(Chicago) -- The Director General of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, Dr. Donny George, spoke about the April 2003 looting, the recovery of antiquities and the museum's restoration initiatives at a lecture hosted by the Field Museum.

"I saw everything as an eyewitness," he said.

George is the Director-General of Research and Studies in the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, Baghdad. He participated in the Nineveh excavation project, as well as the Babylon restoration. His association with the museum began in 1976 and he became the museum's director in 2003.

The Iraq Museum is "the only museum in the world that has history and culture of mankind in one spot," George explained.

After the museum looting, over 20 international archaeologists wrote a collection of essays for the book, "The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad -- The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia," filled with 190 color illustrations. The book reconstructs the museum's collection and George wrote the forward. The inside cover of the book explains: "Iraq is a country of firsts: the earliest villages, cities, writing, poetry, epic literature, temples, codified religion, armies, warfare, world economy, and empire." Hence, Iraq is the Cradle of Civilization.

According to the book's front cover, a portion of the royalties from the sale of the book will be donated to the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.

In April 2003, looters plundered over 15,000 antiquities from the Iraq Museum and 5,000 of them were most precious objects, such as jewelry and figurines. Within two years looters unearthed over 8,000 artifacts from the country's 12,000 archaeological sites. The looting of archaeological sites is an ongoing problem, especially in Southern Iraq.

After his slide presentation, George showed an aerial photo of Umma - an archaeological site of eight square kilometers. The landscape contained thousands of pits. "These are from people digging there for antiquities," he added.

Although the new police system has recruited 1,700 people, they lack communication systems and cars.

The Museum Looters

How much money is in the antiquities market? According to one of the book's essays, "Theft of Time," by Angela M. H. Schuster, antiquities smuggling is "a multibillion-dollar business