Is it too Late to Save Syria’s Antiquities?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 November 2015
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Syria’s cultural heritage is being attacked from all sides - the Assad regime, opportunistic looters, opposition forces, Islamic State fighters and even Russian air strikes. Ancient sites like Palmyra have been destroyed, and it is feared that hundreds of precious valuables have been smuggled out of the country to be sold on the international art market. Is it too late to save Syria’s antiquities? We speak to experts including the specialist trying to recover stolen items being sold on the global antiquities market, the volunteer organising a kind of archaeological resistance inside Syria, and the team reconstructing the country’s historic sites using technology.
(Photo: Baalshamin detonation, Credit: AP)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC World Service, this is Joe Fijon with the inquiry. |
| 0:07.0 | This is Joe Fijon with the inquiry. |
| 0:17.0 | This week is it too late to save Syria's antiquities. Thousands of years ago on a hillside in what's now northern Syria, it's said that a man |
| 0:27.7 | called Abraham used to milk his sheep. This Abraham became an important figure to Jews, Christians and Muslims. |
| 0:36.0 | Where his sheep grazed came a succession of rulers, Hittites, Assyrians, Acadians, Greeks, Romans, Umayyads, Ayubids, Mamluks, Ottomans, all left treasures. |
| 0:51.2 | A citadel was built on the hill and the city of Aleppo grew up around it. |
| 0:56.0 | For eight centuries it was protected by a wall and for the last three decades |
| 1:01.0 | by a UNESCO Declaration of world heritage status. |
| 1:04.8 | The citadel at the moment stands as a launching point for the Syrian military. |
| 1:17.0 | So it's no longer looked at as a historical site, but rather a military site. |
| 1:27.1 | There's been street fighting, tunneling and shelling. Snipers have been firing through the citadel's ancient arrow slits. One Saturday night in July anti-government agents blew up a tunnel and part of the wall |
| 1:36.5 | came down. |
| 1:38.5 | It's a story repeated across Syria. |
| 1:41.6 | What's astonishing is that it's not just the odd citadel or the occasional |
| 1:45.0 | temple that has archaeological value, its entire cities, including Aleppo and Damascus. |
| 1:52.4 | There are more than 10,000 sites of interest. |
| 1:55.0 | Among them the monumental ruins at Palmyra, |
| 1:58.0 | now in the hands of militants from the group calling itself |
| 2:01.0 | Islamic State. They put on a show of destroying some of its |
| 2:05.8 | Roman masterpieces and this month Russia began bombing IS positions around an historic |
| 2:11.8 | castle overlooking Palmyra. We don't yet know what damage has been done. |
| 2:19.7 | There's another threat to the nation's heritage, anything small enough to carry statues, mosaics, ornaments |
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