Just one point on the mailbag responding to my piece on the Iraqi National

Museum. Several readers have objected to my saying that these antiquities

are better off in private hands, as then they would not be available for

public view. Well: (1) This is not true. Public exhibitions often include

items loaned from private collections. (2) They haven’t exactly been

available for public viewing recently–the Iraqi National Museum has been

closed to the public for years! (I am sorry, by the way, that I called Sir

Leonard Woolley “Sir Edward.” There are few fact-checkers on the web…)