When Bob Englund, UCLA professor of Assyriology, thinks about
the looting of Iraq’s cultural sanctuaries, it saddens his
heart.
When American soldiers entered Baghdad this past week, their
quest to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s regime
immediately unbridled locals in an undesirable way ““ it gave
them the freedom to loot and destroy thousands of years of Middle
Eastern history, some of which Englund had personally worked
with.
“As bad as Saddam is, and was, this never would have
happened in times of repression under Saddam Hussein,”
Englund said.
On Tuesday Iraq’s National Library was also pillaged as
looters and arsonists set hundreds of years of Iraqi intellectual
thought into a fiery blaze.
The National Library was home to all of Iraq’s published
books, including copies of every doctoral thesis written in Iraq,
and a number of historical books and Arabic manuscripts.
Englund said the actions were not accidental or cathartic, but
focused.
“It seems they were not just random looters, but people
who knew what they were doing,” Englund said.
This past week the National Museum in Baghdad, as well as
museums in other Iraqi cities, were destroyed. Among the National
Museum’s artifacts were the tablets carrying
Hammurabi’s Code ““ one of the oldest codes of law
““ as well as many other ancient manuscripts and statues.
In addition to the notable artifacts that news media have
mentioned, Englund also said the museums were homes to tens of
thousands of unpublished cuneiform texts, and in their theft comes
the loss of thousands of witnesses to early human life.
If early reports are true, all the museums artifacts were taken,
according to Englund, and the tradition and history lost could be
devastating.
“If looters took everything, they have taken maybe the
third largest collection of cuneiform in the world,” Englund
said.
Cuneiform writing literally means wedge form writing. It is done
on clay tablets, which is one reason why cuneiform is one of the
oldest forms of document writing currently available.
“No writing system of early periods can compete with
cuneiform in the depth and breadth of documentation of early
civilization,” Englund said.
Cuneiform was the writing system used in ancient Mesopotamia, an
area near modern Iraq. Because of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
that surround Iraq, it is widely considered the “cradle of
civilization,” Englund said.
The looting has received condemnation worldwide. Some of the
condemnation has come against the Iraqi looters, but many are
blaming American troops for not stopping the looters, which
sometimes include entire Iraqi families.
“One tank in that courtyard would have stopped
everything,” Englund said.
Englund said the blame does not fall on the young soldiers who
were unaware of the cultural history being looted, but said the
duty of returning 7,000 years of Mesopotamian culture to Iraq falls
on the head of the United States.
“Certainly, there is a moral obligation to the United
States to restore those artifacts that were taken in the period of
lawlessness that followed the American invasion and occupation of
Baghdad,” he said.
At UCLA, Englund teaches in the Ancient Near East department,
and works on a project that he said could be helpful in restoring
stolen artifacts to Iraq ““ the Cuneiform Digital Library
Initiative.
The project, funded by the National Science Foundation,
digitally documents ancient Near Eastern artifacts, which have been
spread across the globe, onto a single online server.
Englund said UNESCO, the organization that has rallied to
restore the stolen artifacts, could use the digital images to
locate and identify looted culture.
But Englund also said there is a question of whether or not
digital images will be accepted as a supplement by Iraqi
citizens.
Before Englund began compiling digital images of Near Eastern
artifacts, he did extensive work excavating proto-cuneiform tablets
in Iraq shortly before the first Gulf War broke out.
“We had experience with this kind of repression, with this
kind of dictatorship,” he said.
The looting has caused anguish for historians and
archaeologists, as well as Iraq’s culturally aware, but
Englund offered some optimism on the situation.
“The only hope is that the first reports are often the
worst reports,” he said.