A loving appreciation of your ancient history, along with the diversion of resources to cataloging and preserving it, is a luxury reserved to well-fed and prosperous societies. It's possible that there may be some resentment in Iraq about money spent on such things.

Certainly, in ancient times, ruins and artifacts were cheerfully broken up and melted down and the stone and metal reused without a second thought.

While checking up on the Baghdad Museum, I found this article in the Google cache.

It contains the following puzzling line:

...Every moveable piece was packed up in crates a week ago and removed from the museum, he added.

Huh?