BULLSH IN A CHINA SHOP

Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | Eleanor Robson: 'The collection lies in ruins, objects from a long, rich past in smithereens'
"Iraq has not been called the cradle of civilisation for nothing: 5,000 years ago it was the birthplace of writing, cities, codified law, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. The House of Wisdom in ninth-century Baghdad kept classical scholarship alive and promoted a vigorous intellectual reaction to it while Europe was stumbling through the dark ages. "