Mediaboss Marketing

From the first panel of the exhibit, anyone who cares about the origins of civilization or the fate of modern Mideastern people will find rough going in "Cultures in the Crossfire," on view through next year at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.

Up front, organizers screen a video of two ISIS members demolishing a wall of the 2,700-year-old palace at Nimrud, not far from Mosul in Iraq, in 2015.

One swings a sledgehammer against the stone, reducing delicate relief sculpture to shards and dust. Another dislodges the slab and the block, carved and fitted so carefully and proudly standing for millennia, smashes to the ground, obliterated.

This performance, captured by skillful videography, is part of ISIS's war on ancient culture in the cradle of civilization. Besides killing and dislocating millions, "They want to destroy things precisely because they are world heritage sites. It gets everybody's attention," said curator Lauren Ristvet.

She is one of many field archaeologists who can no longer dig in Syria because of ongoing violence, and who have had to watch with the rest of the world while ISIS bulldozes sites of global significance dating back to the Bronze Age. Artwork and artifacts from several millennia have been torn out of their settings and sold on the black market for antiquities.

Ebla, southwest of Aleppo in Syria and "one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the past 75 years," has been heavily looted of its treasures.

"These are not just war-torn places. These are places that have contributed an enormous amount to the world," said Ristvet. "What's going on now is just one part of that story."

The museum drew from its holdings to demonstrate the sweep of history in Iraq and Syria, a region where agriculture, writing and cities first arose and where learning blossomed while the rest of the world endured the Dark Ages. Numerous cultures jostled each other in the region over millennia.

The exhibit offers a look at this garden of diversity through objects such as a tombstone with a Hebrew inscription, believed to be from the ancient center of Babylonian Jewry in modern Anbar, Iraq; an illuminated page containing the first surah, or chapter, of the Quran; small, delicately carved ivory pieces depicting the Egyptian god Horus, which were found in Iraq; and a small ceramic lamp from the region decorated with the Christian cross.

Despite their theological differences, all faiths in the area agreed that burying a small bowl inscribed with protective incantations outside the house was a good idea to keep one's home and family safe. Several examples of these personalized objects are on view.

Conditions in Syria are such that refugees are living in an archaeological site in northwest Syria known as the Dead Cities, a region deserted for around a thousand years. Archaeologists, native and foreign, have been reduced to minimizing damage to sites from the inevitable bombing.

Should anyone not get the point, video is presented showing ISIS destroying ancient buildings in Palmyra, a desert city whose heritage dates from the Stone Age through the Romans and beyond. Among previously excavated artifacts on view are funerary portrait sculptures of ancient Palmyrans.

"We wanted to leave people with a sense of hope, and a sense of depth," said Ristvet. "We tried to get a sense of the people who have lived in this area, in Syria and Iraq, over a period of a long time, and have them like people you might find here."

In a parallel to modern obituary photos that show the deceased at his or her best, Palmyran sculptors rendered their subjects in their best clothes, one lady sporting an elaborate jeweled headdress.

Syrian curators asked the Penn Museum for help protecting ancient mosaics from the Dead Cities in a museum in Ma'arra, who feared their facility would be bombed. Experts from Penn and the Smithsonian Institution trained local curators in low-tech preservation involving water-soluble glue, plastic cloth and sandbags heaped in front of the most important images.

Later, the museum was bombed but "Amazingly, the mosaics survived," said Ristvet.

The Syrian curators moved on to preparing for the day the museum can be rebuilt. Similarly, Penn archaeologists helped a fellow professional in Iraqi Kurdistan who is documenting the city of Dohuk. She wants a record of the town in case historic structures are destroyed through war or other means, said Ristvet.

"We were able to help in sort of a nice, small way, getting her some computers, some software, some cameras," she said.

Artifacts from the Penn collection demonstrate not only what can be learned about ancient cultures, but also the value of scientific excavation, ever more endangered by bombs, looting and development.

Over decades, archaeologists have found everything that relates to the human experience, from toys to medieval books on subjects such as hydraulics, music theory and geometry, to 6,000-year-old gold jewelry. They excavated magnificent wall tiles from 16th-century Damascus and cylinder seals that date from the dawn of writing.

As a counterpoint to the glories of the past, the curators also included elements you won't usually see in the archaeological museum. Works by contemporary Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj reflect his outrage at the victimization of his compatriots and their culture.

These are difficult to view, especially "Lost," sculptures made from the clothes of Syrian and Iraqi refugee children who died trying to cross the Aegean Sea. "Book of the Dead, Dismembered" uses X-ray images that are more than usually grueling to view.

"Cultures in the Crossfire" is on view through Nov. 25, 2018.

Here is the original post:
Penn Museum weighs destruction of antiquities in Syria and Iraq with "Cultures in the Crossfire" - The Intelligencer