If stolen cultural artifacts are the third most lucrative black market trade after drugs and weapons, what is more alarming we need to know?
There is an Arabic saying, “unattended goods invites theft”..
making our country Iraq a big open buffet of valuable goods to plunder.. unattended by default or intentional ignorance, it doesn’t matter..
but the problem we have is not only the theft of valuable artifacts but also the theft of the heritage, traditions, the stories and the history, misleading and marginalizing them..
a time before time maybe 7000 years ago or more, in Mesopotamia/ Iraq there was Inanna the goddess, her symbols the eight pointed star, the camomile flower the lion.. Goddess of Summer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria..
Her mythology and symbolism trespassed into various other cultures.
Objects and fragments still present today can be admired in museums all over the world... inspiring artists, designers, poets and writers alike through all times.
Note: for those who still don't know Mesopotamia: it’s modern day IRAQ!
The land between the two rivers Wadi Al-Rafidain, Dijlah and Furat, the Tigris and the Euphrates...
thus Mesopotamia is a rich source of inspiration..
It is always fascinating to learn about the origin, the source of the inspiring "seed", the cultures, the civilizations, the roots, that influenced the artworks.. giving them credit and respect..
regarding the Mesopotamian/Iraqi
culture/civilization artifacts, I’ve noticed the credit for its origin somehow always seems to "fall off" the descriptive signs, whether “unintentionally” or very intentionally it doesn't really make a difference... what I can say after longer observation of various museum displays, descriptions, information signs, books, magazines, documentaries etc... is that somehow the geographical provenance of the artifacts findings seems to be missing, the country of origin of the piece, Ur, Uruk, Lagash, may be written but the whereabouts of those cities on the modern day map (southern Iraq) seems almost always “unknown”.
(mind you, I am only talking about the official institutions, not the third rate "mushroom" galleries, housing valuable looted artifacts, there of course no proper provenance is declared).
Ignorance, hardships, wars, crises, life struggles distracted us from having our heritage and history at the top of the priority list where it should be.
This precious and heavy geographical heritage is our responsibility to preserve, to carry, to pass on to the coming generations... it's definitely not ours to neglect, trade, auction, or worse to assist in its defamation..
reasearching, studying, reviving symbols, historical facts, names, places, stories transforming them in art work, documentations, posts, blogs, is the least that can be done..
The quest may seem complicated, a long lonely path, a small drop in a vast ocean, but oceans are made of small drops, and I firmly believe that at some point these small drops will come together to create a large wave that will adjust and highlight the forgotten history, the intentionally hidden provenance, correct the ownership of the heritage, protect and prevent further marginalization, plagiarism and the hijacking of our Iraqi/Mesopotamian civilization.
Rima Al-Juburi
Vienna Nov. 2024
*painting: fragment from “Inanna is watching” 2023