16 junho 2003

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth: So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks.
Not all of it, of course. There was some looting and damage to a small number of galleries and storerooms, and that is grievous enough. But over the past six weeks it has gradually become clear that most of the objects which had been on display in the museum galleries were removed before the war. Some of the most valuable went into bank vaults, where they were discovered last week. Eight thousand more have been found in 179 boxes hidden "in a secret vault". And several of the larger and most remarked items seem to have been spirited away long before the Americans arrived in Baghdad.
Hoaxes, Hype and Humiliation: Turns out the Iraqi National Museum lost not 170,000 treasures but 33. You'd have to go back centuries, say, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find mendacity on this scale.
What happened? The source of the lie, Donny George, director general of research and study of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities, now says (Washington Post, June 9) that he originally told the media that "there were 170,000 pieces in the entire museum collection. Not 170,000 pieces stolen. No, no, no. That would be every single object we have!"
Of course, George saw the story of the stolen 170,000 museum pieces go around the world and said nothing - indeed, two weeks later, he was in London calling the looting "the crime of the century." Why? Because George and the other museum officials who wept on camera were Baath Party appointees, and the media, Western and Arab, desperate to highlight the dark side of the liberation of Iraq, bought their deceptions without an ounce of skepticism.
Museum celebrates return of vase: The sacred Vase of Warka, a centrepiece of the Iraqi National Museum collection and feared to have been lost for ever after being looted, was returned yesterday. Three unidentified men brought it to the museum in the boot of a car. [...]
Looting and thefts from the museum after the fall of the city to US forces caused an international uproar, but the number of missing pieces appears far fewer than the thousands originally thought.
The Vase of Warka is one of 47 main exhibition items which coalition officials said last week to be still missing. They did not identify the 46 other pieces.