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    In Iraq, Authorities Continue To Fight Uphill Battle Against Antiquities Plunder

    Heritage experts say hundreds of thousands of pieces have been looted at Iraqi archaeological sites and museums. As the illegal trade in antiquities continues, Iraq is trying to get objects returned.
    by Jane Arraf Aug 20, 2020 5 minutes
    Iraqi National Museum Deputy Director Musin Hassan holds his head in his hands as he sits amid destroyed artifacts in the Baghdad museum in 2003. Without instructions from the U.S. military to protect the museum, American soldiers who helped topple Saddam Hussein stood by while Iraqi looters rampaged through the building and stole thousands of objects.

    Seventeen years after it was stolen, archaeologist McGuire Gibson still checks eBay for a 4,000-year-old stone cylinder seal that he excavated in Iraq in the 1970s.

    Gibson was the field director at a University of Chicago-led excavation in Nippur, the ancient Mesopotamian religious capital, when he discovered the seal — used by a governor who become a king. When rolled over a clay tablet, the seal certified the governor's documents.

    "I was cleaning around a drain and I put the pick in and the thing jumped out," Gibson says. "I hit the seal on the end and it jumped out. It was a magnificent agate seal with a really wonderful depiction of a human being led to a god."

    The inscription indicated it had belonged to Shar-Kali-Sharri, who later became king of the Sumerian and Akkadian empires.

    "It's a exceptional. "I'm still looking for that one particular seal ... I'm pretty certain that it's out there."

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