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Iraqi Treasures May Not Be Lost
By Tina Susman Newsday STAFF CORRESPONDENT http://www.newsday.com/ May 27, 2003
Baghdad, Iraq - Ancient treasures said to have been looted from Baghdad's National Museum last month, including some considered as precious as the finds from King Tut's tomb, may actually be safe in a vault in the depths of the ransacked Central Bank. The pieces include ivory, gold and silver pieces dating to the birth of civilization and recovered from the ruins of Nimrud, a thriving capital during the Assyrian empire thousands of years ago. Steve Mocsary, a U.S. Customs special agent overseeing the investigation to recover the missing art, said yesterday that museum inventories indicate such items have been in the vault more than a decade, despite claims they were stolen last month in the chaos that followed Baghdad's fall to U.S. forces. "We're pretty confident they're there, because over the course of this investigation, other artifacts we have found have been where we were told they would be," Mocsary said. "What we're finding is the majority of the more precious pieces were not looted." As he spoke, efforts to reach the vault in the bank's flooded cellar continued. A water pump powered by a generator has been at work for about two weeks. Soldiers guarding the bank said yesterday that about three feet of water remained to be pumped out. Mocsary said artifacts already recovered by his team include ancient manuscripts and books, once thought stolen but really housed safely in a bomb shelter northwest of Baghdad. The team was pointed there by the museum inventory, which was recovered in bits from the museum and re-created by investigators. The process took two weeks, because each museum department kept its own inventory, and all were hand-written in Arabic. There's no saying when the bank vault will be opened or whether water has leaked in. Another vault, also submerged in water, has been opened and held $250 million in undamaged U.S. bills, Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, said yesterday. If the remaining vault does hold the Nimrud treasures, it will be at least a partial vindication for the U.S. military, which was accused of failing to heed art experts' warnings and not having enough troops on hand to protect the museum. While looting was bad, Mocsary said it was not nearly as bad as first thought. According to the inventory, top treasures were removed for safekeeping as far back as the late 1980s, when Iraq was at war with Iran. Most were never returned to the public eye, apparently because the political instability in Iraq and the first war with the United States made museum officials edgy. Exactly which Nimrud pieces might be in the safe is unclear, but any would be crucial to the preservation of remnants of the Mesopotamian culture. "It's in the birth pangs of civilization that some of these pieces originated," said David Stronach, a professor of Near Eastern archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. "Some of these pieces stand at the very beginning of developed, complex art dating back to before 3000 B.C., when the art of carving fine vessels, statues and the like was just beginning." One mystery surrounding the search for the antiquities is why museum officials have not said earlier that the most prized items were hidden, not stolen. The museum's director, Donny George, ducked the question at a news conference May 15, when a preliminary report on the investigation was presented. That report, by the U.S. team at the museum, called original looting claims "grossly exaggerated." George said it was more important to focus on finding what was missing than to question anyone's past actions. Another mystery is how the bank was so badly damaged. Many believe looters started a fire that gutted the building. As for the flooding, various theories have been floated by soldiers, U.S. officials and investigators, including that Saddam Hussein's foes flooded it to prevent him or his sons from reaching the vault and fleeing with its contents.
Direct Link: --http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-womuse273302946may27,0,4184065.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
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