Antiquities in hiding

Reporters on the Job: Unlike the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, the country’s second most important museum isn’t likely to open anytime soon; Mosul is still one of the most dangerous cities in Baghdad.

The Mosul museum director, Muzahim Hussein, lacks security guards so he doesn’t travel to most sites outside the city. And most of the museum’s display pieces are in Baghdad for safekeeping or locked in a vault that’s been welded shut.

Before the war, Dr. Muzahim took me to Nimrud and showed me the royal graves he’d discovered, which yielded the most spectacular find of gold jewelry since the excavation of King Tut’s tomb. Now he wanders a near-empty museum, wondering when it might reopen. (Read the Monitor's report here.)