Everything moves so fast in Iraq. It’s no longer a question
of ‘shock and awe’, more one of the disappearing museum
inventory. In the cradle of world civilisation, the great collection
of antiquities has seen looting and pillaging on a scale never hitherto
foreseen. It is American curators who have taken the lead and the
University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute has provided a list of
some 2,880 missing items. Some 170,000 items are listed as missing
or no longer in existence. The eBay site and others on the internet
can offer Iraqi artefacts immediately. This is not the normal process
of looting; objects held high, quickly deposited in battered vehicles,
and driven away. The smart-suited mobile phone groups might just
as well have been at a Christie’s preview. But outside the
National Museum of Iraq earlier this month, the soldiery of the
coalition were mysteriously otherwise occupied. Neat convoys of
white vans drove the objects quietly away, without any hint of urgency.
They might have been officials; certainly they were professionals.
The lines are buzzing in Switzerland, Tokyo, and even the Russian
Federation. But this process actually got under way long before
— after the first Gulf war.
Meanwhile, very large items have left north-eastern Iraq, one weighing
over one tonne, some six feet square, and have appeared on the British
market. Nebuchadnezzar’s palace has been broken into and ancient
royal relics spirited away. Some 5,000 items from the lost arks
of Iraq have by now been speeding through the widening channels
of the international art market. On the positive side, numbers of
items have mysteriously found their way back to the Museum gates.
Could this be the positive side of Islamic fundamentalism? This
time, coalition forces were on hand, perhaps guarding the museum
from such returning inventory? In the neighbouring streets, sporadic
gunfire indicated that rival gangs of looters were still engaged
in market discussions. But the real professionals had long since
vanished.
