ABSTRACT
It is a sad fact of history that cultural heritage often, quite literally, goes up in smoke, disappears in conflagrations of nature, is sacrificed to the whims of dictators or despots, or is destroyed in efforts at historical revisionism (Battles, 2003). In ancient times, we have examples such as the burning of ancient libraries in Alexandria and the destruction of Herculaneum’s Villa dei Papiri near Mt. Vesuvius. More recently we have witnessed the 1993 bombing and plundering of the Kabul Museum, and the looting of Iraq’s National Museum in 2003.
