Iraqi National Museum to reopen this month

After the nightmare of post-invasion looting and with thousands of pieces still missing, Baghdad’s National Museum is scheduled to reopen by the end of February. They’ve been renovating the space for months, and restoring the 5,000 recovered antiquities out of the 15,000 estimated to have been destroyed or stolen. Most importantly, they’re actively working to …

Antiquities looting funds terrorism

Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, the investigator of the 2003 looting of the Baghdad Museum, claims that the traffic in looted antiquities is funding insurgents and militias in Iraq. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. The smuggling networks that transport antiquities out of Iraq seem to have generated an underground tariff system across …

British army to help protect Iraqi sites, museums

They’re not going to patrol the sites, but they are going to help facilitate a multi-step protection program. Major Holloway explained: “The British Army’s role in the cultural project will be to facilitate specialists coming out from the UK to south-east Iraq, to liaise with Iraqi civil contacts, and to assist where possible with contracts …

Repatriated looted glazed bricks go on display

A group of 51 painted glazed bricks from the little-known Mannaean civilization that were looted from ancient site of Qalaichi in northwestern Iran will go on display for the first time in Bukan City, five miles from where they were plundered four decades ago. The bricks were manufactured in the 8th or 7th century B.C. …

New clay tablet adds 20 lines to Epic of Gilgamesh

A newly discovered clay tablet in the Sulaymaniah Museum in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has corrected the order of chapters, filled in blanks and added 20 lines to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Since the invasion of Iraq and subsequent orgy of looting, the museum has a matter of policy paid smugglers to keep artifacts …