The ancient and modern wars on the Berber, Egyptian and Sumerian civilisations, without a doubt, had dispersed most of their archaeological heritage, as much as they had reduced many of their remaining parts to cumulus rubble. This may explain why so many of the statues and idols you see today in Libya's and Egypt's museums had their noses broken, their ears knocked off, defaced, limbless, headless, cracked, bruised and all the other signs of violent conflict their masters came to endure from the mortals they so hard protected to come about as offspring.
Needless to say, political or any other desecration of archaeological sites today is outlawed and classified under the acts of terrorism, as in the case of the recent destruction of Buddhist statues and sacred temples; and therefore one dares not, any more, call for the destruction of such heritage in the open. But behind closed doors, greed still plays the role it had always played in human history, as was the fate of so many looted tombs from around the world. The pyramids of the Berber Garamantian civilisation in Fezzan were robbed long before archaeologists got to them to unravel some of their desert mysteries. Yet, our ancestors were well aware of the nature of the beast they hoped to evade, and thankfully some of the Garamantian pyramids escaped looting because the sacred treasures were deceptively buried outside the tombs.
The Ancient Egyptians, too, knew about tomb raiders and mummy traders from the future, as they went to great lengths to hide their tombs in the valley of the kings and beneath the desert's sand. Many of these sites are now being discovered by satellites in the sky, and it is only a matter of time before they too come in contact with air! We have no good reason today to assume the practice of looting the sacred heritage of the ancestors ever ceased to exist, if it has not become an art of autocratic crime. It is almost certain that wars and archaeological robberies do go "hand in hand" as documented throughout ancient and modern history.
Wars create political vacuums of grey areas that easily lend themselves to exploitation by white-collar dealers and the gurus of the black market. Take for example the disastrous looting of Libya's and Egypt's treasures during the World Wars, way beyond imagination; the ransacking of the pagan Sumerian and Babylonian heritage during the Iraq war; the looting of the Berber Sahara by many European explorers and diplomatic tomb raiders during the colonial wars; and, of course, one of the largest thefts of archaeological material in history that took place in Benghazi, Libya, during the early months of the February 2011 war, while the city was awash with NTC forces, SAS and Special forces.
The ruling authorities of today's Libya need to have in place a dedicated body to tackle the issue and reconsider the program to safeguard the existing heritage and recover the stolen treasures. They need to secure the Sahara's vast heritage, as well as secure sunken and off-shore sites still beneath the sea. They need to install surveillance cameras in all sections of all museums & archaeological sites in Libya. They need to start immediately fencing all archaeological sites still unprotected and grazed by sheep.
To read the full report please visit Temehu.com's Libya's first online museum at
http://www.temehu.com/Cities_sites/museumvandalism-archaeological-robberies.htm
http://www.temehu.com/Cities_sites/museumvandalism-archaeological-robberies.htm
