Going, Going, Going, Gone!

A great deal of attention has been paid to the events of April 2003—when Baghdad fell to Coalition forces and looters pillaged the National Museum. Fortunately, most of the high-value artifacts on display in the public galleries of the museum had been securely stored elsewhere by the conscientious museum staff. Nonetheless, the losses, especially from the storage rooms, 042are still enormous (see box).a For a number of reasons, however, the spotlight has not been focused as intensely on the plight of archaeological sites throughout Iraq, a country that encompasses most of the territory of ancient Mesopotamia. Due to the […]