EARLIER COLUMNS Of elegant walks & sculpted silks October 19, 2003 Pattern-drawers of Benares October 5, 2003 Kaghaz ki kahani September 21, 2003 The rains in poetry and painting September 7, 2003 The way of the brush August 24, 2003 Passion for collecting textiles August 10, 2003 Dazzling images from Amir Hamza’s life July 27, 2003 Recording intellectual journey of man July 13, 2003 A dynasty of artists June 29, 2003 Controversy dogs IIAS again June 15, 2003

In Rome, another seizure, again of Iraqi antiquities, has been reported. The details are being withheld, for the authorities on the track of these treasures hope that each of these seizures can be "squeezed to give up their sources".

A footnote to these reports adds that one of the officers who is heading the investigation into the looting and sale of antiquities from Iraq has now given out the estimate – these estimates varied dramatically at the time that the Museum was ‘sacked’ – that as many as 13,000 objects are missing from the Baghdad Museum. The figures are not final, and could change.

Seemingly unrelated to these items, although not truly so, is another report in the same issue of the Newspaper. It speaks of a well-known collector of New York who has, for years, been a principal lender and donor of Near Eastern antiquities to several institutions in the USA. There have been rumours in archaeological circles, however, that dealers handling material smuggled out of Iraq offer their goods first to this collector, before taking them to other buyers; also, that all the cylinder seals and tablets in his collection came out of Iraq in the 1990s, in the wake of the Gulf War. The ‘90s were, according to a remark made by this collector to someone, a ‘Golden Age’ for collecting Near Eastern antiquities. The financial part of the ‘deals’ – (‘Golden Age’, indeed) – made by this donor is not all public knowledge yet. But it is clear that the tax breaks that he gets when he makes his ‘donations’, either to a museum or a university, are not insubstantial. And there is word that one of the objects from Turkey which a firm, in which he was once a partner, sold for half a million dollars, was originally bought in Turkey for a little over seven thousand dollars. The collector insists, through his lawyers, that everything that he has been doing is, strictly speaking, legal.

Also the claim of legality for his dealings – morality is another matter, of course – is made by a New York dealer who has just been sent to prison for 33 months by a Federal Court, in what is being described as a landmark case. This gentleman, who was formerly president of the Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, was indicted in a case involving Egyptian antiquities which he claims were not "stolen" property, according to the definition of that term in American law. The details of the case are complicated, but the dealer kept on claiming – unsuccessfully as it turns out now - that the objects cannot be declared as "stolen" because they came from a private home and not a museum. This is nothing but sophistry and, as one commentator wrote in this very Newspaper, there are no separate "licit" and "illicit" trades in antiquities: they are one and the same. This commentator, a Professor of Archaeology, went on to say, using uncommonly harsh words, that the term "reputable dealer" – which this dealer claims he always was – is an oxymoron.

All this – these cases and more – is not to say that there are no other voices, no other practices. Unesco has set up an International Coordination Committee for the Safeguard of Iraq’s National Heritage. The US Congress is currently considering legislation that would ban the import of archaeological objects and works of art from Iraq unless these are accompanied by documentation proving that they were legally exported under Iraqi law before 1990. There is talk of setting up a "Stolen Art Database" in England, something the mere putting together of which is likely to cost close to 12 million pounds. All laudable efforts, but most of them amount to securing the stable after the horses have bolted. At least as far as Iraqi antiquities are concerned. And in any case the breakers of law are – as we know it all too well from our own land – far ahead of its makers or enforcers. They will find their own ways. The memory of what happened to the antiquities of the Kabul Museum is all too fresh in one’s mind.

As if all this were not depressing enough, as reading, let me add some statistics that have come to light in respect of the treasures in the libraries and the archives of Iraq. The looting and burning of books and records at the time of the British-American ‘action’ in Iraq earlier this year, was widely reported then, in voices of anger and regret. It is now being said by sober investigators that the damage and loss was "not as disastrous" as earlier feared, although it is still remarkably bad. While the building of the National Library in Baghdad was completely destroyed by fire and vandalism, and all the inventories were burnt, some 7 lakh volumes have remained safe. The National Archives are said to be in "a very bad situation, much worse than the National Library". In the Awqaf Library at Baghdad, around 40 per cent of the manuscripts, and 90 per cent of the printed books were destroyed. In the Central Library at Basra, 75 per cent of the collection is gone.

There seems to be no end to human greed. Or to senselessness.

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