Monday, April 14, 2003

Looting Mesopotamian artifacts

One of the cover stories in the news the past few days has been the looting of antiquities in the Iraq Museum. One of the pictures in the LA Times' article yesterday was of the so-called Ram Caught in the Thicket, found by Sir Leonard Woolley in the royal tombs of Ur. I saw the University of Pennsylvania Museum Near East section's traveling exhibit The Royal Tombs of Ur a few years ago when it was in the LA area. The Ram was one of the prominent artifacts. This CNN article has an interactive display of more of the exhibit.

I don't know if the exhibit is still here in the States or if some of the artifacts were sent back to Iraq as the picture in the LA Times article suggests.

(A very readable book about the early days of archaeology in Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and South America, including the many colorful characters, is Gods, Graves, & Scholars: The Story of Archaeology by C. W. Ceram.)

No comments: