Customer Reviews

The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia

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I remember Secretary Rumsfeld getting a laugh when he tried putting the looting of Baghdad in proper perspective. "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over," he said, "and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'" Well, this book shouts out from the audience, "Yup!" and in doing so, puts a new face on the war in Iraq, and tells a story as ironic and poignant as what we saw in the Iraqi soccer team at the Olympics last summer. Here the team is a group of experts -- a kind of dream team of Iraqis, Americans, Italians and Brits -- each taking a turn as an expert witness in the most talked about art heist in history. Unlike most of the reporting at the time, this book doesn't presume you already know your Ancient Near Eastern and Islamic history. Ralph Solecki takes us to the very beginning and recalls his prehistoric discoveries in Northern Iraq, where we have possibly the earliest known evidence of human compassion. Harriet Crawford's coverage of the dawn of civilization brings the dawning realization that ancient Mesopotamia is a lot closer to life today than we thought. Paul Collins presents an account of the amazing developments in Sumer, illustrated with some of the most beloved pieces from the Iraq Museum. All right, the Iraqis invented human emotion, agriculture, cities, empires -- what else? Robert Biggs adds writing and literature, using macro lens close-ups and a cuneiform comparison chart. And if you wonder why a quarter million people in America call themselves Assyrians, you'll certainly know after reading Julian Reade's chapter about these great achievers 2500 years ago. The East-meets-West story, starting with Alexander the Great, is vividly told by Elisabetta Fino. After seeing news photos of the mosque in Samarra vandalized, reading Alastair Northedge's piece on Islamic architecture was a form of grief counseling for me. Now as I watch daily footage of car bombings in Baghdad, I think of Vincenzo Strika's review of Baghdad through the ages, and put my hope in his last line: "Baghdad, for all its tumult and suffering, has the potential to become again, as it was in the Middle Ages, the cultural bridge between East and West." Other parts of the book use the museum building itself or specific artifacts as a point of departure: the essential "A Museum is Born" by Lamia Al-Gailani Werr and the exquisite "Small Treasures of the Iraq Museum" by Fiorella Strika. When I first opened the book, I skipped through it reading the double-page spreads here and there by Diana McDonald, and that made me want to read everything else. It was strong stuff for me to read kidnapping survivor Micah Garen's words on universal ideas - heroism, friendship, and our fear of death - drawing a comparison between the quest of Gilgamesh and the purpose of archaeology. Garen and his partner, Marie-Helene Carleton, remind us that we are all Gilgamesh, and archaeologists are our genius scribes. This elegant invitation to preserve our historical memory is echoed throughout the book, in most urgent terms by Selma Al-Radi, by Angela Schuster and Zainab Bahrani, by William and Milbry Polk, by Usam Ghaidan and Anna Paolini, and by the tireless Iraqi archaeologist, Donny George. All of these contributors are within two degrees of separation from everyone else in the cultural heritage community that reacted to the looting of the Iraq Museum. Although they are distinguished writers individually -- worthy of their own Listmania List -- this is a fine ensemble piece. Of course, the real stars of the book are the antiquities themselves, the figurines, bas reliefs, stelae and other vocabulary-building artifacts, along with, yes, the vases. The 190 color pictures on heavy paper make this a compact coffee-table book, but not too heavy to read in bed as well. University archaeology departments would be nuts not to make this required reading for new students. I can't think of a book that will more directly engage and motivate the newcomer, and possibly spark a thousand careers as luminous as those referenced in its pages. The book itself is an example of how people can work together across borders, across cultures and civilizations, clash or no clash. Many of these writers were first responders, rushing in to protect fragile human knowledge, and in the process modeling for the rest of us what we most need these days in Iraq: charity, hope and faith.

I found this to be an excellent volume that opens with the looting of the Iraq Museum at the beginning of the war and develops into an elegant and expert history of Mesopotamia spanning 60,000 years. Although the looting has been covered in newspapers and magazines, this is the only attempt to my knowledge to bring the topic to mainstream readers in book form. Archaeological sites throughout Iraq are still being looted daily, and a percentage of the royalties earned by this title will go to Iraq's State Board of Antiquities to help bring awareness and policing to the illicit trade in antiquities as well as help the Museum function again. The authors of each chapter comprise a formidable cadre of international archaeologists who have worked in Iraq sometimes for decades, and bring here the many voices needed to describe the long and fascinating history of Mesopotamia. The editors, Milbry Polk and Angela Schuster, really have done a fantastic job and have brought us a much needed book.

Beautifully designed and expertly written, this is a must for lovers of history and those with an interest in the cultural background of Iraq. Highly recommended.

As discontent over the continued American presence and the mounting loss of lives of not only soldiers from this country but also from other supporting countries and certainly for the countless loss of civilian lives in Iraq, artists and writers are responding in kind to the woe of war. One of the saddest tragedies of the Iraq invasion was the decimation of the Iraq Museum of Baghdad. Many of the rarest of antiquities housed there are now reduced to dust while others suffered irreparable damage.

This fine book provides many illustrations of the collection of the Iraq Museum and with that, naturally, comes a timeline of civilization as we know it. The treasures are/were wondrous and the history as summarized by Milbry and William Polk, Selma Al-Radi, Angela Schuster, Zainab Bahrani, Usam Ghaidan, Anna Paolini, and Donny George in their fine essays should be required reading for all of us.

This fine and beautifully designed book marks a sad moment in our history, but it also provides an invaluable resource guide for those interested in the cradle of civilization that was Mesopotamia - aka Iraq! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, August 05

This gorgeously illustrated and very detailed guide to the cultural atrocoties committed in April of 2003 is a masterpiece of literature. I am very glad that someone took the time to make a wonderful guide to this event. Flipping through the pages and looking at the many artifacts, one cannot help feeling a sense of melancholy. Looking at the gorgeous photos of the artifacts taken much before the looting occured, admiring them, and knowing that they are now damaged are destroyed is very unsettling, but it is wonderful that many of these brilliant archeologists, curators, and journalists took the time to create such a wonderful book to aknowledge the horrible event and show the world, even just the few people that actually buy the book and spend the time reading it. I truly enjoyed the book, which has so much information not just about the looting, but of the history of Mesopotamian, Persian and Islamic society, and the country of Iraq, specifically Baghdad, a beautiful, but tragic metropolis between the Tigris and Euphrates. The Land Between Two Rivers is brought back to life, for a brief, but beautiful, glimpse.

This edited book offers a summary of archaeology in Iraq and some assessment of the damage done by the Iraq war. It will serve as a basic source, which can be amplified by a growing specialist literature. Useful for students and people teaching about conservation and the archaeology of Mesopotamia.

This is a beautifully illustrated, highly informative, and ultimately very poignant book: it has appeal and meaning both for general readers with any sort of interest in archaeology and far places, and for those concerned with what we have done to Iraq.

This book is made of fine quality paper and binding. It contains lots of photographs of a few of the many lost treasures. I ordered it for Christmas and it arrived via FED-EX 2 days later even though I paid standard shipping! It arrived in excellent condition! The book discusses a bit of the background regarding the looting of the museum but the majority of the book discusses the artifacts and their history / treasure. I guess looting of treasures has accompanied war since recorded time ... if not even earlier. The looting of this museum, however, is perhaps more poignant, as it was videotaped, American troops had been stationed there to protect the artifacts, and the justification of the war was based on multiple reports on WMD dispite frequent statements to the contrary, and, the looters pulled up to the museum in trucks, entered, stole priceless gems and left the rest thus indicating expertise and planning. The pieces in the Iraq Museum had been truly marvelous and will probably not be seen again by the public again. I give everything that I review a grade - and this book is of fine quality, fine photos and very good content - thus, it merits a solid "A". I recommend this book for historians of antiquities and art, middle east culture, military tactical commanders, university - high school - and public libraries, and nerds like me.

Instead of writing about the looting, what was lost, what has since been recovered and how, the various contributors seem to be very busy tell the reader how they had discovered the various items in the museum. If one were interested in discoveries, there are plenty of places to have read about them previously. The book seems to have been put together with minimum thought, poor photos of items that have already been published in much better form.

I pre-ordered this book and waited about a month or two for it to arrive. I was deeply disappointed when it came. Unfortunately, this book is not what it promises.

Very little of the book, perhaps a dozen or so pages (and this assessment is 'liberal') can actually be said to deal with the actual looting of the museum and there is little here that has not been fairly widely reported in the press.

Its main value is arguably that the majority of the chapters (i.e. the overwhelming portion of the book) offer a fairly good introduction to the periods of the history of what is now geographicaally caled Iraq. That being said, there are many better introductions to the subject.

The credentials of the editor seem to have a bit of 'spin' to them. I cannot comment on eveything the publishers blurb says in order to establish her authority, but I would point out the following. The flyleaf and publishers description tells us that the editor of the volume, Angela A. M. Shuster is the "editor of the award-winning preservation magazine 'Icon' and the 'Explorers Journal'." Icon is actually the quarterly report, in magazine format, of the World Monuments Fund, a New York based non-profit organization. The 'Explorers Journal', is the publication of the exclusive Explorers Club, also based in NY. These are hardly newstand publications, nor are they academic publications either. Disingenuous? You be the judge....

'Archaeology', which she is a Contributing Editor to, can at least be found at you some newsstands. This is the 'popular' publication of the American Institute of Archaeology, as opposed to their academic, peer-reviewed journal, called The American Jounal of Archaeology. I cannot comment on the rest of her bio.

This book, in my opinion is mostly just "packaging" and "promotion". If a portion of the proceeds (as a sticker on the cover claims) were not promised to the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq, I would be on my way to the post office to return it. I certainly cannot recommend it, even for the lay reader.