cultural heritage of Iraq.

There are additional events associated with the show this week, including a lecture and candlelight vigil (to mark the anniversary of the Iraq Museum’s looting) today and a symposium on the 12th, “Looting the Cradle of Civilization: The Loss of History in Iraq,” which features speakers from both museums as well as some from other colleges.  The exhibit will remain at the Oriental Institute through the end of 2008.

Finally, visitors will leave with a packet of information about what they can do to help, including mailing letters to senators urging them to ratify an international treaty that would “clarify the U.S. military’s obligations regarding cultural heritage preservation.”…..from this Yahoo! news article

I don’t even begin to compare the loss of articles, regardless of their uniqueness or value, with the loss of life our invader-in-chief has perpetrated.  However, museum and especially antiquity items help define and color a nation’s culture, and thereby, it’s citizens’ identities.  I can’t even begin to image the outrage should a brown person deface…much less pilfer…the statue of liberty or the liberty bell…  Somehow, we’ve stolen their past as well as their present and future…which, again, doesn’t compare, but somehow magnifies the atrocity.

Additionally, America is and has always been a ‘manufactured’ culture.  The indigenous cultures who would have provided us with comparable “American” historical/archaeological items were eradicated, their treasures long lost.  But Iraq’s cultural historical items ARE a part of our history.  The ‘fertile crescent’…Mesopotamia…the ‘cradle of civilization’..defines ALL of us, to one extent or another.  

I’m unable to travel to Chicago this year, but i’ve contacted the museum for a copy of the take-away info….

~73v

11 comments

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    • RiaD on April 10, 2008 at 17:04

    you’re on a roll girl!!!

    again, I must reccomend this one, just too good not to.

    ♥~

  1. The LA Times had a story yesterday about Iraq’s treasures being looted: Missing Iraq antiquities haunt experts.

    Five years ago this week, looters ransacked the Iraqi National Museum, stealing centuries-old artifacts that celebrated Iraq’s role as the cradle of civilization. Some headlines at the time exaggerated the size of the damage, erroneously reporting 170,000 items missing. Investigators later discovered that some important artifacts, including gold jewelry from Nimrud, had been hidden at Iraq’s Central Bank since the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

    Today, investigators say that about 15,000 pieces were either stolen in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 or went unaccounted for in the months and years before the conflict began. About half have been recovered. But the impact of the thefts — amulets, Assyrian ivories, sculpture heads, ritual vessels and cylinder seals — is still being felt in art circles and black markets throughout the world.

    “The numbers can’t tell the whole story,” said U.S. Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a New York assistant district attorney who has made the hunt for antiquities his specialty. “These things remind us of our common beginnings.”

    In Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine she mentioned the looting of the Iraqi National Museum was part of the “shock and awe” process to disconnect the Iraqis with their past and keep them in a state of shock and thus easily manipulated.

    Personally, I wonder if many of these lost Iraqi artifacts will be discovered years from now in the Bush family collections and vaults.

    A similar looting has happened in Afghanistan. The National Gallery of Art, this fall, is hosting a show Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, which, to me, seems too much like the trophies of conquest being parading before the citizens of Rome.  

    • edgery on April 11, 2008 at 04:09

    if ya’ll are interested in a photo-rich travel journal by someone many of you may know from C&J over at that other site, Predictor will be hosting his Travel series tomorrow morning at EENR blog starting around 11 am-ish edt (8 am-ish pdt).  We’d love to cross-post but the best pix are always in the comments.

    We’ll also have our daily front page story on Tibet around 9 am-ish by grannyhelen, she usually brings it over here as well.  Also, I’ll have a diary on the side bar about Darfur and the big event this Sunday in DC that I’ll definitely share here as well.

    Thanks for being here, the site and all the dharma buddies.  You’re an inspiration for me in my efforts at our nascent blog, and in general.

    Namaste /\

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