Antiquities Law, Iraq

Abstract

The Iraqi Government is proposing to supersede the Antiquities Law drawn up eleven years ago, and approved by the League of Nations, by one which will admittedly be far more onerous to the foreign excavator working in Iraq. As a prelude to the introduction of the bill before the Iraqi Parliament there has been a regular campaign of propaganda intended to show that under the existing law Iraq has been robbed, by concessions made to foreign missions, of the treasures which were legally and morally hers, and that Iraq never has had fair treatment and will not have it so long as the division of the objects from excavations is conducted by a foreign Director of Antiquities. To what lengths this campaign has been carried may be illustrated by the following: in March 1934 Abdal Rizaq Effendi, the Curator of the Baghdad Museum, personally repeated to me the statement, published in the local press, that the normal share accruing to the Baghdad Museum from the division of antiquities with a foreign mission, as conducted by the Director, was no more than one half of one per cent. of the objects catalogued.