U.S. reportedly damaged Ancient Babylon

Museum claims military caused 'substantial damage'

LONDON - U.S.-led forces, using Iraq’s ancient city of Babylon as a military base, have caused “substantial damage” to one of the world’s most renowned archaeological treasures, a British Museum report said.

The report, quoted in Saturday’s Guardian newspaper, said U.S. and Polish military vehicles had crushed 2,600-year-old pavements in the city, a cradle of civilization and home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Archaeological fragments were used to fill sand bags, it added.

John Curtis, keeper of the museum’s Ancient and Near East department, invited to visit Babylon by Iraqi antiquities experts, also said he had found cracks and gaps made by people who had apparently tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the city’s Ishtar Gate.

“This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain,” Curtis said in the report.