A group of archaeologists and art historians are angry at the looting of Iraq's cultural heritage -- and at the U.S. government for allowing it. They're using technology to retrieve what they can find.
U.S. forces in Iraq promised to guard museums and archaeological sites and then, after the rampage, dismissed the seriousness of the crimes. At least, that's what the group that is trying to document what's missing claims.
Working to locate those treasures -- which reach back 7,000 years to the advent of civilization -- archaeologists are building a comprehensive, searchable image database of the tens of thousands of objects that are missing and presumed to be in the hands of professional art thieves.
The Lost Iraqi Heritage project is a joint effort of over 80 universities, museums and individuals working to create a tool that law enforcement, customs officials and art dealers can use to prevent the sale and export of stolen objects. The group, which is coordinated by professors at the University of Chicago, includes the Archaeological Institute of America, University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan.
Archaeologists say they are motivated by what they see as an unprecedented, incalculable loss.
"Imagine if Michelangelo's statue of David and the Mona Lisa and the Magna Carta and Botticelli's paintings and all the major Impressionist painters' works were in one museum that got looted," said Dr. Clemens Reichel, a research associate at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.
Nicholas Kouchoukos, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago who heads up the technical effort, says the project will be built in phases. The first online effort is to display images of some of the most famous pieces from the museum in order to show the extent of the losses.
Iraq's Lost Heritage will be the backbone of an extensive effort to catalog the losses, as well as to facilitate the objects' return and the rebuilding of the Iraq Museum. The first version will show only images of the museum's known masterpieces, but the organizers plan to turn it into a searchable database as soon as possible.
The effort faces severe challenges. Little is known outside Iraq about the extent of the holdings, which makes the process of learning what has been looted almost impossible.
The museum's own records were apparently destroyed in the two days of looting. Some say that was an attempt on the part of professional art thieves to cover their trail. The hope is that smashed computer hard drives can be salvaged.
But even if the information can be retrieved, Kouchoukos says the computerized records included only a small fraction of the collection -- the museum's access to software and hardware was extremely limited during the 12-year embargo against Iraq.
The database is being populated with images from published books and museum exhibition catalogs, as well as unpublished images from scholar's notes and from institutions that excavated artifacts in Iraq and documented them before turning them over to the museum.
Copyright laws also complicate the task, requiring the permission of those who have photographed these items.
Reichel, the project's coordinator, said publishing houses have granted permission to publish their copyrighted images, and museums and researchers will permit the display of previously unpublished images.
Kouchoukos says the group will watermark each image, both visibly and digitally, to make sure that copyright holders don't lose control of their images.
"We will never be able to fully recreate what was in the museum," said Reichel.
Perhaps the second biggest unknown is whether Iraq Museum officials approve of the idea.
"We still don't know whether the Iraqi curators want us to do this," said Oriental Institute Professor McGuire Gibson, who has been involved in archaeological digs in Iraq since 1964. "If they don't want the entire catalog on the Web, then we won't publish it."
The group has not been able to contact any museum employees -- the only communication in and out of the country presently is through satellite phone. However, Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum is in Baghdad to meet with museum officials and survey the damage.
On May 8th, a group of archaeologists will travel to Baghdad to meet with officials in order to address what Kouchoukos calls "key ethical questions." For instance, how much should the public be allowed to see? Nobody wants the site to aid the illegal sale of artifacts by verifying their authenticity.
Kouchoukos stresses that these conversations will be essential to determining the format and content of the system, given that the long-term goal is to turn the database and the website over to the museum.
In the meantime, Kouchoukos is using PostgreSQL, an open-source Unix database application developed in Berkeley in the 1980s, to create the database's backend.
A self-described "dedicated open-sourcer," Kouchoukos says he chose the application because he thinks it is the most stable and balanced database application. He also worries that a database built on commercial platforms could be subject to export restrictions.
Kouchoukos wants the database to be much more than a law-enforcement tool.
"This is something we want to hand over as the information technology backbone for the museum as it rebuilds," said Kouchoukos. The database could run on Linux or Mac OS X.
Because of the need for quick action, the project is currently relying on donations from individuals and some money from the University of Chicago. However, the group is searching for grants from foundations and hopes to get funding from government agencies, such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
But "the government moves too slowly," as one archaeologist dryly noted, a reference to the lack of U.S. response when the treasures were looted.
So far, the much criticized State Department has not been involved in the project, though its International Cultural Property Protection office, which works to prevent the illegal sale of cultural artifacts, does link to the project from its website.
On April 14, Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a statement that said that individuals in possession of looted items from Iraqi museums or archaeological sites would be prosecuted under the National Stolen Property Act.
Both Interpol and the FBI have teams of agents heading to Iraq to start tracking down the stolen artworks. For its part, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, held a meeting of 30 experts in Paris on April 17th and is planning to send a delegation to Iraq as soon as possible.
But according to Dr. Ellen Herscher, an anthropologist with the Archaeological Institute of America, all these efforts may be too late.
Although Herscher supports the image database project, she doubts whether much of the looted heritage will be recovered by the FBI or by Customs.
"First of all, these professionals will launder it, then go through a couple of middlemen and get fake papers," said Herscher. "And these people are willing to sit on this stuff for years and years. They aren't going to be bringing it in this week or next week."
"Right now, Customs and the FBI are being very vigilant about looking for these works," continued Herscher. "But how long are they going to stay vigilant?"
