Tragedy

[redrooster]

Bagdad Museum looted and with it the depository of unimaginable amount of their culture and perhaps our own common culture.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2942449.stm
http://info.uibk.ac.at/c/c6/c616/museum/lower.html
http://cctr.umkc.edu/user/fdeblauwe/iraq.html

[Brutal DLX]

War is hell.

[Basileus]

Thats sad news man:(

[Lechev]

Bet those artifacts will eventually end up in some private collector's collections after the war.... sadly... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

[BlackWatch McKenna]

If you can read and write, then thank the Assyrians.

Those 5,000 to 7,000 year old tablets were the first example of the use or writing by mankind. They were among the "looted".

Good news, though. The Ministry of Oil is guarded and intact

~R

[troymclure]

aye this is s****. I mean this is River Valley stuff, i had totally forgotten about this sort of stuff in the leadup to the war, i guess i kinda assumed someone would have had the brains to take care of it....

Edit:Language

[BlackWatch McKenna]

My only hope - and it is a long shot - is that some Totally Dedicated Curator said, "Holy Smokes This stuff is gonna be swiped" and had the wherewithal to stash it somewhere safe.

Want to hear the worst part? Looters, in order to hide original identity of an item, will break the thing down with a hammer - and sell the PARTS

Gah.

~BW

[Demon of Light]

It is worthy of profound sadness. Throughout history there are tales of vast storehouses of knowledge being lost as the victors of war rolled through the remnants of once great civilizations. Today we are they who are become the Destroyer of Worlds. So many worlds...all heaped upon the altar of our strength and prosperity. There is shame here even if the emotion is lacking in people to feel it.

[Spino]

I remember reading a BBC article which mentioned that the museum curators DID move alot of stuff out of the museum to offices and storage areas elsewhere in Baghdad and outside the city. Unfortunately not everything could be saved and alot of the larger statues and pieces were at the mercy of looters and vandals.

[redrooster]

No, stuff was actually moved into the museum from around the country because they thought it would be safe from allied bombs.

[Sjakihata]

then again, can you suspect a country without a decent history and culture to understand how important it is?

[Leet Eriksson]

Alot of historical artifacts were moved to mosques,probably the safest places in iraq http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif,but that was in basrah not baghdad.