Baghdad's National Museum - 23 October

In the few days I had remaining in Baghdad, I got to do a very abbreviated tour of the National Museum. This stores the collected artifacts of ancient Mesopotamia and was one of the state institutions that was looted and damaged in the aftermath of the 2003 war.

What struck me about the museum was the large number of people working there in a vast warren of rooms that are part of the museum complex and the time and paperwork it took to arrange for permissions to visit the exhibit.  Perhaps this was due to the fact that I was a foreigner but my understanding is that it is not very easy for even ordinary Iraqis to visit the museum.  It turned out that it was the first visit to the museum of the NI staff who went with me, H.

Here are some photos (mostly different textures that struck me) from the visit.

Nabu (Assyrian and Babylonian god of wisdom and writing, worshipped by Babylonians as the son of Marduk and his consort, Sarpanitum, and as the grandson of Ea)

H, by a series of stone panels

me flanked by two statues of the God Ea (aka Enki, a Sumerian, Akkadian and Bablyonian God of water, intelligence and creation)