Iraqi national museum reopens for the first time since 2003

by Yuliya Talmazan | February 23, 2009 at 05:11 pm

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Savagely looted in 2003 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraq’s national museum lost numerous one-of-a-kind artifacts of high historical and cultural value. Rarest exhibition samples were lost forever as the result of uncontrolled, vicious looting that took place at the museum back in 2003. Six years later, the Iraqi museum is functional and open to visitors, despite the fact that only 8 of its 26 galleries are open. The opening of the museum took place under a veil of secrecy with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki presiding over the ceremony. Ordinary Iraqis were nowhere to be seen with only invited dignitaries in attendance. Iraq’s Ministry of Culture was against the rushed opening of the museum, saying most of the exhibits were not ready for the display yet. However, al-Maliki decided to go ahead with the opening of the museum despite the warnings.

Well over half the exhibition halls in Iraq’s National Museum are closed, darkened and in disrepair. And yet, the museum whose looting in 2003 became a symbol of the chaos that followed the American invasion officially reopened on Monday.

Thousands of works from its collection of antiquities and art — some of civilization’s earliest objects — remain lost.

The smell of fresh paint infuses the Room of Treasures, which even now is deemed safe enough for only photographs of the intricate gold and gem-studded jewelry made in Nimrud nearly 3,000 years ago, not the real thing.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki pushed to reopen the museum, against the advice of his own Culture Ministry, as a sign of Iraqi progress. Symbol it was, and symbol it remains — not only of how much Iraq has improved, but of how far it has to go.

Heavily armed soldiers patrolled the museum’s roof and watched from sandbagged redoubts as Mr. Maliki, other senior officials and foreign diplomats arrived. Helicopters thudded in the sky, and the police blocked streets for miles around.

Inside, in stark contrast, visitors filled 8 of the museum’s 26 galleries, engaged in hushed conversations before glass cases displaying ancient pottery and sculptures, cuneiform tablets from Sumerian and Babylonian times, and the stunning 2,700-year-old stone reliefs from the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II at Khorsabad.

On Monday ordinary Iraqis — that is, those not invited — could get only as close as the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the museum’s collection of buildings, offices and warehouses at the corner of Qahira and Nasir Streets in central Baghdad. Dozens clutched the fence’s bars and shouted out appeals, vainly, to the prime minister or other officials who came and left in armored convoys.

When Iraqis may actually see for themselves a collection of relics and art that spans millenniums was a question even the museum’s deputy director, Muhsin Hassan Ali, dared not answer, even when pressed.

Ministry of Culture, whose officials argued that the museum and its collection were not yet ready for the public. They complained that the holdings were in disarray, many of them waiting to be cataloged, and that the museum’s basic security remained in doubt.

Mr. Maliki’s government, though, overruled such objections, and Monday’s ceremony went ahead — without Mr. Jabiri and other Culture Ministry officials, who boycotted in protest.

For a day at least, once Mr. Maliki’s entourage departed, people once again walked freely through the museum’s galleries, which still showed wear in places, despite the new paint.

The museum, also known as the Iraq Museum, has been extensively, if not completely, refurbished with financial assistance from Italy and the United States, including a $14 million grant announced last fall by Laura Bush. It still requires a heating and cooling system, security systems and training for a staff that has remained in professional limbo for years.