Preserving Iraq's Cultural Heritage

Various efforts are underway to assist in the conservation of Iraq's cultural heritage. Recently, the National Endowment for the Humanities made six grants totaling $559,000 to assist in a variety of projects, and the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments Fund have formed the GCI-WMF Iraq Cultural Heritage Conservation Initiative.

NEH's first awards under its initiative "Recovering Iraq's Past" will support projects to preserve and document Iraq's cultural resources and to develop education and training opportunities for Iraq's librarians, archivists, and preservation specialists. Recovering Iraq's Past contributes to coordinated efforts by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other federal agencies to assist in rebuilding the cultural heritage infrastructure in Iraq. Projects funded under the initiative focus on the preservation and documentation of resources, which, because of their intellectual content and value as cultural artifacts, are considered highly important for research, education, and public programming in the humanities.

The following institutions received grants as part of the initiative:

• Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, received $97,000 for the creation of a preservation tutorial in Arabic on the treatment and care of books, manuscripts, image and recorded sound collections, papyrus, and clay tablets that would be made available on the Internet and as a CD-ROM for distribution in Iraq.
• The Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, received $65,510 for a conservation assessment of first millennium B.C.E. Neo-Assyrian palaces and related structures at Nineveh and Nimrud, Iraq.
• Simmons College, Boston, received $100,000 for an education and training program that will enhance the professional knowledge and skills of up to 25 Iraqi librarians and archivists.
• The University of California, Berkeley, received $99,357 for the preparation of an online catalog of 5,000 cuneiform lexical texts (similar to modern dictionaries) housed at the National Museum in Iraq. The cataloging records with images of the tablets, transcriptions, and annotations will be incorporated into a large database of cuneiform materials, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative.
• The University of California, Los Angeles, received $96,588 for the development of an online catalog of cuneiform tablets at the Iraq National Museum that documents Mesopotamian civilization from 3300 B.C.E. until 100 C.E. The records will be available in a separate Web site at the museum and through the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative created by UCLA in 2000.
• The World Monuments Fund, New York, received $100,000 for a cultural heritage inventory of Iraqi archaeological and historic sites that will include an integrated database, a Geographic Information System, and a Geographic Positioning System for documenting site information and locations.

For more information about Recovering Iraq's Past, visit www.neh.gov.

The CGI-WMF Iraq Cultural Heritage Conservation Initiative will focus on damaged cultural sites, training Iraqi conservation professionals, and prevention and mitigation of threats to Iraqi cultural heritage. The Initiative, with funding from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, will collaborate with Iraqi officials and colleagues and coordinate its own efforts with those of Iraqi museums and other cultural institutions. Two emergency grants have been awarded by the Initiative for site protection—one to the Massachusetts College of Art for the reinstallation of protective roofing over the archaeological site at Nineveh, looted during the recent war; and another to the American Association for Research in Baghdad for protection of archaeological sites in central Iraq, which are being actively looted by local villagers.

To address long-term cultural heritage management, the World Monuments Fund and the Getty Conservation Institute will work with the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to develop a National Cultural Heritage Information System and Database, which will be used to document site conditions and needs, set priorities, and address threats to cultural resources.

Future work includes:

• training and advanced-degree courses for Iraqi professionals;
• emergency work at sites;
• conservation projects, undertaken as pilot programs, as part of training courses, or as part of larger-scale initiatives;
• planning assistance to advance projects receiving international support.

To learn more about the Iraq Cultural Heritage Conservation Initiative, visit www.wmf.org/html/programs/iraq_release.html.