NYT: Ruined Treasures in Babylon Await an Iraq Without Fighting

[DeepModem Mom]

Ruined Treasures in Babylon Await an Iraq Without Fighting


(Johan Spanner/Polaris, for The New York Times)
A Polish helicopter flies over excavated parts of Babylon. Over the years, colonial powers took artifacts and Saddam Hussein built on Nebuchadnezzar's palace. Then, the occupation.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: April 18, 2006

....Babylon, the mud-brick city with the million-dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied....Ancient Babylon, celebrated as a fount of law, writing and urban living, sits just outside the modern-day city of Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Hilla is neither haunted by Sunni insurgents nor overwhelmed by Shiite militias. And though it has a mix of Shiites and Sunnis, it has not been afflicted by the sectarian violence that has paralyzed so many other heterogeneous parts of Iraq....

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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is pumping millions of dollars into protecting and restoring Babylon and a handful of other ancient ruins in Iraq....The American military still maintains bases near Babylon, but next month, in a sign of how relatively stable the area has become, most troops will pull out and head north to Baghdad, where they are needed more.

Many Iraqis said it was about time. Occupying forces have been blamed for much of Babylon's recent demise.

Donny George, head of Iraq's board of antiquities, said that Polish troops dug trenches through an ancient temple and that American contractors paved over ruins to make a helicopter landing pad.

"How are we supposed to get rid of the helipad now?" Mr. George asked. "With jackhammers? Can you imagine taking a jackhammer to the remains of one of the most important cities in the history of mankind? I mean, come on, this is Babylon."...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/world/middleeast/18babylon.html?hp&ex=1145419200&en=c067c3029bb5990e&ei=5094&partner=homepage