THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE LOOTING OF THE BAGHDAD MUSEUM (9-11 April) received very little notice in the press last week. Here's an article ("Archaeologists review loss of valuable artifacts one year after looting") in the University of Chicago Chronicle (via Archaeologica News) which marks it and discusses how the situation has developed over the last year. Excerpt:

Many artifacts were recovered throughout the last 11 months. By early February, as many as 5,000 objects were reported to have been recovered in Iraq or abroad, including 1,000 pieces in the United States, 700 in Jordan, 500 in France and 250 in Switzerland.

Pieces recovered in police raids in Iraq included two of the most famous pieces from the Iraqi National Museum�s collection�the Lady�s Head from Warka, a beautifully sculpted marble head of a woman, dating to about 3000 B.C., which was recovered in September, and the Bassetki Statue, the lower half of a sitting figure of a hero, cast in copper and dating to ca. 2200 B.C., which was recovered in October.

Other pieces were returned anonymously and voluntarily, including the famous Warka Vase, an alabaster vase decorated with elaborate relief scenes that dates to about 3000 B.C. This vase was returned in June, broken into numerous pieces, though likely restorable.

�Mixed in with the joy over the recovery of these pieces is the sorrow over the loss of other objects, which will remain difficult if not impossible to recover. This list may well be topped by 4,795 cylinder seals, which originally had been thought to be safe in the museum�s storerooms and whose loss was only noted in June,� Reichel said.

These objects, often made of precious stones, decorated with elaborate images and sometimes bearing inscriptions, were ancient bureaucratic devices, used to verify business or legal transactions by impressing the seal into documents inscribed on clay tablets. In modern times, however, these seals have become highly desirable collectors� items, which often sell for astronomical prices at auction. Many of the seals from the Iraq Museum could end up in the hands of collectors worldwide, never to be seen again.

In terms of archaeological losses, the looting of the museum may well be dwarfed by the continual destruction of archaeological sites all over Iraq by looters. This looting has touched upon well-known sites such as Nippur, home of an archaeological expedition of the Oriental Institute, Umma, Lagash, and Isin, but many more unexcavated sites are destroyed by the unsystematic onslaught of pick axes used by the looters throughout the country.

The loss in archaeological data is impossible to quantify but clearly has reached disastrous dimensions. Although coalition forces have taken measures to protect some of the key sites in Iraq, archaeologists contend those measures have been inadequate.