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Looted Treasures Recovered Slowly

Wednesday, May 7, 2003
The Associated Press

Upon closer inspection, American investigators and museum officials found that only 17 cases had been broken into. Thirty-eight items have now been confirmed missing and 22 damaged in the main gallery - far less than originally feared, Bogdanos said. But no one knows the status of tens of thousands of antiquities kept at storage sites across the city, or an untold number of smaller, portable items that museum officials removed for safekeeping months before the war.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- AP
From a dusty library table, Marine Lt. Col. Matthew Bogdanos lifts a small pot with burned red ochre designs and holds it to the light.

One of the world's oldest examples of hand-modeled clay is back home - courtesy of a stranger who came to the gate of the Iraqi National Museum and handed it over to U.S. forces.

Work has begun on recovering some of civilization's earliest artifacts, items of incalculable value that disappeared in the orgy of looting that followed Saddam Hussein's fall. But first investigators must find out: What was there to begin with?

"To say it has proven formidable is just an understatement," said Bogdanos, who heads a 13-member team of U.S. military and customs officials investigating the pillage and compiling an inventory of what is missing.

His comments came as art experts and law enforcement officials met in France on Tuesday to create a database of items looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
(More: Military.com)
2003 © The Associated Press.

Dan