Focus Raqqa 2.0 - Piloting the Retro-Inventory of the Museum of Raqqa

The Raqqa Museum once held objects discovered in particular by foreign missions that had worked for decades on archaeological sites in the Raqqa Governorate. These objects formed part of the museum’s collection that documented millennia of human civilization in Upper Mesopotamia, from the Neanderthals until the Medieval Islamic period. During the Syrian War in 2013, both the museum and its external storage spaces were thoroughly damaged and looted by Daesh, and around 4,800 artifacts (representing about 80% of the entire collection) were channeled into the illegal antiquities market. This project reconstructed the inventory of the Archaeological Museum. By compiling information from the Raqqa Museum and notes from archaeological excavations archived in Berlin and Leyde, a collaboration between Syrian, German and Dutch experts could identify which items had been looted in Raqqa and documented how those objects had originally been discovered. The project could verify that 5,631 pieces out of the original collection of 6,000 had been held in museum prior to the war. These verification documents are now stored on an online database and can be used to facilitate restitution measures should these pieces resurface on the art market. This documentation work also contributed to the creation of a new museum display that provides background information on the artworks.