Should Iraq’s archaeological treasures stay in the west?
“When I was a boy,” the Iraqi diplomat said, “My parents took me to the Louvre and I saw Hammurabi’s Code. I wondered why it wasn’t in Baghdad. Why did we Iraqis have to go to Paris to see it? Why couldn’t the rest of the world come to us? It made me angry.” He […]Ann Marlowe writes for the Daily Beast:
“When I was a boy,” the Iraqi diplomat said, “My parents took me to the Louvre and I saw Hammurabi’s Code. I wondered why it wasn’t in Baghdad. Why did we Iraqis have to go to Paris to see it? Why couldn’t the rest of the world come to us? It made me angry.” He paused. “But after ISIS attacked Nimrud, I was glad that these things were not in Iraq.” Luckily, some monumental Assyrian sculpture from the extraordinary archeological trove at Nimrud was removed in the 19th century and placed in the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hatra wasn’t so lucky. Probably founded about 2,400 years ago under the Seleucids, it became the site of one of the first Arab kingdoms known to history, starting in 156 A.D. Although ruled by Muslims for centuries, it held examples of sculpture from an amazing array of artistic traditions, pre-Islamic Arabic as well as Greek, Caananite and Mesopotamian. Hatra was considered by archeologists to be “the best preserved and most informative example of a Parthian city.” No more. What the Prophet Muhammad’s contemporaries saw fit to preserve, ISIS has destroyed.
