PARIS, April 3: The Louvre Museum says it will devote a special series of exhibitions, film screenings, concerts and conferences to ancient Mesopotamia, much of which is included in present-day Iraq — and the city of Babylon which back in the 18th century BC was transformed by King Hammurabi into the political, cultural, intellectual and religious capital not only of Mesopotamia but also of a good part of what was then the civilized world.

The special series begins on April 14 and is to last until April 20. It includes presentation of one of the museum’s most prestigious works, the Code of Hammurabi (1st half of the XVIIIth century BC), which is very rarely exposed in public.

Lectures will be given by a number of international scholars in an attempt to focus world attention on the situation of the archaeological treasures of modern-day Iraq many of which are endangered by the present war that is being waged by the Anglo- American coalition.

Only last week, French Culture Minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon pleaded with the belligerents in Iraq to spare the country’s archaeological landmarks and historical treasures.

In a letter to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) director-general Koichiro Matsuura — as well as to his counterparts in the 14 other member nations of the European Union, Aillagon expressed the French government’s “extreme concern” over the fate of the cultural and archaeological treasures of Iraq as a result of the war and demanded that Unesco and the EU ministers remind the belligerents of their very grave preoccupation with what is happening in Iraq.