[MSN] Archaeologists worry that Iraq will erase its pre-Islamic history.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Archaeologists worry that Iraq will erase its pre-Islamic history
BY MICAH GAREN AND MARIE-HELENE CARLETON NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Posted on Thursday, September 28, 2006

Email this story | Printer-friendly version


BEIRUT, Lebanon - There is mounting concern among scholars that the
appointment of religiously conservative Shiite Muslims throughout Iraq's
traditionally secular archaeological institutions could threaten the
preservation of the country's pre-Islamic history. 

Dr. Donny George's recent departure as chairman of the State Board of
Antiquities and Heritage, and his flight to Syria with his family, is among
the latest results of a transformation that began in December when a
Shiite-dominated government was elected in Baghdad. The radical Shiite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who commands his own militia, emerged with enough
seats in Parliament to take control of four ministries and to create a
Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. 

The State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, traditionally under the
Ministry of Culture, now reports to this new ministry as well. 

"The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities wants to control Iraq's
archaeological heritage by demolishing this institution, one of the oldest
institutions in Iraq," George said from Damascus. "This will be a disaster
for this field, and for the cultural heritage of the country." 

Although the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has begun operating, the
law creating it has not yet been approved by Parliament, said Abudul Zahra
al-Talaqani, a spokesman for the new ministry. 

The proposed law would divide the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage
into four administrative departments: museums, excavations, manuscripts and
heritage. The present departments of restoration and research would be
eliminated, suggesting that preservation and scholarship would no longer be
the institution's focus. 

The long history of secular scholarship in Iraq has covered all periods,
including excavations at the Islamic site of Samarra and the restoration of
Ukhaidir, an Islamic fortress near Karbala. Earlier sites include ruins from
the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Parthian and Sassanian civilizations. 

The State Board of Antiquities and Heritage was created in 1923, when
Gertrude Bell, the British explorer and administrator, founded the Iraqi
National Museum. "It was the best in the whole Middle East," said Dr.
McGuire Gibson, a professor of Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of
Chicago. "At one point there were 13 Iraqi Ph. D. s working there." 

Liwa Sumaysim, the new minister of tourism and antiquities, is a dentist
whose wife, a member of Parliament, is related to al-Sadr. The new ministry
has already replaced employees of the State Board of Antiquities and
Heritage at the national and local level. 

Burhan Shakur, an archaeologist who was director of excavations at the Iraqi
Museum, was fired in the spring, then given the option to retire; he has
left for Germany. Abdul-Amir Hamdani, the inspector for antiquities in the
Dhi Qar province, an area rich in pre-Islamic sites, was jailed in April on
charges of corruption. After three months he was released, and the charges
were dropped. But his job was then filled by a man with ties to Al Fadilah,
an Islamist party aligned with the Sadr movement. 

With the looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq still thriving,
control of the antiquities department is a significant prize. Most of the
archaeological sites in the southern Dhi Qar province are pre-Islamic,
dating roughly from 3200 B. C. to A. D. 500. A link between Islamic
militants and looting at pre-Islamic archaeological sites has long been
suspected, but is difficult to prove. The Nasiriyah Museum was burned and
looted in 2004 by militants affiliated with al-Sadr. The museum's guards
reported that the militants promised to do to the antiquities there exactly
"what the Taliban did." 

The center for Iraq's illicit antiquities trade, Fajr, in the heart of the
Sumerian plain, is also a stronghold for militants loyal to al-Sadr. And
anti-Western graffiti has appeared at looted archaeological sites. 

"It is hard to say yes or no if these gangs have a relation with the Sadr
movement," cautioned Mufeed al-Jazairi, Iraq's first minister of culture
after the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded, noting that looters
were active in Saddam Hussein's time as well. "But it is not surprising to
imagine that one of these gangs will announce that they are allies with
Sadr, hoping to gain a political shield in case they are being followed by
authorities." 

"If the destruction of sites continues, it is not just the death of
archaeology," Gibson of the University of Chicago said. "Antiquities are key
to Iraq's economy; at some point the oil will run out. Iraqi tourism will be
built on archaeology." 

Yet Gibson warned that putting an archaeological department under a tourism
office tends to have negative consequences because sites may become
mothballed, and research possibilities lost. 

The Sadrist leadership in the new ministry has made its views known in other
ways. Recently two pre-Islamic statues it returned to the Iraqi Museum were
accompanied by a note describing them as "idols." Dr. Elizabeth Stone, an
archaeologist and professor of anthropology who has excavated in southern
Iraq, said that officials of the Ministry of 

Tourism and Antiquities had also 

visited the museum before the 

departure of George, who is 

Christian, and asked, "Do you want to 

be governed by a crusader ?" 

http://www.nwanews.com/