93005349

Missing: A Vase, a Book, a Bird and 10,000 Years of History

From the NY Times, on the destruction of Iraq’s cultural legacy:

Above all, scholars reacted as mourners struggling with an overwhelming loss. In Boston, Dr. Russell fought back tears as he described a sculpture from the museum he had seen in the 1980’s: a small carving of a bird, one of the earliest stone sculptures in existence, from around 8,000 B.C. “The archaeologists had found it literally in the hand of its ancient owner, who had been crushed to death when the roof of his burning house fell on him, evidently as he tried to save this piece,” he said. “In light of what’s happened in the past week, that’s very hard to think about right now.”