Because I knew this would happen. In 2003. Think of your own work, and how you would feel if everything that gave it meaning and import were destroyed, all to help a sociopath gain domestic political points. It's not dramatic to say that my generation of scholars are the last of our kind...

Iraq's most prominent archaeologist has resigned and fled the country, saying the dire security situation, an acute shortage of funds, and the interference of supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had made his position intolerable.

But the Taliban was wrong to blow up those nonbeliever statues:

n April expedition by the Chicago-based Assyrian Academic Society, reported last week on an archaeological e-mail list run by the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, reports the site "is in serious jeopardy of being destroyed." A local mayor has hired a construction firm to dynamite caves out of the rock hillside holding the fragile relief, the society reports, so that visitors to the park there can enjoy some shade.

"Dynamiting anywhere near the reliefs could do damage to them," says University of Chicago Assyriologist McGuire Gibson, by email. He calls the Sennacherib carving one of the most significant standing monuments of ancient Assyria. "These reliefs are almost 2700 years old, and natural processes and some old human actions have damaged them. But they are still in remarkable condition. The threat of damage to create a place where people can picnic out of the sun, without the consent or oversight of the State Board of Antiquities, would be a very bad idea."

In addition, the society reports that visitors are crawling over the relief and chipping away pieces as souvenirs.