Art Part II. Messages from Mesopotamia

Donald Rumsfeld wonders why anyone would make a fuss over old pots, vases and jars. Then the Secretary of Defense says we’re doing our best to recover the millennia-old treasures.

When we were school kids, the wonders of Babylon, the mystery of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, Mesopotamia itself were etched in our minds. No one knew exactly where they were, however, even though the Hanging Gardens are still one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

When we became grown-ups and the world was absorbed with a conflict between Iran and Iraq and one of our presidents found himself caught in the Iran-Contra affair, we still were oblivious to the boundaries and the politics of those mythical places. Then George Herbert Walker Bush came to the rescue of a tiny place on an obscure faraway gulf after a megalomaniac named Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The little oil empire was hard to find on world maps, situated as it was at the top of the Persian Gulf. Saddam continued about his dirty business and we forgot about Iraq, not even connecting it with its ancient legacies. (Iran was once Persia; Iraq was once Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.)

Suddenly with Gulf War II to eliminate the Saddam terror and effect a regime change, Iraq, the Tigris, the Euphrates, camels, the desert, palatial residences became very visible —- in magazines, in newspapers, on TV. We applauded the cartographers who faithfully located the famous rivers and rejoiced. They exist!

But we never noticed or even thought about the museums — until the looters, who’d apparently been standing in the wings all along, whisked themselves in then out carrying the rare links to antiquity to sell to collectors across the globe.

These clay pots and jars, ivory sculptures including the Mona Lisa of Nimrud, cuneiform accounting tablets, Babylonian cuneiforms, gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, bronze statuettes, friezes, bas reliefs and more are our only messages from history, disclosing facts about the religion, daily living, politics and commerce thousands of years ago.

In our mind’s eye we finally behold the storied Biblical Tigris and the Euphrates; we see the unguarded museum doors and the curators standing idly by watching the pilferers, still frightened of Saddam’s power; we see the destruction of the vases and the pots and the jars spirited away.

This war has become our lesson in geography. The sudden awareness of the unique collections is our lesson in communicating. The artifacts tell a story; they tell us of the gods and goddesses who explained earthly phenomena to the people; they tell us how civilization began. We now know where the rivers flow; we know where writing began; we know what ancient peoples crafted in their attempts to communicate to each other and to posterity.

Although the well-planned Iraqi conflict lasted just 26 days, not enough concern was given to protecting Baghdad’s historic places. The consequence? The tremendous loss of museum holdings. Irreplaceable artifacts from ancient cultures in both the National Museum of Iraq and the Sipper Library (which housed the oldest library ever found on its original shelves — a collection of Babyonian clay tablets) were blatently stolen. Even banks, where some of the most revered pieces were vaulted, were sacked. We do have photographs, though; maybe the pieces will surface. Some already have. Collectors have been instructed not to purchase anything, rather to alert the authorities and hopefully return the treasures.

In the last issue of AdTalk, we spoke of the value of art. The current uproar over the ravaging of the some of the world’s most significant art should reinforce that notion. Art is as essential as food, for it nourishes the soul; it replenishes our spirit and provides depth and meaning to life. And after all, when you think about it, shouldn’t that be what our work is about?

Editor’s Note — NJ Governor James E. McGreevey has agreed to restore half the arts funding budget; push continues for full funding.