Iraq Museum Looting (Lioness Attacking a Nubian & Cylinder Seals)
Region — where it (roughly) is
Land & claims · BLM · live
The story
In the spring of 2003, as Baghdad fell, the cradle of civilization was robbed in broad daylight. The Iraq National Museum — keeper of artifacts reaching back to the dawn of writing — was looted, and the early reports put the loss at a catastrophic 170,000 objects. That number was a miscount. The true figure, established as the dust settled, was about 15,000 items taken. It was still one of the great cultural crimes of the age.
The recovery effort that followed reads like a global manhunt for history itself. Roughly half of the looted items have since been returned, clawed back through years of painstaking work. The case became the FBI Art Crime Team's number one priority; Colonel Matthew Bogdanos and the US Marines pursued the stolen pieces on the ground; Interpol circulated alerts worldwide; and the ICOM Iraq Red List warned dealers and collectors against trafficking the treasures of Mesopotamia.
But the ledger is not closed. Thousands of cylinder seals — those tiny engraved cylinders used to sign and seal documents in the ancient world — remain missing. So does the "Lioness Attacking a Nubian," an exquisite 8th-century-BC ivory plaque from Nimrud. These are not legends waiting to be found; they are documented losses, catalogued and hunted, somewhere out in the world's black markets, still gone.
Fact vs. legend: The 2003 looting of the Iraq National Museum, the corrected count of about 15,000 items, the roughly half recovered, the still-missing cylinder seals and the "Lioness Attacking a Nubian" ivory, and the work of the FBI, Bogdanos and the Marines, Interpol, and ICOM are all documented.
Search area: The point marks the Iraq National Museum, Baghdad, Iraq — the search area or landmark, not the treasure, whose exact location is unknown.