, were field surveyors and administrators of a palace real-estate archive. It seems the bureaucratic ethic connects thousands of miles and years separating these ancient worldviews from our own.
Blame for the looting in Iraq is muddied between U.S. failure to protect artifacts, the looters themselves and the private art collectors and dealers who make the most profit. Emberling notes that a Mesopotamian lion statue sold last December nabbed $57 million at a Sotheby’s art auction in New York. “Catastrophe!” highlights U.S. negligence before and after the start of the
“I think that our inattention to the ongoing problem has the potential to be one of the long-lasting legacies of the U.S. invasion of Iraq,” says Emberling.
An exhibition poster describes how former director of the Iraq National Museum, Donny George, warned the U.S. State Department weeks in advance of the April invasion that antiquities would be vulnerable. Museum associates dutifully moved scores of ancient manuscripts and archives in underground bunkers before the world watched twenty-four-hour TV news coverage of thieves taking advantage of a freshly invaded Baghdad.
After requests from Iraq National Museum staff, U.S. troops secured the building April 16, 2003. But the Iraq National Museum’s investigation counted more than 15,000 missing artifacts, and only several thousand of which have been recovered.
Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said of the looting, “Democracy is messy. Stuff happens.” Anarchy is messy too. As U.S. neo-conservatives ironically rambled about the democratic rebuilding of Iraqi society, its very foundations were crumbling or being stolen. An exhibition photograph shows coalition forces casually bulldozing ancient ruins Samara in order to build a roadblock.
Many other archaeological sites are still in danger of being looted and destroyed by an ongoing insurgency, Emberling says. Much of the money made by looters is allegedly used to buy weapons. Building blocks of ancestral society become commodities for destruction.
“Catastrophe!” does display superficial attempts by U.S. forces to hinder the looting and trade of antiquities. On display are playing cards produced by the Department of Defense that give U.S. soldiers visuals of Iraqi artifacts that have been stolen. A U.S. military poster lists the “Top 30” stolen artifacts from the Iraq National Museum. An executive order prohibiting the import and destruction of Iraqi antiquities was amended into U.S. customs law on April 30, 2008.
But the Oriental Institute seeks to build on the often inadequate protection of antiquities, advocating U.S. ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention. To complement U.S. customs law’s ban on imports, the convention is an internationally binding ban on the export of antiquities from Iraq. It also requires parties such as the U.S. to work with Iraqi authorities to protect archaeological sites. Visitors to the exhibit can sign letters to Senators Barack Obama and Dick Durbin urging the U.S. Senate to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention.
“I understand why this might not be considered a high priority. We are concerned about the lives being lost every day,” Emberling says. “But as an archaeologist, I think it’s necessary to take a long view of history and realize how this will be a loss for generations to come. Protecting antiquities requires a relatively small effort.”
“Catastrophe! The Destruction and Looting of Iraq’s Past,” shows at Oriental Institute Museum at The University of Chicago, 1155 East 58th, (773)702-9514, through December 31.