After nearly two decades of bombing in Iraq, the priceless Nimrud ivories were covered with mold and reduced to near-rubble.
Some of the artifacts — elaborate plaques carved with scenes from mythology and daily life found at the site of a former palace and believed to be more than 3,000 years old — had become glued to the packing materials designed to protect them. Fragments of several of the ivories were jumbled together, making any effort to reassemble them into a high-stakes jigsaw puzzle.
Terry Drayman-Weisser, the director of conservation and technical research at the Walters Art Museum, knew she had to do what she could to help get the treasures repaired, even if it meant flying to a country where Americans are still being targeted. Late last month, she returned from the northern city of Erbil, where she helped found a training academy to teach Iraqi museum employees how to restore precious artworks damaged by the war.
"When I saw the photographs of what had happened to the ivories, I felt so helpless," Drayman-Weisser says. "I have never in my all years seen ivories in such bad condition. I was horrified, and I knew I had to do something."
"Something" turned into a series of related programs that took place over five years, and which are part of an ambitious initiative to save Iraq's cultural treasures that is unprecedented in U.S. conservation history.
"I don't know of anything quite like it," says Eryl Wentworth, the executive director of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.
"It's really rather remarkable. Conservators have gone to specific sites over the years to work on artworks that have been damaged in times of war and by natural disasters. But I've never heard of a museum actually traveling to a country like Iraq and setting up an academic program."
The Walters is a small museum. But from the very beginning, it has been a key part of efforts by the U.S. State Department and the American Association of Museums to help Iraq preserve its endangered gold pieces and ivories, as well as its bombed-out archeological sites. It is fair to say that the museum is becoming an increasingly important player among the nation's arts institutes.
"We were chosen on a national basis, and we were chosen because of Terry's reputation," says Walters Director Gary Vikan. "The little Walters. It was an immense honor."
Drayman-Weisser has spent large chunks of the past five years or so working on the Iraq projects. That might seem like an awfully big undertaking on behalf of a bunch of 3,000-year-old elephant tusks located halfway across the world. But the Nimrud ivories aren't important only to residents of the Persian Gulf.
"Iraq is the cradle of civilization," says Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums. "It's from whence we all ultimately came. We can't understand our own history if the world's great cultural treasures disappear."
Even before the first Persian Gulf War broke out, Iraq's ivories were separated into three groups for safekeeping.
The first group was stored in a bank vault, which flooded when the security system was breached. The second was placed in a metal box in an underground location that periodically took on water as the Tigris River rose and fell — steeping the ivories in a foul stew of bacteria and sewage for a dozen years.
Other pieces that had been locked in a storage room and bathroom of the Iraq National Museum were knocked to the ground and crushed underfoot during the infamous 2003 looting, when about 15,000 objects in the museum's collection were stolen.
There was an international outcry once news of the vandalism and thefts became public. In 2005, Vikan contacted the State Department to offer the Walters' assistance.
"When [then-Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfield responded to the looting by saying, 'Stuff happens,' it really irritated me," Vikan says. "Once the dust began to settle, I learned that the British Museum was involved in conservation efforts. I've always admired them, and I wanted to see if there was anything at all we could do to help."
Rather than risk the safety of staff members by sending them to war-torn Baghdad, the Walters opted to bring two conservators from the Iraq museum to Baltimore, where they would train with Drayman-Weisser, who has an international reputation as an ivory expert.
In May 2006, the Iraqi conservators — an older woman and younger man — arrived in Baltimore for a monthlong stay. Only the conservators' immediate families knew they were in the U.S., and to protect their safety, their names have never been made public. Initially, neither the woman, a physicist, nor the man, a geologist, spoke much English. The culture shock was profound.
