Searching for history

Thursday, April 10, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

Looters hit the Iraqi National Museum in April 2003, making off with about 15,000 artifacts that, according to one archaeologist, represent “the rise of civilization in the Western world.”

Among the stolen goods are artifacts dating back more than 7,000 years, when Iraq was known as Mesopotamia and was home to people who were among the first to build cities and to write. Some of the items went missing just before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but many were looted in the wake of the invasion.

About half of the items have been recovered over the past five years, experts say. Bonnie Magness-Gardner, an archaeologist with the FBI, said the missing items are of such global cultural import that the FBI and Interpol, the international police agency, have not ceased looking for the rest, the Los Angeles Times reported this week.

U.S. Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a New York assistant district attorney who specializes in locating missing antiquities, told the Times that there is more at stake than simply the number of items stolen. “These things remind us of our common beginnings,” he said.

It might be difficult to fathom just how important these ancient artifacts and trinkets from Iraq are to our own cultural history. Certainly, as Americans we can imagine the sorrow and outrage we would feel if thieves ransacked the Smithsonian Institution’s museums and made off with artifacts dating back to our nation’s oldest tribes and societies.

The items stored within the National Museum of Iraq came from an era and a civilization that helped provide the foundation for the societies of today’s Western nations.

In essence, these missing artifacts belong to all of us, and it is important that the FBI and others continue in their efforts to recover these treasures.