Looters of ancient sites in Iraq, and buyers for the antiquities they uncover, have multiplied exponentially since the spring of 2003. By some accounts, hundreds of thousands of articles have found their way from ancient sites once protected and now open to anyone brave enough to dig a hole into the sandy soil, to middle-men in limousines who visit the sites, and from there to buyers in Europe and especially the United States.
It can be argued that this practice hurts no one but in fact it hurts everyone. Iraq suffers the loss of its history; once an artifact leaves the site at which it was found, it loses all context, all history, all possibilities of understanding by whom and in what culture it was created. The looters themselves lose, in contradictory ways. They often sell items for $200 that on the black market bring more than ten times that amount. A large sum for a typical Iraqi villager, that $200 only encourages more looting, and the cycle of loss continues. The buyers suffer, even if they buy in good faith. An article bought legitimately, with a verified provenance, can be show and enjoyed by all; its history will be known and understood, its culture and context intact. An article bought on the black market, on the other hand, must be kept hidden from sight, all traces of its existence hidden and all sense of its history erased.
And the rest of the world suffers as well, in tangible and intangible ways.
Iraq is part of the Fertile Crescent, the area of the world from which agriculture, the first lawful societies, and our common origins come. The Code of Hammurabi, the city of Babylon and its king, Nebuchadnezzar, the Summerians and their tablets of stone… the Garden of Eden… the Tower of Babel… all of these and thousands more names that ring throughout the world’s history—they all came from what is now Iraq.
Matthew Bogdanos, author of
Thieves of Baghdad, says “Antiquities, especially those from Mesopotamia, are our common beginnings. They are humans’ previous attempts to struggle with the problems that face any civilization.”
Losing the past means losing part of what makes us—any of us—who we are. With every object looted and sold, a piece of history is erased.
But that's not the worst of it. The looting and sale of these items has taken on an even more sinister shadow. The money a buyer pays often funnels directly into organizations he/she might not otherwise want to fund. Illegal organizations already in existence, of many and varied political and ideological roots, almost immediately recognized potential in the already extant and suddenly growing black market in antiquities. They began using the networks of middlemen and other buyers to smuggle their own contraband through borders and across the world, as well as sending in their own buyers for the antiquities themselves.
Black Market Jihad will be an in-depth exploration of this issue. Through interviews with international art thieves, museum curators, looters, international investigators and authors, we will explore the reasons, the ubiquity, and the tragedy of the illegal looting and sale of antiquities throughout the world.
With the world in such turmoil, and the Middle East being reshaped by events both of its making and from outside, it is vital that the sites in Iraq are preserved and that everyone understands their importance.
With no connection to history, people lose not only the sense of their own cultures but the sense of value for anyone else’s.
Essentially, when we lose the past, we lose ourselves.
For more information, to contribute ideas, funding, sources or research, or to ask a question, please email me.
MA - Cultural Studies