Straight Answers

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">Shyamal Chakravarti, Director, Indian Museum On World Heritage Day today ‘The Indian Museum acquired these bricks from Babylon as early as 1829 and 1877’.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">What’s the role that Indian Museum is playing to preserve the heritage and history of the world?</span><br /><br />Indian Museum is continuously striving to preserve world heritage and history.We have a huge collection of artefacts of great historical and archeological importance and through these we want to spread awareness among masses.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Do you have any special plan for the World Heritage Day?</span><br /><br />We don’t have any special plan for the World Heritage Day particularly. But we are holding a lecture programme with film shows on Mesopotamian culture especially for the students on the occasion of the World Heritage Day. This will continue in future too with a series of film shows. Apart from this we are holding an exhibition this month on the inscribed ancient bricks from Babylon.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">What is the idea behind this exhibition?</span><br /><br />The idea is to make people aware about the great civilisations of the world, which are now at stake. Mesopotamian civilisation is known as one of the greatest civilisations of the world. Ancient Mesopotamia is now called Iraq. Babylon became the seat of power and Hammurabi was its king who presented the world, the first Code of Law. The Indian Museum acquired four inscribed bricks from the ancient ruins of Babylon as early as 1829 and 1877 B.C. Inscriptions on these bricks generally record old literary texts, royal proclamations, decrees and list of names. We thought that we should exhibit these historical bricks of Babylon so that people can see them at this moment.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Is it the war that is drawing a large number of visitors to this exhibition? </span><br /><br />People are very interested about the Mesopotamian civilisation. And obviously the war has increased this interest. These are the reasons why more and more people are coming to see this exhibition.</div> </div>