] The British Museum will help in the global search for ] priceless artefacts plundered in the chaos of war ] ] THE British Museum, accused in the past of being one of ] the world%u2019s leading looters of imperial treasures, ] is to come to the aid of a sister institution devastated ] by war. ] ] Downing Street has asked a leading academic from ] Britain%u2019s national archaeological collection in ] Bloomsbury to draw up a list of antiquities that may have ] been looted from the Baghdad museum so that details can ] be distributed to soldiers patrolling the borders of ] Iraq. ] ] Iraq%u2019s priceless national collection traced the ] origins of modern civilisation in ancient Mesopotamia ] %u2014 the birthplace of writing, cities, codified law, ] mathematics, medicine and astronomy. Its virtual ] destruction in little more than a day of lawlessness is ] seen as a disaster comparable to the 5th-century ] destruction of the library at Alexandria, or an earlier ] sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258. No stone unturned in hunt for looted treasures |