Stolen Iraq treasures remain out of reach
Hunt presses on for museum pieces
WASHINGTON -- More than 2 1/2 years after looters sacked Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad, Iraqi authorities and police forces throughout the world are still searching for thousands of items, including several of the most famous artifacts in history.
US military sources say forces in Iraq have no systematic way of investigating the missing objects, and in the ongoing insurgency neither US or Iraqi forces can justify using scarce manpower to guard sites in the countryside, where widespread looting has continued since the March 2003 US invasion.
Law enforcement organizations worldwide are chasing the lost items, but their representatives said there is no systematic coordination, and they are relying on a shifting set of ad hoc partnerships to bring the thieves to account.
Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, charged with recovering the museum treasures in the six months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, eventually counted about 14,000 lost items, of which about 5,500 have been recovered.
Only a few high-quality looted pieces have reappeared since the end of 2003. Yet paradoxically, although lower-end artifacts occasionally are placed for auction on the Internet, there has been no serious upsurge in public sales of Iraqi antiquities, either in the United States or Europe.
Specialists attribute the absence of a market to a combination of factors, none of them verifiable. Tough laws in Britain and the United States may have scared off known dealers, some say, or smugglers may simply have stashed their prizes in warehouses until they think it is safe.
Others suggest that it takes a few years for stolen goods to migrate from the Middle East to shops in London, Tokyo, or New York. Still others suspect the loot has gone to collectors in countries along the Persian Gulf.
But most sources agree that the most famous pieces are too hot ever to be handled again in public. Without sophisticated police work, help from the art world and patience, the only people who will ever see them are the millionaires who buy them on the black market and lock them away.
''I teach about it all the time," said Columbia University art historian Zainab Bahrani, recalling the missing Sumerian black statue of Eannatum, prince of Lagash, one of the earliest royal sculptures to bear an inscription. ''I explain why it is important, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking, 'It's gone . . . it's gone.' "
No one has disputed Bogdanos's figures on museum losses, but he cautioned that the numbers of both missing and recovered pieces will rise as the staff continues to inventory storerooms.
Outside the capital, looting of known archeological sites has proceeded unimpeded, and there is no end in sight as long as overburdened US and Iraqi security forces remain preoccupied with battling insurgents.
Bogdanos has compiled the accepted ''top 40" list of the most famous pieces stolen from the National Museum. Fifteen have been recovered, including the Sumerian vase of Warka, the mask of Warka, and an Assyrian wheeled firebox made of bronze. The Akkadian Bassetki statue of a boy, cast in copper, was found in November 2003 at the bottom of a Baghdad cesspool.
The 25 missing items include Bahrani's Sumerian statue, the gold-and-ivory carved plaque of a lioness attacking a Nubian, and the almost life-size head of the Goddess of Victory, from Hatra, made of copper.
''You're never going to see these in a gallery," Bahrani said. ''No art dealer would ever touch them, because they're just too well known. We're talking about a black market. These pieces will never see the light of day." 