Melik Kaylan: Myths of Babylon and the reality of Iraq's heritage
[Mr. Kaylan is a columnist for Forbes.]
Whatever other mistakes were made in Iraq, it certainly didn't help the cause of peace that the U.S. and its coalition partners were routinely blamed for the destruction of Iraq's heritage—from allowing the National Museum in Baghdad to be overrun by looters, to neglect of sundry archeological sites, including the most revered ancient site of Babylon.
Today, after extensive recovery efforts, the National Museum is again open to the public, with the majority of its greatest treasures back on display. Moreover, we've long known that much of the pillaging had already occurred in Saddam's time, along with the substitution of fakes for many objects. Many of the museum's most valuable items were locked away in a vault, untouched by looters.
As for the ancient sites, a June 2008 trip by top Western archeologists to southern Iraq's eight most important sites found little or no post-Saddam damage, much to the archeologists' surprise. The trip included the two leading critics of American conduct, Elizabeth Stone from Stony Brook University and John Curtis, head of the British Museum's Middle East Department. They did not visit Babylon in the north, but the places they saw covered a full fifth of the entire landmass of Iraq—all relatively undamaged.
Throughout the bloodiest war years, reports had mounted of depredations to ancient Babylon by coalition forces. Mr. Curtis emerged as the single most persistent source of such accusations. Considering the authority of his position and the incendiary potential of his public statements, it was reasonable to assume he was certain of the facts before he spoke out.
A Jan. 15, 2005, BBC report, for example, began with the following statement: "Coalition forces in Iraq have caused irreparable damage to the ancient city of Babylon, the British Museum says." It continued with such details as "sandbags have been filled with precious archeological fragments and 2,600 year old paving stones have been crushed by tanks," and that long trenches were dug "through archeological deposits."
Mr. Curtis's accusations piled up over the years with added details such as the purported damage from a nearby coalition helicopter base that allegedly caused cracks in the animal bas-reliefs on Babylon's original walls. Finally, at the British Museum, he mounted a five-month-long exhibition that closed this past March, titled "Babylon Myth and Reality." Its final room chronicled the depredations to Babylon in recent years. Here he belatedly began to acknowledge that Saddam himself had already caused grievous harm to the site in various ways—by building a palace at its heart, by ineptly renovating ancient remains, by deploying a tank regiment there, and the like.
In July of this year he authored an official Unesco report with Ms. Stone and others on the state of the site with much the same content. Not surprisingly, it resulted in numerous media reports blaming the U.S. for the destruction of ancient Babylon. One memorable Boston Globe story began, "Iraq's US-led invaders inflicted serious damage on Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops, and digging trenches through one of the world's greatest archeological sites."
Neither the report's authors nor those in the media who repeated their accusations, it seems, bothered to read Emilio Marrero's memoir "A Quiet Reality" published this April by FaithWalk, nor attempted to contact him. As chaplain of the Marine Expeditionary Force that first secured Babylon from looters during the Marines' three-month stint there in 2003, he records how they worked conscientiously to protect the site, ejecting looters, undertaking repairs to the perimeter and establishing ground rules for the war's duration. Chaplain Marrero saw the site immediately after Saddam's forces evacuated. It was in poor condition then...
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Whatever other mistakes were made in Iraq, it certainly didn't help the cause of peace that the U.S. and its coalition partners were routinely blamed for the destruction of Iraq's heritage—from allowing the National Museum in Baghdad to be overrun by looters, to neglect of sundry archeological sites, including the most revered ancient site of Babylon.
Today, after extensive recovery efforts, the National Museum is again open to the public, with the majority of its greatest treasures back on display. Moreover, we've long known that much of the pillaging had already occurred in Saddam's time, along with the substitution of fakes for many objects. Many of the museum's most valuable items were locked away in a vault, untouched by looters.
As for the ancient sites, a June 2008 trip by top Western archeologists to southern Iraq's eight most important sites found little or no post-Saddam damage, much to the archeologists' surprise. The trip included the two leading critics of American conduct, Elizabeth Stone from Stony Brook University and John Curtis, head of the British Museum's Middle East Department. They did not visit Babylon in the north, but the places they saw covered a full fifth of the entire landmass of Iraq—all relatively undamaged.
Throughout the bloodiest war years, reports had mounted of depredations to ancient Babylon by coalition forces. Mr. Curtis emerged as the single most persistent source of such accusations. Considering the authority of his position and the incendiary potential of his public statements, it was reasonable to assume he was certain of the facts before he spoke out.
A Jan. 15, 2005, BBC report, for example, began with the following statement: "Coalition forces in Iraq have caused irreparable damage to the ancient city of Babylon, the British Museum says." It continued with such details as "sandbags have been filled with precious archeological fragments and 2,600 year old paving stones have been crushed by tanks," and that long trenches were dug "through archeological deposits."
Mr. Curtis's accusations piled up over the years with added details such as the purported damage from a nearby coalition helicopter base that allegedly caused cracks in the animal bas-reliefs on Babylon's original walls. Finally, at the British Museum, he mounted a five-month-long exhibition that closed this past March, titled "Babylon Myth and Reality." Its final room chronicled the depredations to Babylon in recent years. Here he belatedly began to acknowledge that Saddam himself had already caused grievous harm to the site in various ways—by building a palace at its heart, by ineptly renovating ancient remains, by deploying a tank regiment there, and the like.
In July of this year he authored an official Unesco report with Ms. Stone and others on the state of the site with much the same content. Not surprisingly, it resulted in numerous media reports blaming the U.S. for the destruction of ancient Babylon. One memorable Boston Globe story began, "Iraq's US-led invaders inflicted serious damage on Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops, and digging trenches through one of the world's greatest archeological sites."
Neither the report's authors nor those in the media who repeated their accusations, it seems, bothered to read Emilio Marrero's memoir "A Quiet Reality" published this April by FaithWalk, nor attempted to contact him. As chaplain of the Marine Expeditionary Force that first secured Babylon from looters during the Marines' three-month stint there in 2003, he records how they worked conscientiously to protect the site, ejecting looters, undertaking repairs to the perimeter and establishing ground rules for the war's duration. Chaplain Marrero saw the site immediately after Saddam's forces evacuated. It was in poor condition then...