Is ancient-coin looting financing ISIS?

@Topcat7 several posts were deleted for being political.

 

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@GerardV
Thanks for that. I hadn't considered that possibility. It makes sense.
(I am O.K. with that.)
Thank you, again.

 

I was looking at old threads in the "ancient artifacts" Yahoo group and someone had posted this link about cultural property and whether ISIS was profiting from it. It is a May 22, 2018 article I had not seen until now.

https://culturalpropertynews.org/whose-truth-nyt-journalist-condemned-for-cultural-appropriation/

It says that a New York Times reporter found abandoned ISIS documents that show "ISIS Funding Comes from Taxes, Not Oil or Art." "It was daily commerce and agriculture — not petroleum — that powered the economy of the caliphate." Some groups are attempting to suppress the publication of the documents which prove that collecting is not the problem and those groups were wrong when they asserted that collecting was the problem.

There are individuals and groups opposed to ancient-coin collecting. They have used arguments like "Collectors make looting profitable and ISIS has made millions from looting." Now we know that argument is specious.

 

We now live in a world where truth and honesty take a back seat to and are at odds with reality and fact. People now seem to react based solely on their emotion and what they might see in their newsfeed or on Facebook. Facts are of no consequence. I see it every day of course in politics, but ancient coin collecting is the same.

 

"It is true that Iraq has a domestic law on antiquities, the Law No. 55 of 2002 for the Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq. This law prohibits removal not only of what is commonly thought of as “antiquities” but also has a classification called “Heritage Material,” which consists of “the movable and immovable property, less than 200 years of age, possessing a historical, national, religious and artistic value.”

This law can be broadly interpreted as meaning that if I were in Iraq, pooped in the morning, said poop could be defined as "Heritage Material". Such is the insanity of modernity.

 

Thanks for saying this!

 

I too have spent a lifetime studying coins. I am left with no doubt that coin issue itself is primarily a political matter, and always has been. To ignore this misses the point of serious numismatic study.

I also have no doubt that what passes for serious official scholarship has always contained rather a lot of political bias - and further, things got a lot worse in recent decades - as archaeology has supplanted history in many areas of the study of the past.

I have had a look at www.partisanlines.com - and it does not seem to be being used for numismatic debate at all. However I would be willing to join and discuss such matters further if others choose to do so. Perhaps Orfew, since he is clearly sincere, but I definitely disagree with his position, equally sincerely.

Having said that, the title "partisanlines" seems regrettable to me. I would never wish to take a partisan position. That there are kinds of quite serious political bias in much official scholarship seems to me a clear objective fact.

Rob Tye