How Two Men Pumped Flooded Vault To Secure Missing Assyrian Antiquitie

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The treasure of Nimrud survived 2,800 years buried near a dusty town in

northern Iraq. It then spent 12 years tucked away in a vault. Until Thursday, it was uncertain

whether it had survived Saddam Hussein's son, a U.S. missile strike, looters, a flood and a

grenade attack. But it has been found intact in the dark, damp basement of a bombed out central

bank building.

Thursday, directors of Iraq's National Museum and a team of U.S. Customs agents and officials

from the Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority -- the Pentagon-run agency managing

postwar Iraq -- cracked open five waterlogged wooden crates, peered inside and breathed a

collective sigh of relief.

There, in dozens of smaller boxes was the entire collection -- 613 pieces of gold jewelry,

precious stones and ornaments from the height of the Assyrian civilization in 800 B.C. Together,

the pieces weigh well over 100 pounds.

The recovery of the artifacts, which hasn't been made public, is a great boost for the museum,

which gained the world's attention in the days after the war when U.S. forces failed to prevent

looters from hauling away thousands of artifacts from ancient civilizations that sprang up in the

Tigris-Euphrates valley. Experts said it was the worst ransacking of Iraq since Genghis Khan tore

into Baghdad in the 13th century.

While initial reports talked of some 170,000 pieces stolen, it is now clear that perhaps only a

few thousand artifacts were taken, experts say. Many priceless objects from the museum are still

missing, such as the sacred Vase of Warka, a Sumerian piece from about 3000 B.C. But

museum officials moved hundreds of the most valuable items into storage rooms and secret

locations only weeks before the war, including some 40,000 ancient books, Islamic manuscripts

and scrolls spirited away in a bomb shelter. More than a thousand other pieces have been

recovered by U.S. officials.

Unearthed in 1988 by Iraqi archaeologists and never seen outside Iraq, the Nimrud treasure

had been on public display at Baghdad's National Museum for just a few months before Saddam

Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Days after the invasion, the treasure was yanked from public

view. Its whereabouts remained secret.

One man who long wondered about the treasure was Jason Williams, a British anthropologist

and filmmaker, who had tried in vain to film the Nimrud treasure in recent years. The only existing

film of the pieces was taken when Iraqi archeologists made the discovery, with grainy images of

an archaeologist holding up rings and bracelets still attached to the bones of their former owners.

"These are Iraq's crown jewels," Mr. Williams said recently as he stepped over several feet of

smashed glass, twisted metal and heaps of charred Iraqi dinars in the hull of the bank building

destroyed by a U.S. missile strike. Although the building was gutted, the missile didn't damage

the basement or the vaults. But a burst water pipe soon flooded the area.

The affable Englishman from a tiny town named Abinger Bottom found an unlikely soul mate for

his search in a New Yorker, Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos. Mr. Bogdanos is a reservist on

active duty who in civilian life works as a homicide prosecutor at the New York district

attorney's office. His other job is on a U.S. military counterterrorism team that has worked in hot

spots such as Afghanistan. A short, muscular man, he also has a master's degree in classical

antiquities and a law degree from Columbia University.

When he read accounts of the Iraqi looting, Mr. Williams, who lives in Washington, called the

National Geographic Society and pitched the idea of trying to find and film the treasure. The

society quickly sent him and a film crew, as well as five archaeologists who fanned out across

Iraq to survey the damage to sites across ancient Mesopotamia.

In the case of Col. Bogdanos, he was busy tracking down remnants of the regime when he

decided he would really rather be tracking down Iraq's stolen antiquities. He helped assemble a

team of three military officers and seven agents from the Department of Homeland Security's

Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The men set about their gumshoe work,

helping recover thousands of stolen pieces for the museum.

Both men were captivated by the treasure, discovered by Iraqi archeologists in four burial sites

in Nimrud, near the biblical city of Nineveh. The pieces include a queen's crown with eight

winged girls and a dome of gold leaves, white marble jars, gold plates and engraved silver

pitchers.

The initial worry of both men was that the treasure was part of the haul taken by looters. In the

days after the war, however, museum curators assured U.S. officials the treasure had been

moved in 1990 to the central bank and was believed safe.

Then rumors surfaced that Saddam's youngest son, Qusay, had made an illicit withdrawal from

central bank vaults shortly before the war, making off with gold ingots and $920 million in cash.

"When I heard that report, I thought 'God, please tell me he wasn't that sick to steal the treasure,'

" says Mr. Williams.

His fears were put to rest when a central bank worker told Mr. Williams he was present at the

vault the night he and others were ordered to stack the money for Qusay. The man said he

helped fill dozens of suitcases with cash and nine coffins with 27.5-pound bars of gold. But, he

said, none of the Nimrud treasure was taken.

The U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division quickly sent a tank to guard the area after bank

officials found that looters were trying to get inside the vaults. Several robbers had killed each

other in one of the buildings, and others were shooting AK-47s at the vault doors. One man was

killed when he fired his rocket-propelled grenade at the vault while standing less than 10 feet

away.

Even after it appeared that the treasure was safe, there was still a major obstacle to getting at it:

The basement of the main central bank building was flooded. Two weeks ago, both men stared

at the water down a dark stairwell and speculated about the treasure. Mr. Williams asked for

permission to buy pumps to begin draining the basement. Col. Bogdanos gave the green light,

and soon two giant irrigation pumps were hard at work. With the vault still flooded, Mr. Williams

bought two smaller pumps that could be lowered down the stairs as the water level dropped.

Even then, progress was painfully slow. Every time Mr. Williams's team turned the pumps off,

the water level rose. Finally, one of Mr. Williams's Iraqi workers hit upon a solution. With

bemused U.S. soldiers looking on, the man lifted every manhole cover in the area until he found a

valve that stopped fresh water from flowing to the building.

It still took a week to fully drain the building. Mr. Williams, now back in Washington, estimates

his team of amateur hydrologists drained 640,000 gallons of water.

There were still some hiccups along the way. When one of the first bank vaults was opened,

museum officials spotted 14 crates thought to contain the treasure only to find jewels of another

kind: belonging to Iraq's first modern king, Faisal I. "We discovered a treasure, it just wasn't the

right one," says Bill Gardner, a producer for National Geographic. Central Bank workers then

told worried museum officials there were five other crates from the museum in another vault,

which was opened on Sunday.

The crates were badly damaged from the flooding and officials didn't want to haul them up the

elevator shaft in case they broke apart and damaged the treasure. So the suspense continued

until the boxes could be packed into new crates and lifted out Thursday. By then both Mr.

Williams and Col. Bogdanos were stateside again.

Updated June 6, 2003www.thetruthishere.com/nimrod-treasure.html

Posted Dec. 11, 2010