The gods must be weeping

Am feeling sorrow over the trashing of the 3000-year-old city of Nimrud in northern Iraq by crazy IS vandals determined to wreck everything that's not Islamic, even it it's vastly pre-Islamic. A while back, wandering around the LA County Museum of Art, I was amazed by a hall full of wonderful ancient Assyrian stone wall carvings.

At the time I thought how weird it was that such glorious old things should be mounted on Californian walls.

But now, what a good thing it is that museums around the world have such beauties as this eagle deity from Nimrud.

Such a peaceful sort of god, he seems to be too, despite his fearsome beak, plucking flowers with one hand and holding what looks like a lady's handbag with the other.

If he'd stayed at home he would probably now be smashed to gravel by barbarians's sledgehammers.