A few shots of Babylon!

[Jona Lendering]

Yes this is a copy. The Germans have the original. The Iraqis tried to get the real one from Germany but no such luck.

Yep. And that is why this photo from the website of the British Museum



is not the cultural disaster it at first sight seems to be.

I think I remain within forum rules if I tell that many of the accusations that Babylon was destroyed by the liberators, have now been proved exaggerated. Most of the damage to Babylon was already done by Saddam.

I have not been there, and I think it is likely that certain things have gone wrong (especially in the Baghdad Museum), but it now turns out that on most sites, damage was restricted, and photos like the one above are not what they seem to be.

I just wrote an article in a Dutch newspaper in which I summarized the good news about the Iraq heritage.