] The British Museum will help in the global search for
] priceless artefacts plundered in the chaos of war
]
] THE British Museum, accused in the past of being one of
] the world%u2019s leading looters of imperial treasures,
] is to come to the aid of a sister institution devastated
] by war.
]
] Downing Street has asked a leading academic from
] Britain%u2019s national archaeological collection in
] Bloomsbury to draw up a list of antiquities that may have
] been looted from the Baghdad museum so that details can
] be distributed to soldiers patrolling the borders of
] Iraq.
]
] Iraq%u2019s priceless national collection traced the
] origins of modern civilisation in ancient Mesopotamia
] %u2014 the birthplace of writing, cities, codified law,
] mathematics, medicine and astronomy. Its virtual
] destruction in little more than a day of lawlessness is
] seen as a disaster comparable to the 5th-century
] destruction of the library at Alexandria, or an earlier
] sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258.