Misplaced Pages

#248751

68-470: Its origin and purpose remain unclear. Wilhelm König , at the time director of the National Museum of Iraq, suggested that the object functioned as a galvanic cell , possibly used for electroplating , or some kind of electrotherapy . There is no electroplated object known from this period, and the claims are universally rejected by archaeologists. An alternative explanation is that it functioned as

136-528: A Parthian settlement in modern day Khujut Rabu (near Baghdad , Iraq ), he discovered the alleged Baghdad Battery . In February 1939, he returned to Vienna, due to blood poisoning, where he published a book Im verlorenen Paradies. Neun Jahre Irak . In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone, of Stony Brook University , an expert on Iraqi archaeology, returning from one of the first archaeological expeditions in Iraq since 20 years, stated that she does not know

204-470: A book published in 2009. In September 2011 Iraqi officials announced the renovated museum will permanently reopen in November, protected by new climate control and security systems. The United States and Italian governments have both contributed to the renovation effort. On February 28, 2015, the museum was officially reopened by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi . The museum also has items taken from

272-482: A bronze cylinder, again sealed, with a pressed-in papyrus wrapper. Although writing could not be found on any of these largely decomposed fiber rolls, on the other hand these clay containers had been staked out with up to four metal rods made of bronze and iron sunk into the ground, their cult meaning and use are inferred. The fourth jar, also sealed, contained broken glass. In 1931, a German-American excavation expedition led by Ernst Kühnel found six more clay vessels in

340-495: A comprehensive online catalog of all cultural artifacts in the museum's collection, (2) create a virtual Baghdad Museum that is accessible to the general public over the Internet, (3) build a 3D collaborative workspace within the virtual Baghdad Museum for design and fundraising purposes, and (4) establish a resource center within the virtual Baghdad Museum for community cultural development. Various ancient items believed looted from

408-480: A few hundred yards away as the country's heritage was stripped bare." Reacting to the loss, French President Jacques Chirac on April 16, 2003, declared the incident "a crime against humanity ." When asked why the U.S. military did not try to guard the museum in the days after the invasion succeeded, Gen. Richard Myers , chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "If you remember, when some of that looting

476-505: A leading role with respect to antiquities in general but this museum in particular," but all such promises were only partially honoured considering the staggering increase in Iraqi archaeological site looting during the U.S. occupation period of Iraq. Two weeks after the museum thefts, Dr. Donny George Youkhanna , General Director Research Studies for the Board of Antiquities in Iraq, stated of

544-523: A reconstruction of the inferred battery design when filled with grape juice . W. Jansen experimented with benzoquinone (some beetles produce quinones ) and vinegar in a cell and got satisfactory performance. In 1978, Arne Eggebrecht, a past director of the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim reportedly reproduced the electroplating of gold onto a small statue. There are no (direct) written or photographic records of this experiment. In an article from

612-454: A single archaeologist, who believed that this was a " real battery". The plaster castings of objects from the Iraq museum, which are exhibited in the "Vorderasiatisches Museum" in Berlin, were made by König. This biographical article about a German archaeologist is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Iraq Museum The Iraq Museum ( Arabic : المتحف العراقي )

680-812: A storage vessel for sacred scrolls . Ten similar clay vessels had been found earlier. Four were found in 1930 in Seleucia dating to the Sassanid period. Three were sealed with bitumen and contained a bronze cylinder, again sealed, with a pressed-in papyrus wrapper containing decomposed fiber rolls. They had been held in place with up to four bronze and iron rods sunk into the ground, and their cult meaning and use are inferred. Six other clay vessels were found nearby in Ctesiphon . Some had bronze wrappers with badly decomposed cellulose fibers. Others had iron nails or lead plates. The artifact disappeared in 2003 during

748-512: A targeting problem," to be dealt with by those flying bombing missions. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld , speaking about the museum's looting, said "stuff happens" and "to try to pass off the fact of that unfortunate activity to a deficit in the war plan strikes me as a stretch," and described the period of looting in general as "untidiness." Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "The United States understands its obligations and will be taking

SECTION 10

#1732765094249

816-498: A young man, originally found in the village Basitke in the northern part of Iraq, an Akkadian Empire piece that goes back to 2300 B.C. and the stone statue of King Schalmanezer, from the eighth century BC. In addition, the museum's above-ground storage rooms were looted. Approximately 3,100 excavation site pieces (jars, vessels, pottery shards, etc.) were stolen, of which only 3,000 have been recovered. The thefts did not appear to be discriminating; for example, an entire shelf of fakes

884-525: Is rejected by archeologists and scientists. Corrosion of the metal and tests both indicate that an acidic agent such as wine or vinegar was present in the jar. This led to speculation that the liquid was used as an acidic electrolyte solution to generate an electric current from the difference between the electrode potentials of the copper and iron electrodes . After the Second World War , Willard Gray demonstrated current production by

952-522: Is the first significant artifact returned all the way from the United States and by far the most important piece found outside Iraq. American officials declined to discuss how they recovered the statue." The statue of the king, located in the center of the museum's second-floor Sumerian Hall, weighs hundreds of pounds, making it the heaviest piece stolen from the museum – the looters "probably rolled or slid it down marble stairs to remove it, smashing

1020-650: Is the national museum of Iraq , located in Baghdad . It is sometimes informally called the National Museum of Iraq . The Iraq Museum contains precious relics from the Mesopotamian , Abbasid , and Persian civilizations. It was looted during and after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq . Despite international efforts, only some of the stolen artifacts have been returned. After being closed for many years while being refurbished, and rarely open for public viewing,

1088-543: Is with this move that the name of the museum was changed to the Iraq Museum. It was originally known as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum. Bahija Khalil became the director of the Iraq Museum in 1983. She was the first woman director and she held that role until 1989. Due to the archaeological riches of Mesopotamia, the museum's collections are considered to be among the most important in

1156-591: The American Council for Cultural Policy asked the Pentagon and the UK government to ensure the museum's safety from both combat and looting, but no promises were made. U.S. forces did not bomb the site, despite them bombing a number of uninhabited Iraqi archaeological sites. On April 9, 2003, the last of the museum curators and staff left the museum. Iraqi forces engaged U.S. forces a few blocks away, as well as

1224-523: The British Museum , their original excavation and context were not well-recorded, and evidence for this date range is very weak. Furthermore, the style of the pottery is Sasanian (224–640). Albert Al-Haik noted original reports from the 1936 dig at Khuyut Rabbou'a giving the location as an area northeast of Baghdad, "some two miles off the Baghdad eastern bund." W. B. Hafford gives context to

1292-609: The Mosul Museum , as ISIS has taken it over. On September 7, 2010, the Associated Press reported that 540 looted treasures were returned to Iraq. 638 stolen artifacts were returned to the Iraq Museum after they were located in the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki . On January 30, 2012, a 6,500-year-old Sumerian gold jar, the head of a Sumerian battle axe and a stone from an Assyrian palace were among 45 relics returned to Iraq by Germany. Up to 10,000 of

1360-529: The Tigris . The object was looted along with thousands of other artifacts from the National Museum during the 2003 invasion of Iraq . In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University , an expert on Iraqi archaeology, returning from the first archaeological expedition in Iraq after 20 years, stated that she does not know a single archaeologist who believed that these were batteries. The Discovery Channel program MythBusters built replicas of

1428-521: The 57th Biennale, and was critically acclaimed by the press. The museum opened its doors only sporadically between September 1980, during the Iran-Iraq War , and 2015. After the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the museum was rarely opened, including an opening on July 3, 2003, for several hours for a visit by journalists and Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer , as a signal that things were returning to normal. In December 2008,

SECTION 20

#1732765094249

1496-455: The BBC, Dr Bettina Schmitz, a researcher based at the same museum, said, "There does not exist any written documentation of the experiments which took place here in 1978... The experiments weren't even documented by photos, which really is a pity...I have searched through the archives of this museum and I talked to everyone involved in 1978 with no results." Though the iron rod did project outside of

1564-507: The Baghdad Museum Project gave presentations to the reconstruction community advocating the preservation of Iraq's cultural heritage in rebuilding projects. On August 27, 2006, Iraq's museum director Dr. Donny Youkhanna fled the country to Syria , as a result of murder threats he and his family members had received from terrorist groups that were assassinating all remaining Iraqi intellectuals and scientists. Youkhanna held

1632-607: The Iraq Museum and spanning six millennia, from the Neolithic Age to the Parthian Period, were shown alongside contemporary artworks at the Venice Biennale . Most of these objects had never previously left Iraq, excluding a few that were recently recovered after the 2003 lootings of the museum. Commissioned by Ruya Foundation , the exhibition 'Archaic' attracted over 5,500 visitors during the preview week of

1700-469: The Iraq Museum and were not pillaged. This reflects prominent miscommunication and/or disconnection between the pertinent bodies responsible for the storage, registration, and display of these artifacts. As of December 16, 2022, the databases of the Iraq Museum on the Lost Treasures from Iraq appear not to be updated after April 14, 2008, to correct this. At various Iraq reconstruction conferences,

1768-528: The Iraq Museum pieces are still missing, said Amira Eidan, general director of the museum at the time of the recovery. On August 3, 2021, multiple global news sites reported that the US has returned 17,000 looted ancient artifacts to Iraq. On March 8, 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation returned an ivory and gold leaf furniture piece dating back 7,500 years ago. It was previously on display at

1836-614: The Iraqi government moved the collection to a new building and established the Baghdad Antiquities Museum, with Bell as its director. Bell died later that year; the new director was Sidney Smith . In 1966, the collection was moved again, to a two-story, 45,000-square-meter (480,000-square-foot) building in Baghdad's Al-Ṣāliḥiyyah neighborhood in the Al-Karkh district on the east side of the Tigris River . It

1904-514: The Nimrud gold collection—which features gold jewelry and figures of the precious stone that date to the 9th-century BCE—and the collection of stone carvings and cuneiform tablets from Uruk are exceptional. The Uruk treasures date to between 3500 and 3000 BCE. In the months preceding the 2003 Iraq war , starting in December and January, various antiquities experts, including representatives from

1972-495: The U.S. forces around the museum. A special team headed by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos initiated an investigation on April 21. His investigation indicated that there were three separate thefts by three distinct groups over the four days. While the staff instituted a storage plan to prevent theft and damage (also used during the Iran–Iraq War and the first Gulf War ), many larger statues , steles , and friezes had been left in

2040-453: The US-led invasion of Iraq . The artifacts consist of a terracotta pot approximately 140 mm (6 in) tall, with a 38 mm (1.5 in) mouth, containing a cylinder made of a rolled copper sheet, which houses a single iron rod. At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by bitumen , with plugs or stoppers, and both rod and cylinder fit snugly inside the opening of

2108-412: The US-led invasion of Iraq. The institute set up a new webpage (named Lost Treasures from Iraq) on its website on April 15, 2003, just a few days after this plundering, sending a worldwide message about the lost, stolen, or probably “status unknown” artifacts. In addition, the website created a mass mailing list (“IraqiCrisis”) about the lost items from the Iraq Museum. However, the pertinent webpage about

Baghdad Battery - Misplaced Pages Continue

2176-446: The aftermath of the looting and its effects on the global art and antiquities market. On April 18, 2003, the Baghdad Museum Project was formed in the United States with a proposal to assure the Iraq Museum every possibility of the eventual safe return of its collection, even if that is to take hundreds of years. Rather than focus only on law enforcement and the current antiquities market, the group set its mission as being to (1) establish

2244-464: The asphalt plug, the copper tube did not, making it impossible to connect a wire to this to complete a circuit. König himself seems to have been mistaken on the nature of the objects he thought were electroplated. They were apparently fire-gilded (with mercury ). Paul Craddock of the British Museum said "The examples we see from this region and era are conventional gold plating and mercury gilding. There's never been any irrefutable evidence to support

2312-439: The battery theory, but believed it was used for some kind of mild electrotherapy such as pain relief, possibly through electroacupuncture . A bitumen seal, being thermoplastic , would be extremely inconvenient for a galvanic cell, which would require frequent topping up of the electrolyte for extended use. The artifacts are similar to other objects believed to be storage vessels for sacred scrolls from nearby Seleucia on

2380-454: The cells had sufficient power to electroplate a small token and to deliver current to acupuncture type needles for therapeutic purposes, but not enough to deliver an electric shock to MythBusters co-host Adam Savage who was instead pranked by co-hosts who hooked him up to a 10,000 volt cattle fence shock generator. Archaeologist Ken Feder commented on the show noting that no archaeological evidence has been found either for connections between

2448-493: The discovery of the artifacts in his reaction video to Milo Rossi's video on the subject. Similar vessels, which can be distinguished primarily by their contents, had previously been found and examined more closely: Four sealed clay vessels were excavated at Seleucia in 1930 under the archaeological direction of Leroy Waterman, University of Michigan. Three of these finds, dated to the late Sassanid period (5th to 6th centuries AD), were sealed with bitumen. These vessels contained

2516-540: The early days of the warfare and between summer 2003 and the end of 2007. Estimates are that 400–600,000 artifacts have been plundered. Iraqi sculptor Mohammed Ghani Hikmat spearheaded efforts by the Iraqi artist community to recover artworks looted from the museum. Approximately 150 of Hikmat's pieces were stolen from the museum alone. Hikmat's group has only recovered approximately 100 of the museum's works, as of September 2011. United States Marine Colonel, and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos led

2584-523: The electroplating theory". David A. Scott, senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute and head of its Museum Research Laboratory, writes: "There is a natural tendency for writers dealing with chemical technology to envisage these unique ancient objects of two thousand years ago as electroplating accessories (Foley 1977), but this is clearly untenable, for there is absolutely no evidence for electroplating in this region at

2652-408: The front and rear of the museum, and the U.S. forces could have secured the museum by simply encircling and isolating it preventing the looters from accessing the facility. Thefts took place between April 10 and 12, and when a number of museum staff returned to the building on April 12, they fended off further attempts by looters to enter the museum and had to wait until April 16 for the deployment of

2720-416: The immediately neighboring Ctesiphon , including three sealed find objects, each with one, three and ten wrapped and sealed bronze rolls. Inside these bronze wraps were already badly decomposed cellulose fibers. Another clay vessel contained three sealed bronze cylinders. In the other two vessels, which were also sealed, there were plates of originally pure lead coated with lead carbonate in a find specimen; in

2788-518: The jar. The copper cylinder is not watertight, so if the jar were filled with a liquid, this would surround the iron rod as well. The artifact had been exposed to the weather and had suffered corrosion. Austrian archeologist Wilhelm König thought the objects might date to the Parthian period, between 250 BC and AD 224. However, according to St John Simpson of the Near Eastern department of

Baghdad Battery - Misplaced Pages Continue

2856-598: The jars (which would have been necessary to produce the required voltage) or for their use for electroplating. Wilhelm K%C3%B6nig Wilhelm König (born in Vienna ) was an Austrian archaeologist and painter . A painter by profession, in 1931, König was elected assistant to the German leader of the Baghdad Antiquity Administration with the title of a "Direktor". At the excavation of

2924-429: The jars to see if it was possible for them to have been used for electroplating or electrostimulation. On MythBusters ' 29th episode (23 March 2005), ten hand-made terracotta jars were fitted to act as batteries. Lemon juice was chosen as the electrolyte to activate the electrochemical reaction between the copper and iron. Connected in series, the battery produced 4 volts of electricity. When linked in series,

2992-494: The looted Mesopotamian artifacts from the Iraq Museum was last updated on April 10, 2008, and then archived. The website seems to not update its information after then. Gradually, many artifacts which were labeled by the Lost Treasure from Iraq website as stolen or status unknown were found to be on display at museums inside Iraq for several years before the US-led invasion of Iraq. In addition, many others were still safe at

3060-527: The looters concentrated on the heart of the exhibition: "the Warka Vase , a Sumerian alabaster piece more than 5,000 years old; a bronze Uruk statue from the Akkadian period, also 5,000 years old, which weighs 660 pounds; and the headless statue of Entemena. The Harp of Ur was torn apart by looters who removed its gold inlay." Among the stolen artefacts is the bronze Bassetki Statue, a life-size statue of

3128-466: The looting of The Iraq Museum has been disputed. Based on a miscommunication by the first crews on the scene, and the empty display cases in the main galleries that in most cases had held objects which museum curators had removed before the First Gulf War and invasion, news organizations for weeks reported that as much as 170,000 catalogued lots (501,000 pieces) had been looted. The accurate figure

3196-633: The looting, "It's the crime of the century because it affects the heritage of all mankind." After the U.S. Marines set up headquarters in Baghdad's Palestine Hotel , Dr Youkhanna confirmed that he personally went there to plead for troops to protect the museum's onsite collection, but no guards were sent for another three days. A few days later, agents of the FBI were sent to Iraq to search for stolen Museum property. UNESCO organized an emergency meeting of antiquities experts on April 17, 2003, in Paris to deal with

3264-424: The museum after occupying Baghdad. Dr Irving Finkel of the British Museum said the looting was "entirely predictable and could easily have been stopped." Martin E. Sullivan , chairman of the U.S. president's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, and U.S. State Department cultural advisers Gary Vikan and Richard S. Lanier resigned in protest at the failure of US forces to prevent the looting. The extent of

3332-400: The museum at risk; the museum's director was fired for airing her objections. In a ceremony to mark the occasion, Qahtan Abbas, Iraq's tourism and antiquities minister, said that only 6,000 of the 15,000 items looted from the museum in 2003 had been returned. And an estimated 600,000 archaeological pieces were looted by groups and militias allied with the United States since 2003, according to

3400-600: The museum have surfaced in neighboring countries on their way to the United States , Israel , Europe , Switzerland , and Japan , and even on eBay . On May 7, 2003, U.S. officials announced that nearly 40,000 manuscripts and 700 artifacts belonging to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad were recovered by U.S. Customs agents working with museum experts in Iraq. Some looters had returned items after promises of rewards and amnesty, and many items previously reported missing had actually been hidden in secret storage vaults prior to

3468-455: The museum was officially reopened in February 2015. After World War I , archaeologists from Europe and the United States began several excavations throughout Iraq. In an effort to keep those findings from leaving Iraq, Gertrude Bell (a British traveller, intelligence agent, archaeologist, and author) began collecting the artifacts in a government building in Baghdad in 1922. In 1926,

SECTION 50

#1732765094249

3536-399: The museum was opened for a photo opportunity for Ahmad Chalabi, who returned a number of artifacts supposedly handed in to him by Iraqis. On February 23, 2009, the museum was opened at the behest of Iraqi prime minister Maliki, to demonstrate that things were returning to normal. Many archaeological officials protested against this opening, arguing that conditions were not yet safe enough to put

3604-427: The museum's collections at its own expense, and make images of four millennia of archaeological treasures available online, free, by early 2010. It is unclear the extent by which Google's effort overlaps with Italy's previous initiative. Google's Street View service was used to image much of the museum's exhibit areas and, as of November 2011, these images are online. In 2017, forty ancient Iraqi artefacts drawn from

3672-476: The nearby Special Republican Guard compound. Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz of the U.S. third Infantry Division declared that he "was unable to enter the compound and secure it since they attempted to avoid returning fire at the building. Sniper positions, discarded ammunition, and 15 Iraqi Army uniforms were later discovered in the building". The positions turned out to be museum arranged sandbags and protective foam support and mitigation barriers for large size artefacts,

3740-544: The obviously missing counter-electrode. Its origin and purpose remain unclear. Wilhelm König was an assistant at the Iraq Museum in the 1930s. He had observed a number of very fine silver objects from ancient Iraq, plated with very thin layers of gold, and speculated that they were electroplated . In 1938 he authored a paper offering the hypothesis that they may have formed a galvanic cell , perhaps used for electroplating gold onto silver objects. This interpretation

3808-401: The other ten heavily corroded iron nails, on which traces of a wrapped organic fiber material could be detected. Although a round coil of metal foil and paper is reminiscent of the construction-typical feature of an electrolytic capacitor constructed, for example, with soaked paper, there is no immediately tangible electrophysical functional basis for this or the finds excavated at Seleucia due to

3876-667: The outbreak of war. On June 7, 2003, the U.S. occupation authorities announced that world-famous treasures of Nimrud were preserved in a secret vault in the Iraqi Central Bank . The artifacts included necklaces, plates, gold earrings, finger and toe rings, bowls and flasks. But, around 15,000 and the tiny items including some of the most valuable artifacts on the antiquities markets remain missing. The museum has been protected since its looting, but archaeological sites in Iraq were left almost entirely unprotected by coalition forces, and there has been massive looting, starting from

3944-584: The position of visiting professor in the anthropology department of Stony Brook State University of New York until his death in March 2011. On June 9, 2009, the treasures of the Iraq Museum went online for the first time as Italy inaugurated the Virtual Museum of Iraq Archived 2009-06-11 at the Wayback Machine . On November 24, 2009, Google announced that it would create a virtual copy of

4012-626: The public galleries, protected with foam and surrounded by sandbags . Forty pieces were stolen from these galleries, mostly the more valuable ones. Of these only 13 had been recovered as of January 2005, including the three most valuable: the Sacred Vase of Warka (though broken in fourteen pieces, which was the original state it was found in when first excavated), the Mask of Warka , and the Bassetki Statue . According to museum officials,

4080-526: The search for these stolen artifacts for over five years from 2003. Up to the year 2006 approximately 10,000 artifacts were recovered through his efforts. Antiquities recovered include the Warka Vase and the Mask of Warka . The Oriental Institute (Chicago) took the very first and most outstanding initiative to inform the rest of the world about the ransacking of the Iraqi Museum's collection during

4148-482: The steps and damaging other artifacts." The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the recovery of the statue of King Entemena of Lagash on July 25, 2006, in the United States again. The statue was returned to the Iraq government. It was discovered in the United States with the help of Hicham Aboutaam , an art dealer in New York . The U.S. government was criticised for doing nothing to protect

SECTION 60

#1732765094249

4216-459: The thieves possessed special master keys to the cabinets but dropped them in the dark. Instead, they stole 10,000 small objects that were lying in plastic boxes on the floor. Of them, only 2,500 have approximately been recovered. One of the most valuable artifacts looted was a headless stone statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash . The Entemena statue, "estimated to be 4,400 years old,

4284-458: The time". Paul T. Keyser of the University of Alberta noted that Eggebrecht used a more efficient, modern electrolyte, and that using only vinegar, or other electrolytes available at the time assumed, the battery would be very feeble, and for that and other reasons concludes that even if this was in fact a battery, it could not have been used for electroplating. However, Keyser still supported

4352-414: The uniforms and ammunition turning out to belong to the museum curators and staff (being reserve military personnel in state of war) and to the contrary to the U.S. statement, no traces of any serious engagement were detected anywhere in the museum and its surrounding yard. Iraqi staff as a protective measure had built a fortified wall along the western side of the compound, allowing concealed movement between

4420-600: The world, and it has a fine record of scholarship and display. The British connection with the museum — and with Iraq — has resulted in exhibits always being displayed bilingually, in both English and Arabic . It contains important artifacts from the over 5,000-year-long history of Mesopotamia in 28 galleries and vaults. The collections of The Iraq Museum include art and artifacts from ancient Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations. The museum also has galleries devoted to collections of both pre-Islamic and Islamic Arabian art and artifacts. Of its many noteworthy collections,

4488-505: Was around 15,000 items, including 5,000 extremely valuable cylinder seals. On April 12, 2003, The Associated Press reported: "The famed Iraq National Museum, home of extraordinary Babylonian , Sumerian and Assyrian collections and rare Islamic texts, sat empty Saturday – except for shattered glass display cases and cracked pottery bowls that littered the floor." On April 14, National Public Radio's Robert Siegel announced on All Things Considered: "As it turned out, American troops were but

4556-413: Was going on, people were being killed, people were being wounded ... It's as much as anything else a matter of priorities." Civil Affairs expert William Sumner, who was tasked with handling arts, monuments and archives, explained that the postwar Civil Affairs planners "didn't foresee the marines as going out and assigning marine units as security ... The issue of archaeological sites was considered

4624-491: Was stolen, while an adjacent shelf of much greater value was undisturbed. The third occurrence of theft was in the underground storage rooms. The thieves attempted to steal the most easily transportable objects, which had been intentionally stored in the most remote location possible. Of the four rooms, the only portion disturbed was a single corner in the furthest room, where cabinets contained 100 small boxes containing cylinder seals , beads, and jewelry. Evidence indicated that

#248751