On April 12, bands of Baghdad looters, ravaging a city that was in shock and awe after being strafed by U.S. bombing, stormed the National Museum of Iraq. In 48 hours of constant pillaging, they removed more thaen 170,000 major artifacts — and innumerable other items — from its shelves, showcases, and storerooms. American troops, under orders, did nothing to stop the looters. As catastrophic as the emptying of this world famous museum was this was, it was not a surprise. According to The Washington Post, as early January, an association of worried museum administrators, curators, scholars in the field, dealers and antiquity collectors asked to meet with Pentagon official to voice their fears the effects of them what seemed then inevitable, war upon Iraqi cultural centers, especially museums. Several noted Iraq specialists had follow up meetings. They felt that their concerns were heard. McGuire Gibson, of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute told the Post "I thought I was given assurances that sites and museums would be protected" But when the looting began -- and continued for two full days -- U.S. troops did nothing. After the looting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated on Meet the Press – in that passive voice made so famous by Richard Nixon when he explain his Viet Name policy by claiming " mistakes were made " -- "we didn't allow it. It happened. There's a transition period, and no one is in control. We don't allow bad things to happen. Bad things happen in life, and people do loot." The Phoenix spoke with Dr. James Armstrong, assistant curator of Harvard University’s Semitic Museum and a specialist in Mesopotamian archeology who worked in the field in Iraq from the 1970s to 1990, about what has been lost.

Q: What was lost in this looting? The media played up the fact that such items as a famous gold harp from the Sumerian era are now gone and stone birds from Nemrik, one of the first villages in the world, are also gone.

A: Well, we don’t actually know everything. The on-site curators would know best, and they have not publicly detailed the losses. But I think that looking at the loss of the most important pieces gives us a very incomplete picture of what has happened. The gold harp, of course, was unique and invaluable, but focusing on the most famous objects allows us to lose sight of the larger picture.

Q: What is the larger picture?

A: The larger picture is that we really have to look at the long term here, not just at what is happening now. Losing any of these artifacts is an immediate loss, but there are other losses that we can’t even imagine which will happen as well. As in any field, archeology is constantly growing by looking at old things with new eyes. We are constantly learning new ways of understanding the past, new ways of looking at the past. Every time we learn something new, we have to use that knowledge to re-examine, re-evaluate artifacts that have been studied for maybe a hundred years. This is true not only of the famous pieces but of all the artifacts that were in the museum.

Q: So the immediate loss will be compounded in the future?

A: Exactly. And not just compounded once, but again and again as we continue to learn about these past cultures. I don’t want to underestimate the very real, visceral immediate loss. But the entire field suffers enormously in the long run when the important testimony of the culture is lost. I am thinking of the hundreds of thousands of tablets — pillow-shaped pieces of clay no bigger then the palm of your hand — that contain cuneiform writing that was made by punching triangular or nail-shaped marks into soft clay. These are all lost — they are very, very fragile — and it is a terrible thing for history. We will never know what they say. We will never know what they have to tell us. Nor will they be there to help us understand other artifacts we may have already examined.

Q: But surely many of these items must have already been studied by scholars. Isn’t that a form of preservation, even if future study is now impossible? Were any of these photographed? Or recorded digitally?

A: That is a good point. But it really doesn’t address the complexity of what we are looking at here. To begin with, digital technology is only 10 years old and the Iraqi antiquities professionals did not have access to this, so the more sophisticated forms of curating are simply not available. But again, let’s look at the larger picture, not the immediate loss. Going back to the cuneiform tablets, it is true that some of those tablets had been published — that is, the writing on them was published — in scholarly journals. But we are talking about the destruction of hundreds and thousands of tablets. Only a small percentage of those had ever reached the stage of translation and publication.

Q: What do you think these losses mean for the people of Iraq?

A: To look at these objects in all of their skill, artistry, beauty, and mastery [took] your breath away. We will never have this experience again. This is particularly awful for Iraqis who are going through such a terrible time. They will not be able to go and draw spiritual strength from looking at their history. That is a terrible loss, a loss that probably is impossible to measure.

POSTSCRIPT

As the Phoenix went to press, news arrived that looters had pillaged Baghdad’s National Library — destroying nearly all its books and files, from ancient texts to books that had survived the Mongol invasion of 1258. Again, US troops who could have prevented the damage did nothing. To stand by and watch a country’s heritage destroyed right before your eyes once is one thing, but to let it happen again defies explanation.

Is the US government so indifferent to Iraqi history and the importance of its preservation that this is, literally, a nonissue? It’s impossible at this point not to compare the Bush administration’s careful planning to protect the country’s oil wells with its complete indifference to the country’s cultural and historic artifacts. If I were deeply cynical — and I am when it comes to the US military — I would wonder whether this is part of a master plan to westernize Iraq. A plan that imposes Western culture and democracy on the country by breaking all Iraq’s ties with its past. That is a sobering and frightening thought — but one that must be seriously considered. The sacking of Iraq’s cultural treasures may have been accomplished by Iraqis, but it is clear that the US government condoned it.