UNESCO's Egyptian delegation: A New Role for UNESCO in Cultural Disasters?

The UNESCO delegation dispatched to Egypt at this particular point in the difficult transition to democracy has rubbed some archaeologists the wrong way, in large part since it comes at a very awkward time, given that the question of who is in charge of Egypt's antiquities is at the moment not clear. But more interesting from the viewpoint of a UNESCO-watcher perhaps is this tidbit from the story from Ahram Online:

El-Awadi told Ahram Online that Manhart offered to provide Egypt with technical experts, including on security measures. If funding is required due to the retreat of tourism, continued Manhart, in order to provide more security facilities, UNESCO could help find financial resources. 

almasryaloum.com has a slightly different take:

UNESCO will not offer crude financial help, but, according to Manhart, it can offer technical support, send security specialists, conduct a needs assessment, and define priorities.

What is interesting here is not just the dancing around the question of providing financial help (which is more or less to be expected, given UNESCO's generally ineffectual fundraising efforts for similar archaeological emergencies), but the double emphasis on sending security specialists and raising money specifically to provide  "more security facilities". So far as I know, that would be a new and extremely important role for UNESCO to assume. Let us hope "security specialists" doesn't mean site conservationists but experts on using guards, guns, barbed wire, walkie-talkies, and the like to lock down sites and museums.

Heavily Touristed Major Sites Do Not Translate Into Protection for Other Sites

120,000 tourists visit Gamarra annually, yet only 5 of the 250 sites in the region are protected.

Despite its status as a major site, Mirador is being devastated, with hundreds of archaeological sites being destroyed annually.

2 million tourists travel to or within Peru to see Machu Picchu, yet there are only three antiquities police officers in the Moche region of northern Peru where over a million people live.

The Global Heritage Fund calls upon Peru and other governments to divert visitors and revenues to local communities and lesser-visited sites. That is undoubtedly a good idea, but unlikely to be implemented. Even if it does get implemented, however, it is far from clear that local buy-in is sufficient in the absence of police. As we see in Egypt, even where the populace has a sense of the importance of archaeological heritage, there are always going to be criminals and hungry people who will have an incentive to loot. Governments need to spend more money for antiquities police.

The problem, of course, is that even countries as rich as the US don't spend the money they should to properly police their sites. For poorer countries the temptation to use tourist dollars for other more pressing social purposes is going to be even stronger. The solution is funding from overseas sources that is earmarked for building site policing capacity. What sources? The US State Department is unlikely to have any such funding available going forward (the Ambassador's Fund is under attack now by Republicans), so foundations, wealthy collectors, and museums are the only ones with the wherewithal.

Resistance to UNESCO Visit: Interference in Protecting Egypt's Heritage is "Antiquities Colonisation", Says Hawass

This is a painful article to read. One admires the patriotic spirit and sense of pride that leads Noureddin to assert that Egyptians "are totally able to protect our monuments" and that lead Hawass to reject offers by international organizations to help protect Egypt's heritage, and under normal circumstances these assertions and rejections would be warranted. But these aren't normal circumstances. Normally gangs of armed looters do not attack guarded sites or storehouses.

Public Archaeology Pays Dividends for Archaeologists

An interesting story about how non-archaeologists sensitized to the importance of digging things up properly have added to our scanty knowledge of America's prehistory.

RIP Donny George Youkhanna

Word from Abdulamir Hamdani that Donny George has died. A great-hearted and brave soul, who put his life on the line to try to protect the Iraq National Museum in its most desperate hour, he is one of my heroes, and someone who deserves to be remembered and honored by the world.

Something the AAMD and AIA Could Do to Help Egyptian Archaeologists

A report in Nature on the risks to Egypt's heritage notes that

some break-ins, particularly those at storage warehouses, do seem to be targeting antiquities to be smuggled out of the country for sale on the international black market. "Some of this material has huge market value," says Malek. The warehouses hold material from archaeological digs, for example fragments of loose wall reliefs from tombs. Much of it has never been properly described or published, meaning that it will be impossible ever to know for sure what has been lost.

This last sentence is key, and points to a major failing on the part not just of Egypt but of the international community of archaeologists, museum directors, and others devoted to preserving the ancient past. Instead of merely providing "professional support to.. identify and reclaim missing objects", as the AIA/AAMD joint statement urges its members to do, these organizations should also be focusing on protecting what has not yet been stolen but is at risk. One step that could and should be taken immediately is to organize a crash program to at least create an archive of photos, if not full descriptions and publication (though they are trained to be fastidious, archaeologists should not let the best should be the enemy of the good here), for the huge number of artifacts that are piled up in Egypt's storerooms, warehouses and museums. Such a program might prove to be a useful pilot leading to similar efforts in other countries.

If cost is an issue, here's a suggestion. Collectors and dealers have long complained about the archaeological community's failure to publish finds, though these complaints have seldom if ever been accompanied by offers to underwrite the costs. Perhaps it is time for Kaywin Feldman and Elizabeth Bartman to sit down with Shelby White and Arthur Houghton. 

We're Going to Need More Guns

This report from Zahi Hawass (via Derek Fincham) is extremely disturbing. Even "well guarded" storage depots, in which guards have been armed with handguns, are vulnerable to attacks by gangs of automatic-weapon-wielding looters. The depot raided in this case contained finds from both Egyptian and British and French teams.

This is the first indication I have seen that guards have been armed at all; as noted in my post yesterday, Hawass has complained that his security is not armed. So this may be a step forward. But if so, it is clearly still inadequate, in ways that should easily have been anticipated. The basic modus operandi of Egyptian looters -- large gangs armed with automatic weapons -- mirrors the tactics employed in Iraq out on archaeological sites in the 2003-2007 period, when the antiquities board was not permitted to rebuild its site police and the US military ignored the problem, as the Egyptian military seems unfortunately to be doing here. In many cases in Iraq, as now in Egypt, site guards were driven off, or if not, were threatened with harm to themselves and to their families (the looters tended to be locals who knew the guards).

Some sites were protected in Iraq, however, by tribal groups that had longstanding relations with university-based archaeologists who paid the tribes to provide site security. One has to wonder whether the British or French made any effort to enlist some of the Egyptian locals they must have ties with, to try to beef up security at the depot. One also has to wonder what other foreign archaeologists are doing right now to help Egyptians protect the digs they may have worked on and the fruits of that work.

Those would just be stopgap measures. In the absence of police, only the Egyptian military can provide the kind of force needed to deter looting on a wide scale by large groups of determined looters armed with automatic weapons.

1900 Security Police for Iraq's Archaeological Sites

Iraq announces a 1900-man security component to protect archaeological site and monuments. That's a big step forward from 106, but nowhere near the 5,000 that were supposed to be in place six months ago according to the 2008 plan to create this security force. As I have written about in Rape of Mesopotamia and on this blog, the 2008 plan itself was overdue about five years, a delay caused by the failure of the US to take responsibility for securing sites during its official occupation or to assist the Iraqis in standing up their own security force after the end of the official occupation. Let us hope that the Iraqis continue to build up this force to the levels needed to make Iraq once again one of the safest places for unexcavated antiquities in the Middle East.

Hawass: No Tourist Police, No Army on Sites

In a very illuminating interview, Zahi Hawass at long last makes clear how little power he wielded, despite his high public profile as head of an agency employing 30,000 responsible for one of Egypt's most important sources of revenue. The military, which had been protecting sites until 10 days ago, has withdrawn, but the tourist police have not filled the security gap, and Hawass now explains that the site guards under his control are unarmed and therefore incapable of protecting sites from gangs of looters:

people come with guns. They stand in front of my security people, who run away, because they are not armed. In the past, Police refused to give them weapons.

Assuming things are as bad as he claims (and there is no reason to think otherwise, since many of the sad facts he adduces here have been independently confirmed already by archaeologists), Hawass is to be commended for resigning under these conditions, and for using his resignation to call attention to the failure of the transitional military government to continue military security on sites. 


What can be done now by those outside Egypt who wish to help that country secure its heritage during this unstable phase in the democratic revolution? The answer can't just be to issue public statements deploring what is happening and calling on the Egyptian authorities to protect sites, as the AIA/AAMD press release does. While necessary, that is unlikely to have much effect on its own. And while these organizations rightly call on their own members to provide expertise supporting Egyptian efforts to identify and reclaim missing objects, curators and archaeologists are not trained in site security. One thing that the AAMD's member museums could do, however, would be to pull together resources -- money and their own best security people -- to at the very least try to hire locals to secure the storehouses and sites connected to archaeological digs that they have been jointly engaged in with the Egyptians. This need not, and probably cannot, involve buying AK-47s for site guards, as was done by some institutions and individuals for a few dig sites in Iraq; but many other steps short of that are doable.


But only the Egyptian military can really handle the security demands. We know that the Egyptian military has longstanding and strong professional connections with the US military, and that archaeologists have participated in joint military trainings in Egypt such as the Bright Star exercise. We also know that the Smithsonian has been developing new and potentially extremely valuable interagency links to the US military, largely as a result of the initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian's Richard Kurin to bring disaster relief assistance for Haiti's cultural sector after the earthquake. It is these networks of relationships that the archaeological and museum community needs to somehow tap into. 


That means, for starters, a focus on:

1. identifying and work contacts with the Egyptian military to urge them to deploy troops to secure sites.
2. identifying and working contacts within the US military to urge them to contact their Egyptian counterparts to express concern about the security vacuum on archaeological sites.
3. offering material support, not just in the form of archaeological expertise to put humpty dumpty together again, but also in ways that would make it easier for the Egyptians to secure and guard their sites. (Just to be clear: there is almost nothing the US military could do directly to help -- we have no deployable equivalent to the Italian carabinieri, and even if we did have such capability the Egyptian military would never countenance American troops being in a position where they might have to fire on Egyptian citizens. The support here would have to be in the form of financial and logistical support for whatever the Egyptian military says it needs.)

What Happened at Saqqara: An Eyewitness Account

Lee Rosenbaum posts an anonymous report from a French archaeologist detailing the looting at Saqqara. It is notable that robbers began appearing very soon after the police abandoned their posts; that the military response at first was to make a show of force with a tank, but that that was inadequate to cow the looters; that the army did a good job protecting the Museum and magazines at Saqqara; and that the sites were secured on the third day after the start of looting. All in all, that is not a bad record. Let's remember that it took the US military six days to get around to arriving at the Iraq Museum to secure it, that almost nothing was ever done by the US military to protect Iraq's archaeological sites, and that as late as this fall, Iraq still had not reconstituted a functioning archaeological police, with only 50 out of 5,000 in place.

Egypt Museum Being Used as Base by Internal Security

CNN reports that a cameraman shooting on the square in front of the museum was dragged inside and his camera confiscated, and put in a pile of other cameras, by what he described as Mukhabarat or internal security officers. It seems that the museum has not just been protected by the military but also turned into a command post for the anti-democratic elements in the Mubarak government. This is a very dangerous development that carries with it the danger that the museum itself may become a target of enraged protestors if the situation turns violent again. 

Egyptian antiquities on the market

Egyptian antiquities on the market

The situation in Egypt requires those involved with the antiquities market to conduct a rigorous due diligence policy when it come to material that is offered for sale.

SAFE is conductioning a survey: "Should market countries stop buying antiquities from Egypt until order is restored?". What do you think? Vote now!

More on the Looting of the Cairo Museum: It Appears to Have Been Left Unguarded

Zahi Hawass has posted on his blog a report on the looting of the museum (see below). It is a self-damning account: Hawass admits that the museum was not well guarded, "unfortunately", but his account strongly implies that the museum was hardly guarded at all. Only three tourist officers were in the museum, and they were there only because they were not able to get out before the curfew. The museum thus was massively vulnerable, and was saved from a far worse fate only because the mob of 1,000 that scaled the wall pillaged the newly built gift shop in the mistaken belief, Hawass tells us, that they were in the museum itself.

So, to sum up, in the wake of a revolution in Tunisia that made it very likely there would be unrest in Egypt, the national museum had no contingency plan in place. Nor have other museums or the archaeological sites been secured: Hawass tells us that "I could not find anyone to protect the antiquities at the site" of Abusir, for instance, and looters armed with guns and a truck have emptied a storehouse of the Port Said Museum, while, unmentioned by Hawass, the Memphis Museum has been reported looted.

That security was so lax is astonishing, especially after the object lesson one would have thought the looting of Iraq's Museum and archaeological sites taught us all. Hawass should be held responsible for this failure, along with whatever museum security experts the museum and the antiquities council have been using. Beyond that, the international community of heritage protection organizations needs to stop pretending that security against looting is something they can leave to others so they can focus on the nicer tasks of conservation, excavation, and tourism-related development. The need to make securing and policing sites and museums job one should have been learned from Iraq. Maybe it will be now.

The Situation in Egyptian Antiquities Today

On Friday, January 28, 2011, when the protest marches began in Cairo, I heard that a curfew had been issued that started at 6.00pm on Friday evening until 7.00am on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, on that day the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, was not well guarded.  About a thousand people began to jump over the wall on the eastern side of the museum into the courtyard.  On the western side of the museum, we recently finished something I was very proud of, a beautiful gift shop, restaurant and cafeteria. The people entered the gift shop and stole all the jewellery and escaped; they thought the shop was the museum, thank God!  However, ten people entered the museum when they found the fire exit stairs located at the back of it.

 As every one knows, the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, is naturally lit and due to the architectural style of it, there are glass windows on its roof.  The criminals broke the glass windows and used ropes to get inside, there is a distance of four metres from the ceiling to the ground of the museum.  The ten people broke in when I was at home and, although I desperately wanted to go to the museum, I could not leave my house due to the curfew.  In the morning, as soon as I woke up, I went directly there.  When I arrived, I found out that, the night before, three tourist police officers had stayed there overnight because they were not able to get out before the curfew was put in place.  These officers, and many young Egyptians who were also there, helped to stop more people from entering the museum.  Thankfully, at 10.00pm on Friday night, the army arrived at the museum and gave additional security assistance.

I found out that one criminal was still at the museum, too.  When he had asked the people guarding the museum for water, they took his hands and tied him to the door that lead to the gift shop so that he could not escape!  Luckily, the criminals who stole the jewellery from the gift shop did not know where the jewellery inside the museum is kept.  They went into the Late Period gallery but, when they found no gold, they broke thirteen vitrines and threw the antiquities on the floor.  Then the criminals went to the King Tutankhamun galleries.  Thank God they opened only one case!  The criminals found a statue of the king on a panther, broke it, and threw it on the floor.  I am very thankful that all of the antiquities that were damaged in the museum can be restored, and the tourist police caught all of the criminals that broke into it.  On Saturday, the army secured the museum again and guarded it from all sides.  I left the museum at 3.00pm on Saturday, 29, 2011.

What is really beautiful is that not all Egyptians were involved in the looting of the museum.  A very small number of people tried to break, steal and rob.  Sadly, one criminal voice is louder than one hundred voices of peace.  The Egyptian people are calling for freedom, not destruction.  When I left the museum on Saturday, I was met outside by many Egyptians, who asked if the museum was safe and what they could do to help.  The people were happy to see an Egyptian official leave his home and come to Tahrir Square without fear; they loved that I came to the museum.

The curfew started again on Saturday afternoon at 4.00pm, and I was receiving messages all night from my inspectors at Saqqara, Dahsur, and Mit Rahina. The magazines and stores of Abusir were opened, and I could not find anyone to protect the antiquities at the site. At this time I still do not know what has happened at Saqqara, but I expect to hear from the inspectors there soon. East of Qantara in the Sinai, we have a large store containing antiquities from the Port Said Museum. Sadly, a large group, armed with guns and a truck, entered the store, opened the boxes in the magazine and took the precious objects. Other groups attempted to enter the Coptic Museum, Royal Jewellery Museum, National Museum of Alexandria, and El Manial Museum. Luckily, the foresighted employees of the Royal Jewellery Museum moved all of the objects into the basement, and sealed it before leaving.

My heart is broken and my blood is boiling. I feel that everything I have done in the last nine years has been destroyed in one day, but all the inspectors, young archaeologists, and administrators, are calling me from sites and museums all over Egypt to tell me that they will give their life to protect our antiquities. Many young Egyptians are in the streets trying to stop the criminals. Due to the circumstances, this behaviour is not surprising; criminals and people without a conscience will rob their own country. If the lights went off in New York City, or London, even if only for an hour, criminal behaviour will occur. I am very proud that Egyptians want to stop these criminals to protect Egypt and its heritage.

At this time, the Internet has not been restored in Egypt. I had to fax this statement to my colleagues in Italy for it to be uploaded in London on my website.

Cairo Museum Looting: What More Might Have Been Done

Responding to my post below, Mark comments:

The Egyptian Ministry of Culture has been reviewing its museums' security protocols since the theft of a Van Gogh from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum. Clearly, no one expected the Cairo environs to grow so hostile so fast. Even with a lock down, which it appears the Museum instituted, there was little it could do without the support of the army, which was clearly focusing its attention elsewhere. What alternative steps could have been taken to prevent this from happening since only six days ago the protests were much less volatile?

It reads as if it were a rhetorical question, but it is not true that there was little the museum could do without the support of the army. It is in the nature of political protests that they erupt quickly, so museums need to have contingency plans ready to dal with this eventuality, which calls for security protocols that have to be different from those designed to prevent clandestine theft. 


So, what alternative steps could have been taken? Here are a few, for starters: 
a) the tourism police, who apparently were the forces available to Hawass, should have been deployed in greater numbers. Of course, if the number of looters attacking the museum is in the hundreds or thousands, antiquities police cannot be expected to hold the fort, but in this case the number of looters was small and could have been fended off if all the entrypoints had been covered, it seems. 
b) citizens should have been organized in advance into a "Protectors of the Museum" or some such civil-society disaster-assistance group like the Blue Shields. My information may be wrong, but what I have heard is that Egypt has no Blue Shield, and nothing like SAFE. Given Hawass' celebrity it would have been a snap to organize such a group, which would have arrived earlier and had a stronger plan for stopping looters than the deeply moving ad hoc human chain did.
c) the museum should have had a standing arrangement with the Egyptian army to have forces deploy immediately upon request.


Additional suggestions, anyone?

Cairo Museum Looting: A Wake-Up Call to Heritage Protection Organizations

Bad, but it could have been much, much worse. Photos here and here and here (thanks to Chuck Jones).


What is disconcerting is that it could have happened at all, given the fate of the Iraq Museum. One would have expected that Zahi Hawass would have anticipated some such eventuality and that the museum would have had the wherewithal to lock itself down. That does not appear to have been the case. 


This should be a wake up call. Right now, the national and international agencies and NGOs who make it their business to save our vanishing heritage -- the Smithsonian, the State Department's Bureau of Economic and Cultural Affairs, UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, INTERPOL, ICCROM, ICOM, AAMD, AAM, AIA, Blue Shield, World Monument Fund, Global Heritage Fund, World Heritage Foundation, the Getty, etc. etc. -- should be on the phone to museum officials in all countries where there is the chance of unrest, asking them if they have in place a plan to secure their buildings and holdings, and offering immediate assistance to create and/or beef up these plans. 

Even in Republican-Dominated Utah, Americans Recognize Artifact-Looting Is Wrong

This poll should come as bad news to the hard-core libertarians in the antiquities-collecting community, but good news to those of us who believe that archaeological sites are a public good. Even in a strongly Republican state, most Americans recognize that those who loot our sites are destroying something valued by us all, that an unpoliced market in antiquities abets this destruction, and that policing means making it clear through prosecution and convictions of looters and dealers in hot pots that their activities are not to be tolerated.

The publicity around this case has undoubtedly sent a signal, and it will be interesting to see whether looting of Native American sites in Utah is reduced substantially or not. On one hand, those who might otherwise have been contemplating heading off into the national park to chisel off a petroglyph may think twice, and public awareness of the importance of preserving archaeological sites is higher now; on the other hand, the publicity in itself has probably also raised awareness about the money that a good pot can bring, so that there are probably a lot more folks to whom the idea of looting will occur. And if, like Arizona and other states in dire fiscal straits, Utah cuts back on the policing of its parks, the good done by these prosecutions may be obviated.

Stunning footage of looting on Iraq's archaeological sites

Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton have posted the trailer for the long-awaited "Road to Nasiriyah", a documentary about the looting of Iraq's archaeological sites. It is based on footage shot in 2004 before Garen and his interpreter were kidnapped and held for ten days, a twist that inevitably shifts the dramatic focus of the film to some extent from the looting to the gripping personal story, a turn that is augmented by the film's attention to the equally gripping personal story of AbdulAmir Hamdani's struggle against the Iraqi mafia who control the looters ravaging Iraq's heritage. No other journalist had the temerity to do what Garen and Carleton did, and the footage they are finally releasing therefore offers a unique glimpse of the actualities of looting. It is not clear from the trailer whether the final cut will pull back from the on-the-ground view, invaluable as it is, to also include interviews with those whose policy choices left Iraq's sites vulnerable and Hamdani and others hamstrung, or with those collectors whose deep pockets and willingness to buy dodgy artifacts fuels the looting. Nonetheless, this film will be a must-see for anyone interested in understanding how and why many of Iraq's sites were destroyed. And it should put the quietus to those who have pooh-poohed reports of massive looting. 

Italian Antiquities Looting Prosecutor: Legal Frameworks Hampering Efforts to Recover Artifacts and Deter Looting

A quite interesting interview with Paolo Giorgio Ferri by Fabio Isman in the online Art Newspaper. Some of the key points, or at least claims, made by the former Italian prosecutor :

• restitutions concern only a tiny fraction of illicitly-dug artifacts that have appeared on the antiquities market
• we are aware of only about 30% of the looting that has occurred
• Italian prosecutors have a database of at least 200,000 objects that have appeared on the black market 
• investigations restricted to recoveries on behalf of a single country don't make sense, since the dealers often handle materials from multiple countries
• tamping down on looting and smuggling of illicit antiquities in Italy has led to organized crime moving to Bulgaria in search of more easily harvested artifacts
• Discrepancies between the legislation in different countries make it difficult to get assistance (Switzerland viewed Medici's crime as a tax crime and therefore not a matter for assistance)
• Italian law is too lenient, both in terms of penalties and in terms of its statute of limitations, which encourages criminals to bank illegally excavated objects for five years
• ancient coins are often of crucial importance for dating an archaeological site or tomb
• UNESCO is considering updated the 1970 Convention to include requirements for states to set up specialized antiquities crime teams, but unless international law is also amended to make it possible for these national teams to coordinate efforts, crimes will go unreported by one country to another, and efforts to stop crime in one country will simply shift it elsewhere.

Ferri doesn't suggest many solutions, though he does say Italy would be better served if it adopted something like Iraq's legislation which makes it a serious crime to not turn over to police objects excavated after 1995. While such legislation didn't do much to stem the looting of Iraq's sites, because there have been no antiquities police deployed to enforce it, similar laws under Saddam worked well (at least until the sanctions and no-fly zones eroded enforcement capabilities. Italian carabinieri armed with such a law would certainly be able to do even more than they are doing now, which is already considerable.

On Bernard Frischer's Proposal for Museum-Sponsored Digs With Loan-Partage

Bernard Frischer offers a vision of a world in which museums partnered with countries of origin to excavate sites:

The countries of origin would own anything that was excavated there and keep most of the finds on display in local partnering museums. But the museum that sponsored the dig would be allowed to borrow a percentage of the finds and exhibit them in America. Eventually, all the finds from a site would be exchanged on a rotating basis between the country of origin and the museum, which would pay the expenses and insurance.

The basic framework seems entirely reasonable, if only countries of origin could get over the very high political hump of persuading their own citizens that patrimony is not being lost but only lent. Academically-affiliated archaeologists have found it impossible to make this sort of arrangement (so far as I am aware), but they came to the table with far less money in their pockets than museums are likely to be able to muster, so perhaps a deal could be arranged that would allow the antiquities ministries to dicker.

That money, though, has to come ultimately from the antiquities collectors who support museums, and that raises a sticky problem. Would museums really be able to raise the money needed for excavations (and for the very unglamorous archiving, storage, and analysis of non-museum-worthy materials) without giving these collectors something special in return? Frischer seems to believe the answer is no, since he offers the following neat idea (in the Oliver North sense):

Even individual collectors could invest and participate in the exchanges, if they were trained to care for the finds on temporary loan to them. Someday, investors or their heirs could sell these shares at auctions and galleries, just like works of art.

This is a bad idea, for several reasons. First, the idea of antiquities being turned over, even if only for a time, to wealthy foreign individuals would be far more toxic politically than loaning pieces to museums -- especially if, as is almost sure to be the case, these same individuals are notorious for collecting illicitly excavated antiquities. (And it would not just be citizens in countries of origin who would be appalled -- Americans might be as well. We do not see the Met raising money by loaning out pieces from its permanent collection, for good reason.) Second, this sort of quid pro quo would probably mean that collectors who might have supported the museum's excavations as a matter of public-spiritedness will stop donating. Why donate when one can invest?

Moreover, how would museums vouch for the training of individual collectors or for the safeguarding of materials in private hands, especially if the loan rights are to be then sold or auctioned off to other individuals? Can you imagine the insurance that would be required to cover, say, a one-year loan to a private collector, or the furor that would ensue if the piece were somehow damaged or stolen while out on the mantelpiece in a Park Avenue penthouse? Neither of these practical objections is insuperable -- museums might require collectors not just to be trained but to employ museum curators, for example, and collectors might be found rich enough or able to put up comparable artifacts as collateral to cover the insurance costs -- but the problems are real.

There is also a concern about whether excavations driven by museums will be conducted with an eye to finding the most spectacular artifacts rather than the more humble but likely more archaeologically-significant materials. Curators working for collecting institutions are certain to be judged on whether they bring back the trophy, not whether they broaden our knowledge of ancient trade routes or enable us to tell when the ancients first began to conceive of the soul as surviving the death of the body.

Last but not least, there is nothing wrong with museums getting back into sponsoring excavations, but the idea that this would "put looters and smugglers out of business" is simply ludicrous. Yes, demand at the top end would be reduced, and yes, this would make smuggling less lucrative, but we are talking about a worldwide demand, and many high-end collectors, especially in other countries, are not going to participate in these arrangements. Even libertarians recognize that markets cannot completely regulate themselves, that property must be secured, and that police are necessary to do this. Until those who love the individual artifact come up with a policy that helps pay for antiquities police as well as reducing demand, we should remain skeptical.

Bush's ghostwriters on the looting of the Iraq National Museum

George W. Bush's utterly mendacious ghostwritten memoir contains only one mention of the looting of the Iraq National Museum. It comes in the context of a rare admission that "there was one important contingency for which we had not adequately prepared":

     In the weeks after liberation, Baghdad descended into a state of lawlessness. I was appalled to see looters carrying precious artifacts out of Iraq's national museum and to read reports of kidnapping, murder, and rape. Part of the explanation was that Saddam had released tens of thousands of criminals shortly before the war. But the problem was deeper than that. Saddam had warped the psychology of Iraqis in a way we didn't fully understand. The suspicion and fear that he had cultivated for decades were rising to the surface.

    "What the hell is happening?" I asked during an NSC meeting in late April. "Why isn't anybody stopping these looters?"

    The short answer was that there was a manpower shortage in Baghdad. The Iraqi police force had collapsed when the regime fell. The Iraqi army had melted away. Because of Turkey's decision, many of the American troops who liberated Baghdad had been required to continue north to free the rest of the country. The damage done in those early days created problems that would linger for years. The Iraqis were looking for someone to protect them. By failing to secure Baghdad, we missed our best chance to show that we could.

True enough. But the excuse that "Saddam had warped the psychology of Iraqis in a way we didn't fully understand", cultivating "suspicion and fear" that were now "rising to the surface," reflects the stupidity and intellectual laziness that characterized Bush and his gang.  As I and many others have made abundantly clear, there was massive evidence that Iraqis were willing and able to loot their country's cultural institutions if given the opportunity: the many regional museums looted within 24 hours of the establishment of no-fly zones back in the 1990s should have made that clear enough that the national museum would be targeted. McGuire Gibson, the Archaeological Institute of America, and many others from the archaeological community warned explicitly that looting was almost certain to occur (Gibson in a face-to-face meeting with Ryan Crocker in late January). And, as we know now thanks to Elizabeth Stone's forensic examination of time-series satellite imagery, the redeployment of Iraqi troops away from the site areas in January 2003, in preparation for the impending invasion, unleashed a wave of looting on Iraq's sites even before the US arrived.
     These looters were not driven by a warped psychology of suspicion and fear, but by a much simpler psychological mechanism that Bush and other freemarketers certainly could have understood: the profit motive. Antiquities are valuable commodities. It doesn't take a genius to imagine that a country reduced to anarchy will resemble the purest of free markets. But it is easier to blame Saddam instead.
    In any case, once Bush saw that the museum had been looted (how, it is hard to say, since to my knowledge there is no footage showing looters carrying objects out of the museum), he should have immediately asked, "What the hell is happening?" Yet he waited until late April to pose this question (assuming that the memoir didn't just make up this remark). That speaks volumes about the fecklessness of our worst President.