 |
| Moslem attitudes to culture, Mosul Museum March 2017 |
As Peter Tompa expertly notes:
Confirmation that ISIS appears to have destroyed the contents of the Mosul Museum should be a cause for sadness rather than an excuse for yet another sound bite condemning the purchase of "blood antiquities." If anything, the destruction of portable antiquities like cuneiform tablets contradicts the archaeological lobby's narrative that ISIS loots rather than destroys for ideological reasons.Obviously, the objects that were held in the museum and not evacuated would have been safer in the collections of private citizens abroad. Sad that the Iraq authorities could not see that but insisted on trying to look after it all themselves. Now we can see to what that led.
The antiquities museum in the Iraqi city of Mosul is in ruins. Piles of rubble fill exhibition halls and a massive fire in the building’s basement has reduced hundreds of rare books and manuscripts to ankle-deep drifts of ash. [...] many of the artifacts destroyed by ISIS were the original ancient stone statues dating back thousands of years, rather than replicas as some Iraqi officials and experts previously claimed. ISIS captured Mosul in 2014 and released a video the following year showing fighters smashing artifacts in the museum with sledgehammers and power tools. The voice narrating the ISIS video justified the acts with verses from the Quran referencing the Prophet Muhammad’s destruction of idols in the Kaaba. “These statues and idols, these artifacts, if God has ordered its removal, they became worthless to us even if they are worth billions of dollars,” the narration said. [...] Inside the Mosul museum’s main exhibition hall, the floor was littered with the jagged remains of an ancient Assyrian bull statue and fragments from cuneiform tablets.The latter could have been sold, but they werre instead smashed by the ignorant ragheads.
No comments:
Post a Comment