Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure
抢劫者洗劫了伊拉克博物馆的财宝
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/international/worldspecial/13BAGH.html?th
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 12 — The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein’s government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters.
巴格达，伊拉克，四月十二日― 伊拉克国家博物馆记录了一个曾在7000多年前的美索布达米亚的肥沃平原繁荣过的文化的历史。但是当这个星期，美国军队进入巴格达并用足够的力量推翻了萨达姆侯赛因的政府以后，博物馆仅仅在四十八个小时内就毁于一旦，至少有17万件艺术品被抢劫者拿走。
The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum came to light only today, as the frenzied looting that swept much of the capital over the previous three days began to ebb.
这次降临在该博物馆的灾难的完整情况直到今天才被公众知晓，这时狂热的抢劫活动已经在过去的三天席卷了这个首都，并开始逐渐消退。
As fires in a dozen government ministries and agencies began to burn out, and as looters tired of pillaging in the 90-degree heat, museum officials reached the hotels where foreign journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River. They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history.
当在一些政府部门和机关的战火开始熄灭，当抢劫者已经厌倦了在华氏90度下抢劫的时候，博物馆的官员来到了位于底格里斯河东岸的外国记者云集的宾馆。他们带来的消息，有可能被认为是在中东历史上最为惨烈的文化灾难之一。
A full accounting of what has been lost may take weeks or months. The museum had been closed during much of the 1990’s, and as with many Iraqi institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein.
So what officials told journalists today may have to be adjusted as a fuller picture comes to light. It remains unclear whether some of the museum’s priceless gold, silver and copper antiquities, some of its ancient stone and ceramics and perhaps some of its fabled bronzes and gold-overlaid ivory, had been locked away for safekeeping elsewhere before the looting, or seized for private display in one of Mr. Hussein’s myriad palaces.
要对这次损失做一个完整的记录可能还需要几个星期甚至几个月。博物馆在九十年代的绝大多数日子都是关闭的，并且和很多伊拉克机构一样，它的运转也笼罩在侯赛因先生的秘密阴影中。
所以，今天这些官员告诉记者的话可能在事情完全水落石出后会与事实有所出入。现在还不清楚博物馆中那些价值连城的黄金，白银和黄铜古董，那些古代的石头和陶器，可能还有那些传说中的青铜器和镶金的象牙，它们是否在抢劫之前就已经被转移到别的地方妥善保存了，或者是被侯赛因先生拿到他众多的宫殿中作为自己的私人陈列。
What was beyond contest today was that the 28 galleries of the museum and vaults with huge steel doors guarding storage chambers that descend floor after floor into unlighted darkness had been completely ransacked.
今天不容争辩的是，博物馆的28个馆厅，和装有巨大铁门的拱顶都完全的被洗劫一空。那些巨大的铁门是用来保卫储藏柜的，这些储藏柜逐级而下，一层层的直到没有灯光的黑暗中。
Officials with crumpled spirits fought back tears and anger at American troops, as they ran down an inventory of the most storied items that they said had been carried away by the thousands of looters who poured into the museum after daybreak on Thursday and remained until dusk on Friday, with only one intervention by American forces, lasting about half an hour, at lunchtime on Thursday.
意志消沉的官员用眼泪和愤怒来回击美国军队，他们开列出一个目录，上面记录了被数以千计的抢劫者拿走的最具有历史价值的物品。这些抢劫者在星期四的拂晓涌入了博物馆，一直待到了星期五的黄昏，期间美国军队只在星期四的午饭时间干预过一次，干预时间持续了半个小时。
Nothing remained, museum officials said, at least nothing of real value, from a museum that had been regarded by archaeologists and other specialists as perhaps the richest of all such institutions in the Middle East.
什么也没有了，博物馆官员说，至少没有什么有价值的了，这个博物馆曾经被考古学家和其他专家视为是中东所有这样的博物馆中馆藏最丰富的。
As examples of what was gone, the officials cited a solid gold harp from the Sumerian era, which began about 3360 B.C. and started to crumble about 2000 B.C. Another item on their list of looted antiquities was a sculptured head of a woman from Uruk, one of the great Sumerian cities, dating from about the same era, and a collection of gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings, also from the Sumerian dynasties and also at least 4,000 years old.
为了举例说明那些流失的文物，这些官员提到了一个立体黄金打造的竖琴，这个竖琴来自于闪族人生活的年代，他们起始于公元前3360年，在公元前2000年走向灭亡。在他们开列的被掠文物中还有一件物品是从Uruk出土的女性头颅的雕刻品，Uruk是闪族人最大的城市之一，起始年代和上面的一样。还有一些金项链，手镯，耳环等收藏品，也是来自于闪族王朝，也至少有4000年的历史。
But an item-by-item inventory of the most valued pieces carried away by the looters hardly seemed to capture the magnitude of what had occurred. More powerful, in its way, was the action of one museum official in hurrying away through the piles of smashed ceramics and torn books and burned-out torches of rags soaked in gasoline that littered the museum’s corridors to find the glossy catalog of an exhibition of “Silk Road Civilizations“ that was held in Japan’s ancient capital of Nara in 1988.
但是这样逐一的登记那些被抢劫者拿走的最值钱的文物似乎还无法表现出这次发生的抢劫损失之大。更有说服力的是这样一个举动：一个博物馆官员匆忙走过那些成堆散落在博物馆走廊的被砸陶器，被撕毁的书籍，以及汽油浸泡过的抹布做成的已经熄灭了的火炬，找到了一本“丝绸之路文明”展览的目录本，那次展览是1988年在日本的古都奈良举办的。
Turning to 50 pages of items lent by the Iraqi museum for the exhibition, he said none of the antiquities pictured remained after the looting. They included ancient stone carvings of bulls and kings and princesses; copper shoes and cuneiform tablets; tapestry fragments and ivory figurines of goddesses and women and Nubian porters; friezes of soldiers and ancient seals and tablets on geometry; and ceramic jars and urns and bowls, all dating back at least 2,000 years, some more than 5,000 years.
翻过了五十页，上面记录了曾经由伊拉克博物馆借出展览过的文物，他说，照片上的所有古董现在无一幸存。它们包括那些雕刻着公牛，国王，公主画面的古代石头；黄铜作的鞋子，留有楔形文字的石板，织锦的残片和用象牙雕成的女神像，妇女像和努比亚守门人像；士兵的饰带，古代章印，关于几何学的石板；陶罐，瓮，木球，所有这些都至少有2000年历史，有些东西的历史超过了5000年。
“All gone, all gone,“ he said. “All gone in two days.“
“都没了，都没了”，他说，“两天内，都没了。”
An Iraqi archaeologist who has taken part in the excavation of some of the country’s 10,000 sites, Raid Abdul Ridhar Muhammad, said he went into the street in the Karkh district, a short distance from the eastern bank of the Tigris, about 1 p.m. on Thursday to find American troops to quell the looting. By that time, he and other museum officials said, the several acres of museum grounds were overrun by thousands of men, women and children, many of them armed with rifles, pistols, axes, knives and clubs, as well as pieces of metal torn from the suspensions of wrecked cars. The crowd was storming out of the complex carrying antiquities on hand carts, bicycles and wheelbarrows and in boxes. Looters stuffed their pockets with smaller items.
一个参加过该国一万多个古迹遗址发掘工作的伊拉克考古学家，Raid Abdul Ridhar Muhammad说他去到Karkh区的街上，那里离底格里斯河的东岸很近， 大约在星期四的下午一点，他找到了美国部队，让他们去制止抢劫。当时，他和其他的博物馆官员说，占地面达好几个英亩的博物馆正在遭到成千的男人，女人和儿童的蹂躏，他们中的很多都拿着来福枪，手枪，斧头和棍子，也有从那些被损毁抛弃的汽车中扯下的金属片。这群人正从那个地区席卷而出，他们把古董放在手推车上，自行车上，独轮车上，有的还放在箱子里。抢劫者的口袋里都装满了小件的文物。
Mr. Muhammad said that he had found an American Abrams tank in Museum Square, about 300 yards away, and that five marines had followed him back into the museum and opened fire above the looters’ heads. That drove several thousand of the marauders out of the museum complex in minutes, he said, but when the tank crewmen left about 30 minutes later, the looters returned.
穆罕穆德先生说，他发现在博物馆广场有一个美军艾布拉姆坦克，大约300码远，有五个海军陆战队员跟着他回到了博物馆，并且对这抢劫者的上空开火。几千抢劫者就这样在数分钟内被驱赶出博物馆，他说，但是当坦克里的士兵离开大约30分钟以后，抢劫者又回来了。
I asked them to bring their tank inside the museum grounds,“ he said. “But they refused and left. About half an hour later, the looters were back, and they threatened to kill me, or to tell the Americans that I am a spy for Saddam Hussein’s intelligence, so that the Americans would kill me. So I was frightened, and I went home.“
“我请求他们把坦克停在博物馆里”，他说，“但是他们拒绝并离开了。大约半个小时后，抢劫者回来了，他们威胁说要杀了我，或者是告诉美国人我是萨达姆侯赛因的情报机关间谍，这样美国人就会杀了我。我于是吓坏了，只好回家去了。”
Mohsen Hassan, a 56-year-old deputy curator, returned to the museum on Saturday afternoon after visiting military commanders a mile away at the Palestine Hotel, with a request that American troops be placed in the museum to protect the building and items left by the looters in the vaults. Mr. Hassan said the American officers had given him no assurances that they would guard the museum around the clock, but other American commanders announced later in the day that joint patrols with unarmed Iraqi police units would begin as early as Sunday in an attempt to prevent further looting.
Mohsen Hassan，56岁的代理馆长，在星期六的下午回到了博物馆，在此之前他访问了位于巴勒斯坦饭店的军队指挥官，请求美国部队驻扎在博物馆里，以保卫建筑物和在大厅中抢劫者剩下的文物。哈桑先生说美国长官没有做出保证说他们会在博物馆做24小时警戒，但是其他美国指挥官后来在那天宣布说，他们与非武装的伊拉克警察组成的联合巡逻将在星期天开始， 并努力防止进一步的抢劫行动。
Mr. Hassan, who said he had spent 34 years helping to develop the museum’s collection, described watching as men took sledgehammers to locked glass display cases and in some instances fired rifles and pistols to break the locks.
哈桑先生说他花了34年来扩大这个博物馆的馆藏，他描述说看到人们用大铁锤砸开玻璃展柜的锁，有的则用来福枪和手枪开锁。
He said that many of the looters appeared to be from the impoverished districts of the city where anger at Mr. Hussein ran at its strongest, but that others were middle-class people who appeared to know exactly what they were looking for.
他说很多抢劫者看来是来自这个城市的贫民区，那里人们对于萨达姆的仇恨是最激烈的，但是还有一些抢劫者来自于中产阶级，他们看起来清楚的知道自己要寻找的是什么。
“Did some of them know the value of what they took?“ he said. “Absolutely, they did. They knew what the most valued pieces in our collection were.“
“他们中的某些人知道他们在拿的东西有多么珍贵吗？”他说，“当然，他们确实知道。他们知道我们馆藏的最珍贵的物品是什么。”
Mr. Muhammad spoke with deep bitterness toward the Americans, as have many Iraqis who have watched looting that began with attacks on government agencies and the palaces and villas of Mr. Hussein, his family and his inner circle broaden into a tidal wave of looting that struck just about every government institution, even ministries dealing with issues like higher education, trade and agriculture, and hospitals.
穆罕穆德先生在谈及美国人的时候带着深深地酸楚，这种酸楚就象很多伊拉克人一样，他们目睹了抢劫，这些抢劫开始是袭击政府机关，侯赛因先生的皇宫和别墅，他的家族和手下，后来扩展到定期的抢劫潮，工记所有的政府机构，甚至连一些管理诸如高等教育，贸易和农业，以及医院的部门也不放过。
American troops have intervened only sporadically, as they did on Friday to halt a crowd of men and boys who were raiding an armory at the edge of the Republican Palace presidential compound and taking brand-new Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.
美国军队只是偶尔干预，就象在星期五，他们制止了一群男人和男孩，当时这些抢劫者正在袭击一个共和国总统官邸边上的军火库，拿走了崭新的卡拉什尼科夫冲锋枪，手榴弹和其他武器。
American commanders have said they lack the troops to curb the looting while their focus remains on the battles across Baghdad that are necessary to mop up pockets of resistance from paramilitary forces loyal to Mr. Hussein.
美国指挥官已经表示，他们缺乏人手来制止抢劫，因为他们的焦点是巴格达的战斗，他们必须消灭来自忠于侯赛因的准军事力量的小股抵抗。
As reporters returned from the national museum to their hotels beside the Tigris tonight, marines guarding the hotels were caught in a heavy firefight with Iraqis across the river, and the neighborhoods erupted with tank and heavy machine-gun fire. Western television cameramen who went onto the embankment beside the Palestine Hotel to film the battle were pulled from danger by helmeted marines who dragged them down behind concrete parapets and waved to reporters on the hotel’s upper balconies to get down.
当记者当晚从国家博物馆返回他们在底格里斯河边上的饭店的时候，正在守卫宾馆的海军陆战队员正在与河对岸的伊拉克人激烈交火。西方电视摄引记者来到巴勒斯坦饭店旁边的堤防上，但是被带着头盔的海军陆战队员拉了到混凝土围墙下，这些海军陆战队员还挥手示意让宾馆楼上阳台的记者快下来。
Mr. Muhammad, the archaeologist, directed much of his anger at President Bush. “A country’s identity, its value and civilization resides in its history,“ he said. “If a country’s civilization is looted, as ours has been here, its history ends. Please tell this to President Bush. Please remind him that he promised to liberate the Iraqi people, but that this is not a liberation, this is a humiliation.“
穆罕穆德先生，这位考古学家，把他的大多数愤怒都指向布什总统。“一个国家的身份，价值还有文明都存在于它的历史当中。”他说，“如果一个国家的文明被抢劫，就象我们这里发生的一样，它的历史就终结了。请把这些话告诉布什总统。请提醒他，他许诺过要解法伊拉克人民，但是现在这不是解放，这时侮辱。”
