The lost art of Iraq

The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia, edited by Milbry Polk and Angela M.H. Schuster, New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2005; 256 pages, $35. Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures by Matthew Bogdanos with William Patrick, New York, Bloomsbury, 2005; 302 pages, $25.95.

In mid-April 2003, political satirist Dennis Miller appeared on the "Tonight Show" telling millions of Americans not to be concerned about the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad because it was filled with worthless trash. People around the world, meanwhile, reacted with shock and despair to the loss of thousands of ancient artworks and artifacts, representing a significant contribution to world heritage.

Fueling the already heated controversy surrounding the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the sack of the museum, which took place over a three-day period, April 10-12, 2003, polarized the press and sparked a host of accusations against the Pentagon and Coalition forces. Some pundits claimed that military leaders had invited the loss and destruction by practicing intentional neglect, since witnesses said U.S. soldiers stood by while looters made off with the booty. Others suggested that an international conspiracy of antiquities dealers carefully planned the museum raid to take place in the midst of the chaos in the invasion's aftermath. There was little doubt, however, that the thefts were carried out by Iraqi nationals--some acting independently, some perhaps at the behest of still unidentified organizers. Reports of the numbers of objects stolen or destroyed varied widely. Initial figures of over 100,000 pieces lost proved to be exaggerated, although the later, more accurate tally of some 15,000 items is still staggering.

Two recent books focusing on the museum, its holdings and the losses sustained in the looting go a long way to clarify if not fully explicate this tragic incident. The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia is an illuminating, colorplate-packed overview of the museum and its highlights, many of which are now missing. It encompasses essays by scholars of Mesopotamian art and Iraqi history as well as an account of the history of the museum itself, which was founded in 1923 by British-born Arabist and archeologist Gertrude Bell. Each essay ends with impassioned comments about the losses of April 2003. Thieves of Baghdad is a lively, though rather serf-aggrandizing, autobiographical report by Matthew Bogdanos, the U.S. Marine colonel who was placed in charge of the ransacked museum and who led an investigation that lasted from April until November 2003. Despite its shortcomings, the book is a remarkable study of the thefts and of the mysterious inner workings of the Iraq Museum. A portion of the proceeds of both books will be donated to the museum and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities.

The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad examines the incalculable importance of the Fertile Crescent in the development of civilization, from the world's first settled communities more than 10,000 years ago to the invention of writing, the flowering of the arts and sciences in such powerful kingdoms as Ur and Babylon, through the advent of Islamic art. Each period is--or was--represented in the museum by extraordinary finds from some of the more than 10,000 archeological sites in Iraq.

In his introduction to the book, current Iraq Museum director Donny George, a Christian Iraqi, discusses the impact of the first Gulf War in 1991 on Iraqi museums. The turmoil that ensued for several years following that conflict, as Saddam Hussein struggled to reestablish control, resulted in the looting of numerous regional museums and the loss of more than 4,000 objects, few of which have been recovered. According to George, probes into the thefts at museums in Babylon and Hatra "led to suspects very close to the head of the former regime, but the investigations were always cut off and ended without any results, so that no one at the top of the regime was ever exposed."

Since the Iraq Museum came through that troubled period relatively unscathed, numerous major works from regional institutions were moved to the Baghdad museum's more secure storage facilities in anticipation of the 2003 invasion. The scheme, however, only added to the number of works the museum lost in April 2003. A key chapter in the book explores the catastrophic results of the looting of many of Iraq's archeological sites that began that spring. The chapter's co-authors, Marie-Helene Carleton and Micah Garen (who was kidnapped in Nasiriya while doing research for the essay and released only with the intervention of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr), emphasize the persistence of looting as a symptom of the nation's ongoing instability.

These issues are central to Bogdanos's book, but several tangent stories about his varied career and interests are also featured. Bogdanos, a colonel in the Marine reserves, holds degrees in law and Classical studies. Before he was called to Baghdad, he was an assistant district attorney in New York, best known for his unsuccessful prosecution of Sean (Puff Daddy) Combs for a shoot-out incident involving Jennifer Lopez. Nicknamed "Pit Bull," Bogdanos trained as a middleweight boxer and developed passions for military combat, ancient art and architecture, ballet and Broadway musicals.