More finds retrieved by Antiquities Department
Azzaman, May 6, 2008
The Antiquities Department has acquired 463 artifacts uncovered illegally from ancient sites in the country.
The finds were delivered to the Iraq Museum by ordinary Iraqi citizens who said they had purchased them from smugglers and illegal diggers.
“All the pieces were unearthed illegally from archaeological sites in the country,” the department said in a statement.
Iraqis delivering finds to the museum are rewarded financially. The department asks no questions on how they came into their possession and presses no charges.
The statement said some of the artifacts were damaged and would be passed to the department’s repair and maintenance section to have them repaired.
Excavation is an extremely delicate and demanding business and digging requires long experience and considerable expertise and skill, the qualities no illegal digger can have or even care about.
The treasures, according to the statement, represented cylinder seals, pots, cups and other utensils some of them of high quality.
The statement did not say how much the department had to pay for their retrieval.
But the high number of artifacts – all archaeologically significant – shows that illegal digging is widely practiced in Iraq where thousands of mounds belonging to different ancient civilizations now lie unprotected.
