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Culture Without Context
Issue 12,
Spring 2003
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- Culture is not the first casualty of war, nor is it the most important,
but the sack of Iraq’s National Museum and other cultural institutions
towards the end of the recent Iraq conflict caused outrage around the world.
The US and UK Governments were put on the defensive as high-ranking
officials set about explaining why the museums had not been afforded some
degree of protection, not even a tank. No convincing justification has yet
emerged. The events of April 2003 were hardly a surprise, regional museums
around Iraq were first looted at the end of the Gulf War and since then
archaeological sites have been subject to chronic looting.
More and more material of probably Iraqi origin but no clear provenance has been appearing
on the Western market, and neither Governments nor dealers have done anything about it.
The justifiable outrage over the Iraq museums should not be allowed to obscure the basic
fact that archaeological sites throughout Iraq have been and continue to be targeted by
gangs of looters in search of saleable artefacts.
There is a ready market for Iraqi material. In the days immediately following the break
in at the National Museum I located 53 inscribed cuneiform tablets and cones for sale on
the Internet. It took me about an hour in total and so it was hardly an exhaustive search,
and as many if not most trade outlets do not maintain websites the true number up for sale
worldwide is anybody’s guess. But what is important about these tablets is that they
constitute a sample, they provide us with a glimpse of the bigger picture, and none of
them had any indication of provenance. Indeed, if anything, the reverse was the case. Many
of the tablets were claimed to have been authenticated and translated by Professor Wilfred
Lambert, which implies that they were fresh to the market and previously unknown. Indeed,
Professor Lambert said as much himself when he was interviewed by the New York Times (30
April 2003). He was reported as saying that he had authenticated several hundred objects
from Iraq, and that he did not know where any came from. He suspected the dealers he
worked for did not know either. Yet the absence of clear provenance did not deter their
sale. Indeed, absence of provenance presents no legal impediment to their sale. Yet while
Iraqi artefacts of unknown origin continue to be sold openly it is probably safe to assume
that somewhere in Iraq archaeological sites are being dug out in the search for more.
One of the first responses to the looting of Iraq’s National Museum has been to
mount images taken from museum catalogues and other publications of what might be stolen
material on the Internet. Websites include The Art Newspaper at http://www.theartnewspaper.com/iraqmus/stolen.html and the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago at http://www.oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html. There have also
been calls for the construction of a searchable data base which will store descriptions
and images of stolen objects. These are good, practical measures, but in themselves they
are not enough. Data bases and catalogues of stolen objects can deter the sale of objects
stolen from museums, or they might aid their identification and recovery, but data bases
can do nothing to prevent the trade in material that has been secretly and illegally
excavated from archaeological sites. More is needed. For example, with the help of the US
State Department the International Council of Museums is preparing the Emergency Red List
of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk, which will describe and illustrate categories of material
under threat from looting and theft. At the very least, there should be an immediate
moratorium on the trade of any object of a type appearing on the Red List, unless it is
accompanied by written documentation of good provenance.
It should not be necessary in 2003 to be calling for a moratorium on trade. In theory
at least, for the past decade or so, trade in Iraqi artefacts has been outlawed by the UN
Security Council’s imposition of trade sanctions, although in practice these
sanctions have had no noticeable effect on the antiquities trade. They might as well not
have existed. The United Nations will now be looking to lift trade sanctions as soon as it
is practicable to do so, but it is imperative that restrictions are left in place for
archaeological material, and that they are enforced.
In the immediate aftermath of the war both the US and UK governments confirmed that it
is illegal to trade in archaeological material that has left Iraq since the Gulf War. In
the United Kingdom, on 14 April 2003, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced in
the House of Commons that the British Government would do everything in its power to
prevent the sale in the United Kingdom of cultural objects looted from Iraq, and also to
ensure that any such objects that appear in Britain will be returned to Iraq and not sold.
Tessa Jowell, the British Secretary of State for Culture, announced on 15 April that she
had written to colleagues in the UK Government reminding them that under UN Resolutions it
is illegal to import Iraqi antiquities into the UK. However, by the 29 April it was
possible to discern a weakening of resolve when in a DCMS press release the Secretary of
State made no mention of Government plans to impose an embargo on trade, and on the 8 May
the Government spokesperson in the House of Lords announced only that the Government have
alerted Customs of the need to enforce the current embargo.
At the time of writing (12 May) there have been no reports of British police or customs
officers seizing any Iraqi artefacts of unknown provenance. What is needed now is an
unequivocal statement by the British Government that it is illegal to sell unprovenanced
Iraqi antiquities, and an explanation of how the law will be enforced on the ground.
- Britain and the United States have both signed
the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import,
Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The UNESCO Convention, however, was
not designed to cope with the extreme forms of looting and despoliation that have taken
place during wartime in countries such as Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq. It is an
instrument of inter-governmental cooperation, and may fail if, for whatever reason,
cooperation is not possible. The First and Second Protocols of the 1954 Hague Convention
for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, on the other hand,
have the express purpose of protecting archaeological and other forms of cultural heritage
during wartime, and are not dependent upon cooperation. The obligations of guardianship
fall solely upon a signatory State, and failure to comply with these obligations is a
criminal offence. Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom have signed the Hague
Convention, but if they had we can be sure that those responsible for securing the
National Museum and other cultural sites and institutions throughout Iraq would have been
far more diligent in the execution of their charge.
- In October 2002 The Art Newspaper reported the
launch of the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), which has 45 advisors,
including lawyers from major museums, and aims to advise on aspects of US legislation as
it relates to the art trade. Members of the ACCP met with the US Departments of State and
Defense in January 2004 and soon found themselves embroiled in a public debate over what
exactly did or did not represent ACCP policy as regards Iraq’s antiquities laws. This
debate was rather tiresome, as it drew attention away from more serious policy shortfalls,
and could have been avoided. The problem is that nobody really knows what are the aims of
the ACCP, what is its membership, and what is its funding base. A good clear statement of
these facts will save a lot of future confusion and ill-feeling.
- Ashton Hawkins, speaking for the ACCP in The
Art Newspaper, said that World War II issues are more important to most museums than
antiquities issues, and he is probably right. But why that should be so is not clear. Many
museums around the world have recently established programmes to research the provenance
of any art in their collections that might have changed hands in Nazi-era Europe. These
are laudable initiatives, and they are not being criticized here, but why are they
restricted only to material that might have been expropriated by the Nazis? The same
museums no doubt contain many objects of archaeological interest that were illegally
removed from their countries of origin during wartime — from Cambodia, Afghanistan
and Iraq to name only a few. But the museums in question have shown no interest in
researching archaeological provenances. Perhaps it is because of the disparity in monetary
value between what are mainly paintings seized by the Nazis and archaeological artefacts
— paintings are, by and large, more expensive. Maybe it is because the property
stolen by the Nazis was from private rather than from public owners, and so in the legal
opinion of those who represent the museums it was a crime more deserving of redress.
Perhaps it is simply because paintings are generally accompanied by a more complete
provenance than archaeological objects, and therefore are much easier to research.
Whatever the reasons, they should be made explicit, and genuine consideration should be
given to extending provenance research to encompass all material that has changed hands
illegally during wartime. Starting with Iraq. At the very least, museums should be
prepared to cooperate fully with scholars who take an interest in such things, and not
block access to museum records.
First posted March 2004; Page
design updated September 2006 |
