As we saw in the last lesson, the works, monuments and sites recovered to knowledge by archaeology, are a universal patrimony of Humankind. For a number of years after 1945, the terrible experience of the extremely severe damage made to the universal cultural heritage during the Second World War, and the strong impact of the declaration of UNESCO principles led to believe, that deliberate damages to this patrimony had been stopped completely. In simple words, the men of culture and the politicians all over the world believed that no one was able to witness brutal destructions like those, of Coventry, Dresden, Montecassino, which with many more, during the Second World War and certainly in different ways led to very severe losses in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy. At the same time they believed that the formulation of an ethic code, for which many of the most important museums in the world engage themselves, following precise indications by UNESCO, not to buy archaeological artifacts of probable illicit provenance would certainly limit the problem of illicit diggings, albeit it might not stop this horrible practice. Indeed, these two very serious phenomena of depletion of the universal cultural heritage - illicit digging, which cancel the finding contexts of ancient works, and intentional destructions of artistic and architectural artifacts of the past- didn't disappear, against all expectation, and even in some very important region of the planet intensified beyond any possible expectation. The reasons for these two phenomena are, as regards illicit diggings, mainly of an economic nature and, as concerns intentional destruction, mainly of ideological and political nature. Even UNESCO, notwithstanding the repeated, and continuous attempts to contrast, though sometimes quite late, cannot phase them. Illicit digging which is one of the greatest barbarity of our times as concerns cultural heritage, nourish the international trade in archaeological and artistic artifacts coming from regions of the five continents. In this trade economic interests are very high, forgeries about the origin of the objects trade are very frequent, and the attempts at blocking the trade of artifacts of illicit provenance are always very difficult. We must repeat that the extreme seriousness of illicit digging depends on the fact that with this illicit activity the finding context of ancient artifacts is completely destroyed, with a series of related damages. In the first place, the value, and meaning of the artifacts brought to light during an illicit digging, void of their original context, are seriously diminished, because the finding context of ancient artifacts is precisely what allows to reconstruct the history of those same artifacts. In the second place, the research modes of illicit diggings, which are similar to a treasure hunting, because they aim at finding only precious objects, seriously destroy the finding places, and therefore seriously hamper also future researches in sacked places, like cemeteries. In the third place, as in our times in several instances, illicit diggings are planned by international organizations on appointment, the excavation techniques, often going into depth, provoke very serious damage to whole archaeological deposits, but also they frequently destroy, completely, whole archaeological sites. Of course, the regions richest in archaeological sites, and most of all in cemeteries, suffered the most, and still suffer from illicit diggings, from Iraq to Peru, from Mexico to Italy, from Iran to Egypt, from Laos to Greece. In very simple words, the action against illicit diggings may have some effectiveness particularly by means of two prevention tools. On the one hand, we should act on the education of local peoples in order to improve the awareness about the importance of the preservation of cultural heritage, also taking into account that the same peoples may draw some advantage from the integrity of the territories, for instance, as concerns tourism development. On the other hand, create police forces specialized in the action against illicit diggings, which should be distributed in the territories particularly rich in archaeological deposits, and traditionally exposed to the actions of illicit researches, in order to create a permanent controls over the places, and districts more frequent by bands of clandestine diggers. Realistically, we should say that a serious, effective, and successful contrast, was never achieved in any part of the planet. Generally speaking fact, in the Countries richest in archaeological sites, like Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Peru, Italy, Iran, an adequate covering of the territory, with specialized, and effective police forces, would be so much expensive that, indeed, it was never accomplished anywhere in the world. However, there is no doubt that where the government expressed a true political will to contrast illicit diggings, these events were drastically reduced when two strong elements of discussion were accomplished. On the one hand a strong worsening of punishments on the legislative level, and on the other hand, the placement on the territory of inadequate number of the police forces with administrative experience. The hunt for archaeological treasures in the clandestine excavations in archaeological sites, are a very ancient phenomenon, and in times luckily quite far away from now, during the 17th and 18th centuries, it even happened that the Spanish imperial government in Peru, granted permissions to adventurers in order to make researches in Pre-Inca burial grounds of the countries, where tombs were extremely rich in precious metal ornaments. As already maintained, the second phenomenon creates a very serious impoverishment of the universal cultural heritage, namely the intentional destruction of artifacts, monuments and sites of the heritage, and this is something horrible, we believed had seen the last even dreadful manifestations during the Second World War. Yet, the phenomenon of the intentional destructions of cultural heritage has reappeared in our days, in a very serious and in unpredictable ways, as to become an international emergency, which came up again in the world political scenarios, in large regions of the planet. The reappearance of this phenomenon of intentional destructions of the cultural heritage of civilizations 'other' than that of the protagonists of the destructions, is determined by the inexpiable hatred, and by the complete intolerance of fundamentalist milieus, aiming at annihilating any expression of a 'different' culture. This kind of intentional destructions has been realized already with heavy losses during the recent wars in the Near and Middle East. During these conflicts, which are usually internal crisis of a Country leading to civil wars, with extended interventions of regular and irregular troops of foreign powers - from Afghanistan to Iraq, and from Lebanon to Syria - three main causes for losses, or risks to the cultural heritage, to frequently place. In the first place, the exorbitant increase in illicit diggings, caused by the complete lack of control of the territories by police forces, by the condition of extreme poverty of many inhabitants, by the not rare intervention of organized bands of treasure hunters on commission. In second place, the occupation of archaeological sites by military commands or detachments, which damage the sites, but also make of those same sites the automatic objective of often devastating shelling by the other contender. In the third place, the aim of destroying every expression, and material evidence of a culture felt as irreconcilable adversary, for ideological, as well as political reasons, but also, and most of all, for religious reasons, even within the same religious belief, as happens with devastations by extremist Sunnis also as regards the orthodox Sunnis. Only in order to make some example of extremely serious events, as regards to the impressive increase in illicit diggings, the sites of the capitals of pre-classical Babylon in Iraq, like Isin and Umma, are nowadays almost completely lost, and not too different situation can be witnessed at Apamea and Dura Europos, two sites of the Roman period in Inner Syria, and on the Euphrates. In the second case of historical centres occupied by military forces, and therefore shelled with important damages, we might recall the wonderful medieval fortress of the Knight's Krack, and the Omayyad Mosque of Aleppo in Syria. In the third case of intentional destruction of artifacts belonging to cultures felt as hostile, we have to mention the sack of Maalula, the Christian village of Syria, where they still speak Aramaic, Jesus' language, the destruction of the big Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, and the demolition of important Assyrian and Aramaean statues, at Raqqa, and Tell Ajaja. Some extreme case of barbarian sacks of the cultural heritage during this regional crisis of the Near East, had different and contrasting interpretations. Yet, the fact remains of the unprecedented gravity of the responsibilities of those who were not able or didn't want to prevent them against the UNESCO conventions and declarations. The most dramatic case is the sack of the Iraqi museum, and of the National Library of Baghdad, as soon as the troops of the United States of America entered Baghdad in 2003 in order to bring Saddam Hussein's regime down. In other cases of very serious and irreparable destructions, three main causes we have just recalled may sum up. So, it is certain that the wish to take possession of precious artifacts, made possible by the almost complete absence of police forces, as well as the will to annihilate artifacts recalling the hatred times of the ancient, pre-Islamic Paganism, brought to the attack against the Regional Archaeological Museum of Minya in Middle Egypt, where a number of artifacts of the Amarna age - the age of the heretic Pharoah Amenophis IV, Akhenaten - were in large part destroyed and in a smaller part stolen. Summing up, the organized, and systematic, illicit diggings, and the intentional destructions of the cultural heritage during civil and regional wars are very serious phenomena of a new, unexpected, and deplorable barbarity, which bring our contemporary world back to ruthless and obscure times, marked, on the one hand, by a blind will to enrich oneself, and, on the other hand, by unacceptable ideological intolerance.
