Unsung Inventors
In Greek, Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers and was used by the ancients to describe the civilizations that emerged from the land between the Tigris and Euphrates. Known as the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia was the birthplace of the wheel, writing, mathematics, law and astronomy. The world owes much of its science and religion to ancient engineering and pagan practices that are rooted in Iraqi lands.
Out of Mesopotamia emerged the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations who dominated the region from circa 3,500 BCE through 539 BCE—when Babylon fell to the Persian Empire under the reign king Cyrus. Collectively these ancient civilizations drove the advancement of science, established law, charted the heavens and dove deep into the psyche of man through deep spiritual practices.
Assyria was located in what is today Iraq and Syria. As the empire expanded, it encompassed territories stretching from modern-day Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Lebanon and Kuwait, to make up what historians refer to as the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
The Fertile Crescent (today’s Middle East) housed many early settlements and stretched south-west from Mesopotamia towards the Levant and Egypt. The Mediterranean Levant was first populated circa 10,000 BCE and resembles a crescent moon that arcs over the region, hence the name—but the first advanced civilizations appeared in Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamian civilizations developed agriculture, urban cities, warfare science, time, religions and museums full of ingenious inventions. The Baghdad battery is a controversial ancient invention that rewires our contemporary understanding of how and when man harnessed electric power.
Today, we still tell esoteric stories about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; resembling the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. We build skyscrapers that reach into clouds in the image of the Tower of Babel. We have complex judicial systems that started with Hammurabi’s laws. We archive data online just as scholars translated and preserved scrolls in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad hundreds of years ago.
In his book History Begins at Sumer, Samuel Noah Kramer lists the 39 ‘firsts’ in human civilization:
The First Schools, The First Case of ‘Apple Polishing’, The First Case of Juvenile Delinquency, The First ‘War of Nerves’, The First Bicameral Congress, The First Historian, The First Case of Tax Reduction, The First ‘Moses’, The First Legal Precedent, The First Pharmacopoeia, The First ‘Farmer’s Almanac’, The First Experiment in Shade-Tree Gardening, Man’s First Cosmogony and Cosmology, The First Moral Ideals, The First ‘Job’, The First Proverbs and Sayings, The First Animal Fables, The First Literary Debates, The First Biblical Parallels, The First ‘Noah’, The First Tale of Resurrection, The First ‘St. George’, The First Case of Literary Borrowing, Man’s First Heroic Age, The First Love Song, The First Library Catalogue, Man’s First Golden Age, The First ‘Sick’ Society, The First Liturgic Laments, The First Messiahs, The First Long-Distance Champion, The First Literary Imagery, The First Sex Symbolism, The First Mater Dolorosa, The First Lullaby, The First Literary Portrait, The First Elegies, Labor’s First Victory, The First Aquarium. (source)
Cultural Terrorism
“.القاهرة تكتب وبيروت تطبع وبغداد تقرأ”
“Cairo writes, Beirut prints, Baghdad reads.” — Arabic saying.
Thousands of priceless Mesopotamian artifacts have been stolen, destroyed and lost under the rubble of conflict. What’s confusing and troubling were the actions of ISIS terrorists in 2015 as they destroyed historic artifacts in Iraq’s second largest museum on camera. These barbaric actions are not only crimes against Iraq but crimes against our collective human heritage.
We cannot blame ISIS entirely since the U.S. military opened the floodgates to artifact destruction during the illegal invasion of 2003. The damage that many ancient sites have endured sound like something out of an American war movie. Perhaps the troops didn’t understand that you cannot turn a UNESCO world heritage site into a barracks for desert skirmishes.
News channels tell the story of Iraq’s lost archaeological treasures and broadcast cinematic “unverified” ISIL videos without expert analysis or details on the specific artifacts that were plundered and power tooled down. Later updated articles claim that some of the statues destroyed were fakes. With so many clashing stories and synchronized broadcasts, how is the average viewer supposed to make sense of what’s really happening and what the bigger agenda is?
Culture is history, and deleting history wipes out the cultural identity that binds together a nation rich in heritage and natural resources. The biggest names in foreign media have been playing the ‘Islamist’ bogeyman mantra for decades which has resulted in prejudice towards Muslims in the West. When one questions all the allegations, unverified claims and attacks on the Middle East from mainstream news, it always points to one thing, oil.
In the digital age, it’s easy to keep a nation divided if the people are under deep media hypnosis. If media propaganda, political strong-arming and trade sanctions don’t work as a resource control mechanism, an elaborate Hollywood style invasion—like our Americans friends do so well—is the result.
Important Artifacts:
- The Cyrus Cylinder (British Museum, London)
- Codex Hammurapi / Hammurabi’s Law (Louvre Museum, Paris)
- The Flood Tablet / The Gilgamesh Tablet (British Museum, London)
Curator’s comments: “This object is the single most famous cuneiform text and caused a sensation when its content was first read in the 19th century because of its similarity to the Flood story in the Book of Genesis. Baked clay tablet inscribed with the Babylonian account of the Flood.”
It is the 11th Tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh and tells how the gods determined to send a flood to destroy the earth, but one of them, Ea, revealed the plan to Utu-napishtim whom he instructed to make a boat in which to save himself and his family. He orders him to take into it birds and beasts of all kinds. Utu-napishtim obeyed and when all were aboard and the door shut the rains descended and all the rest of mankind perished.
- The Sumerian King List/The Weld-Blundell Prism (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
- Mask of Warka (Iraq Museum, Baghdad)
- Plimpton 322 Tablet (Columbia University, New York)
Intergovernmental Sabotage
In the past, empires that toppled challenger states were skilled in systematically dismantling civilizations. Burning libraries of knowledge, destroying priceless art, prioritizing the murder of societies’ intelligentsia and the annexation of indigenous tribes, was business as usual in the game of empire. And of course, the bigger the empire games, the bigger the souvenirs and mementos for kings of old.
In April of 2003, trigger happy U.S. soldiers—under the Bush administration—invaded and occupied Iraq. During the onslaught tens of thousands of artifacts were looted from Iraqi museums. Somehow, a cache of looted artifacts ended up in the United States, which means the military ‘WMD’ (& oil) raid turned into a grab-n-go artifact spree at the expense of the Iraqi people.
In the age of digital diplomacy, economic hitmen and soft power, re-erecting obelisks as cultural trophies and symbols of dominance is shifting into more sophisticated forms of ideological assertion. Foreign resource allocation is also getting more sophisticated with less boots on the ground and more financially rigged futures contracts. Aid packages riddled with suspicious fine print to legally squeeze developing countries is also a popular financial control instrument used by pseudo-entities.
How would the spirits of China’s dynasties feel if Trump’s United States of America Inc. dismantled and relocated their Great Wall to the south of Texas? Surely that will cost more in geopolitical relations than petrodollars. Hypocrisy hides behind false narratives projected on misinformed citizens—in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.
You cannot buy culture, neither from a Christie’s auction nor your friendly neighborhood black market dealer—which is sadly where lost artifacts of conflict end up.
Reference notes:
University of Chicago: The Rape of Mesopotamia
“Nothing can put all the artifacts back into the museum’s displace cases or restore to us the history obliterated by the trashing of thousands of previously untouched archeological sites. But we can — we must — try to at least salvage some lessons about what went wrong in the past, or, as Santayana warns, we will be condemned to repeat it. It is with that purpose in mind that I offer this autopsy of a cultural disaster.”
“…With The Rape of Mesopotamia, Lawrence Rothfield answers the complicated question of how this wholesale thievery was allowed to occur. Drawing on extensive interviews with soldiers, bureaucrats, war planners, archaeologists, and collectors, Rothfield reconstructs the planning failures — originating at the highest levels of the U.S. government — that led to the invading forces’ utter indifference to the protection of Iraq’s cultural heritage from looters. Widespread incompetence and miscommunication on the part of the Pentagon, unchecked by the disappointingly weak advocacy efforts of worldwide preservation advocates, enabled a tragedy that continues even today, despite widespread public outrage…”
University of Oxford: A Brief History of Archaeology in Mesopotamia
“In 2003, following the Coalition invasion of Iraq, the highly publicized looting of the Iraq Museum resulted in the loss of thousands of documents and artifacts that had been the fruit of 150 years of archaeology in Mesopotamia. Beyond the losses of the museum itself, the looting of archaeological sites will no doubt have a disastrous effect on the future of archaeological research in Iraq.”
Khan Academy: Assyrian art, an introduction
“In 2015, a chilling video circulated online, showed people associated with ISIS destroying ancient artifacts in both the museum in Mosul, Iraq and at the nearby ancient archaeological site of ancient Nineveh. Their targets included the lamassu figures that stood at one of the many ceremonial gates to the ancient city, which was a major capital of the Assyrian empire.”
BBC News: Riddle of ‘Baghdad’s batteries’
“War can destroy more than a people, an army or a leader. Culture, tradition and history also lie in the firing line. Iraq has a rich national heritage. The Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel are said to have been sited in this ancient land. In any war, there is a chance that priceless treasures will be lost forever, articles such as the “ancient battery” that resides defenceless in the museum of Baghdad…”
Huffington Post: Brutal Destruction Of Iraq’s Archaeological Sites Continues
“…The United States military turned the site of ancient Babylon into Camp Alpha in 2003 and 2004, inflicting serious damage according to an exhaustive damage assessment recently released by UNESCO. Bulldozers leveled many of Babylon’s artifact-laden hills. Helicopters caused structural damage to an ancient theater…
…Thousands of cuneiform-inscribed tablets, cylinder seals, and stone statues have illegally made their way to the lucrative antiquities markets of London, Geneva, and New York. Irreplaceable artifacts have been purchased for less than $100 on Ebay…
…Rumsfeld was equally indifferent about the looting of more than 15,000 objects from the National Museum in Baghdad on his watch. “Stuff happens,” he said…
…The use of Babylon as a military base was a grave encroachment on the ancient site. Several areas were leveled to serve as parking lots. Heavy vehicles destroyed relics buried near the surface. Troops filled sandbags with soil full of archaeological fragments...”
The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins: Chapter 31 — An EHM Failure in Iraq
“…Today, it is common knowledge that whoever controls Iraq holds a trump card in the Middle East. Above all else, Iraq presented a vast market for American technology and engineering expertise. The fact that it sits atop one of the world’s most extensive oil fields (by some estimates, even greater than Saudi Arabia’s) ensuring that it was in a position to finance huge infrastructure and industrialization programs. All the major players—engineering and construction companies; computer systems suppliers; aircraft, missile, and tank manufacturers; and pharmaceutical and chemical companies—were focused on Iraq. However, by the late 1980s it was apparent that Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario…”
United States Department of Justice: United States Files Civil Action To Forfeit Thousands Of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby
“As alleged in the complaint, these ancient clay artifacts originated in the area of modern-day Iraq and were smuggled into the United States through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, contrary to federal law. The shipping labels on these packages falsely described cuneiform tablets as tile “samples.”
Smithsonian: Looting Iraq
“Objects were unearthed from backyards, fished out of a cesspool, recovered in pre-dawn raids. Some simply reappeared on museum shelves. Other treasures were seized from international antiquities markets in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and New York. A scholar returning from the war zone was collared at John F. Kennedy International Airport and convicted of smuggling three 4,000-year-old cylinder seals from the museum’s collection.”
The Guardian: Isis fighters destroy ancient artefacts at Mosul museum, In Iraq’s four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals
“…In front of something like this, we are speechless,” said Gabriel. “Murder of people and destruction is not enough, so even our civilisation and the culture of our people is being destroyed…”
“…Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today’s Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don’t. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre…
…It is abundantly clear that the Americans and British are not protecting Iraq’s historic sites. All foreign archaeologists have had to leave. Troops are doing nothing to prevent the “farming” of known antiquities. This is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention that an occupying army should “use all means within its power” to guard the cultural heritage of a defeated state.
Shortly after the invasion, the British minister Tessa Jowell won plaudits for “pledging” £5m to protect Iraq’s antiquities. I can find no one who can tell me where, how or whether this money has been spent. It appears to have been pure spin…”
