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Looters undo the work of centuries, writes Paul McGeough in Baghdad.
They knew what they were looking for. It needed to sparkle in the light of the burning oil-soaked rags that light the darkness as they continue to plunder Baghdad.
But as they searched for ancient jewels from civilisations dating back thousands of years, they destroyed one of the world's finest collections of antiquities - the Iraq National Museum.
It is a cultural catastrophe. Yesterday the museum's exhibition halls and security vaults were a barren mess - display cases smashed, offices ransacked and floors littered with hand-written index cards recording the timeless detail of more than 170,000 rare items that were pilfered.
Worse, in their search for gold and gems, the looters got into the museum's underground vaults, where they smashed the contents of the thousands of tin trunks.
It was here that staff had painstakingly packed priceless ceramics that tell the story of life from one civilisation to the next through 9000 fabled years in Mesopotamia.
In tears of anger and frustration, archaeologist Moysen Hassan, 56, itemised the pieces he was certain were stolen: a solid-gold harp from the Sumerian era, which began about 3360BC; a sculptured head of a woman from Uruk, one of the great Sumerian cities; gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings more than 4000 years old, and a rare collection of gold-trimmed ivory sculptures.
Too distraught to talk about the collection, he gave me a copy of the catalogue for The Grand Exhibition of Silk Road Civilisations, which toured the world in the late 1980s and for which the museum set aside its traditional reluctance to allow any of its treasure abroad.
All the items that made it safely around the world and back to Baghdad have been looted.
They include centuries-old carvings of stone bulls, kings and princesses, shoes made of copper and cuneiform tablets, pieces of tapestries and ivory figurines of goddesses, women and Nubian porters, friezes of fighting soldiers and ancient seals and tablets on geometry, and ceramic jars and urns and bowls, all dating back at least 2000 years, some more than 5000 years.
"All gone, all gone," he said. "All gone in two days."
The looting of the museum, in the Karkh district of the inner city, tells the story of the anarchy that has beset Baghdad since the arrival last Wednesday of US-led forces.
Every public building has been raided by the mobs, and most of them torched, sometimes accidentally because of the use of the oily rags.
Hotels and hospitals have been reduced to empty shells, and Iraqis who care are infuriated by the loss and by the transmission to the world of the most appalling images of their society in greedy chaos.
The looters are a product of the regime that has shaped them - poorly educated, hungry for revenge after decades of oppression, and unable to appreciate the damage they are doing to the country that is now theirs. The Americans came in pursuit of a military objective.
Now, when it's too late, they say they will confront the looters, though we have seen little sign of this.
They say they will impose a night-time curfew, as if that matters when most of the looting is done in daylight in a city that has become a patchwork of vigilante-patrolled no-go areas, and a killing field for those bent on revenge.
Those who are hungry for power are asserting themselves with menace. The long-oppressed Shiite majority, centred in the south, is taking control of a key area of Baghdad - the endless slums of Saddam City.
Aggressive and angry young Shiites, in the bearded garb of the mosques of Karbala and Najaf, have taken over the streets and the hospitals, imposing their own brand of law and order and issuing warnings such as this from Ahmed Mohammed, 27: "We thank George Bush, but if he stays here, he is just another Saddam. The Americans are becoming like Saddam. The two of them are exactly the same."
And Baghdadis are acutely aware that the Marines threw a cordon around only one public building when they pulled into town - the high-rise headquarters of the Oil Ministry.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushes it all off. "Yes, it's untidy; but freedom is untidy," was his flip response to the mayhem.
He needs to think again, because how the Iraqis read the conduct of the US forces in these early days will inform their acceptance of the American presence her for years to come. "The Americans have disappointed us all. This country won't be operational for at least a year or two," said Abbas Reta, 51, an engineer and father of five, who was among hundreds of Iraqi professionals who volunteered yesterday to help restore services.
"I've seen nothing new since Saddam's fall. All that we have seen is looting. The Americans are responsible. One round from their guns and all the looting would have stopped."
Nezar Ahmed, an electrical engineer, spoke for many when he said: "We've been wanting to kill Saddam Hussein for 20 years, but we couldn't. So we are grateful to the Americans, but they are letting thieves take everything from the Iraqi people. It is their responsibility to maintain security, but they let the thieves do whatever they want."
And as the tracks of another passing tank screeched on the bitumen while its crew turned a blind eye to the looting, Fouad Abdullah Ahmed, 49, blurted: "The army of America is like Genghis Khan. America is not good, and Saddam is not good. My people refused Saddam, and they will refuse the Americans."
And in the crowd that gathered to protest near the Palestine Hotel, there was an ominous warning for Mr Rumsfeld from the mouth of Raad Bahman Qasim, 30: "If this continues in Baghdad, we'll kill any American or British soldier."
The sacking of the museum took two days, interrupted only for 30 minutes when pleading staff convinced members of a Marines tank unit to go to the museum and scare off the looters with a few warning shots over their heads.
Abdul Rakhman, the museum's live-in guard, 57, was a gibbering wreck as he told of the arrival of a shouting crowd armed with axes and iron bars to smash the doors and cases.
He said: "They said there was no government, that everything belonged to them. There were women and children.
"They stuffed the pieces into bags and I couldn't talk because there were too many of them.
"So I stayed in my room. They were yelling that there was no government and no state and that they would do whatever the liked."
Just like Saddam Hussein, the guard admitted that in 10 years on the job he had never bothered to look at the museum's displays.
And now that there was no Saddam, no museum collection? "I'm a guard. I don't bother myself with stuff like that."
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