Part of 17,000 recovered artifacts are related to Kurdistan

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Kaifi Mustafa, the Director-General of artifacts of the Kurdistan Region, announced that many recovered artifacts are related to the Kurdistan region.

Mustafa stated: "a part of the artifacts that returned to Iraq lately is related to the Kurdistan region." 

He explained that before the 2003 events, the Iraqi teams discovered the artifacts a part of them was discovered in the Duhok governorate and delivered to the Iraqi museum. pointing out that the artifacts were not stolen in Kurdistan, but were looted in 2003.

"As the General Directorate of Archaeology of the Region, we have attempted to return all the archaeological pieces related to the Kurds in the Museums of Iraq, but our efforts were not successful and they did not allow us to retrieve them," He added.

On July 29th, 2021, The Minister of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities Hassan Nazim announced the arrival of 17,000 antiquities from the United States.
 
"The antiquities were recovered, as a result, of the efforts of Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture represented by the Antiquities and Heritage Authority, and a great effort from the Iraqi Embassy in Washington," Nazim added.
  
Laith Hussein, the head of the Antiquities and Heritage Authority, confirmed that most of the recovered antiquities return to the period of Ur III dynasty 2121-2004 BC, from the modern Sumerian era. 

On April 10th, 2003, the first looters broke into the National Museum of Iraq. Staff had vacated two days earlier, ahead of the advance of US forces on Baghdad. The museum was effectively ransacked for the next 36 hours until employees returned.
 
While the staff - showing enormous bravery and foresight - had removed and safely stored 8,366 artifacts before the looting, some 15,000 objects, were stolen during that 36 hours. While 7,000 items have been retrieved, more than 8,000 remain unaccounted for, including artifacts thousands of years old from some of the earliest sites in the Middle East.



PUKmedia