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To all those interested, I recommend Francis Deblauwe's excellent site called 'The 2003 Iraq War & Archaeology': http://cctr.umkc.edu/user/fdeblauwe/iraq.html It offers an amazing archive of articles etc etc on the topic. The man is an expert without doubt. His comments on the articles are very interesting, recalling Peter Brooke's introductions to his news postings. As for our Sommerfeld, he makes mention of his 'possible bias'. Which, of course, does not necessarily disqualify all that the German professor has to say. Below is Deblauwe's current estimate of the losses and damage from his site. Best, Attila My best guess of the Losses & Damage at the National Museum ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- (very approximate numbers based on all available info, my evaluation of the quality of same info, and lots of extrapolation and common sense; updated whenever new info changes the picture) • 300 artifacts in public galleries: 28% missing, 18% damaged • 468,340 artifacts in storage inside Museum: 8% missing, 12% damaged • 7,360 artifacts in storage in Central Bank: 3% missing, 10% damaged • 25,000 artifacts in storage elsewhere outside the Museum: 5% missing, 5% damaged --------------------------------------------------------- 501,000 artifacts in total, of which 8% (38,390) missing and 11% (57,292) damaged • records and files: 5% destroyed, 85% scattered and messed up • the 39,453 manuscripts and scrolls found in a bomb shelter in western Baghdad were most likely the Saddam House of Manuscripts collection and thus not a part of the Museum holdings • the frequently mentioned total figure of 170,000 reflects the inventory numbers; however, lots of individual inventory numbers cover large groups of artifacts _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk