When mobs in Baghdad entered the Iraqi national museum and destroyed the artifacts, little did they know that they were wiping out large traces of history. Not just of Iraq, but that of the entire world.

So, when the museum deputy director Nabhal Amin openly wailed and cried in anguish it was perfectly understandable. She picked up the broken pieces of the artifacts, her helplessness on display for the entire world to see. "They have looted or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years... They were worth billions of dollars", she said, sobbing.

The museum grounds were full of smashed doors, windows and littered with office paperwork and books.

Twenty eight galleries of the museum and vaults with thick steel doors were ransacked through Thursday and Friday with almost no intervention by the US troops. A 4000-year-old copper visage of an Akkadian king, golden bowls, colossal statues and ancient manuscripts were all looted and destroyed.

The museum housed items from ancient Babylon and Nineveh, Sumerian statues, Assyrian reliefs and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known writing. There were also gold and silver helmets and cups from the Ur cemetery.

Iraq, a cradle of civilisation long before the empires of Egypt, Greece or Rome, was home to dynasties that created agriculture and writing and built the cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Babylon -- site of Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens.

On the eve of the invasion in March, archaeologists around the world had warned the US government it had a responsibility to ensure the safety of Iraq's heritage, of the remnants of the Mesopotamian civilization. To no avail.

The museum deputy director blamed the US troops for failing to heed appeals from museum staff to protect it from looters. "The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened," she said. "I hold the American troops responsible for what happened to this museum."

The plundering was ruthless. "We know people are hungry but what are they going to do with these antiquities," said Muhsen Kadhim, a museum guard for the last 30 years but who said he was overwhelmed by the number of looters. "As soon as I saw the American troops near the museum, I asked them to protect it but the second day looters came and robbed or destroyed all the antiquities," he said.

According to archaeologists, a full accounting of what has been lost may take weeks or months. The only hope now is that at least some of the museum's priceless gold, silver and copper antiquities, ancient stone and ceramics, and perhaps some of its fabled bronzes and gold-overlaid ivory had been locked away for safekeeping elsewhere before the looting.

During the first Gulf war in 1991, nine of Iraq's 13 regional museums were plundered. Fortunately, the Baghdad museum was spared because the war did not replace the government and policing of the city was not disrupted. The museum incidentally, had been closed during much of the 1990s, and had been reopened only in April 2000.

The museum's deputy director has now asked the guards to keep guns and protect whatever remains -- a case of "too little too late"?