Clearly, after the looting of the Iraq National Museum, Mesopotamian studies will never be the same again. In Chicago “at one of the leading global centers for the study of ancient Mesopotamia, the personalities vary but the mood is a mix of anger and mourning, seasoned by the bitterness of personal betrayal. And it’s clear that the recent events in Baghdad already have provoked both internal and external soul-searching about the role of this composite museum-research institute in a harsh new world for near-Eastern scholarship.”