The war has long put Iraq’s ancient historic and religious sites
off limits to all but the most daring of scholars,
archeologists, tourists and ordinary Iraqis. Slowly, if
unevenly, that may be changing. A conservation project at the
ancient ruins of Babylon — funded by the United States and
overseen by the World Monuments Fund — is merely the most
ambitious of numerous projects to begin restoration of sites
across the country that have increasingly become accessible with
improved security in recent years. In a place still recovering
from years of conflict, the projects promise to open Iraq’s
rich, deeply layered history to study and to tourism — not just
for foreigners but also for Iraqis, whose engagement with the
ancient past has been obliterated by the more recent past. “We
could not even come to visit before out of fear,” said Israa
Fayadth, who joined her family the other day at the grounds of
an ancient ziggurat called Aqar Quf, a ruin of the Kassite
dynasty that replaced the first Babylonian empire of