Monuments Men: The Quest to Save Syria's History

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-archaelogists-are-trying-to-save-syrian-artifacts-a-983818.html



While the civil war in Syria has killed tens of thousands of people, it has also destroyed countless of the country's ancient treasures. Now a number of Syrians are trying to save what artifacts they can -- and are risking their lives to do so.

Monuments Men: The Quest to Save Syria's History
By Katrin Elger
August 04, 2014 – 05:18 PM

Cheikhmous Ali pushes a box of ballpoint pens across the table towards his friend and countryman Ahmad. The stout Syrian laughs aloud as he tucks one of the pens into his shirt pocket. "You think it'll work?" asks Ahmad.

Ali nods. "And how," he says. The archeologist is proud of his plan: he has inserted mini digital cameras into the pens. "The quality isn't great, but it serves our purposes," he says.

It's a hot summer's day and the two men are sitting on the terrace of a restaurant on the first floor of a department store in Gaziantep, in southern Turkey. Below them is an electrical goods retailer and a busy four-lane street. The Syrian civil war is raging some 60 kilometers away.

In a few days' time, Ahmad, armed with a pen set worthy of James Bond, will set off to Idlib in the northwest of the country. "A normal camera would be too risky," explains Ali. He recently bought the gadget in a store in Strasbourg, France, his adopted home.

[merrily]

1. Dennis Miller, on our military allowing--some say encouraging--looting of the Baghdad

Museum on the first or second night of our "liberation" of Iraq:

"So what. Their new shit is just like their old shit."

Odd. It took 911 for him to reveal what a bitter, insane ass he is.

For better or worse, Europeans long since "liberated" quite a few Syrian antiquities. You can see them in museums around the world and probably in some family collections as well. So, all will not be lost.