Iraq’s gold, as a single cube

The holding

Iraq’s gold reserve, in proportion

Iraq's central bank holds about 175 tonnes of gold — a mid-tier holder, 25th of the 38 nations the World Gold Council tracks. That is a number most people cannot picture, so picture this instead: gathered into one solid block, every bar of it would form a cube roughly 2.1 m on each side — about the height of a person. Gold is so dense (19.32 grams per cubic centimetre, about two and a half times the density of iron) that Iraq's entire reserve, worth approximately $23 billion, would occupy only about 9 cubic meters.

Gold makes up 27.1% of Iraq's official reserves — a moderate allocation, broadly in line with the world average of about 29%. Measured against the world's monetary gold, that block is about 0.5% of all the bullion held by every central bank and treasury on the planet. Iraq sits in the Middle East.

The metal is held at Central Bank of Iraq, Baghdad. In recent years Iraq has been a net buyer, steadily adding to the pile — part of the broad return to gold among emerging-market and reserve-diversifying central banks. Whether a reserve is growing or steady, its physical footprint barely changes: even doubling Iraq's gold would only widen the cube by about a quarter — the defining paradox of the metal is that staggering value keeps collapsing into a remarkably small space.

It is worth holding the comparison in mind. The largest reserve on Earth, the United States', is a cube only 7.5 m per side; all the gold ever mined in human history fits inside a cube about 22 m per side — the size of a seven-story building. Iraq's share of that 6,000-year inheritance is the block you see above.