The latest coverage is in Al Arabiya News: Israel suspected of seeking to ‘steal’ ancient Iraqi manuscripts transferred to U.S., with the Times of Israel then picking up the story: Iraq to the United States: Give us back our Torahs and Talmuds. Baghdad officials claim the US took away thousands of ancient Babylonian artifacts in 2006.
The Al Arabiya article is riddled with errors:
The Iraqi minister of culture has said that the United States is delaying the return of original copies of ancient manuscripts that were illegally smuggled out of Iraq and reportedly sold to Israel.The archive was sent to the United States for conservation purposes. The manuscripts were soaked with water, infested with mold, and then frozen. The expertise and resources needed to conserve them are enormous and they were sent to the best place to get this done, and it is taking as long as it takes to do the job right.
The manuscripts are part of the Jewish archive that was found in the basement of the Iraqi intelligence building following the 2003 American invasion.
The archive was reportedly transferred to the United States for “maintenance purposes” provided that it would be returned to the Iraqi government by mid-2006. The archive, however, has not yet been transferred back to the Iraqi Archeology and Heritage Association.
Iraqi media reports suggest that Israel was behind the stalling of theAll I can say is, if only. The Iraqi Jewish Archive Preservation Report from 2003 has a description of the archive as follows:
delivery of the archives and that the Jewish state was planning to obtain the historic manuscripts from its ally the United States. Arab League Deputy Secretary General Ahmed ben Helli has confirmed attempts by Israel to steal ancient Iraqi archives.
“Iraq has been subjected to the biggest theft of its manuscripts and historic treasures,” he said. “Israel is accomplice to this.”
According to archeologists, the Iraqi Jewish archive contains almost 3,000 documents and 1,700 antiques that chronicle the eras in which Jews were enslaved in Iraq during the first and second eras of Babylonian captivity. The collection also comprises belongings of Jews who lived in Iraq.
Among the most important items in the collection are the oldest copies of the Talmud and the Old Testament. That is why, experts argue, the former Iraqi regime kept the collection guarded in the intelligence building.
Description of the Iraqi Jewish ArchiveThis was written in 2003, and there have been no updates since which give any indication of earlier material in the archive.
The Iraqi Jewish Archive contains 16th-20th century Jewish rare books, correspondence and document files, pamphlets, modern books, audio tape and parchment scrolls. Languages represented in the Archive include Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic and English (a few items).
The following descriptive information, provided by Hebraic and Arabic area study specialists at the Library of Congress, was gleaned from the photographs taken of the frozen materials in the open trunks. Once the materials are dried and have had the mold remediated it will be possible to provide a clearer and more detailed assessment of the contents.
∑ Hebraic materials. The Hebraica includes an eclectic mix of materials, ranging from holiday and daily prayer books, Bibles and commentaries, sections from a damaged Torah scroll, books on Jewish law, as well as children's Hebrew language and Bible primers. The printed books were published in a variety of places, including Baghdad, Warsaw, Livorno, and Venice, and most are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rare works include:
∑ the 'Ketubim' volume of the monumental Third Rabbinic Bible that was published in Venice by Giovanni di Gara in 1568; and
∑ what appears to be Abraham Brudo's 'Birkat Avraham,' which was published in Venice in 1696.
∑ Arabic materials. The Arabic materials include both hand-written and printed items pertaining to the Jewish community of Iraq, some produced by the Jewish community and others from official governmental sources. In addition, there are items that do not appear to have any connection to the Jewish community at all. The materials include:
∑ a handwritten document, dated September 5, 1966, which appears to be a request for names for a board of directors of the Jewish community;
∑ a school roster Madrasat Furnak (second part unclear) with both male and female names, which dates primarily to August-September 1966-67;
∑ a collection that includes the law of the Jewish community #77 for 1931 and the organization of the Jewish community #36 of 1931, published by the Jewish Charitable Organization in 1932;
∑ an official Iraqi report to the Minister of Interior (and various directorates) reporting on important events, dated 16/2/2000.
Now there is a lot of important, interesting, and cool stuff here, but nothing copied or printed before early modernity. It is ridiculous to claim that ancient copies of the Talmud or the Hebrew Bible were included. Had this been true it would have been worked out early on, and specialists would have been all over the collection. It is true that there were early reports of a seventh-century Talmud in the collection, but these were debunked by the beginnning of 2004.
Back to the Al Arabiya article:
Experts add that Israel is keen on obtaining the manuscripts in order to prove their claim that the Jews had built the Tower of Babel as part of its attempt to distort the history of the Middle East for its own interests.Because the controversy over who built the Tower of Babel is central to the geopolitics of 2012.
Now bah to Jawad Al-Tattab for writing such ignorant propaganda and to Al Arabiya for publishing it. But double bah to Elhanan Miller and The Times of Israel for falling for it and propagating it. Their research seems to have consisted of reading the Al Arabiya article, then calling some Iraqi government officials and the IAA, with this result:
Saad Bashir Iskandar, director general of the books and documents department of the Iraqi ministry, said the Americans insisted on removing the artifacts from Iraq. The items were stored in no less than 48,000 boxes and containers, he said.The factual information from the Iraqi officials is of mixed quality: notably, we're talking about 27 metal trunks of manuscripts, which would not hold 48,000 boxes. (Didn't that number sound at all implausible to anyone?) As for the delay, the challenge of carrying out the massive conservation project (and raising the money for it) adequately explains the "procrastination." And I don't blame the IAA for wanting to stay out of the whole thing.
“Our ongoing negotiations with the Americans always run up against barriers of procrastination,” Taher Hamoud, director general of the Culture Ministry told Al-Arabiya. He added that the documents contained within the archive in question are 70% in Hebrew, 25% in Arabic and 5% in other languages.
A spokeswoman for Israel’s Antiquities Authority told The Times of Israel she had no information on the Iraqi allegations.
I would have thought that the stuff about the Tower of Babel would have hinted to pretty much anyone that there were problems with the Al Arabiya piece. And had anyone at The Times of Israel bothered to Google "Iraqi Jewish Archive," they would have found the Iraqi Jewish Archive Preservation Report on the first results page, which would have cleared up much of the nonsense. It is disappointing that the recent example of shoe-leather reporting by their own Matti Friedman did not inspire them to do some real research.
Anyone who wants the full story of the Iraqi Jewish Archive from its discovery in 2003 to the present can follow the PaleoJudaica links here (AP link has rotted) and here all the way back to the original story.
As for who gets the archive, after its treatment of its own Jewish community in the 20th century, I think Iraq's claim is tenuous at best. But the real issue is what is best for the archive itself, as part of the historical heritage not only of Iraqi Judaism, but of humanity. I have commented on this at greater length here and here and links.