6 Comments

1. Ron Mead

   June 10, 2003

   Hmmm, 33 pieces, eh? Seems to reduce the sacking of the museum to a bit of petty pilfering, doesn't it? Much less in scale than the Australian Museum disaster over the last half dozen years or so under the tender loving care of Bob Carr.

2. Gummo Trotsky

   June 11, 2003

   From the Washington Post (link via the good Prof):

   On Saturday, a team of U.S. investigators from the Customs Service and State Department released a summary of a preliminary report that concluded that 3,000 pieces were missing. And more importantly, of the 8,000 or so exhibit-quality, world-class pieces of jewelry, statues and cuneiform clay tablets, only 47 were unaccounted for.

   Today, Iraqi officials at the museum confirmed the U.S. numbers, with a slight adjustment.

   "There are only 33 pieces from the main collections that are unaccounted for," George said. "Not 47. Some more pieces have been returned." Museum staff members had taken some of the more valuable items home and are now returning them.

   There I go, missing the point again.

3. mark

   June 12, 2003

   Bloody hell, Gummo, once again you completely miss the point of scale!

   A bad occurrance is *not* a bad occurrance unless it happens on sufficient scale to make it into a truly horrific occurrance...

   *ahem*

   (BTW, am I the only one who finds the "remember details" thingy doesn't work?)

4. Scott Wickstein

   June 12, 2003

   It's remembering me fine.

5. mark

   June 12, 2003

   Hmm, odd. JavaScript is on, cookies are on... the code came straight out of a template (which works on other sites fine), so it's probably not that either...

6. Norman

   June 13, 2003

   How long will it be before someone starts arguing [a la WMDs] that since the 33 missing Iraqi artefacts haven't been found, there's no evidence they actually existed?