As war again comes to Iraq, the international community is rightly concerned about the human toll, civilian as well as military, long-term as well as immediate. Governments and humanitarian organizations already have relief plans in place to help the expected flood of refugees. Others worry about the fate of the country's oil fields and the impact of high-intensity bombing on the environment. But there is another aspect of the invasion and its aftermath that is, or should be, of concern: the threat posed to Iraq's incomparable antiquities.

This is not a matter of a few fragile objets d'art or dusty museum pieces. Iraq, which is more or less equivalent to the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that was ancient Mesopotamia, is viewed by scholars as the cradle of Western civilization: site of the biblical Garden of Eden and seedbed of the cultures that gave the Western world its first cities, writing systems, libraries, legal codes, coins, calendars, double-entry bookkeeping and farming techniques, among many other things.

Modern Iraq is home to more than 10,000 archaeological sites, from the ruins of entire cities, such as Nineveh, Babylon and Ur, to the remains of fabled palaces, including the one from which Sennacherib the Assyrian sent his army down "like the wolf on the fold" against Jerusalem in 701 B.C. Most have not yet been excavated, although that hasn't stopped looters.