Baghdad's famed antiquities museum, ransacked by looters as Saddam Hussein's rule crumbled, will reopen next month after many of the treasures feared lost forever were found stashed in secret vaults around the city.
Museum research director Donny George said today that among the items on show would be the Treasure of Nimrud, a priceless set of gem-studded gold Assyrian jewellery that has been displayed only once, briefly, in the last 3,000 years.
The treasure was recovered on Thursday from flooded vaults below the gutted shell of the looted central bank.
Discovered between 1988 and 1990 in ancient royal tombs below an Assyrian palace dating from the ninth century BC, it was exhibited in the Baghdad Museum before being hidden in the central bank ahead of the 1991 Gulf War.
The treasure will be on show from July 3, when the museum's large Assyrian gallery will also reopen.
Besides the Nimrud artefacts, US investigators also recovered thousands of items from the museum's main exhibition collection last week when employees led them to a secret vault somewhere in Baghdad. The items had been taken there for safekeeping ahead of the US-led invasion of Iraq.