The destruction of the Iraq Museum is a disaster. “Some objects will doubtless be recovered, and a few of the most remarkable may turn out to have been hidden away. Even so, when the news about the museum emerged some people over here began talking about how the Iraqi people had ‘lost their past’. A museum like the one in Baghdad, they argued, gives a people a sense of who they are, and where they come from. Is this true? There is a lot of sentimentality attached to archaeology by outsiders.”