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Cultural Crime Wednesday, August 20, 2008 Central New Yorkers take pride in their history the Underground Railroad, the Erie Canal, the Iroquois Confederacy.
In southern Iraq, an archeological "underground railroad" points the way to societies that flourished as early as 6000 B.C. But in recent years, that pathway was very nearly obliterated.
Ancient Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization," featured a complex writing system, thriving agriculture and sophisticated city-states that predated the Egyptian pharaohs, China's dynasties, the Maya, Aztecs and Olmecs of the Western Hemisphere, and Africa's fabled empires of the Yoruba, Hausa and Ghana. Early Sumerian culture gave way to Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians, who absorbed Persian and Greek influences before Islamic conquerors arrived in the seventh century.
Countless excavation sites were ready and waiting in the 1920s, when British archaeologists shared their finds with the Iraqi state. Under Saddam Hussein, archaeology became a propaganda tool. Soon after seizing control, Saddam declared: "Antiquities are the most precious relics the Iraqis possess, showing the world that our country . . . offered a great contribution to humanity." The Iraqi dictator imposed harsh punishment on looters and trained a generation of antiquity experts. But in his final years, Saddam cracked down on the Shiite south, destroying their fragile agricultural economy, and turned his back on the region's ancient heritage.
The fall of Saddam in 2003 unleashed looters in Baghdad and at ancient sites like Isin, Umma and Larsa. Writer Hugh Eakin recently reported on wide-ranging research and eyewitness accounts, including his own, for The New York Review of Books. Satellite images assembled by a professor at SUNY Stony Brook confirm the systematic destruction of the remains of early human societies.
There are many culprits in this cultural crime: coalition forces that failed to halt the looting; Shiite leaders who condoned the treasure hunts as long as they produced tribute and spared Islamic sites; an antiquities market that asked no questions and paid top dollar for cuneiform tablets, cylinder scrolls, foundation cones, stone sculptures, coins and glass.
There's still a war on, with sectarian groups fighting for supremacy, U.S.-led coalition forces fighting to increase security, and impoverished Iraqis fighting for survival. Competing passions are no respecters even of Islamic heritage witness the disastrous attack on the 1,200-year-old Samarra Mosque in 2005, and a bomb just this week that shook Baghdad's venerated Abu Hanifa mosque.
The worst of the looting may be over. In June, a team of archaeologists visited key sites. Accumulated data and improved security are having an effect. Nevertheless, Eakin calls the damage already done "one of the most concentrated and devastating episodes of archaeological destruction in modern history."
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^ I guess the irony here is while Saddam and others try to prevent cultural crime by preserving archaeolgical artifacts and other remains, they are at the same time perpetrators of cultural crime against living groups today. Go figure.
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