Google documents Iraqi museum treasures
November 24, 2009 By RYAN LUCAS , Associated Press Writer
Google chief Eric Schmidt, left, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill attend a ceremony at Iraq's national museum, in Baghdad, on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009. Internet search engine Google is documenting the treasures of Iraq's national museum, home to priceless artifacts from the Stone Age through Islamic periods, and will make the photographs available online early next year, the company's chairman said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
(AP) -- Google is documenting Iraq's national museum and will post photographs of its ancient treasures on the Internet early next year, Google chief Eric Schmidt announced Tuesday.
The museum was ransacked in the chaotic aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster in April 2003, and only reopened to visitors early this year. Schmidt, who toured the museum with U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill on Tuesday, said it was important for the world to see Iraq's rich heritage and contribution to world culture.
"The history of the beginning of - literally - civilization is made right here and is preserved here in this museum," Schmidt said at a ceremony attended by Iraqi officials.
"I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and ideas from your civilization, from the very beginnings of time, available to billions of people worldwide," he said.
Schmidt said Google has taken some 14,000 photographs of the museum and its artifacts, and the images will be available online in early 2010.
The antiquities in the museum's vast storage vaults and artifacts from other sites across the country will also be photographed as they become available and then put on the internet, he said.
The museum was among many institutions, including universities, hospitals, libraries and art galleries, that were looted or set ablaze across Iraq in the days and weeks that followed Saddam's ouster.
The museum holds artifacts from the Stone Age through the Babylonian, Assyrian and Islamic periods. The richness of its collection and its importance as a caretaker of the relics of early civilization triggered an outcry around the world.
U.S. troops, the sole power in the city at the time, were intensely criticized for not protecting the treasures at the museum and other cultural institutions like the national library and the Saddam Art Center, a museum of modern Iraqi art.
The national museum reopened in February after being closed for nearly six years. Its director, Amira Edan, said around 5,000 of the estimated 15,000 artifacts that were looted have been recovered so far.
Edan said Google's project marks another step toward normalcy for the museum, and will provide a useful tool for scholars studying ancient Mesopotamia, but also "a kind of tourism journey" for people with a more casual interest in the region's history.
©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
-
Keeping African artifacts in Africa
Apr 07, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Online museum graduate course offered
Feb 05, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Museum: Galileo's fingers, tooth are found
Nov 21, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Swedish museum to exhibit Pirate Bay server
Apr 16, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Scientists find tiny new bat species: Geneva museum
Jun 24, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (31) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Calling function with no input argument
19 hours ago
-
Force free body diagram problem on gym equipment
20 hours ago
-
Empirical data regarding shower heads and water
Feb 10, 2012
-
feed hold button on CNC lathe
Feb 09, 2012
-
RFAC in Fortran
Feb 09, 2012
-
dynamics 2/32
Feb 08, 2012
- More from Physics Forums - General Engineering
More news stories
Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)
The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.
14 hours ago |
4.7 / 5 (13) |
21
New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission
Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. Theyre a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel such as an optical fiber o ...
Technology / Computer Sciences
22 hours ago |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
6
|
Small modular reactor design could be a 'SUPERSTAR'
(PhysOrg.com) -- Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor ...
Technology / Energy & Green Tech
22 hours ago |
4.4 / 5 (14) |
27
|
New power source discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.
Technology / Energy & Green Tech
21 hours ago |
4.7 / 5 (32) |
8
|
Advanced power-grid model finds low-cost, low-carbon future in West
(PhysOrg.com) -- The least expensive way for the Western U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to help prevent the worst consequences of global warming is to replace coal with renewable and other ...
Technology / Energy & Green Tech
22 hours ago |
4.2 / 5 (5) |
11
|
The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males
A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...
Fool's gold may prove an unlikely alternative to overexploited catalytic materials
Catalytic materials, which lower the energy barriers for chemical reactions, are used in everything from the commercial production of chemicals to catalytic converters in car engines. However, with current catalytic materials ...
Could Venus be shifting gear?
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESAs Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the ...
Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets
Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.
A frank discussion of the power law and linking correlation to causation
(PhysOrg.com) -- Michael Stumpf a mathematics professor at Imperial College in London, and Mason Porter a lecturer at Oxford have teamed together to write and publish a perspective piece in Science regarding the in ...
Employers feel no love for unscrupulous practice of 'service sweethearting'
A new study led by two Florida State University marketing professors finds that some frontline service employees who are rewarded for hikes in customer loyalty and satisfaction also may engage in "service ...