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✍ Maggie Chok

Museum of Lost Objects

Looted Sumerian Seal, Baghdad
BBC Radio 4: Museum of Lost Objects Series (10 episodes)
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“A female goddess so powerful and respected that she made her thrown out of a man.”

The Museum of Lost Objects traces the histories of 10 antiquities or cultural sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria.

This is the oldest and smallest object in the series: a tiny Sumerian cylinder seal depicting a harvest festival. It was carved in 2,600 BC and was part of the collection of ancient cylinder seals which disappeared when the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We tell the story of this seal and the pillaging of the country’s most important museum.

Contributors: Lamia al-Gailani, SOAS; Mazin Safar, son of Iraqi archaeologist Fuad Safar; John Curtis, Iran Heritage Foundation

(Source: BBC Radio 4—The Documentary)