Apparently the losses at the Iraqi National Museum are not as bad as originally feared. If I'm reading this right, the really special stuff -- the items kept in the glass cases, for all to see -- were taken to "special secure repositories", whose locations we are now keeping secret so as to protect them. This is good news. But I'm afraid I don't take much solace in the fact that looting was apparently largely confined to the basements where "more commonplace" items were kept, because it's later admitted that most of that stuff was not cataloged or photographed.
That means that we really don't have any idea what the hell was down there.
History is replete with all manner of precious, even priceless, items sitting unnoticed in uncataloged library archives, all over the world. Just recently, some manuscript work by JRR Tolkien was found in precisely such a state. So I have to say, even if it's not as bad as originally feared, it's still pretty horrible.
And I'm not sure what to make of the fact that we now apparently know the locations of Iraq's art treasures to a much greater degree of precision than the locations of those WMDs that we invaded to find in the first place.
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
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