Fears for treasures of civilisation

By DAVID KEYS

While the armchair soldiers watched on television as the fog of war enveloped Iraq, scholars have been anxiously waiting to see how the country's unrivalled archaeological heritage survives.

At the request of the United States military, American and British archaeologists gave the Americans a list of 4000 Iraqi archaeological and historical sites and their locations, and the US Army was known to be anxious not to damage them. Indeed, special guidance was issued to troops.

However, the fear was that if any Iraqi forces were to base themselves in the labyrinthine ruins of Babylon or on the tops of key vantages points like ziggurat temple pyramids, US forces might be tempted to respond with catastrophic effects.

The skirmishing nature of the military campaign and the speed of the collapse of substantial organised resistance offers hope.

The approaches to Baghdad which had been predicted would be the site of the fiercest resistance offer particularly rich treasures. At least a dozen archaeological and historical monuments of international importance include:

Ctesiphon, former capital of the Persian (Sassanian) Empire. Located on the southwestern outskirts of Baghdad, it is around 30km from the city centre. The site includes the largest single-span ancient brick vault in the world - once the roof of the throne room of the fifth-century Persian imperial palace.

Aqarquf was the capital of Mesopotamia around 1500BC. With a huge ziggurat temple pyramid, it is located near the notorious Abu Ghuraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, 15km west of the city centre.

The Khan Marjan Palace and other monuments from medieval Islamic Baghdad include a 14th-century hotel, two mosques and one of the oldest universities in the world. Baghdad was founded by early Muslims and became the capital of the vast eighth to 10th-century Abbasid Empire which stretched from Spain to India.

Sippar was a great Babylonian city and centre for the worship of the ancient Mesopotamian god of justice. Located 40km south of Baghdad, it has an impressive 18th-century BC temple pyramid.

Babylon, a huge expanse of ruins, is the most famous of all Mesopotamian cities. Located outside the modern town of Hillah, 80km south of Baghdad, it was the capital of an ancient kingdom 4000 years ago and continued as a major city for more than 15 centuries. Its great kings included Hammurabi and Nabuchadnezza, both of whom have modern Iraqi Republican Guard divisions named after them. In the seventh century BC Babylon was the capital of the Babylonian Empire which stretched from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. It was the scene of the Jewish Babylonian captivity and the death of Alexander the Great who wanted to make it his capital.

Kish was the capital - in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC - of one of the world's first empires. Under its famous king Sargon the Great (with whom Saddam Hussein sometimes identified himself), it controlled much of Mesopotamia. The site has a substantial ziggurat temple pyramid.

In Baghdad itself, the Iraq National Museum is one of the most important museums in the world, comparable - in terms of early archaeological treasures - to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan in New York and the British Museum in London. It houses more than 100,000 ancient treasures including spectacular sculptures and bass reliefs, ancient texts and beautiful ceramics. The exhibits, dating from 7000BC to AD1000, chronicle the achievements of the Uruk, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian and early Islamic civilisations.

In the last Gulf War, looters broke into more than 10 provincial Iraqi museums and stole 5000 priceless archaeological exhibits.

But this time 30 Iraqi academics have bravely taken up residence in Baghdad's Iraq Museum, night and day, to protect the collection.

Fears are held too for the safety of important archaeological and historic treasures in other parts of Iraq - especially Mosul in the north. Mosul has more than a dozen of the world's earliest churches (with brick domes dating from the seventh and eighth centuries AD) and Iraq's equivalent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa - a beautiful 12th-century leaning minaret.

Most of the palaces and temples and mosques of those ancient civilisations crumbled many centuries ago. But between 10,000 and 100,000 archaeological sites hold the enduring remains.

It is not only warfare itself that is a danger. Charles Tripp, of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, warned that in the wake of the Gulf War, sanctions had inadvertently caused as much damage to the archaeological sites of Iraq as direct attack.

The conditions of poverty had led to much looting of archaeological sites and site museums, which often contained significant finds even after the best items were removed to Baghdad. Numerous finds have turned up on the art market in the West.

"There is a lot of temptation in a destitute country to rip something out that has a saleable value in the West," Dr Tripp said.

Herald Feature: Iraq war