Friday, June 25, 2010

The Kuwait Museum's Missing Treasures

The Guardian Newspaper recently carried this interesting article about artifacts missing from Kuwait's national museum. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/21/kuwait-lost-treasures-stolen-riches-rift-iraq The looting of the Iraq Museum in the aftermath of the 2003 American invasion became a cause celebre for the archaeological community. In contrast, the looting of Kuwait's museum in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of that country has been largely ignored, even though valuable pieces remain missing two decades later.

Ironically, some of the artifacts ended up on display in the Iraq Museum, before they were ultimately returned under pressure before the Second Gulf War. As far as I know, there has been nothing published about whether Saddam's regime involved Iraq Museum personnel in transferring artifacts there for "safekeeping."

1 comment:

Dorothy King said...

Donny George told me that they did, and that during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait his role was to pack up the contents of museums and private collections and ship them back to Baghdad.