Recovering Iraq's Past: Request for Proposals to Preserve and Document Iraq's Cultural Heritage
Division of Preservation and Access
Announced: July 2004

University of California, Los Angeles
A Cultural Heritage Initiative for Ancient Iraq
The development of an online catalog of cuneiform tablets at the Iraq National Museum that documents Mesopotamian civilization from 3300 B.C. until the Christian era.
Outright: $96,588

Cornell University
Online Preservation Tutorial in Arabic
The creation of a preservation tutorial in Arabic on the treatment and care of books, manuscripts, image and recorded sound collections, papyrus, and clay tablets that would be made available on the Internet and as a CD-ROM for distribution in Iraq.
Outright: $97,554

Massachusetts College of Art
Conservation Assessment of Ancient Assyrian Structures at Nineveh and Nimrud, Iraq
A conservation assessment of first millennium B. C. Neo-Assyrian palaces and related structures at Nineveh and Nimrud, Iraq.
Outright: $65,510

University of California, Berkeley
The Intellectual Heritage of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Baghdad Corpus of Lexical Texts
The preparation of an online catalog of 5,000 cuneiform lexical texts housed at the National Museum in Iraq. Images of the tablets, accompanied by transcriptions, will be available on a Web site at the museum and will be integrated into a larger database of cuneiform materials, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI).
Outright: $99,357

Simmons College
Educating Iraqi Librarians and Archivists
An education and training program that will enhance the professional knowledge and skills of up to 25 Iraqi librarians and archivists.
Outright: $100,000

World Monuments Fund
Integrated System for Cultural Heritage Inventory and Assesment in Iraq
A cultural heritage inventory of Iraqi archaeological and historic sites that would include an integrated database, a Geographic Information System (GIS), and a Geographic Positioning System (GPS) for documenting site information and locations.
Outright: $100,000

University of Chicago
Diyala Project
The creation of a publicly accessible virtual archive of archaeological data on ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) that incorporates a relational, expandable database that would be mounted on an existing Web site at the Oriental Institute. The initial component focuses on four major sites in the Diyala Region northeast of Baghdad.
Outright: $100,000

Field Museum of Natural History
Reconciling the Past: A Catalog of Scattered Collections
The cataloging of material culture collections excavated from 1923 to 1933 at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Kish (3100 to 2250 BCE).
Outright: $99,984