The lecture will present the Focus Raqqa project, a collaboration of Leiden University (Centre for Global Heritage and Development) and Gothenburg University to document the archaeological items looted from the Raqqa Museum with the aim of facilitating their future recovery.

After the fall of Raqqa in 2013, the museum's staff transferred the most valuable objects to the Central Bank of Raqqa. Some weeks after, when rebels robbed the bank, all museum objects disappeared.

The Focus Raqqa project has gathered the available information of these 513 items including gold and silver coins, cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, and the occasional prehistoric objects. Working together closely with German field projects, the team was able to collect high-quality imagery for many of the objects. This database will be submitted to the Interpol to be distributed to international museums, police, customs and auctions in order to prevent illicit trafficking of these objects. In our lecture we present the Raqqa Museum, ongoing initiatives to safeguard its collections, and the challenges we face in documenting archaeological objects stolen from a Syrian museum.